Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

1. This submission is limited to the discussion of the nuclear tests in India. The views expressed are entirely my own, and are not those of The Australia India Council.

The Importance of India

2. In his book "India - From Midnight to the Millennium", Shashi Tharoor, argues that "India is the most important country for the future of the world". The reason for this conclusion, is that "Indians stand at the intersection of four of the most important debates facing the world at the end of the twentieth century".1 These four debates are:

• the bread versus freedom debate
• the centralization versus federalism debate
• the pluralism versus fundamentalism debate
• the Coca-colonization debate or globalisation versus self reliance

He goes on to say that "since the century will begin with Indians accounting for a sixth of the world's population, their choices will resonate throughout the globe".

3. Whether or not Mr. Tharoor is correct in asserting that India is the most important country in the world, it is obvious that it is one of the most important and on any view, far more important than Australia now is, or will ever be.

Relevance for Australia

4. Yet, as has been noted so often the last decade, India has never been a high priority for Australia in any sense. This has been true despite its potential importance as a source of ideas in democracy, federal constitutional arrangements, republicanism, literature, and multi-culturalism. Its economic importance has been the subject of comment rather than action.

5. The extraordinary achievement of the creation of a democracy, against almost all the odds, in the last 50 years is simply not widely appreciated in Australia.2

Background to the tests

6. The background to the tests can be simply stated. India has for a generation developed strong defence forces. It has had security concerns and, indeed a history of armed conflict, with Pakistan and with China. It has been developing a nuclear capacity for a very long time and as recently as 1995 an Indian Government considered nuclear tests. For more than 30 years India has felt concerns about the fact that the United States has supplied arms to Pakistan 3. In recent years, India believed that Pakistan had developed a nuclear capability with the assistance of China. It also felt an increasing Chinese presence in Myanmar.

7. India felt that it was not taken as seriously as it should be by the West and its importance as the world's most populous democracy was underrated. It got no support from the U.S. or Australia for joining APEC. That the tests occurred, especially after the election of the new BJP Government depending on numerous small parties for its majority, should not have surprised anyone in the West. In saying this, it must be recognised that the issue cuts across the political spectrum in India, and the nuclear capability had been developed with support of the major parties.

8. As reported in the Guardian after the tests, the Pakistan Government had warned the U.S. Government in April that they believed that India was preparing to test.

The Australian response

9. Nuclear Proliferation anywhere is a matter of great concern, and appropriately the subject of the expression of the deepest concern by an Australian Government.

10. The question is, however, what is the appropriate and effective manner of expressing this concern and influencing the future conduct of India. What Australia did in fact, was to cut off ministerial and Government officials visits, to withdraw its High Commissioner from New Delhi for some weeks, to cut off defence ties and to cut off some of its aid program.

11. The focus of my concern is the fact that the Australian Government on advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, got it into its head that withdrawing contact and disengaging from India would advance its cause or the cause of non-proliferation.

12. Why would Australia possibly think that a policy of disengagement could influence India or any country of similar size? It can only stem from these factors:

• a view that Australia is much more important than other countries think it is
• a view that Australia has some special moral authority in world affairs
• an assumption that India could be influenced in this way
• perhaps, an assumption that this response would be similar to the response of the United States and other Western countries
• a view that the Australian electorate would equate these tests with the French tests in the South Pacific.
• a view that the Australian electorate would only be happy with a policy of disengagement

13. All of those views or assumptions are wrong and all that has happened in Australia, in India, in the U.S. and in Europe since Australia took this action, reinforces the error of these views.

U.S. and international responses

14. In early June I was in New York and visited the Asia Society, Shashi Tharoor at the U.N. and Kamalesh Sharma the Permanent Representative of India at the U.N. At that time Jaswant Singh the deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission was in New York and on his way to Washington to meet U.S. Government officials. While the U.S. Congress was imposing sanctions, (subject to heavy and by now largely successful lobbying by U.S. business interests not to proceed with sanctions), the Clinton Administration was very much engaged with India and dealing with its Government. President Clinton was not ruling out a trip to India later this year. There was a lot of activity around the U.N. seeking a solution to the issue. In addition, the Blair Government was also receiving representatives of the Indian Government and engaging them. Other Western countries did not withdraw their diplomats from Delhi or prohibit Government visits.

Australia out of the loop

15. It was obvious that Australia had taken itself out of the loop. That much was confirmed when I visited Delhi in mid-June and found the Australian High Commission understandably isolated.

The proposed judicial visit

16. The refusal of the Australian Government to allow the Australia India Council to proceed with the visit of the Indian Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee, brought the oddity of the Australian position home. Mr. Sorabjee is an eminent international lawyer. In April he was elected to the U.N. sub-committee on Human Rights. He is not a member of Parliament and is not a member of any political party. He is appointed to his position by the Government of India. He therefore fell within the Australian Government ban on visits of officials of Government. The purposes of his visit was to accompany a Supreme Court judge from India to Australia on a judicial exchange which had been initiated by the AIC. Mr. Sorabjee had hitherto been a friend of Australia and had been a key organiser of the very successful legal conference held in Delhi in November 1996 as part of New Horizons.

17. What does Australia gain, and who does it influence, by saying no to the eminent Mr. Sorabjee. Rather I think the decision was an insult to him, to India and to international constituency he represents in his U.N. capacity. It is a decision which diminishes Australia and Australians.

Australia "an ethically hobbled ally of the U.S."

18. This has all occurred at a time when Australia's reputation is low in international affairs as a result of the Hanson issue. In an article in the L.A. Times, last August, (copy attached), Tom Plate wrote, apropos of the Hanson issue and the Government's response to it, that "Australia was an ethically hobbled ally of the United States" and "... ending up as the dead-ended capital of the South Pacific".

19. Australia ought to be making a constructive and sensible contribution to the arguments for non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. As a country living so firmly under the U.S. defence umbrella, it will always have some difficulty in doing this with a straight face, but its sulky and zealous disengagement from India over this issue has been very damaging to it and not at all damaging to India. Its capacity to influence India in the forseeable future on these or related issues will be negligible.

A new framework

20. The framework for rethinking Australia's relationship with India in the years of trying to re-build the relationship should be based on the following:

• Australia is a small country in relation to India
• Australia turned its back on policies which might have led to it having a real critical mass in terms of population and economy (it chose not to be another California which is the 7th largest economy in the world, and which will grow to 50m. by 2025 substantially by immigration)
• Australia is perceived, in some quarters at least, as ethically hobbled on the international stage
• Australia needs India more than India needs it
• Australia should not base its policies on the assumption that it has a special moral authority in world affairs
• Australia should find a constructive and credible role for itself having regard to its size and credibility

Some specific suggestions

21. There are some specifics around which the relationship with India should be rebuilt. These are:

• evolve the Australian High Commission into an active source of information and exchange of ideas for Australian business interested in India as the U.S. Embassy does the India Interest Group in the U.S. 4
• strengthen the educational ties between the two countries
• encourage the Australian High Commission to develop a stronger relationship with the Ministry for External Affairs in Delhi and the U.S. Embassy in Delhi

Conclusion

22. The relationship with India has been damaged. It is possible to restore it and strengthen it over time. The difficulties in doing so should be frankly recognised. The lessons from a policy which has taken Australia outside the sphere of influence should be remembered for the future.

Hon. Jim Kennan Q.C.

28/7/98

1. Viking, Penguin, India, 1997, p.3. Shahi Tharoor is an Indian writer, who is also the Executive Assistant to the Secretary General of the      United Nations.

2. For a brilliant discussion of the creation of democracy in post Independence India, see "The idea of India" Sunil Khilnani, Penguin Books,     1997

3. The issues haven't changed much in 30 years. See the comments of John Kenneth Galbraith when U.S. Ambassador to India, 1961-63, in     "Letters to Kennedy" Harvard University Press, 1998.

4. The India Interest Group is a group of U.S. companies who have regular telephone conferences with the U.S. Ambassador in Delhi, to      review issues affecting U.S. business in India, and issues in the U.S. affecting the bilateral relationship.