January 13, 2003

MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD SITUATION

By Tom Plate

India's no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons offers a lesson for the world

LOS ANGELES --- If there is a silver lining amid the war clouds that hang over South Asia these days, it is that those clouds are not likely to be nuclear -- at least if India has anything to say about it.

Long before it first tested nuclear weapons -- in 1998 and ever since -- New Delhi has insisted it wouldn't use nuclear weapons unless its territory were fired on first. No ifs, ands or buts about it: Nukes would be launched only in retaliation for a nuclear strike; they exist only to deter; they wouldn't be fired off even in the heat of close-fought battle -- an enemy would need to use them first.

Recall that India faced worldwide censure, especially from the West, when it conducted its surprise 1998 underground tests, which, of course, triggered the Pakistani nuclear tests that predictably followed. The anti-India outcry was led by the United States, which, however, refuses to adopt an unequivocal non-first-use policy (and, of course, used the A-bomb in Asia decades ago). But India was responding to domestic pressures and feeling threatened by Pakistan (both across the border and from divided Kashmir). It acted in what it believed to be national-security interest.

Now, with the fullness of several years' perspective, India may deserve international acceptance more for its continued non-first-use stand and careful nuclear administration than mindless condemnation for its having gone nuclear in the first instance. Just last week, even as Pakistani and Indian officials were hurling their usual belligerent words at one another, the Vajpayee government not only reiterated its no-loopholes, no-first-use policy -- but backed it up with an important disclosure designed to ensure that no mad-dog general can pull the nuclear trigger in India.

A new weapons command system has been put into place so that nuclear retaliation can only be triggered by an explicit civilian decision at the top. And at the top of the new Nuclear Command Authority sits the prime minister -- no one else. The clear aim is to reduce the risk of unauthorized or accidental nuclear use, while underscoring the extreme nature of the nuclear option.

India's stance undoubtedly is rooted in reasons beyond the ephemeral: among them its Gandhi ahimsa (nonviolence) and adroit Nehru-type diplomacy. What's incontrovertible, however, is that this policy could set a valuable precedent were it to be universally emulated. For, by flat logic, if no state with nuclear weapons were ever to use one first, none would ever be used.

Among the current nuclear club, only one other state -- neighboring China (interestingly, another Asian player) -- also rules out first use; otherwise, the Indian policy is an orphan in a global ocean of ambiguity or outright pugnacity. It is especially unfortunate that the United States, a shining democracy, takes the same view as Pakistan, which is not. Neither, tragically, will unreservedly drop the option to use nuclear weapons first.

The shamefulness is all the greater for America. Here we are, surrounded by non-threatening, non-nuclear neighbors Canada and Mexico. At least Islamabad can point out it's living in the shadow of India's fearsome conventional-forces superiority -- and that it's often the butt of provocative statements from grumpy Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, who on Thursday happily oversaw a new test-firing of a nuclear-capable missile.

Too bad the United States is leading the path to proliferation instead of de-bombing the planet. The real U.S. national-security threat these days is sneaky terrorism, not sneak nuclear attacks. Sure, there's justification: Our allies need the security of our nuclear blanket. But for the United States, what's the threat? Even China doesn't make the case right now: Its long-range missiles can't even reach the U.S. East Coast.

The result of this failure of U.S. moral leadership is that the world will wind up with more nuclear states instead of none. Add to India and Pakistan the possibility of Brazil and Argentina. Just last week, a senior official in Brazil's new left-wing government, stating that "mastery of the atomic cycle is important," knocked the U.S. and other nuclear states that propose to deny such weapons to others while keeping them (and the first-use option) for themselves. As Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva put it in a speech last year, "If someone asks me to disarm and keep a slingshot when he comes at me with a cannon, what good does that do?"

Thursday (Jan. 9), North Korea, a minor nuclear power, accused the United States of seeking a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. The charge struck American ears as hysterical and absurd. Still, the United States has used nukes in Asia. But, as nonproliferation experts Richard Falk and David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif., argue: "If the United States really wants to put an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation, it must demonstrate that it has the political will to propose and engage in serious negotiations for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world, including its own."

Until that happens -- which would require, the authors freely admit, "a sea change in the strategy of the U.S. government" -- the best we can hope for is a policy of restraint and prudent nuclear administration, as proposed and, to date, practiced by India. And as far as South Asia and its regional neighbors are concerned, one can only hope that the commendable Indian stance plays out as clearly in geopolitical reality as in policy articulation.

The above weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Previous Columns:

Can Chinese Diplomacy Turn Over A New Card? (January 6, 2003)

Stunning Victory For Korean Reform Candidate (December 31, 2002)

Needed: A World Passion For Tolerance (December 24, 2002)

Historic Election In South Korea (December 17, 2002)