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NUCLEAR WEAPONS MAKE SOUTH ASIA LESS SECURE
DOUGLAS B. SHAW
Vice President for Policy and Programs
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy
INTRODUCTION
In a way, the addition of nuclear
weapons to the arsenals of India and Pakistan made South Asia the most dangerous place on earth. In a way, it already was. Some have used this ambiguity to argue that nuclear weapons have stabilized relations
between the two and enhanced the security of each. However, I will discuss three major reasons that the paired overt declarations of nuclear weapons in South Asia in 1998 have made both nations and the world much
less secure.
First, the religious dimension of the conflict makes the presence of nuclear weapons exceedingly dangerous. Second, nuclear arsenals are unavoidably attended by a possibility of accidental or
unauthorized use, including the possibility that a terrorist organization could acquire a nuclear weapon or material. Third, the 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia struck a major blow against the global
nonproliferation regime upon which the security of all nations depends. The world has long believed that India and Pakistan had the capability to acquire nuclear weapons — a great many nations and perhaps some sub
national groups could reach the bottom rung of this 1940s era technology today — but by doing so, India and Pakistan have shouldered a tremendous burden and imposed one on the rest of the world.
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS SHOULD NOT MIX
A variety of factors led to India’s nuclear tests in 1998. Certainly, India sought prestige; the belief that nuclear weapons confer special political
status on a state is as prevalent around the world as it is counterproductive and dangerous. The perceived inequality Minister Jaswant Singh referred to in Foreign Affairs as “nuclear apartheid” likely played a
role. India can never be sure of the intentions of its large nuclear-armed neighbor China, with which India has a history of hostilities. It had been the unambiguous policy of both India and Pakistan for decades to
keep their nuclear weapons options open and many factors played a role in the explicit introduction of nuclear weapons into the perennial conflict between India and Pakistan.
However, the political backdrop
of the tests strongly suggests that nationalist politics of an overtly religious character were decisive in determining the timing of the May 1998 tests. After the hotly contested and violent elections of February
and March 1998, one of the first orders of business for the new Hindu nationalist BJP government was to repeatedly allude to its longtime commitment to decisively demonstrate an Indian nuclear weapons capability.[1]
India’s May 11 tests caused many in Washington to question whether or not our intelligence apparatus had failed us. But it would hardly have taken a spy satellite to predict what anyone could read in The
Washington Post: that the new government would do what the BJP had long promised, “to turn India into an explicitly declared nuclear power.”[2] The advent of a Hindu nationalist government in India was inseparably
linked to India’s 1998 nuclear explosive tests and explicit declaration of a nuclear arsenal.
This should be not interpreted in any way to suggest that Hinduism — or any religion — supports the acquisition or
use of nuclear weapons. It should put us on guard that it is possible for human beings to connect religion to nuclear weapons. In light of the religious wars of the past and the religious character underlying the
ongoing tension in South Asia generally, and in Kashmir in particular, the 1998 tests put the world on notice that religious conflict can be joined by nuclear armed rivals. This may seem obvious, and I will not
dilate on it further other than to say that the uncompromising nature of religious conflict joined to the uncompromising nature of nuclear weapons is a disastrous combination.
MORE NUCLEAR ARSENALS MEAN MORE CHANCES FOR ACCIDENTS AND TERRORISTS
The argument that India is responsible and that Indian nuclear weapons are, therefore, no cause for alarm, discounts significant
problems that no amount of international relations or political theory can explain away. India is not the problem, neither is Pakistan, or China, or the United States, or any other nation; nuclear weapons are the
problem because they mix human fallibility with the most unforgiving technology ever devised.
Stable deterrence is difficult to achieve and does not guarantee security. Many suppose that the presence of
nuclear weapons promotes caution in relations between states. This may well be true. The presence of a rattlesnake in your bed would also promote caution, but it is difficult to be certain the caution its presence
produced would be enough to compensate for the danger it posed. Nuclear weapons, like rattlesnakes, are inherently dangerous. There is no standard of national responsibility, intelligence, good will, historical or
strategic justification, or cultural development that will make nuclear weapons safe. To my mind, a responsible nuclear custodian recognizes this, and struggles constantly to manage the inherent risk. The claim of
ownership of a trained rattlesnake does nothing more than draw one’s credibility into question; the claim of being a great trainer of rattlesnakes draws one’s judgement into question as well. Unfortunately, since
South Asia — much like the rest of the world — seems unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons within the foreseeable future, we must deal with the presence of these dangerous creatures as best we can, but if we
delude ourselves into the belief that they are not dangerous, we do so at our own peril. Honesty and openness about the true costs and dangers of maintaining nuclear arsenals are essential steps in reducing the
political baggage associated with the Cold War. The world must realize that even the best rattlesnake trainers can get bitten.
The command and control systems of the nuclear weapon states have always born a
terrible burden; the prevention of an accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. Dr. Bruce Blair has written extensively about the subtle dangers that existed within the command and control systems and
procedures of the superpower nuclear arsenals during the Cold War.[3] He suggests that in a crisis, the equipment and procedures involved with nuclear command and control on each side could ratchet the other ever
higher until a nuclear war resulted that no one wanted. Dr. Blair characterizes the U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear command and control systems as, “accidents waiting to happen.”[4] Shawn Gregory catalogs
literally hundreds of accidents involving nuclear weapons in his book The Hidden Cost of Deterrence.[5]
Peter Feaver of Duke University describes the ebb and flow of pressures that led to the development of
the imperfect system for protecting U.S. nuclear weapons from inadvertent or unauthorized launch in his book, Guarding the Guardians; underlining the point that effective control is a constant challenge.[6]
The fact that an accidental or unauthorized detonation of a nuclear weapon has never happened is no cause for complacency; even one instance of this sort of shortfall of custodianship would be infinitely too many.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is the high-water mark of the danger of nuclear war traditionally cited to reinforce the notion that humanity came very close to destroying itself during the Cold War. In The Limits
of Safety, Stanford University Professor Scott Sagan goes beyond the common understanding of events to suggest just how close we came to nuclear war during the crisis:
A number of nuclear safety incidents
occurred that directly raised the risk of an unauthorized or accidental use of a weapon. Minuteman ICBM officers jerry-rigged an independent launch capability with inadequate safeguards. Interceptor pilots were
dispersed with nuclear air-to-air missiles without mechanical safety devices. A bear climbing a fence at a base in Minnesota almost caused the launch of nuclear-armed interceptors in Wisconsin. Other incidents were
discovered that occurred during the U.S. nuclear alert that increased the danger that a false warning would be issued in Moscow declaring that an American attack was imminent or under way. A lost B-52 bomber flew
into the Soviet air defense warning net just prior to the crisis. A test ICBM was launched from Vandenberg during the emergency missile alert. Offensive nuclear forces near the periphery of the Soviet Union were
readied for war without full awareness by U.S. political leaders.[7]
And beyond the American difficulties, Dr. Sagan spends the balance of chapter three of his book describing the false alarm circus that was
occurring on the Soviet side.[8] The peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis had as much to do with luck as with stable deterrence — it could have easily gone the other way. The world can ill afford another
such missile crisis — this time in Kashmir. The luck of 1962 (and every year since), constitutes a chance for nuclear disarmament that mankind should be bound by its survival instinct to take. If every nation takes
a turn rolling the nuclear dice, sooner or later those dice will take a bad bounce and we will all lose.
Although the world should consider the probability of nuclear war that existed during the Cold War as
unacceptable, nuclear weapons parity in South Asia is not likely to produce even that level of stability. The nuclear confrontation between the former Soviet Union and the United States developed more or less
gradually; the two states were former allies, and they were oceans apart geographically. India and Pakistan share a border, have a history of settling disputes violently, territorial disputes persist between the
two, and low-level hostilities are not unknown. The proximity of the two countries is an issue of particular concern. As several observers of nuclear weapons issues have noted, the extremely limited time between
tactical warning and detonation in the case of a nuclear missile attack across the Indo-Pakistani border — very possibly predicted as a negative value — would constitute a pressure to use nuclear weapons first in a
crisis rather than risk having them destroyed by the other side.[9]
The United States and the former Soviet Union spent untold billions of dollars developing command and control systems to allow for response
within the warning-to-impact window they estimated to be within half an hour. Without controls on the posture and deployment of South Asian nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine how India or Pakistan could ever
count on any tactical warning whatsoever.
The second specific problem I’d like to discuss is that of nuclear weapons and material security. September 11th demonstrated that nothing is unthinkable for 21st
century terrorists. The criminals who struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon extended the definition of terrorism — making no demands and seeking to disrupt civilization through the direct application of
force. Experts questioned whether or not the motivation for super-terrorism would ever be coupled with the capability. But last year that debate was silenced, and we must be grimly aware that no technology is more
suited for this purpose of mega-murder by a few criminals than nuclear weapons.
The free world is now challenged by a global terrorist organization that is not responsible for a defined geographic territory
or a civilian population against which to level a deterrent threat. Efforts to use a nuclear deterrent threat to stop a terrorist armed with a nuclear explosive device would have important shortcomings in common
with trying to cure head lice with a handgun. At the same time, even one primitive nuclear explosive could give such an undeterrable group or individual the capability to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. The
civilized world has no higher security priority than preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The biggest technical obstacle to building a nuclear weapon is the acquisition of the necessary
weapons-usable fissile material. The process of making plutonium or enriching uranium to a sufficient concentration of fissile isotope to create a nuclear device is extraordinarily expensive, technically difficult,
time-consuming, and likely to be detected. But if a terrorist organization could buy or steal the necessary fissile material, they would not necessarily have to replicate the Manhattan Project to produce a nuclear
explosive. Theft or purchase of weapons-usable nuclear material could constitute a major short cut on the road to developing a nuclear weapon. Therefore, controlling access to weapons-usable nuclear material is
essential to the prevention of nuclear terrorism.
The fissile material security problem is particularly difficult to address sufficiently because it is possible to manufacture a nuclear weapon with a
surprisingly small amount of nuclear material. Hypothetically, a mass of four kilograms of plutonium is sufficient for one nuclear explosive device; even a small theft of the right kind of nuclear material could
radically promote efforts by a terrorist organization to build a bomb.
The United States, Russia, and other states have already become allies in the effort to enhance fissile material security. This alliance
came about because of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the political and economic chaos that continues to plague that region. However, while Russia faces unique challenges today that have created acute
difficulties for maintaining fissile material security, this is by no means a uniquely Russian problem, or merely a problem for states in turmoil. The need for constant attention to weapons-usable fissile material
security is a product of the existence of such materials, and there is a lot more to the problem of nuclear material protection, control, and accounting than guards, gates, and guns.
Accounting for nuclear
material in the normal course of use by a country with nuclear weapons, research, and energy programs can become exceedingly complicated, even for a very responsible custodial entity with enormous resources
available to devote to the problem. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy’s February 1996 report, “Plutonium:
The First Fifty Years,” observes an inventory difference — that is a difference between book inventory and physical inventory values verified by measurement of 2.8 metric tons of plutonium over a fifty year period.[10]
While this discrepancy is described by David Crawford of the Department of Energy as “largely attributable to measurements and overstatement of plutonium production values for criticality protection,” it
puts the U.S. Government in the uncomfortable, if statistically unavoidable position, of listing tons of plutonium as “material unaccounted for.”[11]
Furthermore, accurate measurement values do not exist for
as much as “10 metric tons of plutonium and nearly 100 metric tons of enriched uranium scrap, representing nearly 10 percent of the total special nuclear material inventory within the DOE.”[12]
Accurate
measurement of material holdup — that is, the small quantities of material that, essentially, get stuck in processes or duct work as dust or in solution or some such fashion — represents another area of concern
regarding the accuracy of material inventories. While there is no reason to believe that any of these materials have ever been at risk for theft or diversion, and the Department of Energy has established a Fissile
Material Assurance Group to vigorously address material inventory issues, ultimate resolution of issues such as these is complicated by the vast quantities of materials involved and the number of years over which
they have been held.
In keeping nuclear materials secure, the devil is truly in the details. Some observe that the threat of non-state acquisition of nuclear weapons materials has not come from the stockpiles
of democracies, but there is nothing about the air in a democracy that keeps a thief or a terrorist from breathing. The threat to nuclear material security is as much about an individual criminal or lunatic on the
staff of a facility covering up the slow diversion of material as it is about mobsters storming the gates at Tomsk. Yes, nuclear facility personnel in Russia face unique hardships, but hardship is not unique to
Russia. All states that use or store weapon-usable material face this problem, and states with nuclear weapon programs have much more in common with each other than with those without such programs. I can say with
certainty that U.S. personnel are learning from nuclear material security cooperation with Russia and the New Independent States. This is an important area of international cooperation among states with nuclear
weapon programs and now that India’s program is out in the open it should seek inclusion in efforts to address the problem globally. Yes, India, the United States, Russia, and others have managed huge nuclear
material inventories for a long time, but things are different now that the smuggling of weapon-usable nuclear materials has become a reality. If a black market in these materials takes root, no inventory of them
will be immune from the threat of theft. The states with nuclear weapons programs have a special role to play, not only because they have more material, but also because International Atomic Energy Agency full-scope
safeguards do not apply to them, and, owing to the nature of their inventories, never will effectively as currently formulated.
MORE NUCLEAR ARSENALS WILL LEAD TO MORE NUCLEAR ARSENALS
The
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) embodies the extraordinary agreement among all but four of the world’s nations that more nuclear weapon states are not better. It balances on the counterintuitive assertion that
nuclear weapons are not militarily or politically desirable for most states in the context of far from perfect verification and enforcement, which in turn rests on the even more unlikely commitment of all states to
work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons and to share the peaceful benefits of nuclear technology.
Absent the Treaty, states would perceive the costs and benefits of nuclear proliferation differently.
Before the NPT was negotiated, the international trend toward nuclear proliferation was demonstrable and predicted to increase to 50 or more nuclear weapon states by the 1990s. It seemed an intractable problem. As
easy as it was to see the danger inherent in a world in which any conflict could spark a conflagration that could consume the world, it was difficult for any individual state to forego weapons of such obvious
importance. Furthermore, nuclear proliferation was already a fact: some states already had nuclear weapons, making it dangerous and politically difficult not to acquire them. The entire NPT undertaking was
“seen by many as a desperate rear-guard action.”[13] But it worked. The projections of rampant nuclear proliferation did not come true, largely as a result of the conclusion of the NPT. No new states declared a
nuclear weapons capability from the time the NPT came into force in 1970 until 1998.
On May 11, 1998, India conducted three explosive nuclear weapon tests and two more two days later, critically challenging
the NPT regime. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Pakistan responded with six tests of its own later in the month. It was an explicit affirmation of the high political value of nuclear weapons as well as an indictment of
the NPT regime, which India is not alone in denouncing as discriminatory. However, after crashing the gate of the nuclear club, India found that a new perspective accompanied its new status.
In some senses,
India’s longtime criticism of the NPT regime as a double standard is valid. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee observed correctly at the fiftieth anniversary of his country’s Atomic Energy Commission in 1998, that a
“few nations are sitting on huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons….and insisting on collective restraint on the part of the rest of the world is an inherently unstable position.”[14] “Our status as a nuclear weapons
power,” he continued, “we believe enables us to pursue the goal of speedy nuclear disarmament with greater vigor.”[15]
As observer Praful Bidwai commented at the time in the Times of India:
Nothing
exposes New Delhi’s nuclear desperation more starkly than the fact that its foreign policy agenda, once broad, complex and resilient, has been reduced to one point:
damage control. India’s high functionaries and diplomats have done little more in the past three months than attempt to limit the negative consequences of nuclearisation at the political, economic, and disarmament diplomacy level.[16]
By exploding nuclear weapons, India damaged the very tools most essential to continue its tradition of international leadership toward nuclear disarmament.
Former Ambassador Thomas Graham and I met
with soon to be Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in the fall of 1998. He told us that, “it is my conviction and shall be my endeavor to make sure that India moves back into the forefront — not just the camp —
the forefront of disarmamentists and nuclear nonproliferationists…India has broken the shield of nuclear Apartheid, but now what?”[17]
What had been overt racism in one breath became enlightened national
interest in the next as Singh agreed “It must be preserved, I agree, NPT must be preserved.” But what does this mean? If states can only find religion as NPT supporters after being “born again” into what they
perceive to be a “nuclear club,” the regime will weaken and ultimately fail. As India had long observed, actions speak louder than words. Overt Indian proliferation led immediately to overt Pakistani proliferation
and weakened the global norm.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, nuclear disarmament is desirable not because it is possible but because the permanent retention of nuclear weapons is ultimately
incompatible with human survival. It cannot happen today and will probably not happen in our lifetimes, but we must all remain realistic about the threat and do what is prudent and possible to manage and reduce it.
Those who challenge this assertion in the name of realism are the true idealists. In a perfect world in which each nation is a billiard ball with perfectly predictable behavior given its circumstances, all
responsible nations could be trusted with nuclear arsenals indefinitely. In the real world, there is no standard of responsibility sufficient to make the permanent retention of nuclear weapons safe. Nuclear weapons
bring the truly unthinkable — the instantaneous destruction of a city, a nation, or human civilization — into the realm of the possible. As long as nuclear weapons exist, each of these horrific events must be
assigned a probability; and, over time, any non-negative probability migrates toward certainty. Nuclear arsenals — and each weapon within them —and each year we retain them — constitute a terrible risk undertaken
for reasons that should be continuously and critically re-examined.
[1] Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterrey Institute for International Studies, http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/bjpchron.htm
[2] Editorial, “Testing Time in India,” May 19, 1996, page C08.
[3] For example, see Bruce Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War, (Brookings: Washington, D.C.) 1993.
[4] Ibid.
[5]
Shaun Gregory, The Hidden Cost of Deterrence: Nuclear Weapons Accidents, (Brassey’s: London) 1990, pages 143-195.
[6] Peter Douglas Feaver, Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear
Weapons in the United States, Cornell University Press: Ithaca) 1992.
[7] Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons,” (Princeton University Press:
Princeton, NJ) 1993, page 117.
[8] Ibid., pages 117-155.
[9] For example, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright quoted in John Diamond, “Security Council Brainstorms on India-Pakistan Nuclear Race,”
Associated Press wire story, June 4, 1998 (wwwebposted at http://www.nando.net).
[10] David W. Crawford, “Materials Control and Accountability Challenges Associated with Plutonium Inventories” paper summary
(wwwebposted at http://inmm.com/newsletter/matcontrol.html).
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Spurgeon Keeny, “The NPT: A Global Success Story,” Arms Control Today, March 1995, p.4.
[14] “India
Says Committed to Global Nuclear Disarmament,” Reuters wire report, August 10, 1998, off cnn.com.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Praful Bidwai, “Faustian Bargain:
U.S. Lays a Trap for India,” The Time of India, August 18, 1998
[17] Meeting Notes.
BIOGRAPHY:
Dough Shaw is the Vice President for Policy and Programs and a Senior Fellow for National
Security Affairs at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. Before joining the Institute, Mr. Shaw had worked as the Communications Director for the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, with the U.S. Department
of Energy Russia and Newly Independent States Nuclear Material Security Task Force, and with the former U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA — now a part of the State Department). Mr. Shaw holds a
Master's Degree and a Bachelor's Degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
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