Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream
 |  |
| |
Edited by M.V.Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy
Full credit to the editors, M.V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy, for bringing together in one volume all one could want in terms of arguments against the nuclearisation of South Asia. The book is divided into four parts dealing respectively with: a) security matters viz India, Pakistan and China; b) international illegality, ethics and science; c) the relationship between nuclearisation and communalism, the negative impact of militarisation on democracy and socio-economic development, especially in India; d) the impact on health and environment not just of testing but of running the full nuclear cycle necessary to continuously produce required fissile materials.
Among the contributors are such illustrious names as Amartya Sen on ethics and the bomb, Amulya Reddy on science and ethics, Jean Dreze on militarism, democracy and development, Admiral Ramdas and Kanti Bajpai on security matters, two Pakistani scholars, Zia Mian and Ejaz Haider, on problems of command and control and managing India-Pakistan nuclear tensions, and a piece by Ye Zhengjia, former Chinese diplomat who served in India and is currently Senior Fellow of the China Institute of International Studies, Beijing who gives the Chinese perspective on Sino-Indian relations. Clearly, in the short space provided by this review one cannot avoid singling some chapters out for greater commentary, depending on whatever the reviewer's own predilections happen to be. But this most certainly does not preclude a warm endorsement, to all potential readers and buyers, of the uniformly high quality of all the contributions in this volume.
The editors also contribute chapters of their own. In a powerful survey, M.V. Ramana not only highlights the role of the scientists' lobby in India which repeatedly pressed for the bomb but also contrasts their behaviour with an alternative scientific tradition represented by Meghnad Saha and C.V. Raman with their much more humane and moral sensitivity to issues concerning science, ethics and development. C. Rammanohar Reddy provides the most comprehensive coverage to be found anywhere regarding the various feasible cost estimates of what producing and maintaining a modest but credible nuclear deterrent would entail and what its opportunity costs are in terms of educational and health supply needs foregone. Even at 0.5 per cent of annual GDP [gross domestic product] a nuclear regime is costly enough. But since there is no such thing as a stable minimum deterrent position one cannot escape being trapped on a damaging escalator of continuous economic haemorrhage.
Kanti Bajpai, rather than challenging the realist paradigm and its claims for security through nuclear weapons head on, tries bravely and with considerable plausibility to show how even within that paradigm of reasoning India has only damaged its security environment vis-àvis Pakistan and China. It has become the only country today to wilfully create a two-front nuclear threat to itself when it could have pursued mutual denuclearisation vis-a vis Pakistan and ignored an essentially abstract and 'theoretical' threat from China which between 1964 and 1998 posed no serious political problems for it. Zia Mian in the longest chapter in the book gives an excellent and authoritative account of what steps India and Pakistan have so far taken regarding the setting up of command and control systems and the immense, indeed insuperable, problems they face in making these function reliably. There has to be the search for both positive and negative control. The first describes a situation where weapons are only used when authorized, i.e. in wartime contexts and the second, when weapons must not be used except when authorized, i.e., in peacetime. The problem is that there is an inescapable tradeoff between the needs of safety and of readiness especially in South Asia where there is so little warning and retaliation time between a possible enemy launch and one's own response. Moreover, nobody knows how even the best laid systems and procedures will work in the inevitable disruption and 'fog' of actual wartime situations. Besides, the safety records and capacities of India and Pakistan even in the field of conventional military preparations are pretty abysmal so the last thing one needs is false confidence about either country's nuclear command and control capacities.
Ejaz Haidar suggests ways to reduce nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan that go beyond even the institutionalisation of mutual risk reduction measures, which incidentally, neither government has yet proceeded to seriously formulate and discuss. There is the interesting suggestion that the No First Use (NFU) proposal of India and the No War Pact (NWP) proposal of Pakistan be tied together in a joint commitment. This, he feels, is a way of getting around India's opposition to the NWP on the grounds that this does not address, indeed legitimises, Pakistan's low-intensity militancy in Kashmir. Pakistan, for its part, opposes the NFU so as to retain a hedge against India's conventional military superiority. The proposed link requires both countries to accept a broad definition of what constitutes war, e.g. support for cross-border militancy, blockades, sabotages, disruption of river waters, etc., and a recognition that violation of either commitment (e.g. a conventional attack by India on Pakistan) absolves the other side from having to continue with its NFU or NWP commitment. While Haider's proposal provides an interesting talking point one cannot seriously expect either country to give up its political options in such a manner when there is so deep a mutual distrust. Indeed, too broad a definition of war creates its own problems. Also, since India sees China as an opponent it will undertake preparations against it that automatically raise tensions with Pakistan.
In this context, another proposal not discussed in this volume but worth considering is mutual recognition by India and Pakistan of the whole of Kashmir as a nuclear weapons free zone (NWFZ). India would not want any such partial NWFZ to be legitimised, i.e., to allow this 'thin end of the wedge' to come into South Asia even if it does not alter actual nuclear preparations on either side, which is why the proposal should be pressed. It too, (like Haidar's NFU-NWP proposal) is a useful way of generating discussion and pressure in civil society on the two governments to come up with ways to lessen nuclear tensions over Kashmir.
Srirupa Roy in her very stimulating chapter correctly insists on framing India's decision to go nuclear within the wider and determining context of domestic developments, most notably the advance of Hindutva and its impact on official nationalism. Realist thinking with its analytical separation of the domestic and the external and its explanation of Pokharan II as external threat determined is forcefully lambasted. Her own option is to avoid a simplistic criticism of Hindu nationalist forces as the key explanatory variable and instead to look at the "socio-historical processes that enabled the emergence of Hindu nationalism in the first place". Thus she sees the nuclear-testing decision as a "site of translation" whereby Hindu nationalist ideology merges with and becomes the mainstay of an official nationalism already burdened with so many of the elements conducive to moving in the direction of Pokharan II. This approach is fine as it goes but also somewhat loose. What is needed is an elucidation of the 'structured causation' that links Hindutva and the "wider social and political field within which it operates" to 1998 and after. Here the key structuring principle is not Hindutva itself but 'elite nationalism', its complex history, its multiple contexts and sources.
Finally, mention must be made of one of my favourite chapters, Jean Dreze's fine piece about wars and their multiple deleterious effects on civil life through physical destruction, displacement, economic deprivation, environmental degradation, psychological trauma, institutional breakdown and crippled administration. Ever the scrupulous social scientist he seeks to provide some valid indicators for quantifiable measurement for his arguments. He goes on to discuss the complicated relationship between strengthening democracy and promoting peaceful behaviour and evaluates the problematic concept of nuclear deterrence. In the latter context he tantalizes this reader certainly, with his dual claim that game theory is very useful for the peace movement and that game theoretic analysis—a favourite with pro-nuclear strategists—is "an extremely fragile and risky basis for collective security". One wishes that Dreze had elaborated much more on this than he does. Perhaps on another occasion he will. One caveat though. Dreze in a footnote suggests that nuclear blackmail against non-nuclear states has been credible and effective. This is itself a highly problematic and eminently contestable claim that is not strengthened by the fact that in situations when nuclear states most need to coerce or blackmail non-nuclear states, i.e., when they are losing wars to them, nuclear weapons have proved politically useless.
Achin Vanaik
© Copyright 2000 - 2002 The Hindu
Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2003, hardback, 502 p, ISBN 81-250-2477-8. Rs 575. Those outside India can order from www.vedamsbooks.com/no30696.htm for US$29.
BWPP Website
The BioWeapons Prevention Project (BWPP) is a new global civil society activity that aims to strengthen the norm against using disease as a weapon. It was initiated by a group of non-governmental organizations concerned at the failure of governments to act. BWPP tracks governmental and other behaviour that is pertinent to compliance with international treaties and other agreements, especially those that outlaw hostile use of biotechnology. The project works to reduce the threat of bioweapons by monitoring and reporting throughout the world. BWPP supports and is supported by a global network of partners.
BWPP maintains a website at www.bwpp.org where you can find BWPP's publications as well as relevant treaty texts, country profiles, and other background information.
Verification Yearbook 2002
 | |
| |
Edited by Trevor Findlay and Oliver Meier
The Verification Yearbook 2002 provides independent, authoritative and concise analysis of Verification developments over the past year, as well as assessing future trends in monitoring, verification and compliance.
It covers developments in arms control and disarmament verification, environmental monitoring and election observation, as well as verification modalities and technologies.
The chapters were written by researchers from VERTIC (Verification Research, Training and Infomration Centre) and other leading practitioners, analysts and academics.
The Yearbook chapters are available as PDF files at www.vertic.org/yearbook/yb2002/index.htm.
VERTIC's mission is to promote effective and efficient verification as a means of ensuring confidence in the implementation of international agreements and intra-national agreements with international involvement. Along with verification, VERTIC also concerns itself with the negotiation, monitoring and implementation of such agreements and the establishment of confidence-building measures to bolster them.
Published by VERTIC, London, December 2002, 227pp, ISBN 1-899548-32-7, £30/$US45.
The German Plutonium Balance for the Years 1968-1999
By Martin B. Kalinowski, Wolfgang Liebert, and Silke Aumann
The technical report The German Plutonium Balance for the Years 1968-1999. Reprocessing, Import and Export, MOX Fuel Element Production and Usage, Stored Inventories provides a comprehensive analysis of open source information on plutonium inventories owned by German nuclear operators for the years 1968-1999. The survey covers plutonium separated by reprocessing of spent fuel in the reprocessing facility Karlsruhe, Germany (Wiederaufarbeitungsanlage Karlsruhe or "WAK"), as well as at the La Hague reprocessing plant, in France, and the Sellafield reprocessing plant, in the United Kingdom. The report also discusses the import and export of unirradiated plutonium and gives an overview of the past production of uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, as well as the usage of MOX fuel in Germany. The study presents these data on an annual basis since the end of the 1960s, although a number of uncertainties remain. As of the beginning of 1999, the study concludes, 23 to 30 tonnes of unirradiated plutonium (separated or in fresh MOX fuel) were under German control and responsibility, either in Germany or abroad. An additional 47 to 60 tonnes were still contained in spent fuel. However, because separated plutonium poses significant proliferation risks, and because the German MOX program will have difficulty absorbing the country's existing stocks of this material, the future of Germany's reprocessing program has been placed in doubt. New initiatives are urgently needed in order to develop a comprehensive, long-term strategy for addressing Germany's plutonium surpluses.
INESAP Technical Report No. 2, 2002, 58 pages. ISBN 3–933071–05–4. US$ 10 + shipping. To order, contact inesap@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de, tel. +49–6151–16 44 68, fax +49–6151–16 60 39.
An Ethical Career in Science and Technology
Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) has produced an introductory booklet and a series of in-depth briefings intended to give scientists and engineers a deeper understanding of the wider ethical dimensions of various careers in science and technology.
The 32-page introductory booklet (published in summer 2001) is an initial look at issues such as genetics, climate change, arms, militarisation of space, animal experiments, cleaner technology, information technology, and science funding. In addition, it describes the experiences of working scientists and how they have dealt with many of these issues. Contributors include Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat, inventor of the World-Wide-Web Dr Tim Berners-Lee, and the well-known commentator on biotechnology issues Dr Mae Wan Ho.
Each of the series of briefings provides a more in-depth analysis of a particular issue and the implications for career choice in science and technology. PDF copies can be downloaded below:
Career choice and climate change (March 2003)
Cleaner technologies: a positive choice (March 2003)
Career choice, ethics and animal experimentation
Further briefings will be published during 2003, covering topics including: the military and space technology; assessing the sustainability of your career; ethics and genetics; nuclear issues; military involvement in science and technology; and how science is funded.
To find more information or download the PDF versions of rhe papers, visit www.sgr.org.uk.
