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The Rediff Interview/Bharat Karnad

'India still does not have sufficient data from its nuclear tests'

Bharat Karnad, research professor of national security studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, has written extensively on issues of security and nuclear proliferation. and often advises the government on the same. Perceived a 'hawk' on security matters, Dr Karnad deplores the move by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arguing that it will hurt India's interests. Excerpts from an interview with Senior Assistant Editor Amberish K Diwanji:

What do you think of our prime minister's move to sign the CTBT is certain conditions are met?

India should not sign the CTBT in its present form. The CTBT is nothing but a flawed treaty, a method of realising the goals of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT recognises only the US, Russia, China, France and UK as nuclear weapon states, and gives the Nuclear-5 certain privileges while denying the same to other countries, including India. India has consistently argued that the NPT is discriminatory and that it will never sign it.

The CTBT, and even the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, are treaties that seek to prevent the emergence of new nuclear states, and in essence are the same as the NPT. For this reason, it is against India's interests to sign the CTBT.

Would you elaborate on how the CTBT is discriminatory against India?

The CTBT is comprehensive only in name. It does not allow underground testing, but it does allow sub-critical, simulated, and hydrodynamic (simulated explosion in water that provides data of the blast) testing. The N-5 already have sufficient data from their various tests against which they can in future compare their data, which we in India certainly don't. And by getting India to sign the CTBT, we will be unable ever again to get that date to compare simulated tests with actual tests.

A classic example of India's woolly-headedness is the way in which we signed the PTBT (Partial Test Ban Treaty that barred atmospheric nuclear tests) in the 1960s. India foolishly signed the treaty in a desperate hurry only to find that we could never carry out atmospheric tests like the N-5 had done and therefore possessed no data about it. We should not commit the same error with the CTBT.

India till today does not have sufficient data from the mere six nuclear tests (three on May 11 and two on May 13, 1998; and one on May 18, 1974) that we have carried out. Especially if we are planning to weaponise, as has been claimed in various government quarters. We need to carry out a few more tests, especially thermonuclear and sub-critical tests before we can go ahead and weaponise. Otherwise, we will forever be stuck with half-baked knowledge and only manage to weaponise half-way. If we are seeking to weaponise to face our enemies, it should not just be the more apparent ones but anyone in the world.

Unfortunately, our country has a habit of doing things in half measures. We hesitated for years to carry out further test even while the others did, and now we are preparing to sign the CTBT even though we lack sufficient data. It will be a tragedy for India to sign the CTBT right now.

But A P J Abdul Kalam had recently declared that India possessed sufficient data to carry out laboratory tests.

First, with all due respect to Abdul Kalam, he is not a nuclear scientist. He is a missile man, a rocket scientist. There is a great difference between a rocket scientist and a nuclear one.

Second, I have talked to various senior scientists in the nuclear establishments and not of one them has said that we possess sufficient data to carry out full-fledged laboratory or simulated tests. They all would like further tests to garner more data before signing any treaty.

If that is the case, why this sudden brouhaha over signing the treaty?

Unfortunately, in our country, signing the treaty will be a political decision. It will not be a strategic decision, it will not even be a scientific one. I guess one reason why Abdul Kalam is speaking out is part of the political move to pave the ground for signing the treaty.

But if India does not sign the CTBT, the treaty will not come into effect. Will that not hurt our international standing?

Provision 14(2) of the CTBT is something that goes against the Vienna Convention, because it forces countries to sign the CTBT. This is absolutely flawed in letter and in spirit. In fact, even if India were in favour of signing the CTBT(and it is not), New Delhi should not sign because of the existence of provision 14(2) which is ultra vires of international law.

This provision states that unless all 44 countries with nuclear reactors sign the CTBT, it will not come into force. This is really aimed at India, Pakistan, and Israel. It is not aimed at North Korea, as some believe, because Pyongyang is a signatory to NPT. It is not understood that if you are part of the NPT regime, you are part of the CTBT regime too, and vice versa.

What these treaties do is to divide the world into nuclear haves and nuclear have-nots, and right now, India sits astride these two worlds. This is not really beneficial, because you have the advantage of neither. Either we go completely nuclear, that is weaponise, or we stay away from nuclear weapons completely. This half measure tactics will not get us anywhere, it has over the years harmed us.

The tragedy is that so far, we have not been decisive in weaponising. We in India have never understood that nuclear weapons do have a major role to play, that they have a political value. For 50 years we have been talking about disarmament, and thereby undermining our own prowess, and we still haven't learnt anything.

Then what will happen to the CTBT?

Let the CTBT die, or extinguish itself. And why should we worry about it? Before we sign the CTBT, there are two conditions that must be fulfilled:

First, as I said earlier, conduct more tests, especially thermonuclear and subcritical ones;

Second, before we sign, we must ensure that the United States, Russia, China, and the others have signed and ratified the treaty.

The important part is ratify the treaty. India is the only democracy where a government decision does not need to be ratified by the legislature, but in the US or Russia, the legislatures will have to. Now we know that the Russian Duma is against the CTBT and may not ratify it; similarly, the US Senate and House of Representatives, both of which are independent of each other, have expressed their doubts about the CTBT. And in the post-Monica Lewinsky age, I seriously doubt if Bill Clinton will be able to get the Senate to ratify the CTBT. I even mentioned this to the prime minister when I met him some time ago.

So why are we in a hurry?

I think that the leadership is under pressure. In my assessment, there are two kinds of pressure faced by the present leadership. The first is that Vajpayee is really the last of the Nehruvian politicians to rule India. He comes from that age, knew and was influenced by Nehru, and I feel that he really does believe in disarmament and an ideal world. This of course will be considered anathema to the RSS and the BJP, but I feel that there is this strong emotional pressure. Vajpayee really cannot detach himself from his own past, and the values that he imbibed in an earlier era.

And the second pressure, which I feel is the lesser one, is perhaps the ones imposed by the West. That is why India has insisted that it will sign only if certain conditions are met, and certainly these conditions include lifting economic sanctions.

What about the other conditions? Will they be met?

I doubt if the US will ever agree to transfer dual-use technology which our scientists would very much like. In fact, Richard Haass, in his speech on September 24, clearly said this was unlikely. So we really need to ask ourselves what is in store for us if we do sign.

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