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We are against US NMD deployment because it begins the militarisation of the outer space and undermines the global strategic stability built over last 20 years by Russia and the United States -- Jaswant Singh, Moscow, June 24, 2000
What then, led India to embrace the National Missile Defense within six hours of United States President George Bush's announcement last week that Washington intended to press ahead with the programme?
"China, " says Bharat Karnad, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.
"It's an advantage for India, since it obviously discomfits China. From being pro-active, China has been forced to become reactive on this issue, which undermines it.
"Let's face it. China is a rapacious, untrustworthy country, out to niggle you out of any advantage." In other words, anything that puts Beijing on the backfoot is good for New Delhi.
This is a view endorsed by many in the capital's strategic circles.
P R Chari, director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, however, disagrees.
"Ridiculous arguments, you don't antagonise the Chinese by pleasing the Americans… you have to hunker down, and grow economically, like the Chinese have done… this is justifying the unjustifiable. And you don't please the Americans by displeasing the nation. what was the hurry?"
In a report prepared for the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project Proliferation Brief last year, Chari says: "The external circumstance that could influence India's decision to weaponize and deploy its nuclear capabilities would be a US decision to deploy a national missile defense system. This would raise the possibility of China and Russia enlarging their nuclear capabilities; Japan, Taiwan and the two Koreas contemplating their nuclear option, which could, in time, strengthen India's bomb lobby to press for demonstrating its nuclear capabilities as strategic insurance in an uncertain security environment."
Chari believes that a deal may indeed have been stuck. "What could that deal be?" he wonders. India's inclusion in the new US security architecture for Asia, which would contain China? Removal of sanctions? Access to dual use technology? Support for India's bid for permanent Security Council seat?
"Whatever it may be, the fact remains that the nation should have bee taken into confidence before taking the decision," he says.
Karnad, however, rejects the idea that Delhi could have struck a quid pro-quo deal with the US. "Grow up. India is a big country, and as Jawaharlal Nehru said, it is the pivot of Asia… not China.
"Lifting of sanctions? The Americans themselves admit that the sanctions have hurt them more than they have hurt us. They have merely delayed, not stopped our progress.
"We are joining because it is in our larger strategic interest to do so. We are not looking for handouts for joining the NMD bandwagon."
But what is China's main problem with the NMD?
Chinese leaders have consistently and categorically warned that the NMD would upset the world's strategic balance, and "shatter the basis of nuclear non-proliferation".
"The consequence will be a dangerous arms race in space," Yao Yunzhu, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Office of the Department of Foreign Military Studies, in the Academy of Military Science of the People's Liberation Army, said at a security conference in Beijing recently .
But more than that, the problem is Economics.
China fears that if it is forced to counter the NMD by stepping up production of ballistic missiles, it would mean diversion of funds which meant for growth. And more than anything else, a slowdown in economic growth would lead to unrest at a time when China is seen as a rising superpower.
"The Chinese would have to increase their military budget, sapping their investments in education, technology, and infrastructure-the prime domestic movers of economic modernization," says The Center for Defense Information, which has produced a complete online source of information on the national missile defense program.
"They would have to take a more confrontational stance against what they perceive to be a growing American security threat, risking the imposition of US economic sanctions that would diminish American technology transfers, direct investment, and market access-the prime international movers of economic modernization. Given its pending integration into the global economy via the World Trade Organization (WTO), China would prefer not to take these actions."
Beijing is also worried that the US might introduce a smaller version of the NMD, a theater missile defence system, meant for smaller areas, to Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory.
Besides, "even if the United States says the system is not aimed at China, the capability is aimed at China, " said Shen Dingli, an arms control expert at Shanghai's Fudan University,
A China watcher in the capital also felt that Beijing was worried that a cash-strapped Moscow, which has so far opposed the NMD on the grounds that it violates the anti-ballistic missile treaty of the 70s, might be "bought out" by the US to support the new programme.
"Suppose, to allow it to save face, the US were to offer Moscow a major role in the new order, apart from some monetary consideration in disguise… what would Russia do? This is a question that is really bothering Beijing."
But whatever may be bothering Beijing, with the arrival of Bush's special emissary and US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in the capital on Thursday night, New Delhi seems to have taken a position on the NMD that will be difficult to retract from. Whether this position is going to strengthen or weaken India, only time, and perhaps Armitage himself, can tell.
You may also want to see Armitage coming to sell Bush's vision on missile plan
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