Karsten Frey's book offers a comprehensive and fine analysis of the debate in India on whether or not to make the bomb.
KARSTEN Frey is little known in India but deserves to be known widely. He is a Research Fellow at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies. His book is a major contribution to the literature on India's nuclear policies. It offers a comprehensive and fine analysis of the debate in India on whether to make the bomb or not.
"In India's nuclear discourse, which reached its peak in the years before the nuclear tests of 1998, nuclear weapons were consistently considered as political rather than security devices; the relationship between the nuclear bomb and national security engendered a fair amount of controversy among the participating elites... . The question here is not whether nuclear weapons improve India's security. Instead, the central interest of this study is to explore the extent that security considerations factored into India's nuclear policy development."
There is another aspect to it. Pokhran I in 1974, Pokhran II in 1998 and Narasimha Rao's aborted move in 1995 were all primarily governed by the domestic factor - mobilisation of public support for a shaky regime.
The author is not unmindful of the external factors; China and Pakistan, particularly. He seeks to construct a model explanatory which factors in both the security and non-security related motives of behaviour. "India's policy-making is taking place within the country's democratic framework," he notes. Hence the intense, protracted and emotionalised debate in which status and prestige mattered as much as security.
The book describes the background but its focus is on the period between Exercise Brasstacks (1986-87) and the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement in 2005. It is well researched and is incisively analytical.
In his view, "certain normative values attributed to nuclear weapons made them particularly attractive in India's struggle for international recognition. The interplay between security concerns on one hand, and the rationale and dynamics behind India's struggle for international recognition on the other - amplified by the strong, often obsessive sensitivity of India's strategic elite to perceived acts of discrimination or ignorance on the part of the West - proved to be one of the pivotal driving forces behind India's quest for the nuclear bomb."
Is India any the more secure after Pokhran II? The issue deserves a proper study, far more objective than the triumphalist ones that have poured out.
In the author's opinion, "The introduction of nuclear weapons reduced, but did not reverse, India's superiority vis--vis Pakistan. With regard to China, nuclear weapons harmed India's strategic position in the short term, as India lost the relative protection provided by its non-nuclear status when it declared itself a nuclear weapons state in 1998. Although it inadequately replaced this loss in the short term, India could improve its position if it develops long-range ballistic missiles and second-strike capabilities."
He asserts emphatically, repeatedly, that considerations other than security determined the option to go nuclear. "In the central phase of India's nuclear programme, security was clearly not the determining motive behind India's nuclear armament behaviour." What was?
The answer is none too flattering. "Within India's discourse on nuclear weapons, neither its relationship with China nor its relationship with Pakistan figured prominently... . Instead, India's nuclear debate focussed on Indo-U.S. relations and, above all, the international nuclear regime, which it vehemently dismissed as discriminatory and imperialist... .
"India's desire for social recognition proved to be a dynamic force... as the country was now recognised as a nuclear weapons power and a member of the exclusive `nuclear club'."
While it is wrong to aver that China and Pakistan did not figure prominently, the view that the considerations of prestige and status proved decisive - to impress the world as also public opinion at home - is hard to contest.
