The Hindu Business Line : Three decades since Buddha smiled

Read about our nuclear doctrine in Indian Foreign Policy. Trace the global political developments from the Second World War in The World Since 1945. And interesting essays about nukes in Iran and North Korea in The Best American Political Writing.

The US congressional approval to the civilian nuclear deal with India is evoking predictable responses. China is alleging `double standards' on the part of Uncle Sam, and the Opposition is crying foul about `drastically shifted goalposts.'

Interestingly, economic reactions have been overshadowing foreign policy debates. For instance, the US business community is reported to have hailed the agreement because of the $100 billion worth of new energy business that can open with India. And even as the Arevas and the GEs compete for nuclear orders, from closer home, Reliance and Tata are among the big players hoping to benefit from the nuke deal after the Atomic Energy Act is amended to allow private-sector participation in the nuclear power sector.

"Today, India has weathered the storm created by the 1998 tests, and that largely due to the bilateral diplomacy conducted with major countries," writes Arundhati Ghose in one of the 50-odd essays in Indian Foreign Policy, from Academic Foundation (www.academicfoundation.com). "The world is now engaged with India," declares the dust-jacket. The massive tome of more than a thousand pages, edited by Atish Sinha and Madhup Mohta of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), New Delhi, is billed as `the standard, comprehensive, authoritative book on Indian foreign policy,' to provide `topical insights' and a long-term perspective.

Surprisingly, a search for `1974 Pokhran' on Google News `did not match any documents.' But Wikipedia would help with a page on `Smiling Buddha', the code name of `the first nuclear test explosion by India on May 18, 1974' at Pokhran in Rajasthan. The `underground nuclear weapon detonation' at `a remote location in Thar Desert region' was the first nuclear test by a nation outside the permanent five members of the UN (United Nations) Security Council, informs http://en.wikipedia.org.

Aftershocks were felt in foreign policy, with the US barring nuclear exports to India - till reversing the policy only days ago, provoking comments such as, `Interests drive US to back a nuclear India,' as Somini Sengupta wrote in International Herald Tribune on December 10. `India's `nuclear liberation',' said Asia Times Online, Hong Kong; and Wall Street Journal called it, `Nuclear sense.'

Writes Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of External Affairs, in his foreword to the book that India's nuclear deterrence is `a measure of self-defence in a hostile and nuclearised environment.' Our nuclear doctrine emphasises "no first use, non-use against non-nuclear weapon states, a voluntary moratorium on testing and credible minimum deterrence," adds Mukherjee. Of value.

The 1998 nuke match

For a view of India from outside, a good read should be The Word Since 1945, by Wayne C. McWilliams and Harry Piotrowski, from Viva (www.vivagroupindia.com). The book, in its sixth edition, `traces the major political, economic, and ideological patterns that have evolved in the global arena from the end of World War II to the present day.'

The India discussion, in a section titled `The Third World', speaks of how "India's foreign relations were not peaceful, despite the `live and let live' policy of neutralism proclaimed by Prime Minister Nehru in the 1950s."

The authors note, "Nehru's efforts to exert the moral influence of India as a neutral peacemaker in the early Cold War years were noteworthy and gained him considerable international prestige, but they did little to help the country in its troubled relations with its neighbours."

However in the early 1970s, India-Pakistan relations `were substantially improved through the diplomacy of the two leaders' (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi) "at least until May 1974, when India successfully tested what it called a `nuclear device'." The Free Encyclopedia would elaborate: "The device used a high explosive implosion system developed... The 6 kg of plutonium came from the CIRUS reactor at BARC. The neutron initiator was a Polonium-Beryllium type (again like those used in early US bombs of the Fat Man type) code-named `Flower'." Polonium-210, as you may remember, is what is making news after the alleged poisoning of the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in the UK. A chapter on `the nuclear arms race' narrates the fast pace of events in 1998, after a long lull. "Shortly after coming to power, India's nationalists displayed their nuclear muscle by exploding five thermonuclear bombs in underground tests in the space of three days... . Within two weeks Pakistan answered with six nuclear bomb tests."

Handy reference.

Fourth Generation warfare

Can foreign policy be made `both understandable and entertaining'? Try Thomas P.M. Barnett's article titled `The Chinese are our friends', included in The Best American Political Writing, edited by Royce Flippin, from Thunder's Mouth Press (www.thundersmouth.com). "The most important thing you need to know about the Pentagon is that it is not in charge of today's wars but rather tomorrow's wars," writes Barnett, who is a former US Naval War College Professor.

He describes 4GW or `Fourth Generation Warfare' as "counterinsurgency operations designed to win over civilians while slowly strangling stubborn insurgencies." These unconventional operations are decidedly low tech and cheap, writes Barnett. "Completely unsexy, 4GW typically drags on for decades, generating real-time operational costs."

Closer to the nuke discussion is Seymour Hersh's essay titled `The Iran plans.' He explains `one of the military's initial option plans' which called for the use of `a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.' Nuke for nuke! "One target is Iran's main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly 200 miles south of Tehran," and 75 feet beneath the surface. The underground floor space can hold 50,000 centrifuges and labs, with a capacity to provide `enough enriched uranium for about 20 nuclear warheads a year.'

Conventional weapons in the US' arsenal can't help break something below `75 feet of earth and rock.' Interestingly, "there is a Cold War precedent for targeting deep underground bunkers with nuclear weapons."

When was that? "In the early 1980s, the American intelligence community watched as the Soviet government began digging a huge underground complex outside Moscow. Analysts concluded that the underground facility was designed for `continuity of government' — for the political and military leadership to survive a nuclear war."

The US too has similar facilities, `in Virginia and Pennsylvania.' The telltale signs are `the ventilator shafts'... but there can be false ones too!

In Scott Stossel's essay `North Korea: The war game,' you'd read about how the nuclear facilities show in satellite photos — `tucked away in underground tunnels or at least partially obscured by what arrows on the photos labelled as hill masses.'

According to one estimate, for the US to get `the chemical-delivery systems, the missile sites, and the nuclear sites before the North Koreans had a chance to use them' would mean `4,000 air sorties a day in the first days of the conflict,' in comparison to 800 a day in Iraq.

Nuke reads to tuck into, on a wintry evening this week, to decode why the Buddha smiled.

Tracing the evolution of India's nuclear doctrine, C. Raja Mohan writes in one of the essays about how nuclear debate in the country began in 1964, "when China conducted its first nuclear test, months after the border conflict of 1962." One learns that the All India Congress Committee demanded in 1965 that the Government `move quickly towards building nuclear weapons.' Post-1974 test, India had been working on `the design of nuclear weapons' and "by the mid-1990s, India had a significant stockpile of fissionable material to manufacture nuclear weapons."

Two other essays on the nuke theme are by Mani Singh Mamik (`Managing India's nuclear security environment: Challenges and policy options') and Shyam Saran (`Nuclear non-proliferation and international security - an Indian perspective'). Catch up also with educative expositions by experts grouped in sections devoted to topics such as multilateral institutions, regional foreign policy, bilateral relations, foreign economic policy, and culture.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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