India today has a unique opportunity to
rekindle the global nuclear disarmament
momentum, and to kick-start this ambitious
but useful project, New Delhi
should offer to sign the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). This
proposal may sound untimely and strategically
unwise, but there are at least
three reasons why India should accede
to the CTBT, besides being able to tap
into a wealth of data generated by the
CTBTO’s International Monitoring
Stations:
First, to respond to global developments
in nuclear disarmament and arms
control as a responsible stakeholder in
the non-proliferation regime;
Second, to negotiate India’s entry into
the global nuclear order and third, to
revive India’s long-forgotten tradition of
campaigning for global nuclear disarmament.
Global nuclear developments
Seventy years since the first atomic
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August
1945, and 45 years since the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered
into force in 1970, the global non-proliferation
regime is under unprecedented
stress. The recently concluded 2015 NPT
Review Conference (RevCon) was a failure
of historic proportions and the international
nuclear order will now find it
hard to get back on its feet, both normatively
and functionally.
Post the 2015 RevCon, both the nuclear-weapon
states (NWS) — the U.S., U.K.,
France, Russia, and China — of the NPT
and the disarmament enthusiasts among
the non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS)
seem to have run out of ideas on how to
revive the global nuclear order.
While the NPT is staring at an uncertain
future, the Conference on Disarmament
(CD) has not even been able
to begin negotiations on a fissile material
cut off treaty (FMCT) thanks to Pakistan’s
unhelpful decision to block the
commencement of negotiations, and the
CTBT seems to be losing steam due to
the lack of enthusiasm shown by its onetime
forceful supporter, the United
States.
The complete absence of any progress
on the ‘grand bargain’ (that the NNWS
would not make nuclear weapons and
the NWS would eventually abolish the
weapons they have) that lay at the heart
of the NPT-led non-proliferation regime,
has eroded the normative core of
the global nuclear order.
Moreover, there is an unhealthy shift
in the contemporary non-proliferation
agenda. From the traditional concerns of
non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament,
and the peaceful uses of nuclear
energy, the focus today has shifted to
counter-proliferation and nuclear security,
primarily due to concerns about nuclear
terrorism and the physical security
of nuclear material. It is likely that future
state-sponsored non-proliferation
initiatives would eschew disarmament
but deal with counter-proliferation, with
an emphasis on the potential use of
force.
Finally, the newly minted disarmament
initiative called the ‘Humanitarian
Initiative’, dealing with the ‘catastrophic
humanitarian consequences of the use of
nuclear weapons’, and spearheaded by
NNWS and European Non-proliferation
enthusiasts, has further complicated the
traditional non-proliferation agenda, especially
for India. Many of the promoters
of the Humanitarian Initiative view
India’s exceptional treatment by the
contemporary nuclear order as setting
an unhealthy precedent and damaging to
the normative framework of the nuclear
order.New Delhi has been seeking the
membership of various strategic export
control cartels such as the Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG) and the Missile
Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
But it will now be harder for it to convince
the European non-proliferation
supporters to continue to treat India as
an exception, without making a substantive
normative offer in return.
To do that India should put forward
two proposals: First, propose and push,
with like-minded countries, for the
adoption of a global ‘No first use’ agreement
on nuclear weapons, and; second,
sign the CTBT, if not immediately ratify
the same. This will clearly reinstate the
lost global enthusiasm for nuclear disarmament
and clarify India’s ‘benign’
nuclear intentions to the international
community.
India should offer to sign the CTBT as
a quid pro quo for admission into the
institutions governing the global nuclear
order. Although they are private initiatives
functioning outside the NPT-centric
treaty framework, they form an
important cog in the non-proliferation
regime. New Delhi has been pursuing
membership of these organisations for
years now without much headway.
India’s inability to reach an accord
with Tokyo has been yet another roadblock
in its pursuit of producing more
nuclear energy as this deal is key to further
operationlising its deals with
France and even the U.S. The current
dispensation in Tokyo is not averse to a
deal but has been insistent on a guarantee
from New Delhi that the latter would
not conduct any more nuclear tests.
While doing so in writing would infringe
on India’s sovereignty, offering to sign
the CTBT could assuage the Japanese
anti-nuclear sensibilities.
Phased nuclear disarmament
Let us not forget India’s remarkable
history of anti-nuclear activism, from
proposing an end to nuclear testing in
1954 after the U.S. nuclear testing in
Bikini Atoll to signing the Partial Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963 to
Rajiv Gandhi’s impassioned plea to the
U.N. General Assembly in 1988 for
phased nuclear disarmament.
India played a key role in the negotiations
to establish the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and actively
participated in the negotiations on
the NPT, but decided not to sign when it
became clear that it would become an
unequal treaty. India had also for long
advocated for a CTBT, although the
eventual treaty was not accepted. However,
resistance to CTBT does not need
to continue anymore given that India
does not intend to conduct any more
tests (as declared in its unilateral moratorium
on nuclear tests). Hence accession
to the CTBT can be used as a
bargaining chip to mainstream itself into
the nuclear order.
Once India signs the CTBT, some of
the other hold-out states are likely to
follow, such as Pakistan. Others like the
U.S. (whose Senate is blocking the ratification
though the U.S. government has
signed it) and China would also come
under pressure to accede to it. Thus India
will be able to reverse the current
non-proliferation pressure which makes
sense not only from a strategic point of
view but also from a normative perspective.
Signing the CTBT, then, is in India’s
enlightened self-interest.
(Happymon Jacob teaches disarmament
and national security at the School
of International Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi.
E-mail: happymon@gmail.com)
