Indian Tests Put Nonproliferation Agreements at Risk

The fallout from New Delhi’s five nuclear tests this week extends far beyond an arms race in the volatile Indian subcontinent. The broader danger is the unraveling of the very framework of agreements the United States has painstakingly constructed over the past 30 years to eliminate apocalyptic weaponry around the world.

“This crisis is much more profound than people realize,” said Joseph Cirincione, an arms specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We hit a nuclear iceberg. We didn’t see it coming, and the damage is much more extensive than people realize from the upper decks.”

The pivotal issue is whether the world community is prepared to take bold but costly steps to preserve the network that sought to remove the nuclear threat. Several initiatives could help salvage the foundation of disarmament.

“There may yet be a silver lining in the plutonium cloud,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. “The Indians have been building bombs all along, it’s just now that the light is suddenly shining on that fact--and makes us realize we have to deal with it.”

But many experts are pessimistic that either the U.S. or the international community has the will or ability to act fast enough to avoid further setbacks. Part of the Clinton administration’s problem is that it might have to be as tough at home as it is on India.

That’s because a critical element of controlling nuclear proliferation is U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The treaty has been a U.S. goal since the Eisenhower administration, and this country is among more than 145 nations that have signed it since 1996. But the accord’s required ratification by Congress has been stalled.

Skeptics on Capitol Hill have long feared that the treaty’s monitoring provisions are not strong enough. Thus, they argue, the U.S. nuclear arsenal needs to be kept up to date to be an effective deterrent against countries that might cheat. And to ensure that American weapons are the most advanced, the U.S. must conduct its own tests.

India is among the countries that failed even to sign the treaty, and its tests have made key Republicans--such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms of North Carolina--more reluctant than ever to ratify the accord.

This hardening line has created a policy conundrum. “The United States is on shaky moral ground in terms of condemning India. We’re engaged in our own obstruction of nonproliferation efforts,” said Khurshid Khoja of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank that focuses on defense issues.

The treaty will not go into effect until it is ratified by 44 designated nations that have facilities, reactors, equipment, technology or other elements required to produce a nuclear bomb. So far only 13, including nuclear powers Britain and France, have signed on.

“The Indian test may have blown away the chance of passage [in Congress]. And if the U.S. doesn’t ratify it, then this treaty is dead,” Cirincione said.

And if the test ban accord dies, the premise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which came into force in 1970 and established the legal and diplomatic framework for the entire nuclear disarmament program, is also profoundly undermined, he added.

The nonproliferation pact calls for nuclear powers to pursue an end to the arms race and move toward disarmament in exchange for a pledge from all other countries not to pursue their own nuclear programs.

“Now, 28 years after it was negotiated, nonnuclear states will be deeply frustrated by the lack of progress in eliminating these weapons,” Cirincione said. “And the collapse of the broader framework would leave a terrible vacuum.”

Other steps experts recommend to address the current crisis and the broader issues it has highlighted include:

* A widespread embrace of sanctions against India and, if it also tests nuclear devices, Pakistan. To be effective, however, these embargoes must be international, not just honored by one or a few states.

In Birmingham, England, on Friday, the Group of 7 industrial powers and Russia, the so-called Group of 8, condemned India but stopped short of imposing sanctions.

“If the world is unwilling to incur the costs to their own economies to achieve nonproliferation, the Iraqs and Irans of the world trying to develop their own nuclear arms will get the message,” Milhollin said. “Proliferation is then effectively being endorsed.”

* Restricting high-tech exports to India and other countries that could be used for advanced weaponry or missiles to deliver nuclear warheads, and sanctioning countries that transfer their own arms technology to others.

But giving priority to security means sacrifices in trade. “So far, countries like the United States, Japan and members of the European [Union] have been unwilling to incur the costs, for example, of sanctioning China for supplying nuclear technology to Pakistan or missile technology to Pakistan and Iran,” Milhollin said.

Clinton administration strategy has emphasized trade and constructive engagement--a strategy Milhollin calls shortsighted. “Rich countries can still get blown up by Third World bombs,” he said.

* Developing means to account for all nuclear weapons and to guarantee the security of all fissile material, whether or not it is in weapons.

“These are screaming requirements the international community has not yet met,” said John D. Steinbruner of the Brookings Institution. “It’s irresponsible to run the world this way.”

At the moment, there are various accounting systems for nuclear arms. The Russians are particularly evasive on numbers, while even close U.S. allies such as Britain and France have been coy, experts say. And, so far, no major party has even outlined an international arrangement to account for fissile material.

“To really deal with proliferation problems, we need to know how many weapons there are down to a single unit and how much fissile material there is down to the last kilogram,” Steinbruner said.

The overall problem for all these steps is that the Indian tests and their likely repercussions have done serious damage to the momentum created since the nonproliferation treaty was signed, and especially since the Cold War ended.

“Thirty years of hard work was having an impact. Instead of the 20 or 30 nuclear nations President Kennedy feared we’d have by now, we have the ‘five plus three’--the five declared nuclear powers [the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France] and the three undeclared [India, Pakistan and Israel],” Cirincione said.

He added: “If significant steps aren’t taken in the near future, some people fear we may witness another great wave of proliferation that would signal an end to the nonnuclear period.”