[Socialism Today, No. 30, July 1998]
An obscene and potentially extremely dangerous nuclear arms race has opened up on the south Asian subcontinent. What lies behind this renewed arms race and what are the prospects for a nuclear exchange? Lynn Walsh writes.
On 11-13 May, India (after 24 years without nuclear tests) carried out a series of five underground nuclear explosions in the Pokhran region only 150 miles from the border with Pakistan. On 28 May, Pakistan responded with five underground tests in the Chagal hills in the western province of Balouchistan. Both states claimed that the tests included low-yield explosions, produced by devices suitable for tactical nuclear weapons. On both sides, the tests followed a missile race, a series of test firings of long-range missiles capable of striking deep into each other’s territory.
At the same time, both states have stepped up their military presence along the ‚line-of-control‘ running through the disputed border state of Jammu and Kashmir. Given the deep antagonism between India and Pakistan, the poisonous legacy of Britain’s divide-and-rule policy even during decolonisation, and three India-Pakistan wars, the nuclear tests inevitably raise the horrifying prospect of another war – and the possibility of nuclear conflict.
Far from guaranteeing ’national security‘, as both Indian and Pakistani leaders claim, these nuclear tests are a disaster for the people of the subcontinent and potentially a threat to all humanity. A nuclear arms race in these heavily militarised, terribly poor countries will enormously increase the social tensions – already being sharpened by the deepening economic crisis. A nuclear arms race between two of the world’s poorest countries is especially obscene. About 370 million people in India and Pakistan survive in absolute poverty, with incomes of less than $1 a day. During 1990-96 the two states between them spent $70bn on military forces and weaponry, compared to only $12bn on education. They have six times more soldiers than doctors, while over 200 million people have no access to basic health services.
Nuclear weapons will not transform such desperately poor countries into super-powers. On the contrary, the diversion of resources to weapons will deepen the fissures tearing through these class-ridden societies.
Any use of nuclear weapons, even of so-called tactical weapons, by India or Pakistan would be suicidal. The US Department of Health estimate that in a nuclear conflict between the two states at least 50 million people would be killed. The radioactive fall-out would result in massive human casualties and environmental damage, a Chernobyl multiplied many thousands of times. But given the extreme contradictions running through the semi-developed countries of the subcontinent and the possibility of unstable regimes desperately seeking a way out of crisis, nuclear conflict cannot be entirely ruled out. Any resort to nuclear weapons, however, would provoke potentially revolutionary protest movements, not only on the sub-continent, but around the world.
US imperialism desperately wants to restrict nuclear weapons capacity to the five existing nuclear powers. The Indo-Pak tests, however, expose the complete inability of the lone superpower to control nuclear weaponry, let alone eliminate nuclear weapons, despite the end of the ‚Cold War‘.
What lies behind this renewed arms race in Asia?
The BJP’s nuclear demagogy
The political trigger for the tests was the narrow victory of the BJP in the Indian general election last February. The BJP leaders expected to win a sweeping victory against the rag-bag coalition of regional and left-ish parties which made up the previous United Front government. They thought they would decisively defeat the Congress Party, which had been weakened by regional rivalries and corruption scandals. But the intervention in the election campaign of Rajiv Gandhi’s widow, Sonia, boosted the party’s support. She played on loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which presided over Congress Party governments for 30 years, demagogically evoking the harsh facts of poverty, the daily reality for over half the population.
While the previous ruling UF coalition lost almost half the seats it won in 1996, Congress (I) increased its seats to 142. The BJP won 179 seats, only 19 more than in 1996. Together with its allies, the BJP had a total of 252 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), 21 short of an absolute majority. After two weeks of parliamentary horse-trading, the BJP leaders managed to put together a ramshackle, 14-party coalition, gaining a vote-of-confidence victory by 274 votes to 261.
The BJP was duly able to form a government with AB Vajpayee as prime minister. But they desperately needed a political stroke to bolster their popular support and, if necessary, assure themselves a bigger majority in further elections. So following the example of Congress leaders in the past, the BJP government pressed the button of ’national security‘. Five nuclear tests were performed to demonstrate the government’s readiness to ‚defend the nation‘ against its alleged enemies, Pakistan and China, and to assert India’s claim to ‚great power‘ status. Tactically, this move was preferable to drawing sectarian arrows from the BJP’s traditional arsenal of chauvinist weapons. Moves against Muslims, Christians, and other minorities would alienate the BJP’s coalition allies and make it much harder to win votes amongst the minorities (the 120 million Muslims, for instance).
The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, formerly Jana Sangh) is a Hindu chauvinist party, a communalist party which plays on the insecurities and fears of India’s majority (80% plus) community. The BJP’s inner core – and notably the hardline Home Minister, LK Advani – are linked to the RSS (Rashtria Sevak Sangh), a fascistic activist organisation with a long history of whipping-up anti-Muslim pogroms. Aiming to replace the crumbling Congress Party as the dominant all-India party, the BJP set out in the early 1990s to boost its mass electoral support through the notorious ‚Ayodhya movement‘. This culminated in the frenzied demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya (in Uttah Pradesh) by a sectarian mob mobilised by the BJP. The BJP championed the slogan of ‚Swadeshi‘ (economic self-reliance for India) and hammered the drum of ‚Hindutva‘ (Hindu cultural nationalism).
The biggest increase in the BJP’s electoral support, however, has come from the new urban middle class which has swelled on the basis of neo-liberal policies – privatisation, deregulation and the influx of foreign capital – globalisation trends which hardly square with the idea of Swadeshi. Also, the BJP’s failure to form a lasting government in 1996 taught the BJP leaders that they could not consolidate an all-India majority purely on the basis of communalist support. They needed allies among the plethora of regional parties in the south as well as a significant slice of votes from sections of the poor, low-caste and non-Hindu electorate. So the BJP leaders have tried in the last few years to present a more respectable image, even claiming to be the best defenders of minority rights. The ‚moderate‘ AB Vajpayee was put up as their prime ministerial candidate, rather than the hardline (ex-RSS leader) Advani.
According to opinion polls, the nuclear tests boosted support for the BJP government. Alongside the appeal to nationalist sentiment against external ‚enemies‘ (Pakistan and China), the BJP appeals to a real but hollow anti-imperialist sentiment among the petit bourgeoisie. It plays on the feeling that India should be a super-power, though they opened the flood gates to foreign investment which is more and more subordinating the Indian economy to the multinational banks and corporations.
It is unlikely, however, that the nuclear tests will secure the rickety BJP coalition a long period of office. In states where the BJP previously formed governments (eg Maharashtra and Rajasthan) the BJP lost votes in the general election, and a period of federal government will rapidly expose the party’s political bankruptcy. Moreover, the coalition could be brought down at any time by the defection of a handful of MPs from one or other of the smaller partners.
The Asian economic crisis is beginning to have a serious effect on India, which will be aggravated by the effects of US sanctions and the increased burden of military spending. Opposition to the nuclear tests from India’s two Communist Parties, the CPI and the bigger CPI(M), is partly electorally motivated but it nevertheless reflects outrage among workers and sections of the middle class against the horror and the atrocious waste of nuclear weaponry. This opposition will undoubtedly grow as the consequences become clearer.
The Indian capitalists‘ hegemonic ambitions
Behind the BJP government’s reckless electoral opportunism in resorting to nuclear tests lie the national interests of the Indian bourgeoisie. Long before the BJP began campaigning on the slogan of a ‚greater India‘, that is, Indian domination, if not absorption, of the whole sub-continent, successive Congress Party governments pursued the ruling class’s hegemonic ambitions.
India (like Pakistan) has, ever since independence and partition in 1949, maintained massive military forces. In 1971, the Indian state intervened in East Pakistan when it split away from west Pakistan, in order to maintain a strong Indian influence over the newly-formed state of Bangladesh. In 1987, Indian forces occupied the Tamil area of Sri Lanka in a futile attempt to impose a settlement.
Immediately after India’s nuclear tests, Advani warned that „Islamabad (ie the Pakistani government) should realise the changes in the geo-strategic situation in the region and the world (and) roll back its anti-Indian policy especially with regard to Kashmir“. The coalition defence minister, George Fernandez, on the other hand pronounced that India’s nuclear capacity was a warning to China.
Skirmishes between Indian and Pakistan forces across the ‚line-of-control‘ (which separates the Indian-controlled from the Pakistan-controlled zone of Kashmir) are a permanent feature of Indo-Pak relations. Successive regimes in both India and Pakistan have continually used the issue of Kashmir to whip up nationalism into support for their respective capitalist aims. But neither regime supports the only step which can resolve the conflict: an independent, unified state of Kashmir under the democratic control of its people.
With regard to China, the situation on the border has been relatively stable for several years, with the Chinese regime proposing talks to settle the dispute which led to the Indo-Chinese war in 1963. Nevertheless, the recent tests are the latest round of a long cycle of nuclear rivalry which reflects the power struggle between the major national states of the region. China first tested nuclear weapons in 1964, which spurred India to develop a nuclear programme, carrying out tests in 1974. This in turn led to the development of the Pakistani state’s nuclear programme, when the People’s Party premier ZA Bhutto famously promised that the Pakistan people would ‚eat grass‘ if necessary to produce nuclear weapons.
It is not an immediate military threat from either Pakistan or China that motivated the tests, but the urge to stake India’s claim for super-power status, and especially to counter the threat to India’s ambitions posed by the strengthening of the alliance between the US and China. The ambition of the Indian ruling class has been strengthened by the collapse of the former Soviet Union, which formerly provided India with the ‚cover‘ of its nuclear umbrella in the relatively stable bi-polar world of superpower rivalry during the ‚Cold War‘.
Even liberal critics of the BJP nuclear tests express capitalist resentment at US policy: „We are India,“ says one commentator, „the second-largest country in the world. You can’t just take us for granted. India doesn’t feel threatened by Pakistan, but in the whole international game, India is being marginalised by the China-US axis“. (International Herald Tribune, 23 June)
The former Indian prime minister, IK Gujral, also a critic of the nuclear tests, says: „Clinton doesn’t mind going to China. (What China does in) Tiananmen is alright, in Tibet is alright, in Taiwan is alright. Everything is alright, but you (the US) ignore our security concerns because we are poor and a non-nuclear power. In your eyes either having a bomb or making money is what matters. Well, money is very difficult to make. A bomb is not“. (IHT, 23 June)
India is now demanding to be allowed to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India previously rejected the Treaty as ‚discriminatory‘ (Pakistan refused to sign unless India signed). However, India is now demanding that it should be admitted to the nuclear club, joining CTBT as the sixth nuclear power.
India is also stepping up its campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, as a sixth permanent member. Both these demands will be rigorously resisted by the US. While some sections of Congress welcome the strengthening of India as a counterweight to China, US imperialism is strongly opposed to any enlargement of the exclusive club of nuclear powers.
At the same time, some representatives of Indian capitalism are alarmed at what they see as the provocative, even reckless foreign policy of the BJP government. They see that an arms race will put an enormous burden on the Indian economy (with defence spending already raised in the recent budget by $1.2bn to $10bn). They fear the effects of US sanctions, which will bite on the economy as the Asian economic crisis deepens.
Pakistan
India’s nuclear tests provoked an intense debate within Pakistan political circles. Benazir Bhutto, leader of the opposition People’s Party, taunted the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, for his delay in responding with underground explosions. Quite a number of more far-sighted capitalist politicians and commentators, however, took a much more cautious view. They warned that nuclear tests, in themselves, would achieve very little, while inevitably provoking economic sanctions by the US and political pressure from the Western powers. The burden on the economy, they warned, would be far greater than the burden on India’s much bigger economy.
Within two weeks, however, Nawaz Sharifs Muslim League government had carried out its own nuclear tests. In spite of intense pressure from the US, Japan and other powers, the delay was probably only to make the necessary technical preparations – and to allow the wealthy feudals and capitalists to get their foreign currency out of the country before the government imposed exchange controls.
The Muslim League leaders seized the nuclear tests as an opportunity to strengthen their political support, whipping-up a patriotic fervour against India. A nuclear weapons programme, Sharif asserted, was the only way to ensure the survival of the (Islamic) nation against the threat of (Hindu) India. Azad Kashmir (the Pakistan-controlled segment of Jammu and Kashmir) would he defended, and Pakistan would continue to support the Muslim majority in the Indian-occupied area of the disputed state.
But how will nuclear weapons enhance the security of a population plagued by poverty and social insecurity? As with all Sharifs policies, the nuclear tests are aimed at increasing the wealth, power and prestige of the unbelievably corrupt feudal landlords and capitalists who milk the people for every last drop of surplus wealth. Sharif called for sacrifices, but it is clear who will be called on to make them: it is only the poor who will be eating grass.
On the day of the tests Sharifs government announced a state of emergency. The immediate effect was to neutralise the judiciary of the Supreme Court, which is responsible for upholding human rights legislation, neatly resolving the government’s long-running political conflict with sections of the higher judiciary. But the emergency also lifts all legal restraints on the police and the army, giving the government immense repressive powers.
At the moment, the nuclear tests have boosted support for Sharifs government. Many politically conscious workers, as well as a strata of left and liberal intellectuals, are strongly opposed to a nuclear weapons programme. The absence of any organised opposition forces, however, means that opposition to nuclear arms finds little open expression at the moment. Nevertheless, in time the enormous economic and social effects of the nuclear programme will translate into discontent and anger. In the longer run, the tests will not produce ’security‘ for the Muslim League government, any more than it will for the BJP coalition in India.
The lone super-power in disarray
The Indo-Pak nuclear tests are a massive set back for US foreign policy. In relation to global strategic power, the overriding aim of the US has been to maintain the nuclear monopoly of the five established nuclear powers, the US, Britain, France, Russia, and China, as an essential tactic for preserving the existing balance of power. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) explicitly recognises the five – and only five – as established nuclear powers, while officially imposing restrictions on ‚threshold‘ nuclear states (like Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) in an attempt to prevent them developing a fully developed nuclear weapons capacity.
The major powers, of course, still retain huge nuclear arsenals. At the same time, the five powers have continued nuclear testing, anxious to complete their current programmes before the ratification of the CTBT due in 1999. France and China both carried out a series of tests in 1995-96. During 1997-98 the US is carrying out a series of tests in the Nevada desert.
It is quite evident, moreover, that the restrictions on nuclear proliferation are widely evaded. For instance, vital technical assistance was provided to India by Israel, which has a far bigger weapons capacity although it has not carried out its own tests. Pakistan was given similar assistance by China, and its weapons scientists have made no secret that they are easily able to buy the technology they need from companies in the US, Europe, from Brazil, and elsewhere.
For US imperialism, the primary aim of the CTBT is to prevent other states from acquiring the status of nuclear powers and thus acquiring the power and prestige attached to publicly acknowledged nuclear arsenals. Zbigniev Brzezinski, formerly president Carter’s national security advisor, admitted that the US policy was always „one of selective and preferential proliferation“ – in other words, licence for the big five, restrictions for the ‚threshold‘ and ‚rogue‘ nuclear states. For the US to accept India and Pakistan into the nuclear club would undermine the whole point of the exercise. On the other hand, the CTBT specifies that the ‚threshold‘ states must sign before the Treaty can come into effect. Having raised the stakes, it is now almost impossible for any Indian government to sign unless it is accepted as a nuclear power, which raises a question mark over the future of the CTBT.
On a wider front, the US’s Asia policy is in a shambles. Clinton’s grandiose visit to China, praising China as a stabilising influence in Asia, comes just when the Asian economic crisis is beginning to show its effects within the country. The US courtship of China undoubtedly spurred India to carry out nuclear tests. In 1995, when the Congress government was considering nuclear tests to boost its electoral prospects, the US intervened to stop them going ahead. This time, the CIA reportedly failed to warn the White House about the BJP government’s preparations.
With regard to Pakistan, the US put intense pressure on the Sharif government not to emulate India’s tests. But the US’s inconsistent sanction policy against Pakistan left the lone superpower with little influence over the Islamabad government. During the 1980s, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear programme when Pakistan provided a crucial channel for the CIA’s supply of dollars and weapons to the Afghan guerrillas fighting against the Soviet-backed Najibullah government. When the US’s covert Afghan operation ended, however, the US cut off its multi-billion dollar military aid programme and imposed sanctions on Pakistan because it refused to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. The blocking by Congress of the delivery of F-16 fighter aircraft, which Pakistan had already paid for, rankled with both Benazir Bhutto’s and Sharif s government.
The Clinton administration has been forced by Congressional legislation to impose economic sanctions on India and Pakistan, while more or less openly admitting that they will achieve very little except destabilising damage to their economies. The guardian of the ’new world order‘ clearly has no solutions to the key sources of conflict in southern Asia.
Nuclear exchanges not ruled out
Socialists are opposed to the accumulation of barbarous nuclear weapons and to nuclear testing to facilitate the production of such weapons. Apart from the hazard they pose to human welfare and the environment and the atrocious waste of resources, nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable capitalist regimes pose the potential danger of nuclear conflict. During the post-war period of the Cold War (1945-89), there was a relatively stable balance of power between the two super-power camps (dominated respectively by US imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy). The reality of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which meant that a nuclear strike would be suicidal, ruled out the actual use of nuclear weapons as a rational strategic option. The nuclear arsenals bestowed prestige and influence on their owners, rather than providing usable battlefield weapons. Even in the neo-colonial regional wars fought by the super-powers through proxies, such as the Soviet-backed North and the US-backed South in the Vietnam war, US imperialism had to rule out the use of even tactical nuclear weapons.
Relations between India and Pakistan, however, are by comparison extremely unstable, both because of their internal contradictions and the multiple sources of regional conflict. The moves of the BJP government, adventurist even from a capitalist point of view, are a warning of what may develop in the future.
In is futile, however, to call for capitalist governments to declare a moratorium on further tests, let alone to renounce their nuclear arsenals. The capitalist ruling class will always seek to defend its interests – wealth, power, territory and international prestige – through the accumulation of arms. If they can commandeer the necessary resources and technology, they will not hesitate to develop nuclear weapons. The only pressure which can check the development of nuclear weapons is the pressure of mass working-class movements. Ultimately, however, it is only the overthrow of feudal and capitalist rulers which can eradicate the parasitic growth of military forces and the nightmare scenario of nuclear destruction.
Throughout the Asian sub-continent, as in other regions, there are millions of workers who bitterly resent the profligate and aggressive nuclear egotism of their ruling classes. In the coming period we must strive to build the necessary fighting, socialist organisations to give expression to this anger and the desire for a society built on the common interests of working people, freed from the poison of nationalism, communalism, and all other divisions of race, religion and gender used by the capitalists to divide and rule.
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