Rajagopalan at the NIDS Conference on Major Powers' Nuclear Policies

Cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan blog, The Real World.


I attended a conference on "Major Powers' Nuclear Policies and International Order in the 21st Century", organized by the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Tokyo, on November 18, 2009.


It was an enjoyable and very informative couple of days. The conference included two excellent key note presentation. Morton Halperin ("The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century") had a somewhat optimistic presentation about where we are headed while Ambassador Yukio Satoh ("Nuclear Disarmament and Japan's Security"), gave a blunt lecture about the troubles facing Japan, especially the consequences of radical nuclear arms control/disarmament on extended deterrence, though his audience seemed to be the new government in Tokyo much more than the outside world. We had presentations about the nuclear policies of each of the N-5, plus India: Elaine Bunn (who, I realised belatedly, has been on all Nuclear Posture Reviews, including the current one!) on the U.S. , Yuri Fedorov on Russia, Xia Liping on China, John Simpson on Britain and Bruno Tertrais on France (and me on India).

I could not get over the sense that Japan is much more worried about the direction of US policy and the general international trends than we realise. In addition to Ambassador Satoh's keynote address, we also had discussions with a couple of senior bureaucrats from MOFA and MOD, and they more or less echoed Amb. Sato's tone too. Maybe it is that I have only passing familiarity with Japan; moreover, alliance angst among American allies is hardly news. Am I over-reading this? Maybe, but it is also possible that others are taking Japan a bit too much for granted too.
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A.Q. Khan on Pakistan-China nuclear links

This is cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan's blog, The Real World. Actually, this has been in the draft folder for some time. Apologies for the late post.


The Washington Post has an important story about A.Q. Khan, the nuclear blackmarketeer, and his dealings with China. But what is most critical is not what A.Q. Khan and the Pakistanis did, but what China did, and their motivations. As Hans Kristensen notes in the article, this is the only known case where a nuclear weapon state has transferred HEU to a non nuclear-weapon state for the explicit purpose of building nuclear weapons.

A.Q.Khan claims that the quid pro quo was the centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment that A.Q.Khan had stolen earlier from the URENCO facility in the Netherlands.

In 1994, Seymour Hersh had written about another deal: why the US bought at face value the absurd Pakistani government claim that the A.Q. Khan episode was a 'rogue operation' not sanctioned by the Pakistani government. Hersh had then reported that the deal was that in return for accepting the nonsensical story about A.Q. Khan, Pakistan would help the US in capturing Osama bin Laden. That sure worked out well.

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Prof. Mattoo argues the need for a new nuclear architecture

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has a new opinion piece on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the Telegraph.

Prof. Mattoo notes that all three legs of the current NPT structure -- non-proliferation, civil nuclear energy cooperation, and nuclear disarmament -- are at the point of collapsing. He argues that India must help set up a new nuclear architecture. You can read his complete essay here.
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Prof. Swaran Singh on the nuclear disconnect

Prof. Swaran Singh has written an essay on the need for India, particularly the Indian strategic community, to consider a different nuclear vision.


Prof. Singh argues that 'as India moves from victimhood to a stakeholder profile in the nuclear sweepstakes, several fundamentals need to change as well', most importantly, the lack of coordination between decision-makers and the strategic community.

Read his essay here.
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Prof. Mattoo attends Pugwash CTBT consultation

Professor Amitabh Mattoo recently attended the Pugwash consultation on the status of the CTBT and prospects for its entry into force in New York.

Clearly, there is a lot of focus on CTBT, given President Obama's Prague speech on nuclear disarmament and the expectation that he would make another attempt at getting the US Senate to ratify the CTBT. The meeting, organized by Pugwash, was held on October 12, under the Chatham House Rule. Invitees were primarily from th Annexe-2 countries. The programme included a presentation by Ambassador Sergio Duarte, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs and remarks from Ambassador Tibor Toth, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the CTBTO.
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More needless hand-wringing over the NPT/US-India nuclear deal

Cross-posted from The Real World.


Are'nt we done with this yet??

Apparently not. The generic UNSC resolution 1887 (click here if the previous link does not open) about nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation (press statement including discussions here) has set-off yet more paranoid worrying in New Delhi that India will be targeted. Only the Indian Express seems to have taken a more sober line.

As if it needed reiteration, the MEA, MoS Tharoor and even PM Manmohan Singh had to step-up to state India's position on the NPT for the umpteenth time and reassure the TV pundits that the UNSC resolution was not directed at India and that the US was not backing out on the nuclear deal (further reiterated by Clinton).

That the UNSC resolution would get tied up with the nuclear deal is even more surprising. To reiterate what I have said before, the US-India nuclear deal is really a deal between India and the international community, not just the US. And the benefits are already visible: here, here, here, here, here, here and here, with more to come. Even if the US were to balk at this stage, it matters little because the gate is already open for nuclear commerce with the rest of the world.

A lot of recent debate in the US about the paranoid style of American politics; it may be time consider seriously hypotheses about the paranoid style of Indian politics . . .
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Prof. Swaran Singh on the Pokhran-2 controversy

Prof. Swaran Singh wrote an OpEd piece on the recent controversy over the Pokhran-2 H-bomb test . . .

Prof. Singh argues that given the controversy, India should keep its nuclear testing option open. Read his full essay in the Hindustan Tmes here.
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Rajesh Rajagopalan on the Pokhran-2 test controversy

Rajesh Rajagopalan has posted a brief comment on his blog about the controversy over the yield of the Pokhran-2 nuclear tests . . .

He argues that the controversy does not particularly affect India's nuclear deterrence capability.
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Updated with seminar report: Amandeep Gill to talk about India's arms control policy

Amandeep Gill of the Disarmament and International Security Affairs (DISA) division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) will speak at the CIPOD Wednesday seminar on 'India and the New Arms Control Agenda' on August 19, 2009.

Keep reading for a report on his presentation . . .

Gill is Director at DISA. He has extensive experience in arms control and disarmament issues, having dealt with it for almost ten years of his service in the MEA. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University. He wrote recently in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that India was unlikely to sign the CTBT even if the US Senate ratifies the treaty.

Updated 24/08/09: Here's a brief summary of Gill's presentation:

Amandeep Gill presented his view of India’s position on the new arms control agenda at the CIPOD Wednesday seminar on August 19. He was speaking in his personal capacity.

He stated that India’s arms control positions were organic and alive, based both on principles and pragmatism. These positions have an inherent link with national security, as it became clear during the CTBT debate. India will support global, verifiable and non-discriminatory disarmament measures but the Indian Government has a responsibility to its citizens with regard to their security in a nuclearised world. Apart from this link with national security, the debate in India regarding our arms control positions was also now more open. He felt that there was a broad consensus that the correct way to approach the process of disarmament is through delegitimizing nuclear weapons through measures such as de-alerting.

There is also a global context: nuclear postures are changing the world over. Both the US and China are enhancing their nuclear triad, with new delivery capabilities as well as missile defence and asymmetric capabilities. India is also developing a triad capability but on a much more modest scale. There are a number of causes for concern in these global developments including the possibility of a nuclearised Korean peninsula and concern over Iran’s nuclear technology development. Regarding the non-proliferation regime, Gill said that the Bush administration, though unilateralist, showed pragmatism in going beyond the existing regimes. While current problems dictate a need to modify and go beyond existing regimes, there is resistance to this.

Regarding India’s position on specific issues, Gill reiterated the Indian position that the NPT was a flawed treaty, flaws which were reinforced in 1995 when the treaty was extended indefinitely. But it was unrealistic for India to expect that the treaty would be modified to let India in as a nuclear weapon state, just as it was unrealistic to expect that India will join the treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state. While the NPT itself can stay, we also need to go beyond it to prevent proliferation. On CTBT and testing, Indian restraint has been unparalleled, but the CTBT needs to be a logical and necessary step on the path towards nuclear disarmament. In India many still see it as part of the old non-proliferation regime which discriminated against India. Ultimately, it is a matter of perception: if others see India as a partner rather than as a target, Indian views of the CTBT will also change.

On the FMCT, India can engage confidently with the rest of the world. Its position on fundamentals has not changed since 1993: it wants a multilateral, non-discriminatory and verifiable treaty that meets its national security concerns. On Iran, he said that Iran has made commitments that it needs to live up to and the appropriate body to deal with the issue is the IAEA.

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