HVK Archives: Nukes or firecrackers?
Nukes or firecrackers? - The Economic Times
Neeraj Kaushal
()
May 19, 1998
Title: Nukes or firecrackers?
Author: Neeraj Kaushal
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: May 19, 1998
There is a flippant side to the American reaction to the five
smiles of the Buddha. Some Americans are asking: Did the Indian
government test five nukes or just exploded firecrackers?
Seismometers set up around the world to track earthquakes and
atomic blasts did not get any signal from four of the five tests.
Seismologists argue that if the tests are of low degree
explosives, they are not likely to be captured by seismometers.
But one reporter goes to the limit of suggesting that Prime
Minister Vajpayee might have bluffed the world, and that India
did not actually undertake a nuclear test.
Says to a report in the New York Times, "Given the lack of
independent evidence, the rest of the world only has India's word
about the size and scope of most of the announced blasts, or even
whether they took place at all. Certainly India already seems to
be exaggerating its achievement.
Estimates by Indian seismologists of the explosive energy of
Monday's large blast are more than double those of American
experts."
However, when the prime minister of a country like India
announces five nuclear tests, including a thermonuclear one, he
is at once taken most seriously by all the governments in the
world.
President Clinton took the tests seriously, indeed. And the
evidence lies in the sanctions that he announced without using
the 30 days the law gives him to ponder all aspects of the
matter.
Something peculiar is happening in the US. The country is divided
in its response to the Indian tests, and it is not finding the
rest of the world ready to march in step with it in slapping
sanctions. The establishment is showing three different trends
of responses.
One is the hard core America-above-all school of thinking. This
constituency covers a majority of the establishment, senators and
Congressmen, security experts and most of the opinion makers.
One senator has gone as far as saying that the Indian tests pose
a direct threat to the territory of the United States.
The president himself appears to represent a more moderate and
realistic school of thinking.
After all, Mr Clinton is the first president of the US to have
publicly admitted, and that too while he was in Berlin, that he
himself paid inadequate attention to India's importance. The
sanctions that he has imposed are relatively mild - cancelling
direct American aid to India, which in 1998 will be less than $
100 million.
The president has been talking about other sanctions prescribed
by the law on which decision making will take time. He must have
also been sobered by the lukewarm response he got in Western
Europe to economic and trade sanctions against India. Some TV
commentators even said that he did not even try to persuade the G-
8 countries to impose these sanctions on India.
There is a third trend in America, which is quite sympathetic to
India. AM Rosenthal, the veteran of the editorial board of New
York Times has in his column deplored the manner in which the US
has been trying to trivialise India.
Prof Embree, the Columbia university historian candidly asked a
reporter of the Daily News, "what do you read about India in the
American papers except child marriage or drowning of a bus
carrying school children."
The India sympathisers are small in number but at this crucial
stage and in this policy matter they will not be without an
impact on policy makers.
America's main concern now is Pakistan, and it is using both the
carrot and the stick in equal proportion to dissuade Pakistan
>from at least immediately carrying out a nuclear test. Prominent
security experts have clearly said that the kind of guarantee
Pakistan is asking for - like giving Pakistan American military
and nuclear protection - will not work.
To please Pakistan, a certain amount of sanctions on India will
be necessary, but it can now be safely predicted economic
sanctions will not bite India too hard.
At the same time, the nuclear test will not give India the status
of a nuclear power at par with China and France. Nor will it get
India a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
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