By now everyone knows that India has exploded five nuclear tests in the space of three days. That the recently-elected Hindu Nationalist Government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was seriously contemplating such tests was no secret, but the timing and scale of the programme seems to have taken the world by surprise.
With these tests the political landscape regarding nuclear weapons has fundamentally shifted, just as surely as happened when the Soviet Union disintegrated. It will be impossible to turn back to the cosy club of five declared nuclear weapon powers - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US; 181 non-nuclear weapon states, held in place by treaty commitments, and three nuclear capable countries remaining outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India, Israel and Pakistan.
India has crossed the nuclear threshold with more than a resounding bang. Will Pakistan follow? Will a nuclear arms race in South Asia be an inevitable consequence, and if so, how would it be possible to avoid a nuclear war starting in such an unstable region? What does the future hold: nuclear free or nuclear free-for-all? India's tests have precipitated a crisis in non-proliferation. Like all crises, however, there are both dangers and opportunities. Selective proliferation was never a sustainable state of affairs, however much the Big Five wanted to retain their privileged position. If India's tests act as a wake-up call, they will not have been all bad. India was once a champion of nuclear disarmament, but for more than two decades it has sought to keep its options open. India joined in the negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT), but vetoed the completed treaty in 1996 and refused to sign. India's arguments that the test ban was inadequate because it did not include a commitment to a timetable for complete nuclear disarmament were beguiling, but ultimately self-serving. The treaty was an important step in the right direction, which, if taken seriously, could lead to other steps. In rejecting the CTBT because it wasn't pure enough, India criticised the US, France and others for their ongoing nuclear weapon programmes, including computer simulations and sub-critical tests. Yet, now we hear the Indian government announce that the tests were not only to prove its nuclear strength, but also to provide data for computer simulation capabilities, including sub-critical tests.
After listening through the decades as the "Russian threat" arguments were ratcheted up a few notches every time one of the other nuclear powers wanted to get public support or money for further nuclear weapons, India's recent diatribes against China were eerily familiar. And then came the explosions.
China, which seldom comments, said it was "deeply shocked", but it was on Pakistan that the impact has been most devastating. Public reaction was immediate, with loud calls for Islamabad to prove that it, too, could make and test nuclear weapons. At the same time, the rest of the world has been urging restraint. Pakistan has the technology and bomb-grade material, although somewhat less than India. If Pakistan tests, a nuclear arms race in South Asia could ensue.
If Pakistan refrains from testing, it becomes easier to stigmatise India's behaviour and exert international pressure on New Delhi, but such arguments may not carry much weight with a population terrified into a frenzy by India's explosions this week. Pakistan is also worried that deals will now be struck with New Delhi, in effect treating India as a sixth nuclear weapon state. India's nuclear weapons are now a fact, but there are good reasons for not giving them legal recognition. How the international community treats India over the next few months will be watched closely by another region, the Middle East, where Israel is also a "threshold state" known to have an actual nuclear arsenal. At the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Thursday, 43 countries made their views clear. In a strong show of international outrage, they condemned the nuclear tests. Many also called on India to join the CTBT and NPT. But as long as India views these treaties as discriminatory, a-vis China and the other nuclear powers, that will be difficult. Since it would be unacceptable to grant India a more privileged position as a result of its nuclear provocation, the only way to make these treaties less discriminatory will be to reduce the privilege of the nuclear haves. Like with secret societies based on racial or sexual discrimination, the answer is not to expand the club, but to dissolve it altogether. This, in effect, was the argument put forward by the South American countries, home of the first nuclear weaponfree zone, and by South Africa and Ireland. It was also the original intention behind the NPT, when Ireland first pushed the idea at the height of the Cold War.
While calling on India to cease testing and reconsider its position, Ireland's Ambassador to Geneva, Anne Anderson, insisted that the nuclear weapon states must also fulfil their international and treaty obligations to pursue nuclear disarmament. She is right to make this connection, although few others in Europe are brave enough to risk British, French and US hostility by pointing out that nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are two sides of the same coin. Only last week an important meeting of the countries belonging to the NPT ended in deadlock and disarray, in large part because the nuclear weapon states did not want to be held accountable for the pace and progress of nuclear arms control and disarmament. As India's explosions clearly remind us: nuclear weapons are everyone's business. We will have to work fast to rebuild shattered relations in South Asia, to address regional security concerns more coherently and to persuade Pakistan not to retaliate in kind. India should be encouraged to join the CTBT, but that treaty should also be reinforced with commitments not to modernise and develop the nuclear arsenals through sophisticated computer and laboratory testing, as the US is spending over $4 billion a year to do. In addition to insisting on the implementation of the START process and much deeper cuts in the bloated arsenals of the US and Russia, neither India, Pakistan nor the weapon states can be allowed to continue blocking negotiations to halt the production and stockpiling of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Most importantly, we must marginalise nuclear weapons in military and political thinking, through measures involving all the nuclear weapon states.
The Canberra Commission offers a place to start, including taking the weapons off alert and off patrol, mothballing the guidance systems, and binding all the nuclear states not to use nuclear weapons first. We cannot turn the clock back, but India's nationalistic tests have set off an alarm that will not be silenced by the snooze button.
Rebecca Johnson is director of The Acronym Institute in London, which is concerned with non-proliferation and disarmament affairs. Its website address is http://www.gn.apc.org/acronym
