INDIA'S LEADING ECONOMIC RESEARCH FIRM
+91-11-42512400
products@indicus.net
Indicus in News
Books & Reports
White Papers
Search
| The nuclear muddle |
 |
 |
| Laveesh Bhandari | |||
| Friday, 22 August 2008 05:30 | |||
|
The key problem is with the voluntary moratorium. Once we decide to have nuclear bombs then we should keep up the process of testing... The Canadians want to once again give us their technology, the Australians do want to sell more of their Uranium, the US wants to get India into its fold, and even the Japanese are not averse to a nuclear India. The Indian government is also quite happy with that. The Indian public has made it very clear in the past (like many other large democracies) that they would like the state to develop, test and maintain a nuclear arsenal. The world has more or less given up on trying to keep India non-nuclear. Given that India will have some sort of a nuclear arsenal what would make most sense is that arsenal be limited. The world would like that, and Indians are also not averse to this idea. So on all of this there is more or less universal agreement. But even a limited nuclear arsenal requires some testing and everyone knows that. So before signing any of those non-proliferation treaties the western nations gave themselves enough time and tested. This must have been India’s argument as well in its negotiations. Given that we like to see ourselves as a nuclear power, and given that the other powers don’t really mind that anymore, why should there be a problem with us testing? After all would not testing allow us to develop better quality nuclear bombs? Or better ones that can better be targeted and those that have minimum collateral damage. Democracy has made the left see right, and now we have a consensus on the matter. Congress or no Congress, India will voluntarily chose to test. The government is claiming this, the left is also claiming it wants this, of course no one really knows what the BJP wants but it seems that’s the key issue. The Ping us theM and his foreign minister both claim that we can test. The right and the left agree that it does not. There is therefore only one way out. Lets do a few tests. That would be the scientific way. Whenever theory does not yield a deterministic outcome, one needs to resort to empiricism. So what we need to do very quickly is to do a couple of underground tests and see the response. But the problem is there is no treaty. So it may be better to quickly sign the treaty let it go through the US congress, do whatever has to be done, and then quickly do a couple of tests as soon as everything is through. Two things could happen. First - Australia will stop giving us their Uranium, and Canada its technology, and US its military ware. We did not have any of this in the first place anyway so no real loss. Second – they will accept that this was allowed in the treaty. In this case we can go on happily testing or voluntarily not testing for the next few years. The key problem is with the voluntary moratorium. Once we decide to have nuclear bombs then we should keep up the process of testing, we need to make them better, lighter, more lethal, more
Newer news items:
Older news items:
|