Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia

Strobe Talbott

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 1999

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Summary:  India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests last May were a double setback: for security on the subcontinent and worldwide nonproliferation efforts. U.S. attempts to forge warmer relations with both countries were also casualties of the blasts. The tests could spark a chain of withdrawals from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, undermining the international consensus against the spread of nuclear arms. Cold War brinkmanship is no model for diplomacy. For their sake as well as the world's, India and Pakistan need to stabilize their nuclear rivalry at the lowest possible level, ban further tests, and embrace frequent, high-level bilateral talks to ease tensions.

Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State, is President Clinton's envoy in talks with India and Pakistan on nonproliferation and security issues.

INDIA'S AND PAKISTAN'S DANGEROUS BLASTS

Last May Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee authorized a series of nuclear tests beneath the desert sands of Rajasthan. While the aftershocks were still registering on seismographs around the world, he proclaimed India a nuclear-weapons state. Fifteen days later, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, claiming he had no choice but to match an adversarial neighbor, ordered Pakistan's own series of tests in the Chagai Hills of Baluchistan and declared that his country, too, had nuclear arms.

The tests spurred immediate global condemnation. In all, 152 nations -- large and small, developed and developing -- voiced their opposition. So did numerous international organizations, including the g-8 major industrialized democracies, the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of American States, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. They all saw the tests as a double setback: for peace in South Asia and for international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and control dangerous technology.

The consequences for American policy toward South Asia were also severe. The explosions derailed an initiative by the United States to put its relations with both India and Pakistan on sounder footing. The relationship between the United States and India had been in a rut throughout much of the Cold War, when the United States was the leader of the West and India a leader of the nonaligned movement, which it helped found in 1955. With those divisive categories now largely in the past, President Clinton saw India and the United States -- fellow democracies with highly developed entrepreneurial economies -- as natural partners.

With Pakistan, too, the Clinton administration had sought a fresh start. For decades, Pakistan had been a U.S. ally on the frontline of the struggle against the Soviet Union. That preoccupation had inhibited the United States and Pakistan from making common cause in other areas, especially fostering moderation and democracy in the Islamic world. The more complex and subtle geopolitics that came with the end of the Cold War provided a more variegated basis for bilateral relations.

With these opportunities and the approach of the 50th anniversary of Indian and Pakistani independence in mind, President Clinton instructed the State Department in 1997 to explore ways to broaden and deepen ties with both countries. The president has remained committed to that goal. But in the wake of the tests last May, the United States has had to concentrate its diplomacy on preserving the viability of the global nonproliferation regime. Since last June, Washington has conducted separate but parallel discussions with New Delhi and Islamabad aimed at heading off an escalation of nuclear and missile competition in the region.

HOLDING THE LINE

The tests last May brought to a head an old and persistent source of tension between the United States and both India and Pakistan. The dispute over nuclear weaponry has been part of the subtext of U.S.-Indian relations from the earliest days of India's independence ...

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