This programme also comes at a time when President Putin, in his speech at the Security Policy Seminar in Munich, has voiced Russian concerns about the unilateralism of the US and NATO. This is also the time when China has hiked its defence budget by 17.6 per cent and has tried to imitate the examples of US and Russia in shooting down a satellite in orbit. Those countries could as well argue that their warheads too are of sixties and seventies vintage and therefore would need to be refurbished to increase their reliability.

Some observers suspect that the nuclear establishments are behind this move. Without this programme, there is a danger of some thousands losing their jobs in the three national laboratories in the US. The leaderships of those laboratories were successful in persuading the US Senate to reject in 1998 the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty sponsored by the US Administration itself.

If anything, these developments highlight the need for India to integrate itself with the international technology regime to improve and strengthen its own capabilities. They also teach us that in the international system there are no irrevocable pledges and strong nations can act on the basis of their national interests irrespective of commitments they make. India will not be able to exploit the situation arising out of US unilateralism unless it frees itself from international technology apartheid.

In 1998, in the US the nuclear establishment won a victory over the diplomatic one in the rejection of CTBT. Once again the US political and diplomatic establishments face a challenge from the nuclear establishment with the presentation of the reliability replacement warhead programme. Nine years later, after terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq, one wonders whether the US political and diplomatic wisdom will prevail over the one-point agenda of the US nuclear establishment or succumb to its pressure and isolate itself because of its technological arrogance.

... contd.