By Washington’s grace

The condition of the Prime Minister’s knees causes me no concern; it can always be fixed with a spot of NRI surgery. It is the state of the nation’s knees which must give us cause to pause. It is now one thousand days and more since the Vajpayee government made us a Nuclear Weapon Power. But we remain a nuclear power without a nuclear doctrine. The draft doctrine prepared by the National Security Council’s Advisory Board has not even been considered, let alone accepted. Vajpayee’s substitute for a nuclear weapons policy is three little words: ‘credible minimum deterrent’. He is unable to spell this out further because what might credibly be minimally deterrent to the Pakistanis would be no more than a laughable flea-bite for the Chinese; and what could credibly deter the Chinese would so overwhelm the Pakistanis that the sub-continent would find itself trapped on the nuclear escalator quicker than Dr Ranawat could replace a defective knee-cap. Which is why, impaled on the horns of this existential nuclear dilemma, the Vajpayee government has resolved to hand over the nuclear defence of our motherland to someone else’s National Defence Missiles system.

True, as the apologists for our self-contradictory nuclear deterrence doctrine have so defensively insisted, the Vajpayee government has not actually, that is, in so many words, welcomed the American NMD. But have they condemned it? Or expressed any skepticism about it? While even the closest allies of the United States — NATO powers like the United Kingdom and France, for example — have viewed the proposed new nuclear order with a measure of alarm, and Russia has warned that it looks upon this updated version of Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars as a dangerously retrograde move, India, under its weak-kneed Prime Minister, has, it would appear, nothing of substance to say. Not even after the Chinese Foreign Office spokesman has pithily described the US NMD as ‘‘harming others without benefiting itself’’.

Once upon a long time ago, India reacted with courage and conviction to a nuclear defence shield in outer space: ‘‘The ambition of creating impenetrable defences against nuclear weapons has merely escalated the arms race and complicated the processes of disarmament. This has happened in spite of the grave doubts expressed by leading scientists about its very feasibility. Even the attempt to build a partial shield against nuclear missiles increases the risk of nuclear war. History shows that there is no shield that has not been penetrated by a superior weapon, nor any weapon for which a superior shield has not been found. Societies get caught in a multiple helix of escalation in chasing this chimera, expending vast resources for an illusory security while increasing the risk of certain extinction.’’ Rajiv Gandhi at the United Nations, June 9, 2001, presenting his Action Plan for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World Order. Would Atal Bihari Vajpayee have the guts to say as much to George W. Bush? ‘‘Atal to hoon, lekin saath saath Bihari bhi hoon!’’ A.B. Vajpayee in Lok Sabha, December 2000.

Jaswant Singh’s ardent wooing of Strobe Talbott — which like all clandestine love affairs is best conducted under cover of total darkness — has resulted in the removal of most economic and technological sanctions but left untouched the most important political sanction of them all, the one and only UN Security Council resolution since Pakistan went to war with India in 1965 which rakes up Kashmir as an international issue. Our external affairs minister, it seems, has not dared even ask for its revocation.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Advani spouts his nonsense about the Vajpayee government having ‘‘internationalised’’ the issue of cross-border terrorism. This has been on the international agenda for 30 years, ever since the PLO kidnapped eleven Israeli laureates of the Munich Olympic games. Advani has gone on to claim that J&K has been brought back to the bilateral table. The truth is that the post-Pokharan UN Security Council determination remains firmly in place as the whiplash in the hands of the arbiters of the international community to discipline us as and when needed. The bogus bravado and impetuous immaturity of the Vajpayee government has re-internationalised Kashmir, liquidating the diplomatic advantage Indira Gandhi secured for the nation at Shimla. And former President Bill Clinton has confirmed what one had suspected all along — that it was the Americans who stepped in as umpires in the Kargil conflict, significantly on America’s Independence Day not ours, and are now ensconced like Banquo’s ghost at the feast which Vajpayee is bilaterally preparing for that unrepentant cross-border terrorist and architect of Kargil, General Chief Executive Pervez Musharraf. And you still think India’s foreign policy is being crafted in South Block, not Foggy Bottom, Washington DC?

Unable to convert its nuclear weapons into a coherent nuclear doctrine, the Vajpayee government has resigned itself to nuclear impotence. India’s nuclear defences are being placed under an American umbrella. That is why we have acquiesced in the NMD. An American umbrella is for those who accept a Pax Americana, a world order crafted by the Americans to serve American interests and legitimise American predominance. India under Indira entertained contrary ideas about a democratic world order in which the meek also counted. Therefore, Indira Gandhi sought a nuclear umbrella knowing there would be no umbrella. She was merely testing the Americans to show up how empty was their misplaced emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation. India under Vajpayee no longer seeks a place of honour, dignity and equality at the international table. It seeks co-option into someone else’s world order. The NMD is the escape hatch through which Vajpayee gets to retain his nuclear weapons in exchange for surrendering nuclear responsibility to the White House.

We are now enmeshed in an American system of subsidiary alliances where in return for surrendering our sovereignty over defence and foreign policy, the guarantor leaves us unfettered in domestic matters. Lord William Bentinck would have applauded. The instant welcome extended by Jaswant Singh’s minions to the NMD-dominated world order signals the abandonment of the principles on which we based our policies of non-alignment. It is a return to 1857 — the House of Jhansi is dead, the House of Gwalior has triumphed.

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