: India was quick in its condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday. It was on the target when pointing to the Pakistan link in the North Korean proliferation. Yet, there is nothing to suggest India has either learnt much from the nuclear nexus between Islamabad and Pyongyang, or that it is prepared to address the longer term consequences that flow out of the nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
India is certainly right in underlining its own impressive record on nuclear non-proliferation. Unlike either China or Pakistan, it has not assisted the nuclear weapon programmes of other countries. As a rising power in the international system it must, however, be a little better than simply being good. Great powers by definition take responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
What, then, is holding India back from undertaking a more assertive nuclear policy? That it took so long to declare itself a nuclear weapon state, precisely 34 years after China exploded its first device in 1964, was part of the problem. Having proclaimed itself a nuclear weapon power in 1998, and gained acknowledgement from the US in 2005 that it is a responsible nuclear weapon state, India should be shedding its past inhibitions about taking leadership on the non-proliferation front. Despite voting twice in the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iranian proliferation during 2005-06 and proclaiming that it is opposed to the further spread of weapons of mass destruction, India’s nuclear diplomacy finds it hard to break out of self-generated delusions.
Consider the following. Thanks to the long-range missiles transferred to Pakistan by North Korea, all major Indian cities today are within the reach of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal. India was aware since the early 1990s that the dangerous nuclear liaison between North Korea and Pakistan fundamentally threatened Indian security. Yet, India has never been willing to publicly criticise North Korea. Was it because of the presumed principle that India should not criticise fellow ‘third world’ countries? Or was it because objecting to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) was a lot easier than criticising those who cheat on it?
C. Raja Mohan
