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 Sunday, May 11, 2008 is the 10th anniversary of Pokharan-II. We could have said, on the eve of this anniversary, how things have changed. Things did change. But India is still back to the nuclear-strategic square one. How India managed to slip back to status quo ante is the story of these 10 years. Let’s begin the story with China.

China’s attitude towards India has always been a good indicator of New Delhi’s global strategic clout. China was contemptuous of India as the latter was preparing for its “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1973. A recently declassified letter (March 2, 1973), from Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon, showcases the utter contempt Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had for the Indian leadership.

Kissinger says, inter alia, “In South Asia, the Chinese believe India remains Moscow’s principal agent; their distrust of New Delhi remains as potent as ever... Chou (Zhou) displayed a particular contempt for the Indians and a personal dislike for Indian leaders. He related several cynical and disdainful anecdotes about Prime Ministers Nehru and Gandhi.... In response, I said that we would go slow in any improvement of relations with New Delhi and would keep the PRC informed.”

Little had changed by the time the Atal Behari Vajpayee government conducted the Shakti series of nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998. The then Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan and the then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright took the lead in drafting Security Council resolution No. 1172. This was aimed at emasculating New Delhi’s nuclear capabilities and, just to make sure the message got through, added the Kashmir issue.

Ten years later, the global calculus has dramatically reversed. Pokharan-II didn’t only result in strategic gains for India but the 2006 Indo-US nuclear deal also offers de facto nuclear weapon status. Washington views New Delhi as a countervailing force to Beijing and discourages any weapon supplies to China. Russia, after the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union, remains a principal hardware supplier to India. But it also sells the same weaponry to China. And it is monitoring negotiations on the Indo-US nuclear deal before resuming nuclear fuel supplies to India. China now accommodates India, after assessing New Delhi’s current relations with Washington.

No one understands the Chinese mindset towards India better than the former defence minister, George Fernandes. Two months after 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld had come to India to meet Fernandes. Rumsfeld had made it clear Washington wanted a long-term strategic relationship with India; with Pakistan, America was only looking at a tactical relationship. A month later, the Chinese envoy to India met and invited “China baiter” Fernandes to Beijing.

Another example: China agreed to sign the political parameters on boundary settlement and acknowledge India’s aspirations for a UN Security Council seat after Condoleezza Rice announced the completion of NSSP in March 2005, setting the stage for the nuclear agreement that was unveiled in July that year. Beijing knew then that the presumption of denial had now become the presumption of approval as far as Washington’s assessment of New Delhi was concerned.

Pokharan II was what in diplomatic parlance is called “changing the facts on ground”. India provided a big bang argument against joining multi-lateral non-proliferation regimes. The credit goes not only to the Vajpayee government but to all previous governments as well. In a Lok Sabha debate on non-proliferation on April 5, 1968, Indira Gandhi had said: “We shall be guided entirely by our self-enlightenment and considerations of national security.” Vajpayee quoted this to the Lok Sabha on May 28, 1998 in his first parliamentary speech after Pokharan-II. And remember that P.V. Narasimha Rao was close to testing a nuclear device in December 1995.

So, on to Manmohan Singh now. At a meeting just a month back, April 8, and hosted by the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute, Indian diplomats were appalled to hear non-proliferation experts, including Robert Einhorn, saying the Indian Left was doing their job for them.

Have Indian politicians understood the significance of this? Pokharan-II boosted and brought together key elements of national security and foreign policy. The full integration of doctrines, armed forces and foreign policy elements is a work-in-progress. But, bluntly put, Dr Singh’s government seems somewhat helpless against forces determined to wreck the process. Politically, the UPA’s retreat on the nuclear deal opened up the space for a free-for-all US bashing. It is no one’s argument that America has to be listened to uncritically. But when Navjot Singh Sidhu feels he has an audience for his thesis on foreign/economic policy and calls George Bush an economic terrorist, you know there’s something seriously wrong in domestic political discourse.

Sidhu’s party, the BJP, is of course doing its own bit. The BJP is tied in knots over the nuclear deal, and the rope is Brajesh Mishra. Mishra, Vajpayee’s key aide in the NDA years, was among the key decision-makers on Pokharan-II and India’s UN envoy during Pokharan I. He was the first major critic of the nuclear deal, arguing it would cap India’s nuclear arsenal. This was echoed by Vajpayee. It became the BJP view. Certainly, the UPA thought so.

It was the same Mishra who, when the NDA was in power, had offered to put some of India’s existing nuclear reactors and all future reactors

under international safeguards. The offer was made to Colin Powell on July 28, 2002, at a meeting in Vajpayee’s PMO. Powell then thought the offer wasn’t good enough.

But the BJP had always outsourced foreign policy to Vajpayee, so his endorsement of Mishra’s stand meant that other leaders kept quiet even though the party’s core constituency is all for the deal. Mishra has now made a 180-degree turn and found out that he, after all, supports the deal. But political parties and nation-states do not have the same luxury as individuals. The NDA’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, tried to get the party out of the corner on the issue but too much criticism of the deal had been officially endorsed by the party by then.