---

Nuclear Disarmament:

It is well known that the conflicting ideology and security based Cold War was the primary cause of the global arms race between the USA and its allies on the one hand the Soviet Union its East European country allies on the other.   Over the period 1950 to 1970 the nuclear arms race led to the building up of huge arsenals of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in the two blocks and their deployment not only in the countries of the two blocks but also in their allies in many other parts of the world.  As of 1986 the US and its allies had 24,400 strategic nuclear weapons which could be put on missiles,  aircraft and submarines to deliver them inter-continently and the USSR and its allies had 45,000.

Around this time the USSR assessed that the twenty years of an intense and highly expensive arms race had placed a huge burden on its economy in terms of resources of all kinds – skilled manpower, R&D and production complexes and material resources and that their economies were showing signs of exhaustion.  The USSR, therefore, initiated a process of détente with the US and the flattening of the build up of its nuclear and conventional arsenals.  As the USA was also feeling a similar pinch though to a lesser extent the two superpowers initiated a series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALTs).  These talks led to three Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements over the decade of the 70’s, early 80’s which led to reductions of strategic arsenals by both sides.  However, the levels of strategic weapons both alliances had even thereafter were still adequate to destroy the planet as a whole many times over.

The coming to power of Ronald Reagan as President of USA in 1980 however, led to a new escalation by the USA in the strategic arms race in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) popularly known as the “Star Wars” programme.  This programme was based on the idea in US military and political circles that it would be possible for the US to build a fool proof ‘defensive shield’ against Soviet strategic missiles using a number of new revolutionary technologies.  The initiation of the SDI programme based on this premise caused extreme concern to peace loving people around the world because of the distinct possibility that it could lead to upsetting the tenuous ‘balance of terror’ or deterrence based on near strategic parity between the two superpowers on which peace had been maintained for almost thirty years.  That such concerns had considerable substance was proven by the fact that a reluctant USSR also launched its own version of SDI for the defense at least of Moscow.  Fortunately SDI in both countries did not make much progress because of technical feasibility, considerations.  Then, in 1991 an Agreement was concluded between Bush Senior and Gorbachev called the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).  This was the last such strategic arms control measure before the collapse of the USSR later in 1991, when the Cold War also came to an end as a consequence of such collapse.  After the   USSR returned to some degree of normalcy, although in a severely weakened state militarily and economically, Bush and Putin concluded a treaty in 2002  whereby both countries agreed that by end December 2012, the aggregate number of strategic nuclear warheads that both would have would not exceed 1700-2200 from the levels of 10000 in the case of USA and 9000 in the case of the Russian Federation which prevailed when the Agreement was signed. However, this was hardly a disarmament measure as the Treaty allowed either country to withdraw from the Treaty on giving three months notice!!  That is where things stand today.  But the US in particular has not given up its policy of nuclear weapons as usable weapons in war.  It also steadfastly holds to its doctrine of first use of such weapons.  What is more, weapons laboratories are continuing to undertake R&D on developing new nuclear weapons such as the so-called “bunker-buster” bombs and improving the existing nuclear arsenals of the USA.  Earlier this year even a second rank nuclear power like to UK undertook a number of tests in the US nuclear testing grounds in Nevada to test the readiness and effectiveness of its small nuclear arsenal.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the USA consequently as the only super power – indeed its has been called by some a ‘hyper-power’ – US global policy in the  nuclear realm shifted almost completely to preventing further “horizontal” spread of nuclear weapons i.e. to focus on so-called nuclear non proliferation.  As a result of its efforts the main instrument for this purpose fashioned by the five nuclear weapon powers viz. the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) originally promulgated in 1970 was at the 1995 Review Conference of the Treaty extended indefinitely.  Soon thereafter the US initiated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) primarily to restrain further development of nuclear weapons by China and to close the nuclear weapon programmes of Israel, India and Pakistan.  However, not only did those three countries not agree to be part of that treaty but China has still not ratified the treaty and so is not bound by its provisions i.e. China could still undertake nuclear weapon tests on an open ended basis.

As far as India was concerned with an overt nuclear weapon power viz. China, to our North and a clandestine weapon power viz. Pakistan to our West, the “all quiet” as regards nuclear weapons development and production at the global level by the US and the USSR and later the Russian Federation provided us with little comfort.  Hence we had no option but to follow our peaceful nuclear explosion experiment of 1974 by the explicit Shakti weapon tests of 1998.  That Pakistan would follow suit was only to be expected.

More recently, there have emerged the nuclear weapon programme of North Korea and the suspected nuclear weapon programme of Iran both of which have involved substantial assistance by both China and Pakistan as China had assisted the Pakistani programme almost right from the programme’s inception in the early 70’s to its first stage completion in the late 80’s.

Thus over the 60 years since the US dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima we have seen both vertical and horizontal proliferation on a substantial scale, despite changes in the world order the most important of which was the collapse of the USSR which Putin has called “the biggest  geopolitical disaster of the 20^th century”.  Nuclear weapons – those terrible weapons – have come to stay and there is no mention at all anywhere in the world about global nuclear disarmament.  The crusade for nuclear disarmament that Nehru so passionately argued and worked for with unprecedented commitment in the fifties and right up to his death sounds like a fairy tale.  Even the peoples movements in the UK and Europe in the 60’s for such disarmament have ceased to exist.  Only an eerie silence prevails.  Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction such as biological and chemical weapons which are also horrible weapons have come to stay; they have become something that appears the world can live with as the people of the globe carry on their daily lives “normally”.

Chinese Nuclear Weapon, Conventional weapon and Ballistic Missle Proliferation to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea.

A major threat to peace in West,  South and North East Asia has been China’s massive and sustained technical and industrial assistance to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea in the areas of nuclear weapons, conventional weapons and ballistic missiles.

The Chinese assistance to the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme started in 1972 can be traced at least to as far back as 1976 when it started by training Pakistani nuclear weapon scientists and engineers.  It then extended to the Chinese providing Pakistan with the technology to produce uranium hexafluoride gas which Pakistan fed into its cascade of centrifuges set up using the technology stolen by A.Q. Khan from Almelo in Holland to produce highly enriched weapon – grade uranium China then provided not only the complete design but also detailed drawings for the production of  nuclear bombs, and also provided the services of Chinese specialists to enable Pakistan to use those drawings to make its first few bombs.  In 1983, Pakistan detonated its first atomic bomb of around 20 kiloton capacity at the Chinese nuclear weapon test site of Lop Nor in Inner Mongolia.  What was more, to mask that test, it was synchronized to be exploded simultaneously with a much larger megaton sized Chinese bomb.  With further Chinese assistance, Pakistan was able to fully weaponise by 1987.  Pakistan for its part provided China with the full design and detailed manufacturing designs and technical assistance for the setting up of China’s first uranium enrichment plant for producing weapons grade uranium using Pakistan’s stolen uranium centrifuge technology.  Subsequently, China set up a second plant using the same technology on its own.  Furthermore, Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme continues, covering improvements in the yield-to-weight ratios of its weapons and their miniaturization to make Pakistan’s bomb capable of being carried on missiles as their warheads etc.  China also provided Pakistan with the technology to set up a nuclear reactor to produce weapon grade plutonium at a site in Pakistan called Kushab, to make plutonium based atomic bombs and to again test and prove them in China.  China also provided the heavy water for the Kushab reactor.  In parallel, China set up an allegedly civilian power reactor of 300 MW capacity at Chashma in Pakistan.  Although the Chashma reactor is supposed to be under international safeguards, it is widely believed that China has assisted Pakistan in transferring some of the Chashma technology and spares to Kushab, thereby violating its safeguards agreement with the IAEA.  As a result of furious production of both enriched uranium and plutonium and converting them into operationally usable weapons, Pakistan is estimated to now have a weapon stockpile of around 50 bombs and a capacity to produce 3 bombs a year.  It has also used that inventory to arm a number of its missile and its F-16 fighter bombers supplied by the USA with deliverable nuclear weapons. 

To come now to the ballistic missile programme of Pakistan. Here the Chinese supply –cum  technology transfer – cum setting up of missile manufacturing plants in Pakistan has been near total, with the rest being similarly done by North Korea to whom China “introduced” Pakistan.  The direct Chinese assistance has taken two forms.  One, the supply of 84 nos. of  M-11 missiles of 300 km range (which the Pakistan call the “Shaheen or HATF-3), about the same number of M-9 missiles of 800 km range (which the Pakistanis call the Shaheen-1) and an undisclosed number of 2000 km range M-18 missiles (which the Pakistanis call the Shaheen-2).  All these missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads which China has assisted Pakistan to make.  The missiles are now operational with the Pakistani military.  As if this was not enough, China has set up on a turnkey basis a complete plant in Pakistan for the manufacture of the M-11 and M-9 missiles.

But that is not all.  Coming under increased heat from the US and the international community to stop its missile proliferation to Pakistan, and to try and correct its global image as the world’s greatest nuclear and missile proliferator, China “introduced” Pakistan to North Korea several years ago.  Those two countries have, over the last almost one decade, collaborated massively in the areas of both nuclear weapon and missile technologies.  The ‘deal’ was that Pakistan would supply its nuclear weapon technology to the North Koreans and the latter would in return do likewise in regard to ballistic missiles, most of which were however directly of Chinese origin.  Thus North Korea has transferred complete Nowdong medium range missiles to Pakistan and also kits of parts of those missiles and trained Pakistan to assemble and test them.  The Chinese then came in and taught the Pakistanis how to design, develop, produce and fit appropriate nuclear warheads on the Nowdong.  Full information on all this is in the public domain.  However, on one occasion in 1998, an allegedly civilian commercial cargo vessel of North Korea, which had entered Indian Territorial Waters, was captured by the Indian Coast Guard near Mumbai. When towed ashore and “emptied out” by India Customs Authorities, it  revealed a large number of kits of parts and almost half a ton of technical documentation on how to convert those kits into complete Nowdong missiles. The Nowdong is an old Chinese Surface-to-Surface (CSS-2) missile transferred to North Korea in 1992 and re-transferred to Pakistan in 1998.  Pakistan now calls the Nowdong Gauri or HATF-5.  It is known to have a range of 1350 – 1500 kms.  Where was the North Korean cargo vessel taking the above documentation and kits of parts – 50 % to Karachi and the remainder to Tripoli!!

Then there is the assistance to the Pakistan Air Force.  This has taken  the form not only of supplying almost 400 Chinese F-7 fighter bombers - which are improved versions of Russian Mig-21s – but also the setting up by the Chinese in Pakistan of   total overhaul facilities for these aircraft.  The most recent supply of brand new F-7 aircraft was three squadrons (around 45-50 aircrafts) about the time of the outbreak of the  war against India launched by Pakistan in 1999 in Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir.  (It may be added here that during that war a number of Chinese military specialists were also in Pakistan providing military assistance and even being involved in providing back stopping support to the conduct of the war by the Pakistani side).  Supplies of the standard F-7 apart, for over five years now the two countries have been jointly undertaking the design and development of a vastly improved version of the F-7 called the “Super Seven” at Chengdu in Szechuan province in Western China.  The new plane’s first prototype undertook its first flight trials earlier this year.  The Super Seven is supposed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons over a 3000 kms range.

To come to the Navy, China has supplied several frigates and even one or two destroyers to Pakistan.  More seriously, a joint team has been building a huge naval base in Gwadar on the coast of Pakistan not far from the Iranian border.  Provision has been specifically made in the design and facility provisions of the base to enable Chinese navel surface vessels and submarines to be based and even to be repaired there.  This gives China superb access to the whole of the Arabian Sea and even to come to the aid of Pakistan in any naval war with India.

But China’s actions inimical to India are not confined to its total collaboration with and assistance to Pakistan’s military machine.  Nor has it been active only in relation to the Arabian Sea.  It has also entered into broad based military cooperation with Myanmar (Burma) to India’s east.  Not only have large supplies of a whole range of conventional weapons been made to the Myanmar military, but a string of naval bases on the Myanmari coast at least one of which can berth Chinese nuclear submarines, have been set up.  China has also obtained a long term lease from the Myanmar Government to use Cocos island an island barely 100 km from the northern tip of the Andaman Islands - and converted it not only into an electronic eavesdropping and intelligence gathering post but has built a missile tracking radar station on the island directed solely at India.  From Cocos, China collects invaluable data on all Indian missile tests from the Interim Test Range of the Defense R&D Organization at Chandipur on the Orissa coast and of the launches of the satellite launch vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organization from the large launch station on Sriharikota island off the Andhra coast. 

But the coup de gras perhaps is that there are nearly 200 Chinese medium range and intermediate range missiles and several hundred military aircraft located in a string of bases in Tibet targeted at Indian cities and military installations and formations.

When the Government of India confronts the Chinese with all this information, the Chinese Government blandly denies them!  They even deny the high resolution pictures taken by Indian reconnaissance satellites of all these installations in Tibet,  Cocos and Myanmar when these pictures are shown to them. 

---

*Former Special Assistant for S&T to late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Secretary in many Scientific Departments of the Government of India and Professor, Cetre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

Appendix (38.9 KB pdf)