CTBT - A Psychological Profile

Editorial Columnist Dr SM RAHMAN looks at CTBT

from a different angle and comes to some very

human conclusions

sub-critical tests which would be far too many, have been tacitly accepted as great marvels of scientific sport, which only Anglo-Saxon nations play - China being the only exception which proves the rule. Its acceptance in the nuclear club is not out of magnanimity or gracious adherence to the rules of the game, but one of those spill-over-effects, from tight control, that restricts movements of nations to higher pedestal of power - where `angles’ dread to tread.

China is the first Asiatic nation to break the nuclear monopoly of the West. It had to be accepted in the nuclear club, but not without serious `bruises’ to the combined western ego. After USA had exploded the nuclear bombs in 1945 upon the Japanese communities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to establish its nuclear might, it had hoped to be the sole custodian of the weapon. It aspired to rule the world in a typical Caesar’s style - I came, I saw and I conquered! But providence abhors such absolutist power in the hands of one single nation. The four European countries including Russia-even though an ideological outcast but in prejudice blood often takes precedence over ideology - soon followed suit to earn their pound-of-nuclear-flesh. The gang of four nuclear powers would have been quite content if no other nation had intruded: China’s entry made the difference. Measures of control through Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Partial Nuclear Treaty (PNT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) notwithstanding sanctions are essentially manifestations of that fear that nuclear weapons on no account should go out of the domain of the five. Had China been of the same white racial stock, one wonders if the hullabaloo on CTBT or NPT would have been of the same magnitude as one finds it in the contemporary scenario. India’s nuclear adventure and Pakistan’s well meditated response have further exacerbated the fear beyond proportions. The prospect of rogue states, becoming nuclear is the strategic nightmare for USA and its allies.

There is something racial about nuclear weapon is borne by history. The very choice of the Japanese people to serve as guinea-pigs, for massive human-killing-experiment at Hiroshima and Nagasaki goes to testify that Asiatic breed of humanity is not viewed at par with the white superior race. No part of Europe would have been subjected to such macabre tragedy. It is ironical that the bomb which exploded at Nagasaki, its main victim was the Christian community. The prejudice of racial inequality is endemic in the American society and the dilemma still persists. To Abraham Lincoln, slavery is an unmitigated evil, says Alonzo Myers: By the same instinct that makes the ant’s fight fiercely to defend the crumb, it has dragged to its nest, the slave knows he is wronged in being deprived of the fruit of his labour. 2 Lincoln - he says, posed a question: If we start making exceptions to the Declaration of Independence where will these exceptions stop. If its principles are applied only to the Protestant British gentlemen of revolutionary America and to their descendants, what can the Fourth of July mean to the thousands of new immigrants...3 Lincoln thus feared, when the Know-Nothings get control he wrote to Joshua Speed, the Declaration will read all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics. 4 CTBT/NPT reflects no different mindset. It has the same discriminatory underpinning, which makes it more a power ploy than a prescription to free the world of the nuclear menace.

For a psychological appraisal of the non-proliferation dynamics one has to discern, how the post Hiroshima - Nagasaki psychic fall-out gripped the American mind and what unconscious defence - mechanisms were used to cope up with the weapon of such a colossal killing power and off-load the guilt which was not too easy to bear. The jubilation and joy seemed to express only the upper crest of emotions. On the fateful day of August 6, 1945 - when bomb was dropped on Hiroshima NBC Radio commentator Kalternborn declared: For all we know we have created a Frankenstein, we must assume that with the passage of only a little time all improved form of the nuclear weapon we use today can be turned against us.5 This reminds one the story of a person who while fighting a feud with his opponent had overpowered him and sitting right over his chest was beating him but at the same time could not help weeping also. In reply to the query as to why he was crying, he said; this man below will sooner or later rise up and give me a good thrashing. It is that dread which makes me weep. USA’s reaction was of a similar nature. Edward Murrow of CBS Radio reiterated the same anxiety on August 12, when Japan surrendered; Seldom if ever has war ended to leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty with fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.6

A psychologist - Robber Clifton wrote a book Hiroshima - 50 years of Denial, in which he says: People go through every day life, working, marrying, having children, planning for the future. But at the same time, they have a second image - a double life of fear, even expectation that all this will get wiped-out in a single second. To some degree this combination has existed inside everybody since Hiroshima.7 W.H. Auden called this age an Age of Anxiety. Two paradoxical response modalities emerged to face the anxiety. The initial one was of brooding over the horrible consequences and then erecting a psychic barrier against the brooding, by forgetting about it-what Clifton calls a mechanism of denial. The bomb after all was not that bad. Dr. Strangelove wrote a book, How I learned to stop worrying and Love the Bomb.8 Herman Kahn, a physicist along with numerous scholars at the RAND Foundation, worked out the strategies of fighting nuclear war and projecting a very comforting idea that Only two million would die.9 The irony is implicit in the word Only, which reflects the dehumanized sensibility, which the US strategists seem to possess.

To assume that the ardent proponents of CTBT and NPT have suddenly metamorphosed into nuclear moralists, would only be an utopian proposition. The reality is different. In the third phase when the shock effect had withered there was an attempt to structure a stratified nuclear world. The pressures on non nuclear nations to sign the CTBT to freeze, cap and ultimately roll back the nuclear progammes, were part of a well deliberated nuclear realpolitik - to freeze the status quo. Vijal Niar rightly comments The track record indicates that the NPT is essentially an accord at disarming the unarmed rather than eliminating the menace of nuclear weapons from global polemics.10 According to Harold Wilson: We know that there are two forms of proliferations - vertical as well as horizontal,- the countries which do not possess nuclear weapons and which are now undertaking an obligation never to possess them have the right to expect that the nuclear weapon states will fulfil their part of the bargain.11 That expectation is not at all being fulfilled and there are no perceptible symptoms that vertical proliferation would ever come to an end. Nuclear weapons are symbols of power and who would part with power, when being powerful provides a sense of infallibility? As an illustration it may be cited that when the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, USA wanted to exhibit the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with the actual plan-the Enola Gay, that dropped the bomb, the US Congress took serious exception to this and forced its cancellation. As Edward Said, describing the Arrogance in US Foreign Policy, said: The exhibit was characterised as nothing less then an attack on America - our country right or wrong runs the slogan, which means nothing less than America is always right.12 Commenting on the egregious US habit of laying on sanctions on states, it does not approve of or those it has designated terrorist, or rogue or pariah countries, he says: the list grows longer everyday, many of these states (Sudan, Syria, Iran and Iraq) are Muslim states.13

The way the people of Iraq are being murdered in the name of sanctions, makes mockery of human justice. Iraq is no threat to its neighbours and yet the hell is let loose over it, just because it provides some sadistic pleasure to USA. Edward Said also points to the fact that the repressive government of Algeria which is killing its people just to perpetuate its power and hold over the country, but USA is least concerned. As Algeria has oil it is important for the US corporations and that is what matters Algeria is not pariah state. 14 Cuba has endured sanctions for about forty years - a tiny economically depressed island which is hardly a match for the US colossus.15 Israel is absolved of all crimes, terrorism, and human right violations and open defiance of UN resolutions. In other words, USA practises its own brand of justice, which serves its own interests. Morality is a redundant concept in the scheme of things, and this is what makes NPT or CTBT mere exercises in futility.

India’s stand, no doubt, was principled as these treaties were not based on equity and justice and were out-rightly discriminatory in nature. But the moral argument does not necessarily imply that it is backed by a sincere commitment to adhere to it as well. The moment India carried out Pokran explosions, there was a talk that it would now sign the CTBT. It was a ruse to dilute the impact of negative reactions from USA and other donor countries who were likely to impose sanctions. But soon after the situation stabilised and India’s nuclear status was accepted as a fait-accompli situation, there was a shift in its stand and it now insisted that it would sign only when some conditions are fulfilled. In other words a bargaining strategy was contrived. If India was promised a seat in the Security Council and that it was accorded the same status as the other five nuclear states enjoyed it would sign the Treaty. This way India would retain the option of carrying out sub critical nuclear tests as other nuclear powers enjoy this privilege.

Killing many birds with one stone is the distinguishing feature of India’s Kautalian style diplomacy. Hypothetically speaking, if India succeeds in getting these conditions accepted, it will then enunciate its moral reservations and not hesitate even for a moment in signing this discriminatory Treaty. It is this duplicity, which is really abhorring. How would the nature of the Treaty change if there is one more signatory to it? If there is a moral flaw it would continue to persist until steps are taken to rectify it.

India’s game in detonating nuclear weapons was to attain for itself the prestigious status of a nuclear power through a swift and surprised action. It was calculated that Pakistan under international pressures would ultimately yield and not explode its weapons, if at all it had them in its arsenal. India in the meantime, with some bargaining would sign the CTBT and Pakistan thus would be left high and dry and with no choice but to sign them. In other words, Pakistan’s position would be qualitatively different from that of India and at best it would only remain a threshold nuclear state. India’s nuclear ascendancy would be ensured and provide all the leverage to nuclear blackmail Pakistan on Kashmir. There was an element of chicanery and deceit but Pakistan’s counter blasts nullified the calculations. Ironically, it was India’s BJP Government with its Hindu fundamentalist stance that a Muslim country earned the distinction of being a nuclear power. Pakistan otherwise nourished no such ambition. The pressure is now mounting on Pakistan to sign the CTBT. The Foreign office issued a very apt statement that Pakistan did not pursue any rigid position: We have no inflexibility or fixations - we don’t have a rigid attitude in any sense - we don’t have the linkages of the rigid kind, and further added India had taken step which was a status driven, our concerns were security-driven and these security-driven concerns are genuine concerns. Everything is linked with the peace and security of the region.16

Pakistan, in other words, come what may, will not let the nuclear balance tilt in favour of India. It should take a judicious decision based on the new imperatives of nuclear South Asia. Linking it with India is no longer our strategic option. While we may sign the Treaty without making explicit conditions on the resolution of Kashmir imbroglio, we must continue stressing on those who are seriously concerned to bring nuclear sobriety in South Asia, the urgency to provide the Kashmiris their inalienable right of self determination and honour the sacrosanct commitment made by the United Nations. There is no other option. Any predilection to short - circuit it, may end in colossal catastrophe - CTBT or no CTBT. No First use Nuclear Weapons proposal by India cannot be acceptable unless the prospects of war are reduced. Nuclear deterrence for Pakistan is its life blood, in the face of enormous disparity that exist in conventional weapons as compared to India.

Bertrand Russell - indeed a very perceptive mind - made three propositions:17 A large scale nuclear war would be utter disaster not only to the belligerents, but to mankind and would achieve no result that any sane mind could desire. When a small war occurs there is a considerable risk that it may turn into a great war; and in the course of many small wars, the risk could ultimately become almost a certainty. If all existing nuclear weapons had been destroyed and there were an agreement that no new one should be manufactured, any serious war would nevertheless become a nuclear war as soon as the belligerents had time to manufacture the forbidden weapons.

From the above, the great philosopher deduced the logical conclusion: If we are to escape unimaginable catastrophes we must find a way of avoiding all wars whether great or small and whether intentionally nuclear or not.18

For avoiding wars a new attitudinal commitment has to be fostered in which scholars and intellectuals are dissuaded to propagate the themes of civilizational conflicts, the way, the Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington has assiduously been pursuing. In his recent visit to India to lend support to new Hindu Self assertion, he said: You certainly have a Hindu revival going on in a verity of ways, culturally and politically certainly a part of the process what I call indeginization.19 Who knows, this goading and pampering may have induced the present Hindu leadership to embark upon the Pokran II adventure. Huntington also pleaded for an alliance between Christian America, Hindu India and Jewish Israel against Islamic Iraq. He also said: China will present a civilizational challenge to the west if its economic development

continues and if it reasserts its hegemony in East Asia.20 Praful Bidwai therefore observes: Huntington’s social science is not an enterprise to eliminate reality or understand it so as to change it, but to perpetuate its most brutal unjust dark aspects.21

There is a method in madness implicit in the civilizational conflict paradigm. Without conflicts, prospects of war would be reduced and consequently the sale of conventional weapon and light weapons would be grossly affected. The Arms lobby, therefore, needs sale promoters. Who could be a more credible communicator than a scholar like Huntington?

Behind the facade of nuclear non proliferation, lurks the latent interest of arms producing countries whose affluence depends on the sale of weapons to the third world countries. Nuclear weapons serve as damper on the demand for the state-of-art weapons, which fetch exorbitant price. A letter which the President Clinton, wrote to US arms share holders and employees is an illustration: The end of the Cold War has caused a drop in both domestic and global arms demand; US arms has responded by spending shareholder money to develop export markets in Asia and the Middle East. As a result, our share of Global Conventional Arms agreements rose from 17 percent in 1988 to 70 percent in 1993. And, thanks to the efforts of our marketing team, the majority of our 1993 sales were to a promising new market - the developing world. In order to ensure stability, un-elected governments and developing countries feel the need to acquire more arms; we are reaching out of them vigorously. Where we once catered to Cold War political allegiances, we now aggressively respond to supply and demand. With Russia, our major competitor, still severely crippled, we can look forward to several years of spectacular growth.22

Ronald Brown, secretary of Commerce US Arms, and Vice President of Marketing ,on the assumption that USA, the sole remaining Super Power, in the post cold war world has a moral responsibility to restrict the sales of arms, replies: We believe that view is unrealistic and is disrespectful of country’s sovereign right. Frankly we do not live in a moral world, and if US arms did not fill the global arms demand others would.... The critics talk about moral imperatives. US arms believe our only moral imperative is to protect the jobs and security of the American people and to sustain the industrial base that has made us the most powerful nation in the world.23

No one would contest America being the most powerful nation but in moral terms it is rather dwarfish. It is this basic deficiency which renders CTBT a mere gobbledygook. Moral impoverishment breeds a sensibility which is callous and indifferent to human agony and sufferings. Bronowski, in his very profound book Science and Human Values recalls his experience when he visited Nagasaki in November, 1945: I saw the warm night and the meaningless shape; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship, it was a dance tune, which had been popular in 1945 and it was called Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby?24 He then states: We are not here fumbling with a new dilemma, our subjects and our fears are as old as the tool making civilizations. Men have been killed with weapons before now: what happened at Nagasaki was only more massive (for 40,000 were killed there by a flash which lasted seconds) ..... Nothing happened in 1945 except that we changed the scale of our indifference to man..... The implications are both the industrial slump which Nagasaki was before it was bombed and the ashy dissolution which the bomb made of the slump. And civilization asks of both ruins Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t Ma Baby.25