Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
United States at the time of India's nuclear tests—a matter we will return to
below.) Chinese policy evinced no comparable concern about threats from India.
The reasons for India's nuclearization were laid out in the now-famous 11
May letter by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to US President William
Clinton and other world leaders. Vajpayee's letter explained India's
nuclearization in terms of a deteriorating security environment due largely to
activities by China and Pakistan. Neither of those countries was explicitly named,
but the allusions were clear enough. China was the chief threat outlined in
Vajpayee's letter; 68 words explicated the Chinese threat to India, while 48
words dealt with the Pakistani threat.
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'We have an overt nuclear weapon state
on our borders, a state that committed armed aggression against India in 1962',
Vajpayee's letter said. Although Sino-Indian relations had improved, 'An
atmosphere of distrust persists mainly due to the unresolved border problem'. In
addition, 'that country has materially helped another neighbor of ours to become
a covert nuclear weapons state'.
There was a tendency in the United States at the time of Vajpayee's letter to
dismiss it as not genuinely reflective of real Indian apprehensions, but as a
disingenuous Indian move calculated to appeal to presumed US fears of China. It
is important to note, however, that the threats from China outlined in Vajpayee's
letter correspond to the analyses presented in the Ministry of Defense annual
reports described earlier. They also correspond to the arguments made by Jaswant
Singh to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in their talks during late
1998. A public exposition of Singh's position appeared in
Foreign Affairs
.
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Singh's article focused on Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear and missile
programs. China's 'proliferation' to Pakistan posed 'a threat to India's security',
Singh argued. 'The nuclear era entered India's neighbourhood when China
became a nuclear power in October 1964'. Over the following decades, 'Neither
the world nor the nuclear powers succeeded in halting the transfer of nuclear
weapons technology from declared nuclear powers to their preferred clients. The
NPT (Non-proliferation Treaty) notwithstanding, proliferation in India's
backyard spread'. During the 1990s, 'India's plight worsened as the decade wore
on'. 'The rise of China and continued strains with Pakistan made the 1980s and
1990s a greatly troubling period for India'.
Beijing refused to accept New Delhi's public airing of its concerns about
China. Beijing reacted strongly and negatively to New Delhi's 'China threat'
justification of the nuclear tests. In the eighteen months after the letter Beijing
unfolded a campaign designed to pressure New Delhi to retract its talk about
China constituting a threat to India. That effort to influence Indian policy is
beyond the purview of this article, but it should be noted that this effort was
premised on a fundamental divergence of perspectives on the India-China
relation; Beijing's objective was to compel New Delhi to formally, publicly
accept China's view that the two countries did not constitute a threat to one
another.
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