By Prem Shankar Jha

As the moment draws near when India will have to decide whether or not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a large section of the Indian intelligentsia has begun to suffer from a crisis of nerves. The treaty and the allied assurances the U.S. is seeking, represent some large although indefinable loss. India will be giving away some of its rights, foreclosing some of its options - in short surrendering some part of its sovereignty - if it accedes to the U.S.' wishes. But it is difficult to see what India will get in return. This is why, as the date for the U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton's visit draws near, the air is thick with insinuations that the Vajpayee Government is about to sell India out by conceding some of Washington's demands. This is quite the opposite of the truth. Far from sealing India's subordination, signing the CTBT and giving the U.S. (and the rest of the world community) some of the reassurances on our nuclear weapons programme will put the seal of international acceptance on India's emergence as a mature and stable nation-state, destined for a place in the first tier of nations. It will thus crown India's search for equality, the quest begun by Pandit Nehru 53 years ago when he hosted the first Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi.

Paradoxically, the yardstick of success is not the absence of international commitments which limit India's sovereignty, but the very demand that it make these commitments. As scholars belonging to all schools of international relations ceaselessly point out, absolute sovereignty is a myth. No state exists in limbo. All are part of a ``state system'' in which the sovereignty of each nation-state is constrained by the sovereignty of others. Wars break out only when accommodation breaks down, and this is an exception rather than the rule. India is being asked for these commitments precisely in order to fit it as a mature player into the ``state system'' of the post-Cold War world.

India and, for that matter, most other countries were shielded from the constant international jostling and strength testing needed to establish the ``state system'', and the consequent need to enter into binding international commitments that limited their sovereignty, by the Cold War. This was because the Cold War created, in effect, a ``state system'' which consisted of only two ``state blocs''. For 50 years, all the strength testing and accommodation took place between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Other countries lived under the umbrella of one or the other hegemon or fell into the cracks in between. They, therefore, enjoyed a degree of freedom from constraint which in fact no state had ever enjoyed before. That was as true of Germany and Japan, which could live next to the two nuclear powers, Russia and China, without arming themselves with nuclear weapons, as of North Korea or Libya, which could thumb their noses at the West without fear of retaliation.

This was a highly artificial condition which could not last. It in fact ended with the Cold War. The next decade was spent, spelling out the terms of association of the newly-reconstituted ``state system''. The new system which was first placed on offer centred round the NPT. Five countries were, largely for historical reasons, accepted as legitimate possessors of nuclear weapons. The rest of the world was offered, in essence, the same levels of freedom enjoyed under the U.S. and Soviet umbrellas during the Cold War if it agreed to remain part of the subordinate group. Thus the number of countries whose sovereignty would be constrained in the old way by the sovereignty of others was proposed to be expanded from two to five. The key institution for overseeing this new ``system'' was the U.N. Security Council. It was not accidental that the five permanent veto-holding members are the very same five nuclear powers. Although none of the P-5 was prepared to say so, even at the NPT conference in New york in 1995, implicit in this bargain was the promise of protection against nuclear blackmail to the signatory states. This was, of course, explicit in the case of the NATO and only slightly less so for Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. But one has only to imagine the reaction of the P-5 to a threat by China that it would use nuclear weapons to settle the Spratlys dispute in its favour, to see how nearly-impossible the NPT has made it for a nuclear state to blackmail a non-nuclear one.

A total of 174 non-nuclear countries accepted this state system in 1995 and signed the NPT. Only Israel, Pakistan and India held out. All the three did so because they had ongoing territorial and existential disputes with nuclear, near-nuclear or trying-to- be nuclear states. But of these India was the only country for which the proposed new ``state system'' simply had no place.

For while Israel and Pakistan had disputes with militarily weak, `second tier' countries which could easily be coerced into giving up their nuclear threats or plans, India's dispute was with China - a member of the P-5 and therefore of the first-tier governing countries. That is why, although the actual threat of nuclear blackmail by Beijing is remote, it is China and not Pakistan to which Indian negotiators have continually referred, justifying their decision to go nuclear.

It was, therefore, inevitable that India would demand a renegotiation of the state system one day to find a secure place for itself within it. It did so by exploding nuclear weapons at Pokhran in May 1998. The Strobe Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks were the direct outcome. The speed with which they were initiated and the purposefulness with which they have been pursued are a tribute to both Governments and underline India's good fortune in having had in the White House a President who was a committed democrat and who felt a genuine admiration for the way India had used democracy to resolve the problems of nation-building.

These negotiations are in their final stage. India ideally wanted the P-5 expanded to become P-6, but has accepted that this cannot happen without destroying the entire ``state system'' now built around the NPT. China still wants India relegated all the way back to the status of a second-tier non-nuclear nation. But this too has been rejected not only by India but tacitly by the U.S. and Europe. The broad outline of the emerging bargain is that India will be accepted as a de facto nuclear state but it should in exchange accept some voluntary constraints on its weapons programme. These relate to the scope of its deterrent and its willingness to join the nonproliferation regime as a nuclear weapons power., i.e. to sign the CTBT and accept the fissile materials cap.

Given the quality of India's negotiators, it would be both unnecessary and presumptuous to suggest what constraints India should or should not accept. What the Indian intelligentsia and politicians need to accept is that the next round of negotiations in London this month will be the last. If an agreement is not reached, India will have to start all over again with a new and almost certainly less sympathetic administration in Washington.

This would be an immense pity because India has already succeeded in getting the substance of its demands. The commitments it is being asked to make will open the way for it to consolidate its position eventually as a member of the first tier of nation- states. In specific terms, it will greatly enhance cooperation on issues such as international terrorism, increase India's access to sensitive technology and open the way for its eventual permanent membership of the Security Council.