Explaining India’s Nuclearization: Engaging Realism and Social Constructivism

Abstract

This article presents an analytical hybrid of realism and critical social constructivism as its theoretical framework, and representations of (in)securities as an interpretation of politics, to explain India's nuclearization policies. Arguing that a linkage of political leaders' ideologies, articulation of statist identities, and (in)securities defines a state's security practices, I compare how the ideological perceptions of the post-colonial Indian state's leaders have articulated divergent notions of nationalisms, nationalist identities, and (in)securities and corresponding nuclear-policy choices. In charting this comparison, I explore how the political, economic, and developmental insecurities perceived by the Indian state under the Congress Party have become communal/cultural under the Bharatiya Janata Party, thereby facilitating the BJP's justification of India's nuclear-weapon tests. The article thus hopes to add to our understanding about the security problematiques of states and communities. Key words: India, East Asian security, weapons Introduction Weaknesses of Realist Explanations On May 11, 1998 the Indian state under its recent Hindu Right Government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)1 exploded three devices, followed by two more explosions a couple of days later. Shortly afterwards, on May 28 and 30, the Pakistani government responded by exploding six weapons. These two events marked the emergence of India and Pakistan as declared nuclear-weapon states from their earlier, more ambivalent, positions as nuclear-capable states. What explains India's detonations? Among the contending arguments, the predominant one is based on realism-the assumption that in an anarchical world, recourse to self-help to protect national security is the most pragmatic strategy for a state to follow.2 From this realist perspective, the regional milieu surrounding the Indian subcontinent-in particular, the animosity of India's neighbors, Pakistan and China-makes India's tests understandable. Yet, I consider this explanation limited because realism, guided by a utilitarian [objective] calculus, conceptualizes security largely within the parameters of an objective and empirical discourse, where insecurity is a given. Thus, realism has paid scant attention to the subjective ways in which insecurity may be constructed in international relations and how policy makers' ideologies may define states' identities, (in)securities, and security policies. The Indian government has also made use of a nuclearapartheid argument to justify India's detonation. Although relatively less recognized than the realist explanation, this argument points to the inequalities in the distribution of global resources that were institutionalized and legitimized through international arms control treaties such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)-treaties that created an elite club of nuclear-haves with exclusive rights to maintain arsenals that were denied to the vast majority of the nuclear havenots. 3 The nuclear-apartheid argument overcomes the objective biases of the realists and provides more normative explanations of India's nuclearization. Yet, this line of analysis ignores how nationalist identities and insecurities may also explain India's policies. Recently scholars have also highlighted an identity-logic constitutive of India's identity as a post-colonial state in explaining India's 1998 detonation. This specific analysis needs to be taken at two levels: first, by paying attention to India's identity as a modern post-colonial state; and second, by explaining how the relation between modernity and nation-state evidenced through India's monumental state-building project has resulted in the fetishization of science by the country's policy makers.4 The identity-logic argument has acquired considerable currency in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 tests, with the claim that the tests were emblematic of the jingoistic BJP's quest for a more virile and muscular Indian state. …