India, Pakistan and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Abstract

54 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No.4, Summer 2011 India, Pakistan and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty M. Yousuf Saeed* In its Final Document adopted in May 2010, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference urged India and Pakistan to subscribe to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and to put all their nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards “promptly and without conditions.”1 This was not the first time that members of international community asked the two South Asian states to sign the treaty. Similar appeals were made by the U.N. Security Council in 1998 and by the NPT Review Conference in 2000.2 Both countries have remained unresponsive. This article reviews the origin and evolution of India and Pakistan’s attitudes toward the NPT. It discusses the reasons they offer for staying out of the treaty, describes the similarities and differences in their policies and the changes that these policies have undergone over a period of time. It suggests that both countries should be admitted into the treaty as nuclear weapon states (NWS), the status assigned to the first five nuclear powers. India and Pakistan: Initial response The idea of an international non-proliferation treaty, when first mooted in 1961, was supported by both India and Pakistan. The Irish resolution on the “Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons,” to which the legislative origin of the NPT is traced,3 was presented to the U.N. *M. Yousuf Saeed is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Sociology at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of South Carolina. His research interests include international relations of south and southwest Asia, and nuclear proliferation. 1 United Nations, 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, 16. www.un.org. 2 U.N. Security Council resolution 1172, June 6, 1998; 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document, May 24, 2000. 3 Mason Willrich, Non-Proliferation Treaty: Framework for Arms Control (Charlottesville, Virginia: The Michie Company, 1969), 61. 55 General Assembly that year and was favored by the two countries when put to vote on December 4.4 The central paragraph of the resolution, which contained language similar to what was later used in Articles I and II of the NPT,5 asked for the conclusion of an international agreement containing provisions under which the nuclear States would undertake to refrain from relinquishing control of nuclear weapons and from transmitting the information necessary for their manufacture to States not possessing such weapons, and provisions under which States not possessing nuclear weapons would undertake not to manufacture or otherwise acquire control of such weapons....6 In addition, both India and Pakistan supported other resolutions, moved around this time in the U.N. General Assembly that recommended cessation of all nuclear tests.7 India and the NPT Indian policy regarding non-proliferation underwent a change after the Chinese nuclear explosion in October 1964.8 Defending its nuclear detonation, the Chinese government claimed that the 1963 Moscow partial test ban treaty, which prohibited tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, was an attempt “to consolidate the nuclear monopoly held by the three nuclear powers and tie the hands and feet of all peace loving countries.” China, it further stated, supported “the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons” and believed that partial suspension, or complete prohibition, of nuclear testing, or destruction of nuclear weapon delivery vehicles could not be the first step toward complete disarmament. Rather, in Chinese view, an international summit conference had to be convened which “as the first step” should conclude an agreement under which the nuclear-weapon and nuclear-weapon threshold states “undertake not to use nuclear weapons, neither to use them 4 Resolution 1665 (XVI) was unanimously approved. Documents on Disarmament 1961 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1962), 694. 5 Article I of NPT requires NWS not to transfer nuclear weapons...