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#17, 1 October 1997
 
India's Nuclear Option
Ramesh Thakur
 Head of the Peace Research Centre, Australian National University
 

India can break out of the straight jacket of being relegated to the minor leagues with Pakistan either by open testing and weaponization - joining the club of nuclear powers - or by renouncing the nuclear option and forcing Pakistan to do the same. Pro-bomb advocates argue that the costs of merely maintaining the nuclear option are so high that India might as well exercise the option to derive the substantial security benefits of nuclear deterrence at the minimal marginal costs of weaponization.

 

 

The equation should be reversed. The additional political, economic and technological costs of weaponization would be very high and the net security gains illusory and questionable. India is better off renouncing the nuclear option and travelling down Japan ’s and Germany ’s path to international influence through economic prowess and market power. The examples of North and South Korea are very instructive. Nuclear brinkmanship earns North Korea neither prestige, power nor friends; non-nuclear South Korea does better on all three. So let it be with India .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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