India Plays With Nuclear Fire

India’s new government took power two months ago with a hard foreign policy line, including the appalling threat to develop nuclear weapons. Even more shocking was Monday’s announcement that three underground nuclear devices had been detonated in a state bordering archenemy Pakistan.

Because the coalition government is dominated by the Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Muslims inside and outside India have looked with alarm at the new regime. Pakistan, overwhelmingly Muslim, has fought three wars with India since 1947; in April it announced the successful test-firing of a new missile that could reach deeper into India. That no doubt prompted India’s hawks to brandish the nuclear sword.

Monday’s explosions, the first since China and France conducted nuclear tests in 1996, raise the stakes again in South Asia, a restive region long considered vulnerable to nuclear war. Pakistan, predictably, pledged to take “all appropriate measures for its security.” Nuclear experts believe that the Islamabad regime is capable of assembling a nuclear weapon on short notice. China, which fought a war with India in 1962, obviously must be concerned by Monday’s news.

Previous Indian governments, most of them led by the Congress (I) Party, insisted that New Delhi’s only previous nuclear test, in 1974, was a “peaceful” experiment. The new government, in contrast, boasted that Monday’s tests demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability, a message that rang loudly in Pakistan. Although China denies it, intelligence sources contend that Beijing has helped Pakistan’s nuclear program, also tabbed the “Islamic bomb” due to funding from some Arab nations.

The United States was quick to condemn Monday’s tests and clearly will have to rethink President Clinton’s planned trip to India and Pakistan later this year. Washington and its allies should make clear to the two Asian nations that weapons tests and hostile rhetoric inflame an already dangerous situation.