Opportunity for India in US shift in nuclear policy

President Trump's decision to end Washington's moratorium on nuclear testing offers a window for New Delhi to reassess its nuclear arsenal

- Manoj Joshi

US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that the US will resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. Just what kind of tests Trump envisages is not known, but his message was delivered hours ahead of his meeting with President Xi Jinping. A breakout of the informal global moratorium on nuclear testing would not be too far out for a President of the US (POTUS) who has trashed many other international norms, and plans to gut more.

A resumption of nuclear tests could be a huge opportunity for India, if it can seize the moment. It is not a great secret that the Indian nuclear arsenal, which rests on its nuclear doctrine, has a deep flaw. This is its claim to possess a weapon that failed its only test. The thermonuclear weapon whose test took place on May 11, 1998, was, to quote K Santhanam, the man in charge of the Pokhran II tests, "a fizzle". But Santhanam only made the revelation in 2009, long after he had retired from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as well as the directorship of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) that he held till 2004.

On May 11, 1998, India tested a 45 kiloton (kT) thermonuclear device, a 15 kT nuclear bomb as well as a 0.2 kT sub-kiloton device. On May 13, two more sub-kiloton tests were conducted.

There had been questions about the thermonuclear tests in the wake of Pokhran II. For one thing, photographs of the test site showed a large crater at the site of the nuclear bomb test, but virtually none at the site of the allegedly more powerful thermonuclear one.