Abstract
In 1967, Michael Edwardes drew a parallel between the Indian attitude regarding nuclear weapons and that of the British and French, asking ‘Why should India be any more rational than Britain or France?’ He therefore predicted a similar decision in favour of nuclear weapons by India.1 Such a prediction owed much to the general assumption that any country capable of acquiring nuclear weapons would be unable to resist the temptation to do so. This assumption was further inspired by the fact that India, in its NPT diplomacy, had established the political and diplomatic right to acquire nuclear weapons.
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Notes
The Sino-Soviet nuclear co-operation in the 1950s had become one of the causes of the Sino-Soviet disagreement in the 1950s. See C. C. Hu, Arms Control Policy of the PRC 1949–1978, chaps 2 and 3 (Oxford University, D.Phil. thesis, 1985).
See for example K. O. Kapur, ‘Soviet nuclear policies in the Third World’, India Quarterly, vol. XXXIX, no. 2 (April–June 1983), pp. 183–92.
For further discussion see R. H. Donaldson, ‘The USSR, the subcontinent, and the Indian Ocean: Naval power and political influence’, in L. Ziring (ed.), The Subcontinent in World Politics: India, its Neighbours and the Great Powers (New York: Praeger, 1978). And see
R. Cassen (ed.), Soviet Interests in the Third World (London: The Royal Institute of International Relations, 1985);
E. Kolodziej and R. E. Kanet (ed.), The Limits of Soviet Power in the Developing World (London: Macmillan Press, 1989).
W. J. Barnds, ‘Comments’, in J. W. Mellor (ed.), India a Rising Middle Power (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), p. 182. For example, the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan accords provides Sri Lanka’s foreign and defence strategy to be governed by the requirements of India’s security.
B. Sen Gupta, Soviet Asian Relations in the 1970s and Beyond (New York: Praeger, 1976), p. 154.
S. Mansingh, India’s Search for Power: Indira Gandhi’s Foreign Policy 1966–1982 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1984), p. 32
See D. Braun, ‘Changes in South Asian inter-regional and external relationship’, The World Today, vol. 34, no. 10 (October 1978), pp. 390–400,
S. Hoffmann, ‘Nuclear proliferation and world politics’, in A. Buchan (ed.), A World of Nuclear Powers? (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1966) p. 94.
For some earlier estimates see L. Beaton and J. Maddox, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962); K. Krishna, ‘India and the bomb’, India Quarterly (April–June 1965); ‘A study for India for a credible posture against a nuclear adversary’ (New Delhi: Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1968), p. 6.
‘India capable of making IRMBs now’, The Hindu (Madras), 18 April 1983, cited in J. F. Elkin and B. Fredericks, ‘India’s space program: accomplishments, goals, politico-military implications’, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Spring 1984), vol. VII, no. 3, p. 53.
See for example D. Sharma, India’s Nuclear Estate (New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNUJ, Lancers Publishers, 1983), pp. 3–13, 121–2.
The DAE is sometimes referred to as ‘Department of Added Estimates’, Sharma, India’s Nuclear State, p. 3. Also see K. V. Subrahmayan, ‘Nuclear energy: a dismal record’, Business India, May–June 1982; ‘Nuclear setback’, Chandigrah Tribune, 22 September 1982; and R. P. Cronin, ‘Prospects for nuclear proliferation in South Asia’, The Middle East Journal, vol. 37, no. 4 (Autumn 1983), p. 598.
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© 1991 Ziba Moshaver
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Moshaver, Z. (1991). India’s Choice: Nuclear Option vs. Nuclear Weapons. In: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the Indian Subcontinent. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11471-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11471-9_8
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