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April 27th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
India Flexes Its Nuclear Muscles – While We Fixate on North Korea
and Iran
Recently
by Eric Margolis: ‘Unwelcome
Home, Musharraf!’
While the
United States beats the war drums over North Korea and Iran’s long-ranged
nuclear armed missiles –which they don’t even possess – Washington
remains curiously silent about the arrival of the world’s newest
member of the big nuke club – India.
In January,
Delhi revealed a new, 800km-ranged submarine launched missile (SLBM)
designated K-15. Twelve of these strategic, nuclear-armed missiles
will be carried by India’s first of a class of domestically built
nuclear-powered submarine, “Arihant.” India is also working
on another SLBM, K-5, with a range of some 2,800km.
These new nuclear
subs and their SLBM’s will give India the capability to strike many
high-value targets around the globe. Equally important, they complete
India’s nuclear triad of nuclear weapons delivered by aircraft,
missiles, and now sea that will be invulnerable to a decapitating
first strike from either Pakistan or China.
Last February,
it was revealed that India is fast developing a new, long-ranged,
three-stage ballistic missile, Agni-VI. This powerful missile is
said to be able to carry up to ten independently targetable nuclear
warheads, known as MIRV’s.
Agni-VI’s range
is believed to be at least 10,000km, putting
all of China, Japan, Australia, and Russia in its range. A new 15,000km
missile capable of hitting North America is also in the works under
cover of India’s civilian space program. India is also developing
accurate cruise missiles and miniaturized nuclear warheads to fit
into their small diameter.
These important
strategic developments will put India ahead of other nuclear powers
France, Britain, North Korea, and Pakistan, about equal in striking
power to Israel and China, and not too far behind the United States
and Russia.
Delhi says
it needs a nuclear triad because of the growing threat of China,
whose conventional and nuclear forces are being rapidly modernized.
This writer
has been reporting on the nuclear arms race between India and China
since the late 1990’s. China has replaced Pakistan as India’s primary
nuclear threat. Even so, Indian and Pakistani nuclear forces remain
on a frightening hair-trigger alert within only a 3-5 minute warning
time of enemy attack, making the Kashmir cease-fire line (or Line
of Control) the world’s most dangerous border.
The Bush administration
began quietly aiding India’s nuclear program with nuclear fuel when
India had a shortage of fissile material. Some advanced technology
from the US and India’s second largest arms supplier, Israel, has
also aided Delhi’s nuclear and missile delivery programs.
India, as I
wrote years ago after one of its big nuclear tests, is feeling its
“nuclear Viagra.” Most Indians take great pride in their
strategic nuclear programs as their way into the great power’s exclusive
nuclear club.
But not all
Indians are so delighted, particularly those on the left who ask
how their nation, with one third of all the world’s poorest people,
can afford to spend tens of billions on advanced weapons, including
nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and ICBM’s.
According to
the World Bank, 32.7% of Indians subsist below the international
poverty level of $1.25 daily, and 68.7% on less than $2 daily. Aid
agencies say 33% of Indian children are malnourished.
Delhi is making
steady progress in reducing poverty and disease, and in trying to
break down the pernicious caste system that dooms a quarter of Indians
to lives of misery.
This, critics
claim, is no time to be posturing as a world power when Mother India
still has feet of clay.
The Bush administration
was totally unaware that India’s advent as a major nuclear power
whose weapons might one day challenge the United States. Bush &
Co. wanted India to bulk up as a competitor to China, a permanent
enemy of the Republican hard right. Today’s Republicans think similarly.
India
is a great democracy where politicians, not generals, make policy.
She is a staunch friend of the United States, where over one million
Indians now live. True enough, but we have seen there are no permanent
friends in world politics, only permanent interests.
One day mighty
India may vie for influence with the US for Mideast and Central
Asian oil, and control of the Indian Ocean’s vital sea lanes. But
not today, as all eyes are on pipsqueak North Korea and dilapidated
Iran.
April
27, 2013
Eric
Margolis [send
him mail] is the author of War
at the Top of the World and the new book, American
Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the
West and the Muslim World. See his
website.
Copyright
© 2013 Eric Margolis
Source Article from http://lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis338.html
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