Opinion
Should India also Develop
Satellite-killing Capability?
by
Sreeram Chaulia
Former Indian
president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's contention that India has the capability
to intercept objects in space and destroy them within a radius of 200 km
has ignited a strategic dilemma. The issue has gained significance after
the US successfully shot down one of its own collapsing satellites at a
height of 233 km. The fear that India will be left lagging in one more
global arms race and pay a heavy ex-post price looms on the minds of the
country's strategic elites.
Although Washington described its operation Feb 20 as a life-saving
strike to prevent a rogue satellite from crashing on to earth, the
hush-hush manner in which the entire event took place set the cat among
the pigeons. Since the hazards of the malfunctioning satellite's fall
may not have been as catastrophic as portrayed in the media, doubts have
arisen about the official American justification for launching the
satellite-killing missile.
It makes sound diplomatic sense to couch a provocative military action
in humanitarian garb by whipping up public anxiety about a loose cannon
that could randomly take lives. Most analysts believe that the affair
was a barely disguised demonstration of US military preparedness in an
emerging 'new Cold War' with China and Russia.
China's critical reaction to the American "kinetic warhead" smacks of
rank opportunism and holier-than-thou prickliness. After all, it was
Beijing that fired the first salvo in this category of space
weaponization through a direct kinetic hit on one of its satellites in
January 2007 at a height of over 800 km. Washington's show of missile
prowess is a tit-for-tat response to Beijing's much-hailed muscle
flexing as a new great power in space.
Russia's own ability to perform a similar satellite-killing exhibition
is well proven right from the 1970s, thanks to its decades of research
and development in military avionics. Russian President Vladimir Putin's
recent condemnation of the US government for plunging the world into a
new arms race was accompanied by a stern admission that "we are forced
to retaliate, to take corresponding decisions".
One can only expect that Russian scientists will now further sharpen
their own technology to match and outdo the Americans and the Chinese in
this arena. Washington's sharp rejection of a joint Beijing-Moscow
proposal for an international treaty banning weapons in space has left
no doubters in the Kremlin that unilateral arming is necessary in the
absence of international agreement.
Yet, from a reading of history, one cannot be absolutely sure that some
treaty to limit and verify weaponization in space will not eventually be
negotiated. Herein lies India's quandary. New Delhi has bad memories of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which designated all states
possessing nuclear weapons as of 1968 as legitimate holders and
consigned the rest of the world to 'non-nuclear weapon state' status.
Indian diplomats have often rued the lost window of opportunity in the
early 1960s before the NPT came into effect. Had India tested 'Pokhran-I'
before the NPT entered into force, it would have saved itself the
constant opprobrium of being a recalcitrant that deserved to be
sanctioned or barred from the benefits of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
The cul de sac that India has presently gotten into with regard to the
Hyde Act and the civil nuclear deal with the US would be inconceivable
had the governments of Lal Bahadur Shastri or Indira Gandhi tested a
nuclear device before 1968.
The analogy of the NPT is all the more relevant to whether India should
conduct its own satellite-killer test because that treaty came about
after the big players - the US, the Soviet Union and Britain - had
already attained a degree of sophistication in nuclear weapons. France
and China ratified the NPT in 1992 after they too had reached
satisfactory testing levels, and just in time before the treaty became
permanent in 1995. Satellite killers are registering technological
advances in height and accuracy in all major power centers and a day
might come when a treaty will anoint the early movers as 'kinetic weapon
states' and bar latecomers like India to the doghouse of non-weapon
states.
Abdul Kalam's categorical statement that India has the missile know-how
for interception in space was confirmed by V.K. Saraswat, the Chief
Controller of Missiles and Strategic Systems (CC-MSS). He remarked: "It
is just a matter of time before we could place the necessary wherewithal
to meet such requirements." The question is "how much time?" Time is of
essence in a discriminatory world order where there is a distinct
first-entrant advantage.
The guardians of the so-called "international community" have repeatedly
set the precedent of proliferation of deadly arms in every conceivable
sphere of the known world - land, water, air and outer space. Their
special talent lies in developing new ways of threatening rivals and
safeguarding themselves, and then preventing the same technologies from
horizontally spreading through treaties that shut the door. These
treaties become the nucleus of regimes that generate rules sanctioning
violators who dream of reordering world power constellations. The rules
are applicable to all except the rule-makers themselves, who sit pretty
as the judge, jury and executioners.
Does India want to be hauled into the dock of this hypocritical
"international community" again? If the consensus answer is 'no', New
Delhi has no option but to stay abreast in the domain of
satellite-killers. The Damocles sword of time is hanging over its neck.
(Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship in New York. He can be reached at sreeramchaulia@hotmail.com)
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