Nuclear Tests

As we puzzle through the implications of the Indian nuclear tests, we find uncanny similarities between the first test in 1974 and the most recent explosions. The first is the world's surprise. When U.S. spy satellites discovered suspicious activity in the Pokaran testing range in December 1995, the Clinton administration made it clear to India that a nuclear test would be taken very seriously. The Indian government backed down. This reaffirmed the idea that U.S. satellite technology had world nuclear proliferation well in hand.

Amid reports that Pakistan had already decided to test nuclear weapons, White House officials said yesterday that they knew of no "magic solutions" to forestall what they feared could be an escalating arms race. Reporting here on his meeting last week with officials in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said: "They made quite clear that they didn't think there was any magic wand to be waved here, that the international community or the United States could do something that would make the problem that the Indian test has created for them go away.

Still seeking to prevent Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons, the Clinton administration signaled yesterday that taking the "high moral ground" could reap Islamabad significant U.S. military assistance. While the White House has made no firm offers, high-ranking officials said key members of Congress were warming to the notion that a "courageous" decision to refrain from testing would deserve some type of reward. "If we're in a world where Pakistan doesn't test, then a lot of options open up," said national security adviser Samuel R. Berger.

They come off the planes here every day, starry-eyed Westerners, hoping for a glimpse of the exotic East - perhaps a god-man or two who can produce ash out of thin air. From the Beatles' interest in Indian classical music to alternative medicine exponent Deepak Chopra's best-sellers about living in harmony with yourself, India has long played well in the West. But much of the interest in the country has been as cultural curiosity or third world basket case. Indians want to be seen as more.

As they searched for a way to dissuade Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons and setting off an arms race, White House officials acknowledged yesterday that they were working against difficult, perhaps insurmountable, odds. President Clinton said he does not consider Pakistani nuclear tests to be inevitable. But he and his aides said it would be extremely difficult for that nation's leaders to resist domestic pressure to test in the aftermath of five underground explosions set off by neighboring India this week.

Gauzy, cotton shirts, carved elephants and tinkling bangled jewelry from India still stock local store shelves. But increasingly, Indians here and in their home country are doing more than making geegaws. They are becoming a presence in the U.S. computer industry - a small presence but "key players in the software industry," according to one observer. "A lot of Indian engineers are here on an expert visa to help the United States compete with the Europeans," says Narasimha B. Shenoy, president of S&G Electric, a fibreoptics and computer firm in Frazer, Chester County.

It's a sad commentary when a country with the size and ancient civilization of India thinks it must go nuclear to prove it is great. With two rounds of nuclear tests that stunned the world and startled the CIA, India's Hindu nationalist government has heightened tensions in its own neighborhood and broken an informal global moratorium on nuclear testing in effect since 1996 when 149 nations signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. New Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is taking bows at home for giving India a key attribute of a world power.

Professors and students, politicians and business people, Indian Americans who were interviewed yesterday responded to the world's disapproval of India's nuclear tests with a mix of justification, ambivalence, worries for the country they once called home, and disapproval of their own. "I don't see why it should be OK for one country to test with impunity and not another just because one happens to be a Third World country," said Farhat Biviji,...

The Clinton administration punished India yesterday for setting off a series of nuclear explosions this week, but still found itself struggling to contain what Defense Secretary William S. Cohen called a possible "chain reaction" of nuclear tests in Asia. In Potsdam, Germany, for the beginning of a six-day European tour, President Clinton announced a tough package of economic sanctions against India, including cutting off nearly all U.S. aid, ending U.S. bank loans, and pledging to oppose loans from international institutions, all totaling about $21 billion.

Joining a growing chorus of criticism at home and abroad, President Clinton said yesterday that he was deeply disturbed by India's nuclear weapons testing and vowed that he would "fully implement" a law ordering widespread economic sanctions. A day after India took the world by surprise by breaking its 24-year-old moratorium on nuclear testing, the U.S. intelligence community came under criticism for failing to anticipate the underground explosions. And Clinton appealed to Pakistan and China not to conduct their own tests as the White House tried to save a three-year effort to ban nuclear weapons tests worldwide.