Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012. x, 218 pp. US$19.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-87003-269-1.
This impressive small book brings a recipe of 80 percent strategic thought and 20 percent “civil nuclear” thought together to address the large and uncertain China and India relationship now looming on the horizon. Given the importance of the strategic issues, it is understandable (but unfortunate) that the nuclear power and energy issues are subordinated, in part because these two capabilities ride together in both countries. While allowing full scope for expert expression of doubts about the other (these states continue to disagree about the border between them) and skepticism about their own mutual assurances like “no first strike,” a clearer picture emerges that their strategic and energy uses of nuclear power have a number of important similarities, and that these constitute a realistic basis for cooperation and conflict management.
This is a diplomatic and publishing phenomenon, connecting doctoral candidates with serving and retired senior military officers and academic experts during five dialogues in June 2011 in Beijing, all around classic nuclear issues facing these two states. The mix alone is impressive, and includes some very senior people like V.S. Arunachalam who was from the 1970s India’s scientific advisor to the defence minister and secretary of the Defence Research and Development Organization; also Pan Zhenqiang and Yang Yi, very senior retired officers and both former directors of the Institute of Strategic Studies of the National Defense University. Many of the authors are extrapolating from their recent experience.
Under the guidance of George Perkovich, who wrote a classic study of India’s nuclear history, and with the insight of Lora Saalman, this “global think tank” is backed by the Carnegie Endowment, with cooperating nodes in Beirut, Brussels, Beijing, Moscow and Washington. The Carnegie effort is intended to help these key people and their supporters find common platforms (such as relations between scientists in the two countries, or improving joint-maritime studies) on which more dialogues can be staged in an ongoing, “built-in” way. The heightened tension in April 2013 around North Korea’s missile test and nuclear weapons proves the importance of such dialogue in the immediate neighbourhood.
This is a carefully edited book that achieves a balance of detail and tone among many contributors, using admirably plain and clear writing in English. It is a comprehensive introduction to all the issues, but also has enough detail to satisfy experts. There is no attempt to suffocate interesting disagreements among the voices. But is there something particular that readers of this journal, Pacific Affairs, could draw from this book about Asia? Is there something distinct here which is not a repeat of the discourse and negotiations found among two “peripheral” nuclear states in the 1980s, like France and the United Kingdom, which also both tested weapons? Certainly the strategic language is very familiar to those who study (or studied) those earlier “crossroads” relationships in Europe, terms like mating and non-mating of missiles with warheads, or the “survivability” of a first nuclear attack. How much nuanced understanding does one need about these countries to read the list of possible cooperation-points intelligently? Would this book satisfy researchers of and in Asia, and not just nuclear specialists?
To satisfy such people, one could start by reading the recent study by Andrew Bingham Kennedy comparing China’s and India’s earlier leaders and their nuclear potential, The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: national efficacy beliefs and the making of foreign policy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012). Perhaps to address the delicacy of the 2012 leadership change in China, the Saalman-Carnegie book does not refer to specific living leaders. To deepen this comparison we would need works like Karthika Sasikumar’s “The Role of Culture in Understanding Nuclear Organizations,” in a special issue on “Organizational Cultures and the Management of Nuclear Technology” (Political and Military Sociology: an annual review, vol. 39: 27–42). Such people also need something comparable about China, a study for which we have long been waiting; however, unlike Sasikumar, people with a grasp of organizational culture often have not mastered the jargon of nuclear doctrine, which is evident yet carefully managed in these Beijing dialogues.
In a masterful concluding summary Lora Saalman focuses on points of common interest between the two countries and advises that they could and should work up their bilateral relations, sometimes at least beyond the sight of media; she also concludes that “third party issues must not be allowed to hijack the conversation,” (185) by which is meant the China-Pakistan relationship, or the US-China relationship. The Carnegie Endowment has long been a protagonist for multilateral approaches (and one plan is indeed to have China-India dialogues about the India-Pakistan and China-US relationships), and there is mention of the useful role of the IAEA in Vienna. But I do agree that quality time involving these two states alone would be very well spent. Drawn from participants’ statements, the list of common interests includes specialized subjects like civil nuclear energy programs, anti-satellite programs, ballistic missile modernization, and the vast (and often amorphous) subjects of strategic stability, deterrence and disarmament.
One quote from Saalman explains perfectly why these dialogues and this book are so necessary; she says that China’s “dogged preoccupation with the United States” and India’s “fixation” on China “create a nuclear chain in which any shock radiates through the links.” This shock would occur, she says, because India “finds everything China does to contain a signal while the other actor, China, misses all the signals” (185). This book does much to loosen that chain and reduce that shock.
Robert S. Anderson
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
pp. 120-122