First, there is a need to rethink why India needs nuclear weapons. The only reason is to provide insurance against nuclear threat (``blackmail'' or hegemony, as the Chinese describe it) and possible use. We do not need them for power or prestige. India's status in the final analysis will be governed by how successfully we solve our problems. This, no doubt, has beenthe basis of the four-decades-old consensus that we will not commit to being non-nuclear, at least not until the nuclear weapons states give up these horrendous tools of coercion and destruction. This has been the basis of the policy of keeping the nuclear option open while working for disarmament.

It is often forgotten that nuclear disarmament is not only sound in principle and morality, but also serves our national security interests. But the events of recent years tell us that instead of moving toward disarmament the international community, led by the five nuclear weapons states, has shifted the focus instead to ``non-proliferation.'' Measures have been increasingly deployed to tighten the non-proliferation stranglehold, especially around India, symbolised by the Clinton mantra of ``cap, reduce and eliminate.'' And, if no effort were made to break out of the non-proliferation noose, the option would have simply been squeezed to nothingness.

Secondly, do the events of the past six weeks indicate thatwe are now well set on an ``arms race''? The answer is a categorical no. There is no requirement for an arms race. Deterrence is not dependent on matching weapon to weapon, but on the ability to retaliate with a residual capability. The United States was deterred from using nuclear weapons at the time of the Cuban missile crisis because it could not risk a single city, although it could have wiped the Soviet Union off the face of the earth. China has successfully managed to ward off nuclear blackmail for decades with less than 5 per cent of the combined arsenal of the US and the USSR/Russia.

Thirdly, Pakistan's tests do not alter the situation. Pakistan had acquired usable nuclear weapons capability 11 years ago. The US president, by his inability to certify in 1990 that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear device, had confirmed this. People like General Aslam Beg have been saying on record since at least 1993 that Pakistan had acquired deterrence by 1987 and had capped parts of its programme in 1989 withoutjeopardising development. So what is new? Pakistan has tested nuclear weapons, which confirms that their devices will work. But it would have been imprudent, to say the least, for any Indian leave alone the government to assume that Pakistan's bomb, which they have flaunting in our face since 1987, would not have worked just because it was not tested. There was, of course, a risk of miscalculation in the ambiguity that prevailed. And the tests by Pakistan do bring an element of clarity into the situation.

Fourthly, the Pakistanis have been saying for more than two decades that once they have the nuclear umbrella, they can pursue transnational militancy to take Kashmir from India. Many eminent US scholars have also assessed this as the major reason for Pakistan's quest for the bomb. General Aslam Beg had stated in 1989 that past attempts to take Kashmir had failed because of a lack of strategic vision, which he said had now been rectified. Within a few months militancy escalated in Jammu and Kashmir.

Thereality is that we did not carry out `hot pursuit' of militants and terrorists across the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir for ten years, unlike what was done in 1965. The reason for this was not incapacity, but the certainty that it would escalate to a full-fledged war. The issue is not that we would not have won the war militarily, but that the world would have sought an early end to the war. Especially, the US and China would have pressed the UN Security Council to step in. A ceasefire under UN auspices would have brought the Kashmir issue onto the Security Council's agenda, with all the cards stacked against us. This was Aslam Beg's strategic vision and offensive-defence doctrine which would allow a non-conventional offensive with military-cum-nuclear defence. There is of course a risk now not of nuclear war, but of trans-border terrorism and militancy being stepped up by Pakistan. The response to that has to be greater vigilance and security steps within the country, no hot pursuit or punitive actionacross the line of control (although such actions would be fully justified), and firm multilateral and bilateral diplomatic actions to counter transnational terrorism.

But Pakistan should not be allowed to derail our central and long-term agenda: that of pressing for global nuclear disarmament. The shift away from disarmament had brought in an urgency, and we had sought to press for disarmament within a defined time frame. This was claimed as unrealistic by many in the world. India and Pakistan have, in a way, jointly challenged the prevailing non-proliferation order, although for different reasons. There will no doubt be efforts to impose this order through coercive methods, of which the sanctions are the first manifestations. But it is all the more necessary for us to press for global disarmament. Now that we have clearly indicated a shift toward weaponisation, we need not press for time-bound disarmament. Instead we should press for a treaty for global nuclear disarmament to be concluded within a definedperiod. Four of the nuclear weapons states are under substantial pressure from the non-nuclear weapons states and China to move toward elimination of nuclear weapons. India's weight on the side of disarmament would be a major contribution to what in the long term would be our security interest. The government should appoint a special ambassador for disarmament to process various initiatives that should now be high on the agenda to abolish nuclear weapons.

The author is Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses