The tests by India and Pakistan, however, don't permit the silence to continue. For Britain was an accessory before the fact of them. Their happening engages Britain as a member of the nuclear club, but for a more particular reason too.

The argument India used for its five tests was, essentially, the same Britain has used since she went nuclear 50 years ago. The critical propellant in both cases was the need for status and apparent independence. ``We will not accept an unequal system,'' said the ruling BJP. ``This says we will do what we want to do,'' blurted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Although the China threat came into the attendantdialectic, along with the doomed pre-emptive jump on Pakistan, the dancing in the Delhi streets celebrated national virility, and the illusion that the bomb would make India more secure.

India's gambit carries dangers that are far from unimaginable. It wasn't new technically: we've known for 25 years that India could make a bomb, and so, with China's bootlegged help, could Pakistan. But the shameless testing heightens tension, sets a potent example and breaks a taboo that many other nuclear-capable countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Iran, South Africa -- have preserved. Smashing through the elaborate construct of global treaties, India, followed by Pakistan, justifies itself by reference to the theory and practice of nuclear powerdom. As a small power, Britain, in particular, is the model -- and now, sermonising to the sub-continent, the hypocrite.

To this charge, Britain has some answers, but they are far from perfect. The bomb is the most sacred relic of Britain's past. We got it because we knew how tomake it, and Washington wanted us to have it. We justified it as an addition to Western defence. But in the real world, nobody ever took seriously the pretence that Britain would use it on her own. Its value was as a ticket of entry, in certain arenas, to the top table.

This continues in the New Labour world. A vast theology has grown up around the British bomb, which will not be revised. In defence terms, however, it is fiction parading as unexaminable fact. Status -- the Indian obsession -- is what continues to matter most in Britain. Remaining a player in the Virtual War preserves the anachronism of Britain's seat on the UN Security Council. The bomb is a refuge from the national decline so visible on other fronts.

Its putative abandonment is therefore protected from any pressures for an ethical foreign policy. Could there be anything more ethical than re-configuring defence policy so that Britain forsakes the nuclear option and destroys the illusion that these weapons could ever, in any case, beprudently used?

That dramatic gesture will not be made. On the other hand, nuclear powerdom imposes responsibilities. Here, after all, is a new situation of tinder-box fragility: India and Pakistan are innocents at operating the deterrent doctrine of mutually assured destruction. But since they have failed to show restraint, the nuclear powers must face their own obligations towards disarmament.

The recklessness of India and Pakistan is shocking, and their playing with the poverty of the people a savage disgrace. But it won't be undone. Meanwhile nuclear disarmament has stalled. The enlightened response is no longer to bleat against them but for the nuclear powers to dedicate themselves to a world free of nuclear weapons. Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a 15-year target in 1986. To resuscitate it would be a plausible international commitment, and the only way, as we may now see, to throttle nuclear proliferation.

The pledge would require Washington and Moscow to rise above the sloth of their politicians, andthe demands of their military industries. A strange lack of interest infects the Western attitude to the nuclear subcontinent. This is happening a long way away. In fact, it's the wake-up call which says the status quo is hideously unsustainable.