Critical Mass

Title: Critical Mass – Decoding India’s Nuclear Policy
Author: Rajaraman R
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9789354359934
Pages: 450

When we were in college in the early 1990s, the suspense regarding India’s possession of nuclear weapons was an intriguing topic of debate. We were all unabashedly pro-nuclear: we wanted India to definitely possess nuclear weapons but not to use it till the last resort is exhausted. A nuclear test was conducted in 1974, but its euphoria had long died down. It was known that thanks to A Q Khan’s smuggling of nuclear material, Pakistan also possessed nuclear arms but they had not tested it. It was a nuclear ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ situation in the subcontinent. The uncertainty was dispelled on 11 May 1998 by the Shakti nuclear tests conducted by India at Pokhran and tests two weeks later by Pakistan. Both nations then officially declared to have possession of nuclear weapons. The US was totally taken off-guard by India’s testing and frankly, that was the icing on the cake. We were so overjoyed that for many years hence, ‘shakti’ used to be our computer password with some combination of letters or numerals. It was reported that the US President Bill Clinton came to know about it from TV news. Crippling sanctions on transfer of technology and supply of uranium for reactors were imposed on both nations soon thereafter. Anyway, the 1998 nuclear tests was a game changer. With it, India elbowed its way to the international high table. India’s rapid economic growth in the ensuing years finally convinced the US to allow it a one-time exemption from nuclear sanctions if India separated its civilian and military programs and subjected the civilian program to international surveillance and safeguards. A nuclear treaty was put in place in 2008 after more than three years of hard negotiations amid opposition from even the ruling party in both the countries. India also formulated a nuclear policy at this time which clearly defined its objectives in having nuclear weapons. R. Rajaraman was a renowned theoretical physicist of JNU who changed his theatre of work to nuclear policy issues and arms control after retirement. He has worked in international NGOs like International Panel of Fissile Materials (IPFM) and has attended numerous programs on nuclear issues and disarmament. Even though the author is ideologically positioned against nuclear weapons, he understood the futility of opposing it after 1998 and changed track to analyse the scenario objectively.

Being a physicist himself, Rajaraman clearly lists out the reasons for why India desperately wanted the post-1998 sanctions to end and reach a deal with the US which would automatically prompt other nations to follow suit. By 2020, it was estimated that the burgeoning energy demand of the nation would reach 300,000 MW of electricity. Out of this, 30,000 MW was to come from nuclear energy. However, uranium sources were very poor in India which could not meet the demand. Sanctions had caused the uranium supply to dry up. Another option was to ‘create’ uranium by transmuting thorium metal in a breeder nuclear reactor. But this technology was only in the design stages and tough technical challenges prevented its early maturing. Under the proposed deal, the civil and military programs were to be separated. India wanted to keep its fast breeder system in the military group but the US initially objected to it. Many, including the author, criticized India’s stand as it would torpedo the deal. India remained steadfast and negotiations remained in limbo for some time. Finally, the US blinked and the deal was signed. The author graciously acknowledges that ‘those observers, including myself, who felt that the Indian demand on the breeder was a deal breaker and should be softened in the higher interests of our nuclear energy needs turned out to be wrong’. This was made possible with a great deal of support extended by the then US President George W Bush in yielding to India’s demands. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged him for this, Singh was ridiculed by the Left intelligentsia. Rajaraman then quips that ‘it would only be poetic justice to rename the street in front of the what had been the world’s last leftist bastion – Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi – George W Bush Marg or Avenue’ (p.80). It should be remembered that the author was a teaching faculty at that institution for many decades.

Even though the nuclear deal was made functional at great risk of being aborted anytime in the middle, the author finds that India shot itself in the leg with a strange legislation whose only purpose was to scare away potential reactor suppliers. India passed a Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act in 2010 with stringent rules of compensation by the supplier in case of an accident attributable to negligence on their part. Even before reactors could be purchased and built, an extensive redressal system was put in place. In case of an incident, the reactor operator could sue the supplier if the incident was as a consequence of an act of the supplier which includes supply of equipment or service with patent or latent defects. No other country had stipulated such conditions for reactor purchases. When no supplier from the US, France or Russia was willing to enter into a contract on these terms, the government diluted the provisions. Supplier liability was then limited to the warranty period and capped at a fixed sum of Rs. 1500 crores. The book includes details of reactor negotiations with GE, Westinghouse and Areva. GE backed out due to the liability act while the others were mired in financial difficulties and bankruptcy. With the Fukushima reactor accident in 2011, many countries in the world chose to turn away from nuclear energy.

This book handles the issue of ‘credible minimum deterrent’ (CMD) in some detail which is the basis of India’s nuclear policy. This document states that India won’t use nuclear weapons first. But if it was attacked by nuclear weapons at home or wherever its troops are, it would retaliate with nuclear weapons to inflict an unacceptable damage on the enemy. A nuclear deterrent arsenal is required to convince the enemy of the stupidity of launching a first strike. The extent of the unacceptable damage is estimated and redundancy is added to arrive at the required number of warheads. However, the concept of deterrence necessarily assumes that the other side is rational who values human life. No deterrence is feasible against a suicidal jihadi group should one take over Pakistan as no amount of civilian deaths would deter them. Even Mao Zedong of China – may be only as a rhetoric – once declared that he was willing to sacrifice 300 million Chinese in a nuclear showdown with the US. The author then estimates that only two bombs are required as retaliation for a first strike on the major cities of Pakistan or China which would cause at least half a million deaths that is sufficient ‘unacceptable damage’. Hence he audaciously suggests just two bombs as sufficient CMD. This pittance is against thousands of nuclear warheads in China and hundreds in Pakistan. Why are our intellectuals so adamantly anti-national? The cold war arms race had accumulated around 60,000 warheads by both adversaries. The author suggests a ‘more is not better; less is enough’ principle. However, professionals in India’s nuclear technology front have outright rejected Rajaraman’s insinuations as ‘an amateurish oversimplification by a theoretical physicist unschooled in the complexities of nuclear technology’ (p.201). He then considers the delivery systems and concurs with the general view that the triad of delivery platforms such as land-based missiles (the Agni series), sea-based missiles from nuclear submarines and release from fighter jets. Assuming that many of them might be shot down by missile defence systems, conservative analysts feel that even 100-odd warheads will not be sufficient to arm the triad for ensuring minimum deterrence.

However cleverly one may play brinkmanship, the chance of getting struck by a nuclear bomb in a busy city cannot be entirely ruled out. This can also happen by accident or equipment malfunction even if not by intent. Rajaraman raises awareness of the requirement of a civil nuclear defence and complains that India has still not developed a system. The US had implemented several measures in the 1950s but the American civil defence was not revived once they petered out by the 1960s. Nobody finds it attractive enough to spend a lot of money on something that may never be used. The American public and government lost interest in maintaining such a high level of preparedness for an event that didn’t seem to be happening. Besides this may not even be practical in India because of the incredibly short time of response available to a missile launch from Pakistan. A nuclear device shot against India from the Sargodha air force base in Pakistan would reach Delhi in just six minutes! This book also hints that the Indian government should have conducted a referendum before going nuclear in 1998 because it was an existential issue for the public. Here again, he is demanding something from India which no other country had done before. In fact, this is an existential issue more for the author as his research, seat in international consultative bodies and stature are solely linked to his anti-nuclear stance. However, he is not much concerned about countries other than India possessing nuclear weapons.

An original idea which is fully explained in the book is estimating the casualty figures in case of a nuclear attack on an Indian metropolis. Based on international consensus charts, the author makes ballpark estimates of the number of civilian deaths in the event of a nuclear bomb exploding in various neighbourhoods of Delhi. This makes for sickening reading, but we must accept that it is a risk we have to contend with while living next door to our arch enemy who was willing to eat grass to get nuclear weapons. Rajaraman describes about the numerous international conferences on nuclear issues he had attended around the globe. Some photographs are included which do not go above the level of ‘selfies’. Many of these meetings were pointless exercises of academic-turned activists helping each other to make an item of expense acceptable to an auditor of the grants received by them. Many of them are simple gatherings of self-appointed arms control ‘experts’ running on liberal funding by American NGOs. The author’s criteria for evaluating the ‘success’ of such meetings verge on the comical. His estimate of the utility of such conferences is represented in such remarks as ‘they were attended by unprecedented number of heads of states’, ‘the set of invitees was very inclusive’, ‘the proceedings were very cordial’ etc. He has also shared the response of the official Indian delegation upon meeting him on the sidelines of such global meets. The officials considered him only as a rabble-rouser and won’t even talk to him even if he made an initiative to walk over to their seats to make a self-introduction. Reports of two such incidents are recorded in the book. International NGOs usually rank India very low in their much-trumpeted-yet-totally-worthless global indices. One such scheme is the Nuclear Security Index where India’s position is just two slots from the bottom. Rajaraman admits that this is due to the prejudice of the adjudicating members who are resentful of India not joining the NPT and peeved at its getting away from the consequences of the 1998 tests with a nuclear deal from the US.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Hitler’s Pope

Title: Hitler’s Pope – The Secret History of Pius XII

Author: John Cornwell

Publisher: Penguin, 2008 (First published 1999)

ISBN: 9780143114000

Pages: 426

 

Racial hatred against the Jews was the hallmark of Germany in the Second World War. It disenfranchised, evicted and deported them to concentration camps to finish them off at leisure. After the German homeland, the Nazis continued the practice in those places which they conquered in the first years of the War when the tide was decidedly in their favour. Germany, as we know, is predominantly Christian, but the Protestants enjoyed a majority in numbers with the Catholics constituting a sizeable and powerful minority. This book analyses the relations between Eugenio Pacelli – later Pope Pius XII – with the Nazis before and after he ascended the papal throne. This book argues that Pacelli enabled the Nazi onslaught by his silence and failure to organize efforts to check Hitler so that he is known as Hitler’s Pope. This was neither because he favoured Hitler nor he was anti-Semitic but because he was an ideal church leader for Hitler’s purposes. He openly colluded with the Nazis before the war and this appeasement dignified the Nazi regime in the eyes of the world. John Cornwell is an award-winning journalist and author with a lifelong interest in Catholic and Vatican affairs. He has profiled Pope John Paul II and has written on Catholic issues for many publications.

 

The book opens with the concerted effort of the papacy to become the absolute ruler of Catholicism in the near term, of Christianity in the medium term and of the entire world in the long term. Modern means of communication has facilitated a single man to rule the church in a vastly unequal power relationship. This replaced those old times when Catholic Church’s authority was widely distributed through many councils and local discretion. The Pope was declared infallible in the First Vatican Council of 1869 and the curia prepared a code of law applicable to the church to solidify papal prominence. This Code of Canon Law was enacted in 1917 under the supervision of 2000 scholars and 700 bishops. Eugenio Pacelli, who was a church lawyer, was the main architect. Canon 218 in the document assured supreme authority to the Pope over the church. Till that time he had to consult local European governments in the nomination of bishops. It was Pacelli’s principal task to reach an agreement – a concordat – with those governments in implementing the code. Being the largest and most powerful Catholic population in Europe, Germany proved a formidable obstacle. Compared to this, it was easier to reach a consensus with Mussolini who ruled Italy. In the Lateran Treaty of 1929, he permitted imposition of Canon law over the church in Italy. The Pope was granted sovereignty over the tiny territory of Vatican. In compensation, Vatican paid the equivalent of $85 million. Also, the Catholic Popular Party was disbanded and the Fascists thrived in the political vacuum. Pope Pius XI, Pacelli’s predecessor, spoke of Mussolini as ‘a man sent by Providence’!

 

Pacelli had a special relationship to Germany as he worked there as Papal Nuncio for many years. After his elevation as the Cardinal Secretary of State, he entered into protracted negotiations with short-lived regimes of the Weimar period. These instable administrations were not prepared to concede total control of their churches to the Pope. Germany also had a powerful Catholic presence in internal politics. Bolstered by the strength of the Catholic Centre Party during the post-1919 period, there was an unprecedented growth of German Catholic life and activity. There had been a proliferation of Catholic associations like workers’ unions, religious vocations and public fervor. Hitler took control of a favourable situation in diplomacy. In 1933, Pacelli negotiated with Hitler to form a treaty which authorized the papacy to impose the new church law on German Catholics and granted generous privileges to Catholic schools and clergy. In return, Catholic political and social associations withdrew from activity and gave the Nazis a walkover. Hitler wanted a two-thirds majority for an Enabling Act to bring in dictatorship. The Catholic Centre Party supported his coalition and voted in favour due to Vatican’s pressure. This Act enabled Hitler to pass laws without consulting the Reichstag and to make treaties with foreign governments. When the Concordat was ratified, the church organisations were authorized only to indulge in social and religious activities. The nature of the social work was subject to bureaucratic interpretation and the organisations and their workers were targeted for intimidation and harassment by Nazi workers and Gestapo.

 

Cornwell attempts to find the reason why the church tried appeasing totalitarian ideologues even though what they practiced was diametrically opposite to what the church preached. The church was mortally opposed to atheism and communism which had strong roots and pockets of influence in west European nations. With the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the ingress of communism under various guises were intensely resented and resisted. The church fathers found the Nazis and Fascists as wary of the Communists as they themselves were. This aversion extended to centre-left political parties as well. From the 1870s, Vatican encouraged a distrust of social democracy as a precursor of socialism and thus of communism. Since Nazis had declared open war on socialism and communism alike, they became a natural ally of the ecclesiastical authority.

 

Even with this mitigating factor, the book contains sufficient references to prove the church’s anti-Semitic stand beyond a trace of doubt. Here, the church merely echoed the sentiments of the community at large. Even Pacelli was not above partisan mistrust of the Jews. Speaking at the 1938 Eucharistic Congress in Hungary, Pacelli declared, “As opposed to the foes of Jesus who cried out to his face, ‘crucify him!’, we sing him hymns of our loyalty and love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today” (p.185-6). Taking a cue from their pontiff, thousands of German priests took part in the anti-Semitic attestation process, supplying the Nazi regime with details of blood purity through marriages and baptism registries. The author also presents a racially prejudiced face of Pacelli. After the Second World War ended, when the Allies were about to enter Rome, Pius XII asked the British ambassador that no Allied coloured troops should be among the soldiers garrisoned in Rome.

 

The Catholic Church’s silence on the Nazi war crimes did not end with the Jews, but extended to Orthodox Serbs too. The combined forces of Hitler and Mussolini overran Croatia and they appointed Ante Pavlic as the dictator. Ethnic cleansing and forced conversion of the Orthodox Serbs followed. Pius XII recognised the new state of Croatia without demur. Direct involvement of the clergy in sectarian violence was shocking. Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most (p.254). In Sep 1941 in Germany, Hitler decreed that all Jews must wear the Yellow Star which naturally had a devastating, stigmatizing and demoralizing effect on those forced to wear it. Catholic bishops lodged a complaint against this in which they asked for the stars to be removed, not from all Jews, but only from those Jews who had converted to Christianity!

 

The Second World War got into motion with the German invasion of Poland. Their Soviet allies invaded Eastern Europe. Pius XII failed to denounce the attack. At last, Rome itself fell to the Germans after Mussolini’s ouster by nationalist forces. Nazis rounded up hundreds of Jews from the Roman ghetto, right under the nose of Vatican, but what Pacelli offered was a feeble protest in vague language presented half-heartedly. At the same time, he tried to forestall Allied bombing of Rome to capture the city. The author surmises that apart from the likely loss of his own life, Pacelli was also worried at the probable damage to priceless art stored in the churches and cathedrals of Rome. However, irrespective of the subtle anti-papal stance of the author, it also tells about numerous priests and bishops venturing to help the victims in their personal capacity. Pacelli himself organized an impressive charity work that brought solace to the oppressed Jews.

 

The book presents an absorbing style of diction that is bold, sharp and lucid. What makes it stand out from the rest is its handling of both the dark and bright sides of the protagonist. The first edition of the book was subjected to seething criticism from the faithful as the beatification proceedings of Pius XII were well under way. Cornwell gives fitting replies to many allegations in a special foreword to the second edition. What is also evident unbroken throughout the narrative is the assumption of unchallenged supremacy of the Pope over all spiritual and ecclesiastical matters, starting from Pope Pius IX to John Paul II. The book came out in 1999, so we don’t know how the two recent popes fared on this issue.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

What Really Happened in Wuhan

Title: What Really Happened in Wuhan

Author: Sharri Markson

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9781460761083

Pages: 422

 

The sudden onslaught and quick global spread of the Covid 19 virus undermined the global society’s safety and security in myriad ways. Millions perished, with thousands not getting basic medical care even in first-world countries. Harsh lockdowns crippled the economies of many nations. The spread of the disease was so fast that large chunks of people suddenly fell ill that imposed a heavy cost on businesses. The virus originated in China but that country tried to hide the occurrence of this mysterious disease in its midst. By the time evasion was out of the question, the virus had already spread to other parts of the world. Even then, it was thought to have originated naturally and diffused through a wet seafood market in Wuhan. China was believed to be complicit in suppressing information on the outbreak for obvious reasons. As a few months went by, scientists were alarmed by the rapid proliferation capacity of the virus. This was found to be due to a protein that appeared to be perfectly designed to attack the human respiratory tract. Doubts arose, because the disease originated near the premises of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) which specializes in studying different corona viruses and was known to be involved in increasing the ferocity of pathogens in order to produce effective vaccines. This book addresses the question whether the virus had accidentally leaked out of the lab due to incompetent safety protocols. Sharri Markson is an Australian journalist and talk show host. She has been at the forefront of breaking news regarding the origins of Covid 19 pandemic since early 2020. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

 

It must be accepted that China was literally overwhelmed by the early growth rate of patients. Non-disclosure of the true reason for casualties was enforced on health workers who were demanded not to talk to media or to express their opinion on social media platforms. Automated detection systems wiped objectionable content clean within minutes of their posting. People who steadfastly insisted on bringing out the truth were taken into custody and detained. In the meanwhile, dead bodies were piling up, left to decay for days in hospital corridors because Chinese authorities refused to officially record any deaths. The bodies were nothing more than a logistical problem for them. After the initial onslaught was endured, China denied human-to-human transmission of Covid 19 even though it was known to them for a month.

 

Markson narrates the invidious suppression methods unleashed by the Chinese state to keep the secret under wraps. China shut down domestic travel from Wuhan for medical concerns, but still allowed international flights to leave the city. Neither did it advise foreign governments to be aware of the risk of people returning from Wuhan. News of the virus was first broken by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) only on Dec 30, 2019. This is galling as we now know that the outbreak began a full two months back in October of that year. China had to reluctantly confirm the news and switched on a massive cover up operation. All mentions of terms such as ‘unknown Wuhan pneumonia’ or ‘Wuhan seafood market’ were removed from social media. What made this operation so effective was the readiness with which many western scientists and health professionals endorsed the Chinese stand. Scholars who had professional links to virus research in China did not disclose their conflict of interest and acted like impartial arbiters.

 

The author accuses Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as the institution from which the virus inadvertently escaped. After some tentative suggestions of biological warfare and deliberate release, she finally concedes that the escape was due to some accident. This institute was comparatively new and boasted of Biosafety Level 4 (BSL 4) protocols in place. The institute was set up with French collaboration and technical support. But after the entity began its operation, the French experts were unceremoniously kicked out. For an institute doing research work on corona viruses, it observed substandard and negligent biosafety practices. US scientists also took part in the research for another reason. Obama administration banned gain-of-function research on viruses. This refers to a genetic technique of multiplying a pathogen’s virility many times by tweaking its genome. So they outsourced their research to China and specifically to WIV, where lax standards applied. The author confirms that US public money was funding dangerous projects at WIV which was having no biosafety standards for handling deadly pathogens. This book also alleges that the Covid virus, which is exquisitely matched to humans, might be a product of this collective effort and had been worked on in a lab using humanized mice.

 

Markson makes a seething attack on the World Health Organisation (WHO) whose involvement was lukewarm and partisan to China. It accepted the Chinese arguments without demur even when they flew in the face of common logic. Unnerved by procrastination from China, the US, Australia and New Zealand effected a travel ban on China, but WHO rebuffed them, sanctimoniously advising the nations to take decisions that are ‘evidence-based’ and ‘consistent’. This book is a good effort of journalism, but it does not always follow the time-tested methods in science to ascertain the truth of a proposition. An Australian virus researcher named Petrovsky found a lab origin for the Covid virus. However, his paper did not pass the mandatory peer review process which returned the paper as conspiracy theory. The scientific dictum is that if you can’t convince your peers that your theory is at least plausible, it probably isn’t. However, the scholar and the author accuse the scientific community of cover up. Eventually, he released the paper directly to the general public who are not competent to evaluate the veracity of his claims. The author must understand that this is not valid research.

 

The book is unnecessarily large for the point it wanted to convey. In spite of this big arsenal, the author has not been able to convincingly make out the case for a lab leak and also Chinese military’s involvement in the Wuhan lab for developing deadly biological weapons. The WIV was built, tested and run with input and funding from European and American agencies and it is highly improbable that the institution can do military research without awakening suspicion in them. It may indeed be probable that the virus leaked out of the lab but what Markson offers as evidence in support of the claim is just hyperbole and conjecture. The undue length of the book exhausts the readers, especially because she could have served her purpose with a volume that is half this size.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star

 

The Churchill Complex

Title: The Churchill Complex – The Rise and Fall of the Special Relationship

Author: Ian Buruma

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9781786494658

Pages: 308

 

The relationship between the US and the UK is an interesting and unique one. The US owes the development of its early political systems to Britain, but the two countries soon engaged in a bloody war of independence which the US won. This defeat dimmed British reputation as a world power for some time, but the rise of colonialism and industrial revolution helped it stay at the helm for another century and a half. Eventually, diminishing returns from the colonies and increased competition from widening industry in other nations took their toll on the British Empire. After its pyrrhic victory in the two world wars, the empire was gasping for breath. The colonial system had to be disbanded simply because it had become economically unviable. Britain stared at a future in which it would be relegated to the margins of world history as just another medium-sized western European nation. It managed to avert this fate by hitchhiking on the US’ political strategies to assert their own will in the world. It was Winston Churchill, Britain’s war-time prime minister, who was instrumental in roping in the US as an ally in World War II. Aid flowed freely east across the Atlantic during the war. Most of the time, what the US received in return were grandiose exclamations on the interconnectedness of both the nations’ societies and culture. Churchill coined the term ‘Special Relationship’ to characterize the engagement. The ‘Special Relationship’ waxed and waned to follow events in the late-20^th and early-21^st centuries. This book studies the legacy of Churchill in still maintaining the vitality of the relationship. Ian Buruma is an American political writer with many books to his credit. He was named as one of the 100 top global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2010. He lives in New York and teaches at Bard College.

 

Churchill was a great orator whose rousing speeches contributed a great deal in quickly channeling public opinion to his project of combating the German might. Churchill stood up against Hitler’s intimidating tactics that exposed his predecessor Neville Chamberlain as a gullible fretter. Chamberlain meekly countersigned Hitler’s annexation plan of Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference in 1938. For a long time, the epithet of ‘Munich’ was attributed to any action in which one party readily capitulated to the other. Churchill helped Britain hold her head high and earned immense respect for his country and himself both at home and abroad. In a sense, Churchill was more popular in the US than in Britain. He had an American mother and his sentimental feelings for the native country of his mother, often expressed in flowery speeches across the US caught the public imagination. His frequent references to the ‘English-speaking peoples’ and ‘Anglo-Saxon kith and kin’ appealed to Americans of a certain age and class. Buruma establishes this idea with a witty narrative and good examples. He places Churchill as an ideal which his successors tried to emulate with varying degrees of success.

 

This book portrays the dilemma of the British state by the middle of the twentieth century. Its colonial assets were slipping away and along with it its prestige on the international stage. All crumbling empires reach such a state in the twilight of their careers. By the end of 1940s, the dusk of empire was beginning to fall. The idea that the Commonwealth nations would enable Britain to continue as a great global power was becoming fanciful. Even though not directly related to the US-UK relationship, the author hints at several facts that expose the effectiveness of national struggles for freedom. It answers the question that whether Britain would have granted freedom to her colonies even if they didn’t pursue a struggle for independence. Buruma remarks that Britain was more concerned with how to hand over power without creating chaos. When the old sources of authority breaks down, vicious civil wars will often follow. British PM Harold Macmillan expressed the idea with a remarkable observation that African leaders were not ready for independence in the late 1960s, but power had to be handed over. He was concerned that if colonial rule is prolonged further, the best and most intelligent people would be in jail whereas they have to learn how to run the country.

 

The author analyses the prospects of the Special Relationship after the world war ended in 1945. Britain eagerly sided with the US in the Cold War with Soviet Union that ensued armistice. Much of the effort was to ensure British relevancy in international platforms. Whenever Britain tried to assert its self-interest, the US had no qualms in snubbing its ‘special partner’. When Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company in 1956, this was taken as an affront to European interests as the major shareholders were British and French companies. Britain and France invaded the Canal Zone militarily with the help of Israel. The attack was in spite of dire warnings issued by the US against it. The Pound was under severe pressure at this time and the British had to dig into their gold and dollar reserves to maintain its value. The US suddenly refused to lend money as long as the British continued the war. A loan from the IMF was also blocked. When PM Anthony Eden pleaded with Eisenhower to allow British troops to clear the Canal and remain to keep peace, he got a blunt message in return which threatened that “if you don’t get out of Port Said by tomorrow, I’ll cause a run on the pound and drive it down to zero” (p.77). Chastened by this misfortune, the British never overstepped the line drawn by the US and faithfully followed the instructions that came from Washington. This book provides a survey of all major international events from World War II to the term of Donald Trump and examines how the ‘Special Relationship’ fared in each of them.

 

Buruma exhibits the possession of an excellent sense of humour in the narrative. This helps readers appreciate the argument’s logic and go along the way. The US-UK relationship was often portrayed by critics as of a one-sided, servile nature. Britain is often compared to a door mat or a poodle in the American scheme of things. The British always invoked ties of blood, language, culture and values that bind Britain and America. This book does not predict a bright future for this state of affairs as people with no Anglo-Saxon background assume supreme positions of power in the US such as Barak Obama. The book imparts a nice reading experience to all readers and expects only a marginal familiarity with modern world history in return.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

The Bomb

Title: The Bomb – Presidents, Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War

Author: Fred Kaplan

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9781982107291

Pages: 372

Opening of the nuclear age with the ruthless bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought in a new dimension in warfare. The unacceptable level of devastation in infrastructure and human lives at first presented a scenario to presidents and generals that immensely favoured those who possessed the weapons. However, the nuclear gap between the US and its arch enemy, the Soviet Union, closed in just one decade thanks in most part to espionage by politically motivated scientists and technicians who worked in the American nuclear effort. With Russia acquiring the nuclear capability, stalemate returned in international policy. Both sides tried hard to be one step ahead of their rival by devising grand plans for a nuclear first strike which would cripple the enemy’s atomic stockpile. The other side then matched the challenge by diversifying its weapon launch capacity to land, undersea and air. While all this was going on, the nuclear weapons were multiplying. Any skirmish between the two superpowers or between their proxies quickened the pulse of the world as each side boasted of an arsenal that had the potential to destroy the planet many times over. With the demise of communism and collapse of the Soviet Union, the nuclear standoff cooled considerably and the number of weapons greatly reduced. But with the rise of rogue states like Pakistan and North Korea attaining nuclear capability and a resurgent Russia under Putin, they once again begin to assume greater significance. This book is a snapshot of how American politicians and military men handled them for seven decades after World War II. Fred Kaplan is an American author and journalist who has six books to his credit and handles a weekly column ‘War Stories’ for the ‘Slate’ magazine.

Kaplan presents the calm confidence of the US establishment immediately after the world war when Russia did not possess nuclear weapons. This enabled them to casually examine the stakes if nuclear weapons were launched in response to conventional warfare such as in Korea. But the situation didn't stay stagnant for long. The US resolve was tested when Khrushchev tried to deploy Soviet missiles in Cuba. The US posture was belligerent but Kaplan provides details from classified documents that reveal its climb down. President Kennedy reached a secret deal with his Soviet counterpart to dismantle American missiles deployed in Turkey in response to Soviet withdrawal of its own weapons from Cuba.

The unquestioned premise of Cold War nuclear policy was that deterrence required persuading the Soviets that the American president would use nuclear weapons first, in response to aggression against it or its allies in Europe or elsewhere. The NATO member states basked under the nuclear umbrella unfolded by the US. This was essentially an American guarantee to launch nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe even by conventional means. This made the nuclear weapons the centrepiece of Trans-Atlantic security. But the actual fact was that there was no scenario in which using nuclear weapons would give the US or any country an advantage because of the extreme damage caused by a nuclear strike. However tightly they guarded their skies, it was still possible that many of the enemy’s nuclear warheads would hit the homeland. This was the conclusion that every president of the nuclear age and most high level political officials had reached. Yet those presidents and officials also realised that they had to act as if they would use nuclear weapons or else their threats might not be credible in a crisis. On the one hand they wanted the Soviets to think these things would actually be used to ensure deterrence. On the other, they did not want to make a weapon too easy or tempting to use if war broke out. 

The book also points out efforts to stem the tide of brinkmanship. Way back in 1963 itself, the US, USSR and UK signed a treaty outlawing tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, under the ocean or in outer space. Contrary to the popular image they had cultivated, we see many truculent presidents adopting a very sane outlook on nuclear issues. Reagan entered the White House with an entourage bent not merely on deterring and containing the Soviet Union but on weakening and rolling back its empire. But once he was assured of the earnestness of Gorbachev, he scaled down his plans and offered drastic cuts in the arsenal. The Soviet Empire was in tatters at the time. Gorbachev realised that the Soviet Union was in shambles, its ideology moribund and its economy dysfunctional. Its military budget consumed nearly all of the government’s resources.

People would normally presume that nuclear weapons being highly destructive, its uses and deployment are most meticulously planned. Kaplan provides stunning details of sloppy preparedness. Each arm of the US military such as the Army, Navy and Air Force fixed their targets in isolation and two targets which may physically be very near so as to suffer lethal damage as the result of a nuclear strike on the other, were given no attention to the offensive redundancy. In 1991, a critical review to weed out redundancy and an imaginative selection of targets was undertaken. As a result, the requirement of nuclear weapons came down from 12,000 to 5,888. This reduction stemmed not from an arms control treaty or relaxation of international tensions, but rather from a purely technical, deep dive analysis of how many weapons US policy required. We see that at the height of the nuclear standoff, the city of Moscow was targeted by 689 nuclear weapons, many releasing more than a megaton of explosive power. By comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the power of only fifteen kilotons.

The book is easy to read, but too many acronyms and too many characters from the US bureaucracy prove to be a spoilsport. After a while, readers lose track of who’s who with the long line of secretaries, deputy and deputy assistant secretaries dancing before their eyes in the text. The book presents only the American perspective. It includes many references that express doubt on the sanity of decisions taken by the current President, Donald Trump.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star