India's draft resolution on `reducing nuclear danger' introduced in the General Assembly of the United Nations this week deserves a close study at home and abroad. It calls for the de-alerting of all nuclear weapons backed by the adoption of no-first-use doctrines.These proposals are worthy of serious consideration. That is why the self-congratulatory tone of official briefings on them is quite out of place.Certainly, the resolution carries the campaign for nuclear restraint into the P-5 camp but to imply that it is one in the eye for critics of Pokharan-II is damaging to the case India is trying to make. Standing down nuclear weapons by taking them off a hair-trigger alert is, in the view of arms control experts who have been urging this over the years, an essential insurance against the ever-present danger of unintentional use of nuclear weapons. Such a step will reduce tensions and is a move towards disarmament.India has regularly advocated a global disarmament regime. The Rajiv Gandhi Declarationset out a phased programme of disarmament over ten years. But the P-5 dismissed it all as impractical rhetoric. What the latest piece of nuclear diplomacy does is demand a specific, incremental measure from all weapons states which is achievable in a short time and would make the world a little safer. It does not require weapons states to abandon right away their nuclear deterrence theories; it asks them to keep their bombs far away from itchy fingers.The draft resolution is significant for other reasons as well. First, it confirms that India accepts a pragmatic step by step approach to isarmament. India is saying global arms control agreements, even if limited in scope, are desirable because they create a climate which is conducive to arms reductions and eventual elimination.This is a positive development. Second, the global measures India advocates have relevance at the regional level. As the draft notes, nuclear weapons are the most serious threat to mankind and the survival of civilization.Something must be done to guard against the catastrophic consequences of the accidental use of the bomb. India's representative at the UN cited an example of a near nuclear disaster during the Cold War. Mishaps can occur.Even technically sophisticated command-control communications and intelligence systems are fallible. It is therefore essential, as India argues, to lengthen the time between a decision and the actual launch of nuclear-armed missiles.In practical terms, the means of overcoming the danger posed by weapons on hair-trigger alert is the separation of existing warheads from guidance systems and from delivery vehicles and no new deployment of weapons on a short fuse.All nuclear powers must take these precautions. The India-Pakistan dialogue should take up as a matter of urgency the military doctrines that underwrite hair-trigger nuclear postures. Evidently, policy makers have thought long and hard about the horror of nuclear weapons and have decided to show the way to nuclear restraint.
