To save a few hundred crores of rupees on developing a strategic arsenal in the 1960s, Jawaharlal Nehru set India on a course that has thus far bled the country of thousands of crores as well as lives. Its "soft" image has encouraged not merely China and Pakistan but even Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Nepal to connive at groups that commit terrorist acts in India.

Such disregard of India's security concerns is a consequence of the policies followed by successive governments, including those of non-Congress parties such as the ones led by Morarji Desai and V P Singh. Apart from the 1977-79 Janata government (that saw Pakistan gain entry into the Nonaligned group and re-entry into the Commonwealth on India's backing), it was the Narasimha Rao government that during 1991-93 made the greatest compromises on national security in the post-Nehru family age. For example, border forces were thinned on sensitive sectors of the India-Pakistan border as a confidence building measure. While New Delhi implemented such understandings, Islamabad reneged after a short while, using the lower Indian deployment to push in more terrorists.

It took the 1995 Hank Brown amendment -which rewarded Pakistan for drug-running, terrorism and promotion of religious extremism by gifting it a billion dollars worth of India-specific weaponry-that woke Narasimha Rao to the danger of relying on Robin Raphel for India's security doctrine. Post-Brown, critical programmes were once again unfrozen, though they were speeded up only after the combative H D Deve Gowda became Prime Minister in 1996. To his credit, Inder Kumar Gujral too followed the dictum of soft talk with hard action, refusing to heed the finance ministry's plea that India should heed Washington's orders to cap and then roll back its missile and bomb programme. News reports on the activities of the James Riadys and the John Huangs indicate one reason why Washington was trying so hard to make Asia safe for Chinese hegemony.

The other western power that consistently took an anti-India position was the United Kingdom. As the creator of Pakistan, Britain clearly felt a sentimental bond towards that country. As a result, it has lost almost the whole of the goodwill that could have been present in India for a democracy which has close cultural connections with us. Even today, the BBC talks of ah imminent denial of high-technology items from the "civilised" world, neglecting to inform its viewers that all such items from the US and the EU have been frozen since 1974, even though they flooded China. Japan, as usual, has been content to tail behind the western countries.

Should there be sanctions, it would be an indication that the western powers and Japan are rejecting New Delhi's positive stance on a strategic alliance. This would especially be the case were the sanctions to cover private companies as well. Paradoxically,. such a move may leave India with little option other than to develop the strategic alternative of an India-Russia-China alliance that would challenge the western world across four continents. Within both Russia and China, a growing school of thought is emerging that sees the solidarity of the three regional giants as essential to the dominance of Asia in the world.

Thus, in place of the old India-USSR pact, there would be a New Delhi-Beijing-Moscow entente. Given the unreasonable attitude of most western powers to India's security concerns, and the imposition of sanctions that may make the sale of strategic technologies imperative to retain the 5 to 7 per cent growth rate needed for social stability, this alternative scenario needs to be put on track. Indian interests are paramount, and alliances hinge on the conditions prevalent at the time. Although strategic linkages with fellow democracies may have a higher comfort level than those with authoritarian powers, New Delhi may be left with no choice, should Washington and the EU (once again) follow the Pakistani prescription on India.

Further, the purpose behind building a screen that includes Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia would not be for the containment of China. It would simply serve to deter any future authoritarian regime there from using muscle-power to achieve its territorial and economic objectives. The aim of this "friendship necklace" would be to preserve the peace in East Asia. After a dozen years, when China will have the ability to flatten the continental United States, any deterrent value based on an alliance with Washington would be nil. The eastern Asian powers will need to work out a defensive system that does not rely on a power that is thousands of miles away, and which has political constraints against expenditure of human life in Asia.

New Delhi is equally critical in both the Gulf and Central Asia. As a status quo power in these regions, India would like to buttress moderate regimes there, and help them prevent extremist takeovers. It would like to ensure the free supply of labour into the region, and the exit of oil at reasonable prices. In defence of democratic strategic interests in the Gulf and Central Asia, New Delhi can commit an enormous volume of armed manpower untainted by fundamentalist rhetoric.

As in the Maldives a few years ago, such deployments would inevitably take place only on the invitation of the lawful regimes of these lands.

As for Pakistan, that country has long been touted by non-proliferation "experts" as being on par with India in the development of missile and bomb technology. How these analysts believe that a country incapable of producing a decent lathe can manufacture strategic equipment is unclear. Unless China gifts a bomb to Pakistan just as it did two missile systems there is no way Islamabad can detonate any device that is not essentially a firecracker. Should China thus help Pakistan, any prospects of future co-operation between India and Beijing would of course go up in a mushroom cloud. However, Islamabad is likely to make a virtue of its impotence by demanding goodies to exercise a "restraint" that its own lack of technology has forced on it. However, the armed forces in Pakistan can be expected to significantly increase, despite the billions being earned through the drugs trade.

With its second round of nuclear testing, New Delhi has made clear that it is among the world's major powers. Its future alliances will hinge on the response of the other major powers to this uncharacteristic self-assertion, for which every citizen of this country needs to thank the Vajpayee government

By - M.D. Nalapat