H-Diplo Article Review 651 on “‘I Think We Cannot Refuse the Order’: Britain, America, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and the Indian Jaguar Deal, 1974-1978.” Cold War History 16:1

George Fujii Discussion

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Article Review
No. 651
20 October 2016

Article Review Editors:  Thomas Maddux and Diane Labrosse
Web and Production Editor: George Fujii
Commissioned for H-Diplo by Thomas Maddux

Malcolm M. Craig.  “‘I Think We Cannot Refuse the Order’:  Britain, America, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and the Indian Jaguar Deal, 1974-1978.”  Cold War History 16:1 (February 2016):  61-81.  DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2015.1078314

URL:      http://tiny.cc/AR651

Review by Mara Drogan, Siena College

Gabrielle Hecht observed that “the degree to which—and the purpose for which—a nation, a program, a technology, or a material counted as ‘nuclear’ is not always been a matter of consensus.”[1] Malcolm M. Craig’s article is an excellent illustration of Hecht’s observation. In his analysis of the debates that developed in the mid-1970s over the proposed sale of British Jaguar strike aircraft to India, Craig shows that a key element in the opposition to the sale was that the aircraft was perceived as being “nuclear capable,” despite the fact that “the version of the Jaguar that the UK proposed for India was not—without substantial modification—able to deliver nuclear weapons” (71). Opponents of the deal stated that it did not matter whether the Jaguar was truly nuclear capable or not – what mattered was that “the Pakistanis would think that the aircraft was adding to India’s nuclear status” (71).

India’s 1974 nuclear explosion further destabilized an already contentious relationship with Pakistan and the latter seemed likely to embark on its own bomb project.

 The UK was one of the architects and depository governments of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, as well as the first state to ratify the treaty; Craig explains that “successive prime ministers had positioned the UK as a leading anti-proliferation voice” (63). Selling an aircraft that was perceived as nuclear capable would undermine that position and exacerbate tensions in South Asia. Arguments in favor of the deal were primarily economic; the hard times of the 1970s encouraged the sale as a means of shoring up the British aerospace industry and the jobs it provided. British officials who favored the deal pointed out that if Britain did not sell the aircraft to India, that country would look to other countries such as France or the Soviet Union which were prepared to do so. Craig argues that domestic concerns trumped non-proliferation priorities, revealing the limitations of the 1970s non-proliferation regime.

The Jaguar deal had been in the works as early as 1967, but with the 1974 Indian nuclear test it took on new importance. The British Ministry of Defense argued that India’s existing fleet of Canberra bombers could also be adapted for nuclear delivery, thus the Jaguar deal did not represent a significant improvement to India’s nuclear preparedness. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Arms Control and Disarmament Department countered that such a sale was now unthinkable. While there were some practical concerns about India’s ability to pay for the aircraft, opposition to the sale was ultimately rooted in its symbolic rather than its strategic or economic impact. Opponents argued that the sale appeared to sanction India’s detonation of a nuclear device and would further propel Pakistan along the nuclear path.

Debate over the sale drew in the United States as well. The U.S. and UK had worked together to prevent Pakistan from developing uranium reprocessing and enrichment capabilities, and U.S. officials believed that the sale would undermine those efforts. Craig points out that there had been long-standing disagreements between the U.S. and the UK over trade with non-aligned India. But again it was the nuclear element that rendered the Jaguar deal particularly troubling for the U.S. government, especially after President Jimmy Carter came into office in January 1977 calling for “the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth” (74). But despite increasing pressure from the Carter Administration, the deal went forward and indeed expanded in scope. As Craig argues, “The contention that the deal was vital for a troubled British economy ultimately proved irresistible” (63). The Indian Air Force purchased forty complete aircraft worth £260 million and produced up to 150 more in India using British designs and components (80). Craig notes that despite the outcome of the Jaguar deal, U.S.-UK non-proliferation cooperation continued and even grew stronger in the years that followed.

The article is based on extensive research in British and American archives; if Craig expands this project in the future, it would be interesting to see more from the Indian and Pakistani side of the story. To what degree were Indian and Pakistani representatives aware of the split within the British government and between the United States and the UK? Did either side attempt to leverage these divisions to their own advantage?

My own interest in the political culture of governments and bureaucracies, particularly as they relate to nuclear history, also leads me to wonder about the priorities and motivations, aside from the institutional affiliations, of the two dozen or more officials involved in the debate. With the exception of Carter, there is no indication of whether these officials argued from a place of conviction, professional obligation, or opportunism. Given the primacy of economic factors in determining the outcome of the Jaguar debate, however, such issues may be less salient than they might have been in other inter- and intra-governmental disputes.

In relating the history of this lesser-known debate, Craig shows that fears about nuclear weapons worked on the symbolic level even within the purportedly rational sphere of policy. British officials openly acknowledged that their debate circled around the image rather than the reality of the aircraft’s nuclear capability and what that image would do to the British government’s reputation for promoting non-proliferation. But given that much of the NPT itself operated at the symbolic level – particularly the claim that the five recognized nuclear states would work towards disarmament – it is not surprising that non-proliferation was so easily undermined and that British officials would ultimately favor an immediate economic benefit over the long-range and less tangible goal of non-proliferation. 

 

Mara Drogan is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Siena College, Loudonville, New York. She is currently working on a book manuscript about President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program and the globalization of non-military nuclear technology. Her publications include “The Nuclear Imperative: Atoms for Peace and the Development of US Policy on Exporting Nuclear Power, 1953-1955,” Diplomatic History 40:5 (November 2016): 948-974, and “The Nuclear Nation and the German Question: An American Reactor in West Berlin,” Cold War History 15:3 (2015): 301-319.

© 2016 The Authors | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License


Note

[1] Gabrielle Hecht, “A Cosmogram for Nuclear Things,” Isis 98 (2007), 100.