Crashing the big bomb club
a SUIT column by Chris Jungle
Most people envy the cool kids. They may hate them or secretly wish they could hang out, but everyone looks at the cool kids a little differently than everyone else. The cool kids come in many shapes and sizes. There are NBA stars, supermodels, actors and actresses, writers, comedians, musicians, the rich, artists, fashion designers, politicians. Basically, it's any person the public feels they can vicariously live through. Sometimes the cool kids aren't even people but countries. The United States are part of the cool kids as are Great Britain, France, and China. The only way you can impress the these hipsters is to show them you can do the exact same thing. That's precisely what India did.
India has had nuclear weapons for a long time--along with Pakistan, Israel, and others. But they were always considered the small to intermediate variety. It was enough to threaten its neighbors but nowhere near the cool kids standards. That all changed last week when India set off five nuclear devices and proclaimed "We have the capacity for a big bomb now." The government encouraged all Indians to celebrate this step of progress. It may not be an NBA championship, but it's about the best performance a nation-state can do.
I said the word nation-state! All of my international relations terms are jumping out of a drawer in my subconscious. Proliferation, prisoner's dilemma, domestic initiatives, international imperatives, perimeters, parameters, policy preferences, chief of government (COG), ICBM, SALT, NATO, INF, GATT, treaty ratifications, regimes-- of course, use of these terms won't get you laid or anything.
It's not necessary to read up on game theory or domestic policy to figure out why India tested nuclear devices. They want to be considered a cool kid. One of the young scientists who helped build the devices exclaimed that the rest of the world should be proud because they figured out how to improve without the help of anyone else. If that's all they wanted, then I'll tell them myself-- India, I'm proud of you. You are a smart country if I ever saw one. You're way cooler than Yemen, Oman, and Afghanistan put together.
Like every Big Bomb Club member, India promises it would only use nuclear weapons as a means of defense--never firing first. That's all part of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) game. The idea of MAD is that if you try and kill my country, your country will get blown up too. In theory, India should be able to be a country throughout time now. Who would mess with a country with a full-blown nuclear capability?
The United States and the Soviet Union never actually fought each other during the Cold War. They used other countries like Korea, Vietnam and Cuba as their fighting grounds. This means that Pakistan and India will have to start using Somalia or Myanmar to pick on each other.
The U.S. is upset with India for blowing up stuff, but they only did it to impress everybody. They want to be known as smart scientific people. Not every good scientist is a German defector, you know. The U.S. may be upset because they didn't get to hand pick India for initiation into the Big Bomb Club, but the message is clear. The Indians think they are as cool as any country on the planet.
I'm sure they will sign whatever treaty they have to sign saying they won't ever blow up any more devices. They don't have to anymore. They made their statement, and now they want the respect the rest of the cool kids get.
Some ethical questions abound when blowing up huge bombs for testing purposes, but India did it on their own soil much like the U.S. used to do. They weren't like the French who decided to screw over its South Pacific territories. If a country wants to make huge sunken holes on its own turf, it is their right to do so. Sacrifices must be made if you want be in the hip crowd. Instead of getting fake boobs, plastic surgery, or sleeping with powerful people, India had to blow up chunks of its own land. It's amazing what people have to do to get noticed nowadays, but they found a way to do it.
So let's hear it for India! They now have the power to blow up the world as easily as many other countries. Let's shake their hands and invite them to the big parties. They've earned it. Those crazy cool kids.
Chris Jungle used to blow up parts of his yard in attempt to be cool until the landlord came by with an eviction notice.
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