May-July 1998
The Asian Bomb:
The Indian and Pakistani Tests and New Threats of Nuclear Proliferation
Just two weeks after India shook the world with its first nuclear tests, Pakistan exploded five nuclear weapons. President Clinton condemned India's and Pakistan's tests, but many observers believed that U.S. policies were a root cause of the crisis. Since the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was indefinitely extended in 1995, the "Big Five" nuclear powers did not fulfill pledges to reduce nuclear arsenals. In so doing, they exasperated many non-nuclear states, whose patience was exhausted.
Many observers feared that without immediate action, the NPT would collapse and nuclear weapons would spread unchecked across the globe. To shed light on this urgent issue, the Mainstream Media Project offered some of the world's leading authorities on nuclear nonproliferation to address this critical question: What can we do to prevent the South Asian nuclear arms race from triggering a global chain reaction?
In the three weeks following the initial Indian tests, MMP arranged 72 interviews, 25 of them nationally syndicated. We booked some 20 leading arms control experts, including M.V. Ramana of MIT and Arjun Makhajani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Studies (both Indian), Pervez Houdboy of the University of Maryland, and Zia Mian of Princeton (both Pakistani).
We also gave significant publicity to a study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (covered in a July 16, 1998 New York Times article) that reported possible U.S. violations of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in pure fusion energy experiments at Livermore National Laboratory. The study noted that these tests, conducted as part of the nation's Stockpile Stewardship Program, could be used to develop a new generation of hydrogen bombs. Study authors Arjun Makhajani and Hisham Zerriffi did 19 interviews.
Guest Speakers
George Bunn, Arms control expert, Stanford University; Negotiated Nonproliferation and Limited Test Ban Treaties
Adm. Eugene Carroll (ret.), Deputy Director, Center for Defense Information
Sen. Alan Cranston, Former Four-Term Senator (D-CA); Leading Advocate of Nuclear "Abolition"; organized 1997 generals nuclear elimination letter
Thomas Graham, Former Ambassador; President, Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS); U.S. Negotiator of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Pervez Houdboy, Nuclear Physicist, University of Maryland
Daryl Kimball, Director, Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
Michael Krepon, President, Henry L. Stimson Center
Arjun Makhajani, President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Riko Marcelli, Communications Director, California Peace Action
Greg Mello, Director, Los Alamos Study Group
Jack Mendelsohn, Deputy Director, Arms Control Association
Zia Mian, Nuclear Physicist, Princeton University
George Perkovich, Director, Secure World Program, W. Alton Jones Foundation
M. V. Ramana, Nuclear Physicist, MIT
Marvin Resnikoff, Radioactive Waste Management Association
Jonathan Schell, Author, The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now and The Fate of the Earth
Alyn Ware, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Stephen Young, Senior Analyst, British American Security Information Council (BASIC)
