Reassuring and Unnerving India } 741
capable multirole combat aircraft, the Russian-made Sukhoi-30MKI Flanker,
to the northeast to defend Arunachal Pradesh. Old airbases in India’s north-
east were reopened and refurbished to host those aircraft. (These locations are
shown on Figure 16-1 on page 441.) India also established two new mountain
divisions to serve as a mountain strike force to India’s northeast.^10
Nuclear Weapons and the PRC-India-US Triangle
China’s nightmare regarding India since the 1989–1991 upheaval has been that
India would join with the United States, as it had once joined with the USSR,
to encircle China. This fear did not spring immediately into existence, how-
ever, but was acquired by Beijing over a period of several years in mid-1990s,
as New Delhi and Washington adapted to the new post–Cold War era. The
1990s constituted for Beijing, for New Delhi, and for Washington a crucial
learning period. Within a decade of the Soviet Union’s demise, however, all
three capitals were aware of convergent Indian and US concerns regarding
the growth of China’s power, and were pondering the implications of an
emerging India-US alignment.
As Beijing scored modest improvements in its ties with India in the mid-
1990s, it also expanded cooperation with the United States on South Asian
nuclear proliferation issues. This cooperation would eventually explode
in Beijing’s face, producing consequences very different than those antici-
pated by Beijing or by Washington. Simply stated, Sino-US cooperation on
South Asian nonproliferation issues would ultimately confront New Delhi
with the specter of a China-US condominium, leading both New Delhi and
Washington to rethink their interests and policies, leading in turn to emer-
gence of an India-US alignment based, in part, on common apprehensions
about China’s rise.
Sino-US nuclear nonproliferation cooperation in South Asia occurred in
three venues in the mid-1990s: the 1995 NPT Extension and Review (E&R)
conference and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations,
and in the Security Council in the aftermath of India’s nuclear tests in 1998.^11
Regarding the E&R Conference, the term of the NPT that took effect in 1970
was for twenty-five years, meaning it expired in 1995 unless extended. It was
also time for a “review” conference of the NPT, held every five years. A major
US objective going into the NPT E&R Conference was to secure entry into
the NPT regime of India and Pakistan, both of which were threshold nuclear
weapons powers with “screwdriver bombs” that could be assembled in short
periods of time. But neither country had deployed nuclear weapons, and nei-
ther was a signatory of the NPT. As a non-NPT signatory power, India did not
attend or participate in the E&R conference, but followed it very closely, since
India was a major object of conference deliberations.