The instant his 50-foot-tall, tungsten-tipped "dream" rocket pierced the stratosphere on Thursday, April 19, V.K. Saraswat could finally dare to exhale. Unlike with North Korea's disastrous display just days before, years of secret preparations by the director of India's Defense Research and Development Organization on its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) paid off flawlessly. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was among the first to offer congratulations, telling him that "you made the nation proud." The last time an Indian nuclear scientist was so honored, the country held parades and revelers even worshipped the bombs. The Buddha was smiling then; now, he's flexing.
Fifth in the Agni series (meaning "fire" in Hindi), this indigenously constructed missile can carry multiple nuclear warheads up to 3,100 miles away, putting not only Beijing in play, but also the Middle East, as well as sections of Africa, Europe, and Australia. It's also India's strongest display of military might since a series of 1998 nuclear tests. Then, the international community greeted the announcement with economic sanctions and widespread condemnation. This time is different. Images of the rocket's launch, its sides emblazoned with patriotic flags, ensured that Indian dailies and TV stations were powerless to resist from crafting Agni "high-five" headlines. Once the news reached the other side of the world, it garnered little more than the equivalent of diplomatic golf claps.
So why did countries that so aggressively (and even sanctimoniously) punished India less than 15 years ago act positively subdued this time -- and for a weapon with far more destructive potential? The answer lies not only in India's emerging global role, but also in the fact that India is hunting bigger, and unfriendlier, geopolitical game. Traditional rival Pakistan has long been viewed as India's binary strategic pole, and in 1998 both countries were chastised over fears that neither was responsible enough to be a nuclear power. Now it's clear that the biggest target painted by the test lies within New Delhi's neighbor to the northeast.
India has been saber rattling China for the last decade (which, according to then-Defense Minister George Fernandes, was a big reason for the 1998 tests), but the Agni V's range gives India its first legitimate deterrence-based threat to China's growing military might. The Agni V's actual capabilities are years away from the "deterrence parity" that giddy Indian analysts are already claiming, but while the ICBM may conjure feelings of near nostalgia in the United States among Cold War wonks and North Dakotan farmers tilling crops around abandoned underground silos, for India those four little letters herald proof of making the big time. Joining the exclusive nuclear annihilation capabilities club with Britain, China, France, Israel, Russia, and the United States, India now thinks it can redefine its nationalist pride and global standing merely by whom it picks fights with.
China is not the only one revising old irenic policies as it improves military capabilities. A muscular India is a perplexing sight for those with visions of the country as a land of Gandhian peace and nonviolent struggle, especially given India's historic role as one of nonproliferation's guiding lights. India spearheaded the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, arguing consistently in the United Nations for an end to nuclear weapons from countries forced to live under the shadow of the Cold War. Then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi forwarded a global action plan for nuclear disarmament in 1988. Today, however, abolition voices are marginalized while a prideful nuclear breast-beating leads top Indian dailies to declare the Agni V launch a Great Leap Forward -- without a trace of irony.
That's because at its core, the Agni V project isn't driven by credibility, deterrence, or even military strategy -- it's about mending a broken Indian psyche. The India-China relationship is as complex as it is acrimonious, inviting comparisons between the two for at least the last 65 years. Mao's People's Republic of China was founded two years after India's 1947 independence, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s the two massive states scored similarly on economic indicators, while squabbling over issues such as Tibet and skirmishing in minor border wars that, while largely inconsequential, humiliated India.
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