A Study Of The Policy To India’s Nuclear Test In Nixon Administration

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination. It is a weapon of mass destruction. At the same time, a nuclear energy can benefit human under controllable conditions.In the late WWWII, the United States cast separately two atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to accelerate the surrender of Japan, bringing about tremendous deaths and injuries. The shocking might indicates the arrival of nuclear time.From the day the huge mushroom cloud rose in Hiroshima, nuclear weapons and its related nuclear strategy and nuclear energy application has been the research target of all the countries, of which there is no exception of India. As a country with a long history and glorious civilization, India was colonized by Britain in modern times and gained independence in 1947, coincidentally simultaneous with the nuclear time. India adopted different strategies in different periods. Nehru opposed to research or developed nuclear weapons in his Prime Minister times, while Indira Gandhi, his daughter, claimed a "nuclear test for peaceful purposes" in 1970 and exposed a nuclear bomb four years later.As the first atomic bomb country, and the only one that used it, the United States emerges as the leadership in the world. It had different nuclear policies in different presidencies. With the NPT taking effect, the Nixon Administration paid less attention to the global nonproliferation than Johnson. Also, it didn’t attach much importance to the India’s nuclear issue, leading to failure of intelligence in that problem. This thesis attempts to find and analyze the Nixon Administration’s nuclear policy toward "the test for peaceful purpose" by India in the 1970s.This paper consists of introduction, text and peroration.The introduction introduces the study’s aim and meaning, the structure of this paper, study methods and innovation, status quo of this study, original documents and definition of relative concepts.The main body is made up of four parts. The first one presents American nuclear foreign policies from Truman to Johnson. The second part and the third part are separated by the third Indo-Pak War as the earlier stage and the later stage of Nixon Administration, which is 1968-1971 and 1971-1974. The last part discusses India’s nuclear test’s shock on American nuclear foreign policies.In the peroration, this paper tries to refine and sublime and, through the combination of American policy toward North Korea,,conclude the features of American nuclear policies. In current times, the nuclear issues of Iran and North Korea have been two focuses between the United States and China. Although these two countries differ from India, American nuclear policies toward India are still worth taking example by China.