BHUPENDRA JASANI

It was around December 1971 that I received a call from Frank Barnaby, who asked me to meet him in a London hotel that might have been a film set from The Third Man. He had recently taken the position as the Director of SIPRI. I had first met Frank when he was a BSc student and I was still at school in London. Some years later we were colleagues at the University College Hospital Medical School in London and spent some time together there before Frank went to Pugwash and then to SIPRI. During the London meeting, Frank indicated that he was looking for a physicist who would work on nuclear weapon proliferation problems at SIPRI and that he had me in mind. At that time I was pursuing a Master's course in International Relations. However, being a man of action, Frank demanded an answer there and then: this clearly was not possible as I had to discuss it with Charu, my wife, and had to choose between the prospect of a permanent job with the British Medical Research Council and a somewhat uncertain future in Sweden.

While I was keen to leave science for international relations, it was not an easy decision. Although the job offer was initially for just two years, to be out of science even for that length of time was too long. Thus, the decision had to be a long-term one, implying a momentous change in direction of my career. Moreover, Charu was close to completing her librarianship examinations and we were expecting our first child, Nisha. For all this, we took the plunge and accepted the offer to come to SIPRI, making an advance visit and then finally moving to Stockholm in February 1972. Soon after settling down there, Nisha was born and Charu successfully completed her exams.

My first assignment was to learn about the technical and political issues related to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. The difficulty was that, although I was a British national from birth (of Indian origin), the nuclear non-proliferation community regarded me as an outsider. Thus, learning about some of the sensitive technical issues was not easy. The next challenge was to make the scientific and technical aspects understandable to the non-scientifi c community to help the latter arrive at reasonable solutions.

However, before I could get my teeth into the nuclear issues, my attention was diverted a little. SIPRI had a visitor, a member of the US SALT I Agreement negotiating team on his way back to the USA. He indicated to Frank that the ABM and the SALT I agreements were possible largely because both sides were able to verify compliance with the terms of the treaties by their military reconnaissance satellites. Such satellites were an important element of the technical means of verification of both the USSR and the USA. Our visitor suggested that SIPRI should look into the capabilities of these spacecraft. I happened to be around during these discussions and was picked for the task. This was not easy in the early 1970s since there was very little in the public domain about such satellites. In any case this was the pattern of my whole work throughout my early time at SIPRI.

Frank was good in allowing people to follow diverse topics if they were willing to do so. For example, in the mid-1970s the UN was engaged in discussions on environmental warfare issues. My preliminary study in 1975 with one made by a Canadian scholar, was used as background material for the discussions that resulted in the 1978 Environmental Modifi cation Convention. As for the satellites, two conclusions were drawn in my first chapter on reconnaissance satellites, for the SIPRI Yearbook 1973. The first was that the photographic reconnaissance satellites of the time were able to detect objects down to 30 cm in size, a figure that became widely used by governments as well as others. The second conclusion raised the question, if such satellites improved relations between the USA and the former USSR, why was the international community not also using them? As a result, France proposed to the UN Special Session on Disarmament in 1978 that the UN should consider establishing an International Satellite Monitoring Agency (ISMA).

In 1981 a report on an ISMA (for which I was a UN consultant) was submitted to the UN General Assembly. The USA and the USSR rejected the idea, and the report has ever since been gathering dust in the dungeons of the UN offices in New York. However, it was as a result of this episode that the concept of a regional agency emerged, as explained below.

My first book at SIPRI, Nuclear Proliferation Problems, related to the NPT debate in 1974, had made a significant contribution to the discussion in the UN forum at Geneva. For a period in 1977-78 I worked on the compilation of registers of major weapons in industrialized and developing countries for the SIPRI Yearbooks. This was perhaps the most soul-destroying work I carried out during my time at the Institute. My next involvement in nuclear issues, the original purpose for which I joined SIPRI, was not to come until 1979-80- although, in the meantime I had continued to write articles in this area.

A SIPRI staff trip to Vaxholm in the Stockholm archipelago. Bhupendra Jasani is sitting at the stern of the boat with Frank Barnaby

However, my non-involvement in nuclear issues in 1976-78 allowed me to focus my attention on the military uses of outer space and this was truly a blessing in disguise. It resulted in 1978 in my first major SIPRI publication, Outer Space-Battlefield of the Future. Four more books that I edited, a fifth co-edited, and a further co-authored volume were to follow, not to mention my contribution of at least one chapter in each SIPRI Yearbook until I left SIPRI in 1987, and numerous articles in various journals.

While the years at SIPRI were extremely productive and informative and I learned the tricks of the trade, there were some frustrating times arising from lost opportunities. For example, in February 1986 I was invited to brief Prime Minister Olof Palme at his official country house in Harpsund on the issue of the militarization of outer space. During the discussions, he asked me if there were any positive possibilities for the use of outer space. I suggested the idea of a regional satel lite monitoring agency (RSMA) for arms control verification, crisis observation and as a confi dence-building measure.
He took this on board and announced to the press at the end of our meeting that Sweden would be very interested in developing the RSMA.

Olof Palme was killed a week or so later; but when the dust had settled, his successor, Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, wrote to SIPRI asking the Institute for a paper on an RSMA. The document we sent to him, authored by me, resulted in the Swedish Project Tellus. However, by this time I had left SIPRI and the Institute did not take the initiative any further.

The happy end of this story is that my discussions with the Western European Union (WEU) were already initiated while at SIPRI, and the Union took the idea on board and eventually established the WEU Satellite Centre near Madrid. I spent a year at the WEUSC as it was being established. It is now renamed the European Union Satellite Centre.

During the last months of my time at SIPRI, a proposal was made to set up a demonstration project on the use of commercial observation satellites for arms control and crisis monitoring and as a confidence building measure. Again, the Institute did not pursue this seriously. I then completed the project at King's College London for the IAEA under the joint auspices of the British, German, US and Canadian governments. The Agency is now using satellites in its safeguards procedures. For all these frustrations, I learned a good deal about arms control and international relations at SIPRI. My gurus were the well-established 'grand-pappies' in the field. The wonderful editorial staff taught me a good deal about the values and uses of words. I even experienced what it means to be 'sent to Coventry', an expression I had heard a lot in the UK. This was in spite of making every effort to keep out of institutional politics.

There is much more one could write about many very pleasant times at SIPRI, but I will conclude by saying that what amounted to almost 16 years at SIPRI prepared me in many ways for my life in London since 1987.