The Wrong Nuclear Option
Bush’s new deal with India is radioactive.
By Keith White, University of Virginia
Monday November 27, 2006
On Nov. 16, the Senate voted 85-12 to move the United States one step closer to providing nuclear fuel and technology to India. The deal, initiated by the Bush Administration in a radical departure from five decades of bipartisan consensus and overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, alters American counter-proliferation strategy and sets a dangerous precedent.
The new legislation exempts India from certain provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that barred the United States from sharing nuclear technology and fuel with other countries. As noted by the Financial Times, many non-proliferation advocates fear the precedent-breaking deal will pressure more countries to go nuclear while encouraging the world’s nuclear powers to cut similar deals to curry the favor of non-nuclear countries and further develop their own nuclear arsenals. Of immediate concern is the possibility that China will make the same deal with Pakistan that the U.S. has with India.
How did we get here? In 1998, India, acting against the will of the international community, tested a nuclear bomb. This led to fears of nuclear conflict after neighboring Pakistan quickly followed suit with tests of their own.
These tests brought sweeping international condemnation, but were not illegal. Unlike nearly every other nation, with the notable exceptions of Israel and North Korea, India and Pakistan are not parties to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003, while the other three never signed.) This treaty enjoins its non-nuclear members from nuclear weapon production, while nuclear powers the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and China, committed vaguely under the treaty to move toward nuclear disarmament (a commitment that they haven’t really lived up to).
India thus posed a challenge to the global non-proliferation regime. Unfortunately, both the Clinton administration and, to a far greater extent, the current Bush administration have failed to step-up to this challenge.
President Clinton led an unsuccessful campaign to get India, after its nuclear test, to sign the NPT and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and slapped trade sanctions on the country. But none of these demands were met, and Clinton ended up tacitly condoning the tests during his 2000 visit to India.
President Bush, and now the U.S. Congress, have done far worse. Instead of just tolerating a nuclear India, Bush has opted to actually reward India with U.S. nuclear technology and fuel. Advocates argue only that only by becoming involved in the India nuclear deal can America gain leverage to curtail further Indian nuclear development and testing.
While this position is not without merits, it ignores the damaging ramifications of this deal.
The India nuclear deal shows countries that not only can they get away with producing nuclear weapons, they will actually have their nuclear programs rewarded by the United States. It thus reduces the incentive of other non-nuclear countries to stay in the NPT.
Some will argue the India deal is offset by American diplomacy toward North Korea and Iran. In those cases, U.S. policy actively insists these nations refrain from their WMD programs. North Korea and India are both now NPT non-members that hold nuclear weapons.
So why the double-standard? Because America, and other nations, view North Korea as a grave danger to international stability. Security experts are also alarmed by the danger that the tense India-Pakistan conflict could turn into a nuclear exchange, but in a world of serious threats, that one seems someone more manageable today than a nuclear Korea. Also, the U.S. wants to strengthen political and economic ties to India, the world’s largest democracy and a growing engine of commerce and trade. . While these considerations are valid, there is a troublesome question for America’s proliferation policy: Is it alright for “good” countries to produce nuclear weapons?
India is a relatively stable democracy that has not exported its nuclear technology; it seems like a fairly safe candidate for limited nuclear development. But what keeps other countries from making their own subjective decisions about who can and who can not proliferate?
Pakistan, a key American ally that has been responsible for spreading nuclear technology to several other countries, is already angling for a similar deal. China, watching the U.S. help their strategic rival India, is seriously considering balancing our deal with one of their own with Pakistan.
And what is to stop other nuclear nations, such as France, Great Britain, or Russia, from using similar deals to cement relationships with other nations, whether or not the United States considers them “responsible?”
These potential long-term consequences have been forgotten by Democrats and Republicans alike. Too many in Washington have bought into the neo-conservative premise that one-size-fits all international agreements must be tossed aside in favor of a foreign policy that favors—or harasses—certain states based on their “character.” This is the premise underpinning all Bush administration foreign policy decisions, from the invasion of Iraq, to the refusal to comply with the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocols.
President Eisenhower once stated:
“Controlled, universal disarmament is the imperative of our time. The demand for it by the hundreds of millions whose chief concern is the long future of themselves and their children will, I hope, become so universal and so insistent that no man, no government anywhere, can withstand it.”
Opinion polls show this aspiration is indeed universal. The Bush administration has dangerously abandoned that goal, and the House and Senate have signed on to that radical agenda. The American people must hold them accountable and demand a return to sanity in our non-proliferation policy.
You can read the Center for American Progress’s letter to the Senate on how to fix the India nuclear deal here.
--------
Comments
Leave a comment about this article below. For more discussion, visit our community page and sign up for your own Campus Progress blog!
|
!
Keith White article is about India-Us nuclear deal is worth reading for the simple reason that it demonstrates how little the so called pundits know of the global affairs. Just one point:
“Advocates argue only that only by becoming involved in the India nuclear deal can America gain leverage to curtail further Indian nuclear development and testing.
While this position is not without merits, it ignores the damaging ramifications of this deal.”
Please do read the deal again Mr. Keith. No where is there any reference to India’s future testing. India simply will reject the deal if a binding clause like that is added. As PM told the parliament, if the threat perception demands that we test the newer and smarter designs of nuclear warheads, as a sovereign nation, India will go ahead and do it.
— Chinmay Varma - Nov 27, 01:59 PM - #The nuclear deal is so utterly hypocritical that it almost seems DESIGNED to provoke Iran or North Korea into behaving rashly.
— AKM - Nov 27, 09:31 PM - #The nuclear deal with India is simply an American attempt to balance out the unjust nuclear control systems in place today. The NPT and the NTBT are mechanisms formed by the countries in power, at the time, to control/regulate the countries out of power, at the time. What these treaties lack, as do most world power organizations created after WWII, is a flexible way to adapt to the changing world we live in. The reason for the strength of America’s government is our constitution, its ambiguity (which can be interpreted by the norms of the times through the courts) and its flexibility in changing with the times. India is home to the second largest population in the world, soon the largest. India operates the largest democracy the world has ever seen. India has sustained rates of economic growth second only to an oligarchical empire run more like a corporation than a government created for the people by the people. It is very odd for the world to think that its okay for countries hundreds of times smaller to possess nuclear weapons and be allowed of testing them to this day, while looking down upon a nation such as India, surrounded by enemies, protecting the largest single population of free (democratically protected) citizens testing nuclear weapons twice in its 50+ year existence.
— Neil Patel - Nov 28, 12:59 PM - #I think it’s plain to see that the US is exchanging economic possibilities and military leniency to India for India’s alliance and compliance with the United States’ political, military, and economic endeavors. India had no choice but to take this bait, since it would seem like doing otherwise would be a “sabotage” of their national interest to prosperity. Now India is left with 2 awful options when the US makes ill-adviced advances elsewhere: to either agree and side with the US even when good sense would forbid their support, or to condemn the US’s policy and seem like ingrates for all of the “favors” the States have bestowed out of false generosity. And wavering from compliance with the US’s wishes will seem like a stab in the back, and will be reflected with ill will towards the Indian pubic within India and America… as if this resentment wasn’t enough already..
— Rajiv Raghavan - Dec 1, 05:04 PM - #Keith White’s article wrongly contends that China could easily implement a civilian nuclear sharing arrangement with Pakistan, akin to the one the United States will soon have with India. Had Mr. White researched the U.S.-India civilian nuclear sharing agreement in sufficient detail, he would know that, in order for the deal to take effect, it most be approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an international body which regulates all civilian nuclear sharing arrangements and which includes the five recognized nuclear powers under the NPT as well as dozens of other nations with civilian nuclear power industries. The NSG operates on a consensus basis, and it is the only mechanism via which an NPT signatory (e.g. China) can legally share civilian nuclear technology. China could never gain NSG approval for a similar sharing arrangement with Pakistan; Islamabad’s infamous A.Q. Khan network alone would disqualify it from serious consideration. In contrast, the NSG as well as the International Atomic Energy Association head, Mohamed ElBaradei, have applauded the U.S.-India civilian nuclear sharing initiative because India boasts an exemplary record of non-proliferation.
No one with any knowledge of the issue is concerned that China will be able to offer Pakistan a similar deal. Mr. White’s scare tactics reveal his ignorance of the subject at best and amount to willful deception at worst.
— A. Eichman - Dec 1, 09:44 PM - #