SPEAKING FREELY
China's chance to play good cop
By Lora Saalman

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

In Chinese there is a phrase that sums up the challenges that China faces under the US-India nuclear deal - opportunity cannot exist without risk (fengxian yu jihui bing cun).

In early March, US President George W Bush traveled to India on a trip hailed as the equivalent of Richard Nixon's resumption of relations with China. This comparison, while exaggerated, is apt in its choice of country. The American shift from tacit acceptance to open support of India's nuclear program under the US-India



nuclear deal promises to shape international export control policies, in particular those of China.

Faced with the potential for Indian vertical nuclear proliferation enabled by US civilian nuclear assistance, the US-India nuclear deal is steadily evolving into a non-proliferation catalyst for China. After Bush's trip, China's Foreign Ministry in March made a seemingly routine statement voicing support for early negotiations on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT).

Yet, the inherent risks of the nuclear deal for China and the non-proliferation regime are anything but routine. While seen as a detriment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the US-India nuclear deal may ironically serve as an opportunity for China to assume a pivotal role in concluding another treaty, the FMCT.

Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty
In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the negotiation of a non-discriminatory, multilateral and verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.

Two years later, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) established an ad hoc committee on what became known as the FMCT. Early on, a dispute arose as the US proffered its support for the FMCT, countered by China's pursuit of a treaty on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS).

Even after China offered to de-link negotiation of the FMCT and PAROS, the US refusal to proceed due to verification issues cast even US support for the FMCT under a shadow of doubt. The CD deadlock illustrates the non-proliferation stasis that the Bush administration has sought to bypass with its unilateral and counter-proliferation initiatives. The US-India nuclear deal emerges from this underlying assumption that traditional non-proliferation has failed.

Ironically, a clause of the US-Indian nuclear deal that has received relatively scant attention hinges on India's willingness to work toward conclusion of the FMCT. Admittedly, this commitment appears hollow. The phrasing of this article does not oblige India even to sign the treaty, simply to work toward it. India and the US no doubt saw this as a rhetorical but ultimately derisive nod to non-proliferation.

Yet, outside of India's pledge to permit civilian nuclear inspections, the FMCT clause is the only one that even comes close to undertaking a new and binding initiative. It also amounts to the only real limitation on India's nuclear weapons arsenal within the nuclear deal.

Under the existing US-India nuclear agreement, the growing consensus is that India will be able to ramp up its production of fissile material through fast breeder reactors, self-selected for military use. Freeing up India's limited uranium stores and providing technology and equipment allows India rapid nuclear advances.

Firewalls between India's civilian and military program are touted as a solution, and yet no negotiated plan of action has yet emerged from India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The spread of know-how is a difficult quantity to block. India's "campaign style" implementation of its safeguards makes it harder to ensure that even material contributions to India's civilian program will not eventually reach its military.

If estimates of the Arms Control Association and Institute of Science and International Security are correct and India will be able to add 50 nuclear warheads to its stockpile or generate one ton of unsafeguarded plutonium annually, incentives for regional neighbors to bind India into a treaty banning fissile material production expand greatly.

Not only do these inducements augment, they become paramount for two of India's most important neighbors - Pakistan and China. India analysts frequently invoke these two countries' wavering commitment to export controls to demonstrate India's credibility. Yet, whereas Pakistan does not have the political and economic weight, much less credibility, to spearhead a non-proliferation initiative, China does.

China's nuclear arsenal, estimated by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at 400 warheads, is thought to be static in number due to its self-declared cessation of fissile material production and doctrine of minimal credible deterrence. India also professes a strategic doctrine based on a small nuclear stockpile, estimated by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at between 40 and 50 warheads, yet it also remains one of the few countries that continues fissile material production.

If the US gives India the technology and means to vastly expand its arsenal, India could opt to relinquish the limits of a minimal credible deterrent, leaving China to face some serious long-term decisions. The paths that China selects promise to generate the greatest regional impact from the US-India nuclear deal.

The various paths
The first path
This would be for China to actively guard its numerical advantage by resuming its production of fissile material. China's decision to augment its nuclear stockpile would demonstrate a marked departure from China's commitment to a minimum credible deterrent. It would also require China to redistribute funds, otherwise spent on economic development and conventional military modernization in the event of an altercation over Taiwan.

Strategic weapons expansion would further lead to greater regional instability as Japan, Korea and other neighbors are already wary of China's growing regional dominance. An arms race would require China to drastically alter priorities that have been focused for the past two decades on maintaining regional stability to sustain economic growth.

The second path
This would be for China to expand its conventional military and nuclear assistance to Pakistan. China has its own financial interests in sales to Pakistan, enhanced by the strategic benefit of keeping India preoccupied with a neighbor other than China. Notably in the wake of the US-India nuclear deal and the concomitant conventional military sales from the United States, China and Pakistan have already signed contracts for fighter aircraft and frigates.

China and Pakistan have also continued their pursuit of civil nuclear cooperation, criticized by the United States in the past as dangerous exceptionalism. As the United States engages in its own form of nuclear exceptionalism, the incentive to find other profitable loopholes will grow for Beijing. These opportunities are unlikely to be limited to exports. China's arguments for making exceptions to technology bans on its own country will also be strengthened.

The third path
This would be for China to avoid provocation by maintaining a numerical nuclear status quo and by intensifying cooperation with India. China has already embarked upon this avenue by providing India with political and economic inducements.

Yet, pursuing engagement without strategic considerations may have long-term costs. India remains wary of China and could be seeking to utilize technology gained through cooperation with the United States, France, Russia, among others in a bid for parity. With outside assistance, India's quantitative nuclear and conventional weapons arsenal could be improved more rapidly than qualitative intangibles such as its economic and political status. Unhindered by arms embargoes, assisted by nuclear technology and fuel, and bolstered by space technology for its missile program, India could make rapid and unanticipated gains on China in the future.

The fourth path
This would be for China to actively, rather than merely rhetorically, support the FMCT. China's reticence in the past to concluding the FMCT would be greatly mitigated by the threat of India soaking in foreign civilian nuclear technology and freeing up resources to expand its arsenal. The treaty offers a multilateral and non-discriminatory means of officially capping fissile production of more countries than simply India.

By relinquishing its reservations and actively pursuing a verifiable FMCT, China would also force India and the US to act upon one of the only real non-proliferation tenet within the nuclear deal. Combined with transparency and confidence building measures afforded by existing engagement, pursuit of a multilateral FMCT would alleviate the pressure for China to resume destabilizing fissile material production.

Conclusion
These four paths demonstrate the complexities that China faces as the US solidifies yet another strategic partnership at its borders. As in the case of Central Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, China has, thus far, chosen cooperation in lieu of competition with India. China and India have dubbed 2006 as the Sino-Indian Friendship Year.

They have concluded memoranda of understanding on everything from energy to economic cooperation. India has also made it clear that it does not wish to become entangled in any US agenda to use it as a counterweight against China. China similarly is likely to work toward a strengthening of relations with India rather than allow the US to pull it into a costly cold war of nuclear competition.

Engagement, however, does not free China of strategic concerns over India expanding its nuclear arsenal. China is currently reluctant to denounce the US-India deal, to avoid damaging relations with India, to maintain its policy of non-interference and in anticipation of export loopholes opened by US exceptionalism. Allowing India unhindered expansion of its arsenal, however, could also create future military liabilities.

Were China to lift its own self-imposed ban on fissile material production, this could also precipitate military repercussions in the rest of Asia. In the near-term, assistance to Pakistan is likely to continue as China's financially attractive and strategically expedient proxy. Since March, this enhanced assistance has been conventional, but China could eventually accede to Pakistan's demands for a stronger nuclear bent.

A viable long-term option for China is continued engagement of India combined with working toward conclusion of the FMCT. In doing so, China would be assuming a leadership role in compelling the United States and India to deliver on one of the most overlooked and seemingly hollow clauses of their deal. China would have very little to lose given its current fissile material production cap and everything to gain in political and non-proliferation credentials.

The FMCT is universal in tone, but would also stem a regional escalation of fissile material production at its source. Russia has already stepped through the door opened by the United States to sell nuclear fuel to India. France, Canada and other supporters of the deal are certain to follow. The rapidity with which this deal is being pushed through the US Congress imbues the FMCT with the urgency necessary to tackle rankling concerns over treaty verification and compliance.

China once decried the non-proliferation regime as discriminatory; India continues to do so. Ironically, India stands to benefit from discrimination and exceptionalism inherent in the US-India nuclear deal. China pressing ahead with the conclusion of the FMCT would compel India to re-evaluate its mantra that you can't violate what you haven't signed. The US-India nuclear deal poses numerous challenges to non-proliferation.

Yet, the threat of India expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal could finally offer a heretofore unlikely victory, conclusion of a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. For a country that took decades to accede to the non-proliferation regime, China may end up as the one country able to preserve it.

Lora Saalman is a research associate at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Wisconsin Project. Her areas of interest include China, the Koreas and South Asia.

(Copyright Lora Saalman 2006)

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.