SPEAKING
FREELY A fight for
acceptance By Rajesh Arya
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The meeting of
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and
his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom in Istanbul
on September 1 was held in the midst of some
strategic rethinking going on in the capitals of
Islamabad and Tel Aviv. Contrary to some theories
among analysts and writers placing this meeting in
the context of rapprochement between Israel and
the Muslim world, the major impetus behind it is a
singular common interest, and that is the two
nations being accepted by the world as nuclear
powers and getting access to nuclear materials and
advanced nuclear technologies from the Nuclear
Suppliers Group.
At
present, most countries, with the exception of
India, Pakistan and Israel, are signatories of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT, with the
US, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom
accorded the official status of powers with
nuclear weapons). Until now, there were on the
whole four classes of countries: the five
mentioned above as nuclear-haves, the rest of
the
NPT signatories as nuclear have-nots, a few
countries such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran and
Libya as formal nuclear have-nots with clandestine
(suspected) nuclear weapons programs, and then of
course the non-signatories such as India, Pakistan
and Israel, who do have nuclear-weapon programs
but exist outside the scope of the NPT.
The international community has been quite
active in pursuing the NPT rebels. Iraq and Libya
have been neutralized; North Korea is out of
control; and Iran is resisting pressure from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
EU-3 (Britain, Germany and France) and the US to
virtually abandon its nuclear program, which
Tehran claims is for civilian purposes.
North Korea and Iran symbolize the
challenges to the international system of nuclear
controls built around the NPT. As such, these
challenges need to be met within the logic
dictated by that treaty. India, Pakistan and
Israel on the other hand represent the limits of
the NPT. As long as they remain outside, the world
will not have a universal system of nuclear
control. Their nuclear-weapons power status,
however, makes it difficult to reconcile that
status with the provisions of the
non-proliferation regime.
Lately, India
has broken out of three decades of nuclear
untouchability and reached a far-reaching
understanding with the Bush administration
allowing Delhi to import nuclear materials as well
as advanced nuclear technology and reactors for
its civilian nuclear program. Even though this
India-US accord has not yet been ratified by the
US Congress, there is sufficient support there to
see it through.
The US has come around to
this view because of India's heightened profile,
both as an economic and military power, and
because American and Indian strategic interests
coincide for the most part. As such, India will
benefit hugely in its civilian nuclear program,
where it concedes it needs more than a helping
hand, but without having to give up any of its
security-related nuclear assets.
The US
will also benefit commercially from the sale of
nuclear technology, as well as domestically by
strengthening its own nuclear industry. This will
for all practical purposes bring India into the
club of nuclear-haves, in spite of not being a
signatory to the NPT.
Israel and Pakistan
remain locked out of the benefits ensuing from
access to nuclear technology and materials. The
India-US accord has completely rattled Pakistan
and taken the wind out of its sails. Until now,
Pakistan could always say, that the US treats
India and Pakistan as equals. The India-US nuclear
accord has not only broken that illusion, but put
Pakistan at a serious strategic disadvantage
vis-a-vis its nuclear neighbor, India. The
imperative for Pakistan to remove this asymmetry
cannot be greater. Soon after the India-US accord,
Pakistan promised to work on an appropriate
response to the changed strategic balance.
Similarly, Israel also sees itself stuck
in nuclear no-man's land. It follows a policy of
nuclear ambiguity. Even though this policy has
kept the question of nuclear asymmetry between
Israel and its Arab neighbors contained to
informal politics, whereby the world at large can
turn a blind eye to the Israeli nuclear arsenal,
the policy still has its drawbacks. Openness
allows a far freer trade in both technology and
materials. There is also the question of prestige
that accompanies being a declared, recognized and
accepted nuclear-weapons power.
If Israel
were to declare itself a nuclear weapons state,
Arab countries, too, would be clamoring for
freedom to produce their own nuclear weapons, and
the NPT could fall apart. If the US were to openly
embrace Israel's nuclear program, it would stand
accused of double standards, which could erode
American standing in the Arab and Muslim world
even further. As such, the US and the
international community would find it difficult to
accord Israel any recognition and acceptance of
its nuclear weapons status, as will soon be the
case with India.
As far as Pakistan is
concerned, it has probably forfeited every bit of
credibility to be called a responsible
nuclear-weapons state committed to
non-proliferation. After the confessions of Abdul
Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear
program, to proliferation, nobody in US Congress
would be willing to accord Pakistan the same
privileges expected to be granted to India.
Moreover, there is a general fear in Washington
that nuclear weapons in Pakistan could fall into
the hands of Islamic radicals, and as such the
nuclear program of Pakistan should be dismantled
rather than given support to be built up even
further.
On their own, both Israel and
Pakistan have a problem of acceptability in the
international community as nuclear-weapons states.
However, were they to launch a joint bid, they
could succeed in getting approval in the US for an
accord similar to the one signed with India. The
reasoning is that Israel could provide the muscle
of the Jewish lobby in Washington, and Pakistan
could provide the cover for Israel and US against
the notion that double standards are again at
work, Pakistan being a Muslim country. President
General Pervez Musharraf's sudden enthusiasm to
address the Council for World Jewry this month in
the US is understandable.
This new
arrangement, in some ways, would also be enticing
to the US and the international community at
large. It would allow India, Pakistan and Israel
to be brought into the nuclear non-proliferation
architecture of a revised NPT. These countries may
be needed to be given the status of nuclear-haves,
but that would just be acknowledging reality. As
for Iran and North Korea, screws would be
tightened on them because as NPT signatories they
have forfeited the right to nuclear weapons. That
way a revised non-proliferation regime could be
established, with eight nuclear haves and the rest
as nuclear have-nots, which in its new incarnation
would be universal, just as the NPT was supposed
to be, possibly with still tighter controls.
This would hardly sit well with the Arabs,
that Israel is accorded a nuclear-have status, and
the nuclear asymmetry between Israel and them is
hard-coded in perpetuity. Nor would Iran be very
happy, that it has been checkmated on the one hand
by an Israeli nuclear arsenal and on the other
hand by a Sunni one, and it can't have one of its
own. India would certainly not like the idea, that
it has won a nuclear agreement by being a model
citizen, while Pakistan is accorded the same
rights, even though it has been the biggest
proliferator in town.
The handshake
between Kasuri and Shalom had little to do with
furthering the cause of Mideast peace. The next
day Palestinian Authority officials were already
denying any go-ahead they allegedly gave to
Pakistan. Palestine does not need Pakistan cosying
up to Israel to achieve peace. For that there are
enough mediators on the international circuit.
Musharraf has, for the sake of nuclear parity with
India, sold out both the Palestinian cause, as
well as Arab security needs for any eventual
nuclear symmetry with Israel. But then his policy
u-turns are the stuff of which legends are made.
Rajesh Arya is a keen watcher of
the international political scene.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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