US deal with India draws more
fire By William Hawkins
WASHINGTON - On Monday, just two days
before India celebrated 60 years of independence,
its Parliament was disrupted as some members tried
to shout down Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He
was defending the nuclear-technology deal he
negotiated with the United States against critics,
some within his own coalition, who claim the deal
will give the US too much leverage over Indian
policy.
Under the deal, India gets access
to civilian nuclear technology
and
fuel, without having to give up its
nuclear-weapons program. It is even allowed to
reprocess spent nuclear fuel, though under the
safeguards of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA). India has also pledged not to pass
on any US technology or materials to third
parties.
The US will back India joining
the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and even support
the creation of an "Indian strategic fuel
reserve", something New Delhi wanted to guard
against any supply cutoff due to future
nuclear-weapons development. "The agreement does
not in any way affect India's right to undertake
future nuclear tests, if it is necessary in
India's national interest," Manmohan told
Parliament.
In the US, critics have tried
to block the deal because it ends decades of
restrictions that Washington has imposed on India
because New Delhi has not signed the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nor opened all of
its nuclear facilities to the IAEA. Former
president Jimmy Carter jumped into the fray with a
Washington Post op-ed on March 28, 2006,
complaining, "During the past five years, the
United States has abandoned many of the
nuclear-arms-control agreements negotiated since
the administration of Dwight Eisenhower ... The
proposed nuclear deal with India is just one more
step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear
proliferation."
However, Ashton Carter, an
assistant secretary of defense in the Bill Clinton
administration and now a professor at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government, defended the deal in
the July/August Foreign Affairs, writing:
Washington gave something away on
the nuclear front in order to gain much more on
other fronts; it hoped to win the support and
cooperation of India - a strategically located
democratic country of growing economic
importance - to help the United States confront
the challenges that a threatening Iran, a
turbulent Pakistan, and an unpredictable China
may pose in the future. Washington's decision to
trade a nuclear-recognition quid for a
strategic-partnership quo was a
reasonable move.
Though originally
signed by Manmohan and President George W Bush
during the latter's visit to India in early March
2006, the details were not finalized until last
month. The US Congress will have to approve the
final terms, which will give critics another run
at it.
Democratic Congressman Edward
Markey, co-chairman of the Bipartisan Task Force
on Non-proliferation and a longtime opponent of
all forms of nuclear power, led 23 members of the
House of Representatives in sending a letter to
Bush on July 25. The Congress members questioned
whether the new terms go beyond what is allowed
under current law, which, according to the letter,
"states that nuclear cooperation shall be
terminated, and the US would have the right to
demand the return of all material, equipment, and
technology, if India again tests a nuclear
explosive".
On the task-force website,
more space is devoted to denouncing India than to
opposing the nuclear programs of North Korea or
Iran, which are far more dangerous to US security.
Indeed, helping India build up its economic and
military strength is an asset to US foreign policy
in both Asia and the Middle East. Washington and
New Delhi face many of the same threats from
radical Islam and communist China.
India
already has a small nuclear arsenal and an
expanding atomic-energy program. India's nuclear
test was in 1974, prompted by China's deployment
of nuclear arms. India then renounced nuclear
weapons, and as late as 1988 was calling for their
global elimination. But the rapid rise of China,
and the increased militancy of Beijing's ally
Pakistan in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan
and Kashmir, heightened tensions. India and
Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, bringing
US sanctions against both. The sanctions on New
Delhi were lifted in 2001, as Bush gave priority
to improving US-India relations.
India was
quick to show its willingness to cooperate. When
the Bush administration pulled out of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, India's
reaction was to endorse part of the US
missile-defense initiative. India has a similar
concern about the spread of ballistic missiles in
its part of the world, a region whose unstable
regimes may not be contained by a posture of
deterrence only. Cooperation has continued to
increase. The largest joint US-India naval
exercises ever conducted are set for September 4-9
in the Bay of Bengal, involving two US and one
Indian aircraft carriers. Warships from Japan,
Singapore and Australia will also participate as a
demonstration of the "arc of democracy" along the
rim of Asia.
The nuclear agreement with
India does have non-proliferation elements. India
will place all future civilian nuclear reactors,
and 14 of its current 22 reactors, under IAEA
control and inspection. The agreement only covers
peaceful, civilian cooperation, but knowledge
cannot be isolated. This is the legitimate concern
about Iran's nuclear program. So it must be
accepted that India's nuclear capabilities will be
advanced across the board. But India is not Iran,
and blanket objections to any deal that might
contribute to New Delhi's military development
overlooks the fact that the US has long treated
countries differently based on strategic
calculations.
The US directly helped
Britain's nuclear-weapons program during the Cold
War. France developed an independent nuclear
deterrent, and while this was often disquieting to
American leaders, it was not considered a threat
like the weapons deployed by Russia or China.
Israel is believed to have nuclear arms, but
Washington has rightly refused to consider this as
the moral equivalent of an Iranian bomb. Treating
friends and rivals differently is the essence of
foreign policy.
China understands the
significance of the US-India deal and has been
lobbying against it at the United Nations and
within the NSG. It wants India barred from the
group, and to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear state,
meaning it would have to disarm. Beijing, of
course, has no intention of curbing its growing
nuclear arsenal. It has an advantage and wants to
keep it. But it is not in the interests of the
United States to see democratic India kept in an
inferior position to the Chinese dictatorship.
A majority in Congress should understand
the larger strategic meaning of closer US ties to
India and renew the strong positive vote it gave
the preliminary agreement last year.
William Hawkins is senior fellow
for national-security studies at the US Business
and Industry Council in Washington, DC.
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