ATLANTA, March 8 (UPI) -- The recent visit of President George W. Bush to South Asia heralds a watershed in India-U.S. relations. The highlight of the visit was the agreement on India's nuclear separation by the U.S. This sets the stage for the Bush administration to work with Congress to change U.S. laws to facilitate civilian nuclear commerce with India. The U.S. is also committed, under the July 18, 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, to work with the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel to carve out an India specific exception.
The hype surrounding the nuclear aspect should not cloud the fact that the Indo-US agreement is only peripherally about accommodating India's atomic program. Why?
The current global nuclear order is basically a reflection of the world power structure when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came into effect in 1970. The five "recognized" nuclear powers under the NPT basically negotiated a farcically light set of responsibilities for themselves while subjecting the rest of the states to a life of permanent servitude. Bill Epstein, a United Nations arms control official noted that one of the American negotiators of the NPT privately conceded that the treaty was "one of the greatest con games of modern times."
The 1960s, when the NPT was being negotiated by the big powers, was a bad decade for India. The nation saw a disastrous war with China in 1962 followed by an inconclusive tussle with Pakistan in 1965. Two of its statesmen, Prime Ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri died in quick succession. The psyche of the country was in tatters following a near-famine and food shortages that affected even its upper classes. To top it all, the father of its nuclear program Dr. Homi Bhabha -- a man who interacted as an equal with the likes of Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr -- died in a horrific airplane crash in 1966. India was thus in no position to react to the NPT's formation.
Shut out of the nuclear club, Indian leaders were determined not to be part of a discriminatory system. India knew that behind the egalitarian slogans of the NPT lay a structure that was kept up by the big powers through machtpolitik and deal-cutting. Countries like Canada, Japan, and Germany negotiated the provision of a NATO nuclear weapon umbrella as an unstated condition for their joining the NPT as Non-Nuclear Weapon States. In fact, even today the U.S. has some 450 nuclear warheads in the territory of European NNWS. Those nations that pontificated about the strategic irrelevance of nuclear weapons apparently could not do without them as long as they could outsource warhead deployment. India, however, never had the luxury of a nuclear umbrella and had to fend for itself.
Once India regained its breath, it tried to knock at the nuclear club's doors by conducting a "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion" in 1974. However, Nixon administration's obsession with wooing China and the desire to thwart new power centers led to a fierce backlash against New Delhi. The US led efforts create the NSG and formulate nuclear laws to punish India and deter threats to the NPT order. Meanwhile, China was busy transferring soup-to-nuts atomic weapon technology to Pakistan.
In the 1980s, India continued its weapons program refusing to be cowed down by its international isolation. Frequent reports of large scale Chinese help to Pakistan only speeded up the process. America for its part tried to pretend everything was normal in order to preserve Pakistan as the base for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. However, as Gary Milhollin, an expert on nuclear proliferation once noted, "If you subtract Chinese assistance from the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, there is no program."
With The end of the Cold War, the 1990s became the era of American internationalists. Under the two Bill Clinton administrations, America launched a massive effort to bring China "into the nuclear mainstream." China however, figured out that its commercial clout gave it impunity from proliferation transgressions and began a cynical cycle of "proliferate-deny-get concessions" game. India, which was seeing the first fruits of economic liberalization, watched with horror as Chinese proliferation to Pakistan rose to alarming proportions with Beijing gifting entire ballistic missile factories and warhead technologies to Pakistan and getting away with slaps on the wrist. To India, these were signs that the U.S. was willing to overlook even the worst proliferation acts for important countries. In 1998, a more self-confident India decided to blast its way out of the NPT shackles by conducting tests and removing any ambiguities about its weapon state status.
Post 1998, India stuck to its principled position even as it tried to negotiate a nuclear modus vivendi with two successive U.S. administrations. Meanwhile the NPT began floundering due to its internal contradictions. The 2005 NPT review conference collapsed, vindicating India's position that the treaty had fundamental flaws. Weeks later, in July 2005, India got its due when the Bush administration decided to change 30 years of U.S. policy and accommodate India as a nuclear weapon state.
Lest anyone should think that the Indian entry into the nuclear club was because of its weapons program, one must note that India's nuclear energy program was possibly one of the biggest drivers for the U.S. India, all by itself, had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and the ability to reprocess spent fuel. Indian scientists have perfected the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) technology The New Scientist magazine recently did a feature piece saying that India is possibly the world leader in fast breeder reactor (FBR) technology. Cooperation with India might just be the spark to resuscitate the moribund American nuclear power industry at a time when Americans are evaluating the true costs of their oil dependence.
All said this epoch-making deal is likely to have wide ranging ramifications. China is likely to show its displeasure by supplying new delivery systems such as submarine launched missiles for Pakistan to "test." Pakistan may seek to demonstrate its relevance to India in the form of an attack on India's population or technology centers by jihadist proxies. Knee-jerk reactions, however, will eventually give way to a realization of Asia's new strategic alignment. China will likely moderate its nuclear profligacy when it turns around and sees India on the same nuclear table. Pakistan will be told by other nations that there is a price to pay for treating nukes as objects of commerce.
The American-led nuclear engagement of India is not an act of geopolitical munificence nor is it a reckless abandonment of ideals. It is quite simply about the arrival of a new power on the world stage. It is also about the far sightedness of the leader of the world's only remaining superpower in seeking to accommodate the rising power in a manner beneficial to the superpower's interests.
George W. Bush may perhaps be remembered in history for his efforts to initiate reform in the Islamic world. More perceptive historians however may celebrate him for his courage to cut the Gordian nuclear knot that shackled India-U.S. ties for over four decades. This brave gambit by Bush basically enables unfettered cooperation between America and India, two nations with a large intersection of strategic interests such as counterterrorism, democracy and the need for a multipolar Asia.
Congress, decidedly peeved at the manner in which the deal was concluded, may try to slow things down or even consider rejecting the it altogether. However, based on history, pragmatism is likely to prevail. After all, few lawmakers would want to jeopardize American relations with the world power of 2070 just to preserve an unequal status quo of 1970.
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K(aushik Kapisthalam is a freelance commentator on South Asia issues. He can be reached at [email protected].)
