‘Testing’ Time for a ‘Civil’ Nuclear Deal: Reflections ahead of the NSG meet
August 20, 2008
By P.K. Sundaram, Guest Contributor. August 20, 2008. Open for comments.
India’s desperate diplomacy prior to the NSG meet on August 21-22, 2008 reveals the not-so-hidden truth about the deal – at a time when there is a need for renewed focus on disarmament, India rehabilitates nuclear energy corporates in order to circumvent nonproliferation regime and secure its right to conduct nuclear tests. And it finds supports from the Bush nuclear strategy bent on reducing nonproliferation into counterproliferation.
Before the Nuclear Supplier Group meeting in Vienna on August 21-22, New Delhi is engaged in massive diplomatic campaign. Senior diplomats have been rushing to the NSG member countries to ensure their support, in particular the ‘tough’ countries like Switzerland, New Zealand, along with Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands are being lobbied desperately. Even the recent crisis in Georgia is hoped to provide some desperately needed detraction. Evidently, India will ensure that no stone remains unturned.
The remarkable point however is, even more than ensuring its access to high-end technologies and the right to nuclear reprocessing in the ‘civil’ cooperation, India is busy convincing the NSG countries and the larger world that its responsible track record on proliferation and no first use policy should be held enough to grant it a waiver and India should not be asked for a legally-binding no-test pledge, through existing treaties or otherwise. Indian negotiators have made it clear strongly that the question of anything resembling a test ban falls beyond the outer limit of its flexibility.[1]
Testing the Deal
This diehard opposition to any curbs on future testing helps in comprehending the real implications of the supposedly innocuous energy deal. By allowing huge investments in the Indian nuclear energy sector, this deal will provide India the necessary elbow space in case of eventual sanctions against future nuclear tests. The rehabilitation of the American, Russian and European nuclear vendors through India’s planned 40,000 MW of nuclear energy production and its subsidiary sectors would provide India a much desired cushion and would effectively diversify its nuclear foreign policy. And the signs of it are not far away; clearance at the NSG level would definitely mean increased corporate pressure upon the US congress to clear the deal soon in the fear of companies from other countries benefiting from the US-driven exemption.
By stressing that the NSG waiver must be ‘clean’ (meaning NSG should leave the essential conditionalities to be addressed in the bilateral nuclear commerce agreements), India is actually pre-empting any concerted action on any concern related to the qualitative or quantitative expansion of its nuclear arsenal. And its insistence on an ‘unconditional’ waiver evidently stems from undisguised nuclear ambitions which practically mean protecting its right to producing and testing hydrogen bombs, and of course expanding the ‘minimum’ of its credible deterrence.
The insistence on the test option reveals the true intentions when we see that on the question of reprocessing, India has scaled down from an earlier ‘non-negotiable’ gesture to what is considered as ‘empty theoretical right to reprocess’ by the still differing troika of senior nuclear scientists - A Gopalkrishnan, A N Prasad, P K Iyengar. This group has been consistently arguing that the deal is far from providing India ‘full spectrum’ nuclear cooperation on several important counts - strategic fuel reserves, reprocessing right, corrective measures and a linkage between perpetual safeguards and perpetual fuel supply. It is another matter that this group is not welcomed by the progressive opponents of the deal as the troika only insists for a robust nuclear programme and open testing options overlooking the environmental, economic, and disarmament related aspects of such a development.
Deal for the nuclear legitimacy and ’sovereignty’
This fierce resistance to test-ban should not be very surprising. Indian state’s nuclear diplomacy has been one of the most consistent and successful elements in its overall foreign policy since the very initial days. It has made the most ‘creative’ use of even the worst of circumstances in its history to keep its nuclear options open, and has resorted to all kinds of maneuverings – from high-pitched ‘principled’ opposition to the NPT and CTBT, to utilizing the strategic leverage in the bipolar world to siding with the lone superpower in the post-cold war days.
And this time, India is hoping to manage the tide through a set of policies aimed at outmaneuvering the minimum resemblance of nuclear restraint in our times and the consensus around it. India has come a long way after the shameful and failed tricking effort in Vajpayee’s letter to the US president citing Chinese threat for the Pokhran tests. In the new emerging nuclear order, it can foresee that the ‘nonproliferation apartheid’ along which its nuclear policy revolved matters very little to the US. The US itself is now bent on circumventing the nonproliferation regime to maintain its geostrategic hegemony. At a time when US is busy devising pre-emption strategies and extra regime coercions for Iran, and unfettered right to (selective) interdictions and inspections in form of unilateral moves like the Proliferation Security Initiatives (PSI), Container Security Initiative (CSI) and other UN Security Council driven counterproliferation measures, India is trying to silently slip away from the corner from which it used to protest the limitations of NPT and call for universal disarmament.
Eventually, India has changed its tune to nonproliferation which in content means nothing more than joining the US counterproliferation bandwagon in exchange for legitimizing its own nuclear status and ensuring unhindered testing option. Ever since the prolonged Jaswant Singh-Talbot meetings, India has been using its nonproliferation records as diplomatic credit card. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and all prominent negotiators have been vouching publicly for India’s ‘impeccable’ nonproliferation commitments. At the inauguration of the recent International Conference “Towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons” in New Delhi on the 20th anniversary of the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for Disarmament, Manmohan Singh had little to say anything concrete on disarmament other than his new-found wisdom about the risk of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands.[2] Obviously the United States would be more than willing to support India in this pursuit of extending ‘war on terror’ in the nuclear domain, something that would provide it with fluid targets that it desperately needs. So, the US has not only commended India’s ‘responsible’ nuclear weapons, but has also tried to sell this deal to American people and the international community as a move strengthening the nonproliferation regime.
Resisting the disaster
However, this farce has not lost on the hundreds of peace activists and experts, of around 150 NGOs from 24 countries, who have argued in their August 15 letter to the foreign ministers of the NSG countries that the current waiver to India means an undermining of nonproliferation principles. According to the letter, “It creates a dangerous distinction between ‘good’ proliferators and ‘bad’ proliferators and sends out misleading signals to the international community with regard to NPT norms”. The nonproliferation concerns have been also voiced by Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala and Daryl G. Kimball in their commentary - “the Indian nuclear deal would be a nonproliferation disaster, especially now. The NPT is in jeopardy and diplomatic efforts to address the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran are at a delicate stage. For those world leaders who are serious about ending the arms race, holding all states to their international commitments, and strengthening the NPT, it is time to stand up and be counted.”[3]
Unfortunately, this craving for an unfettered option enjoys a total consensus in domestic politics and debates. The left political parties in parliament have always overlooked this aspect of the deal and have failed in their claim to raise a mass movement against the deal after their fiasco in the trust vote. Rather, India’s right to test is believed to be its hallmark of its principled position in a world of nuclear apartheid, and one expects that if the NSG manages somehow to put some no-test clause in its clearance, the left would only join crying hoarse with others over the lost nuclear sovereignty rather than taking any principled position. Even in the media, there is a clear unanimity about this. In the most liberal media house The Hindu, its star columnist Siddharth Varadrajan cites his opposition to the 1998 Pokhran tests to claim his credibility only to argue that India will not do further tests as it no longer needs them strategically.[4] Then why to shy away from a formal pledge? The myopic strategic concerns have led the entire flock of global security experts to have us believe that nuclear bombs will not be used ever again.
But it will be foolhardy to take it as a mere naiveté or a false hope; it is patently complacent, pushing us towards a dangerous future!
[1] “No more flexibility left in India’s position” The Hindu August 15, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/15/stories/2008081559201200.htm
[2]”N-terrorist a realistic threat, says PM” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/N-terrorist_a_realistic_threat_says_PM/articleshow/3115430.cms
[3] “A Nonproliferation Disaster” http://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2008/20080710_Nonproliferation_Disaster
[4] See Varadrajan’s detailed comment on Jeffry Lewis’ Post “India NSG Exemption in Danger?” http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1997/india-nsg-exemption-in-danger
August 28th, 2008 at 7:45 am
This article sounds quite anti-Indian and anti-patriotic. Sitting in the secure comfort zones of Indian democracy one can write such an article. Truly democracy is amazing. There will be always bunch of NGOs who will always shout against any step the government takes. I don’t see anything wrong to keep the option of Nuclear testing open since India is a fledgling Nuclear state and it might need to conduct some research/testing. It needs to keep its nuclear arsenal to a minimal deterrent level to neutralize the Chinese threat. I guess this sort of articles miss the broader picture of national security. Surely this will help the propaganda of organizations and foreign nations which does not want India to grow as a Nation.
Thanks,
-Sourav
September 9th, 2008 at 5:22 am
We cannot theorise except in the cool comfort provided by our Air Conditioners. And the AC runs on electric power. The list of amenities essential for intellectualising is endless.
Why do we still depend on petro for locomotion, and on nuclear for power? The companies that make money out of it all are that powerful; that’s why.
We might turn back to nature only when natural resources like wind and the Sun can also be ’sold’ solely by corporates.