Bush
starts to get it right
on India's nuclear status
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
July 27, 2005
LONDON - The critics of President
George W.Bush's new nuclear deal with India have got it
back to front. They appear to have no understanding of
the history of U.S.-Indian nuclear relations. They draw
their pessimistic and sanctimonious conclusions about how
this new policy of relaxing the supply of advanced
nuclear materials to India will further undermine the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as if no water had ever
flowed under the bridge. Let's go back to the head of
that river.
The first mistake in dealing with
India was for President Richard Nixon to make it
unambiguously clear in the early days of his
opening-to-China policy that a major reason for taking
China seriously was China's possession of the bomb. The
second mistake was the famous Nixon-Kissinger "tilt"
towards Pakistan during the India-Pakistan war of 1971.
It was at that time that the Indian prime minister,
Indira Gandhi, gave the go ahead to India's scientists to
develop a nuclear device. The third mistake was to say
nothing, yes nothing, when India exploded its first
nuclear device in 1974. In the West only the UK and
Canada made a public criticism.
Then under the earnest, but
simplistic, non-proliferation, diplomacy of President
Jimmy Carter, a once in a lifetime opportunity to
neutralise India's still fledgling pro bomb policy was
missed. The issue was whether, in the light of India's
ongoing secret nuclear research, the U.S. should continue
to supply enriched uranium to India's reactor in Tarapur.
Washington announced it would not do so any longer,
unless India signed a safeguard agreement on the use of
spent fuel.
But at the same time, in a sharp
contradiction, Washington was refusing to criticise
France even though Paris was attempting to sell nuclear
reactors to China, which was then not only a
non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was
a fully armed nuclear weapons power as well.
What should the U.S. have done?
Carter was negotiating with the most pacific prime
minister India has ever had, Morarji Desai, a convinced
Gandhian. Carter should have made his first approach to
India before the restrictively worded 1987
Non-Proliferation Act landed on his desk. He should have
told Desai that the U.S. understood, given previous
American attitudes, why it was an Indian point of
principle not to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. (Because it was both discriminatory and
hypocritical, with its unfulfilled pledge for the already
nuclear armed powers to reduce their stockpiles in return
for the have-nots not entering the nuclear arms
business.)
Carter should have also made it
clear that the question of supplies of enriched uranium
to Tarapur was not an issue since the Indian government,
at that moment, had no intention of building nuclear
weapons. (Ironically, 25 years later, U.S. and EU policy
towards Iran is to offer it enriched uranium if it
forswears the nuclear bomb option.)
If this approach had been coupled
with more rapid U.S. progress on strategic nuclear arms
reductions with the Soviet Union and adherence to the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Desai might have been
swung over. He would have had the political muscle to do
what he really wanted to do - which was to override New
Delhi's nuclear lobby once and for all.
Desai then might not only have
committed his country to a policy of international
inspection but he may well have been prepared to make a
formal promise to forgo nuclear weapons. (Although later,
as an extra incentive, the U.S. would also have had to
forgo its post-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan policy of
turning a blind eye to Pakistan's nuclear bomb
research.)
But Carter, unable to make the
intellectual leap and also feeling his hands were tied by
a hard line Congress, persisted with the policy of
sanctioning India's nuclear industry. The blunderbuss
triumphed over a more sophisticated diplomacy.
Unsurprisingly, not only did a proud India go its own way
into nuclear self-sufficiency, it was finally to end up
in the hands of the nuclear hawks of the right wing
Hindu-nationalist government which decided in 1998 to
unveil India's nuclear bomb.
India was lost on the issue seven
years ago. Bush is merely recognizing the obvious, which
his predecessor had refused to do. The new policy has all
the advantages of jettisoning hypocrisy. The next step
which logically should grow from it would be to revise
the Non-Proliferation Treaty to make India formally one
of the established nuclear powers, and thus gain India's
membership of the Treaty. Then India's immense diplomatic
energies could be harnessed to the battle of ensuring
that other countries are not pushed towards the bomb by
the double standards of the nuclear-haves.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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