[Mb-civic] An article for you from Michael Butler.

Sun Mar 12 14:03:23 PST 2006

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NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL
Mar 9th 2006  

Congress should veto George Bush's nuclear agreement with India

TEN years from now, will George Bush's determination to rewrite nuclear
rules for preventing the bomb's spread be judged to have been
courageously right or dangerously wrong? In striking his deal with
India, allowing it to import nuclear fuel and technology despite its
weapons-building, Mr Bush has not for the first time seemed readier to
favour a friend than to stick to a principle. He is gambling that the
future benefits of accepting a rising India in all but name as a member
of the nuclear club will outweigh the shock to the global
anti-proliferation regime, already under severe strain from the nuclear
dealings of North Korea and Iran. His gamble is a dangerous one.
Meanwhile, in his rush to accommodate India, Mr Bush is missing a
chance to win wider nuclear restraint in one of the world's tougher
neighbourhoods. 

New thinking is needed in the anti-proliferation game. North Korea has
broken every rule of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and
boasts proudly of its bomb. Iran claims to have no use for one, yet
demands the "right" to pursue dangerous nuclear fuel-making
technologies--as others may do in future unless creative solutions are
found to deflect them--that could be abused for weapons-making. This
week America and others were insisting at the International Atomic
Energy Agency that Iran not be allowed to bend the anti-nuclear rules
out of shape to further what are assumed to be its weapons ambitions
(see article[1]). So why does Mr Bush propose doing just that for
already nuclear-armed India?

NOT JUST OLD THINKING
You have to deal with the world as it is, comes the reply. India needs
to import nuclear fuel and technology, hitherto denied it by a
combination of the NPT, the informal rules of the Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG) and by American law, to support its fast-growing energy
needs. And India is not Iran or North Korea. They signed the NPT and
cheated. Like Pakistan and Israel, India never joined the treaty and
its weapons-making breaks no laws. India is also a responsible
democracy; it does not support terrorist groups or threaten to wipe
neighbours off the map, as Iran did recently with Israel. Meanwhile, in
return for America's bending the rules of nuclear trade, India will put
more civilian nuclear reactors under international safeguards, and
stiffen its anti-proliferation resolve.

Leave aside whether nuclear power best serves Indians' needs--that is
India's choice, made knowing the anti-nuclear rules it was up against.
And while India's nukes broke no laws, in practice it got its start in
the weapons business, rather as North Korea and Iran did, by misusing
technologies and materials provided for civilian purposes. Mr Bush is
nonetheless right that no one expects India to give up its weapons now.

 But it is one thing to have as broad and close a friendship with a
nuclear India as the anti-nuclear rules allow. That is already in both
countries' interests. It is quite another to knock aside the rules for
India's sake. To be sure, Mr Bush is not proposing that other nuclear
dabblers be given a welcome if they are persistent enough to
succeed--though that will be the message Iran prefers to hear this
week. Rather, he wants democratic, friendly, law-abiding India to be
treated as an exception by Congress, which must first amend America's
own laws if the deal is to go through, and by others in the NSG.

The problem here is that India could instead prove the exception that
fatally weakens the rules. The devil is both in the deal's troubling
detail, and in its likely knock-on effects. 

India may not have signed the NPT, but America has. In doing so, it
promised not to help other countries with their nuclear-weapons
tinkering. It also pioneered the reinforcing principle that only
countries that have all their nuclear facilities under international
safeguards (India doesn't now and won't in future) should benefit from
trade in civilian nuclear technology. If countries were going to sign
the NPT and renounce nuclear weapons themselves, they needed assurance
that as many others as possible would follow suit. To encourage them,
treaty rights--help in enjoying the benefits of civilian nuclear
power--were withheld from those that shrugged off or ignored its
obligations.

Allowing nuclear trade with India breaks that bargain in a particularly
damaging way. The rules had started to bite: India was running short of
supplies of uranium for both civilian and military purposes. By
allowing it to import nuclear fuel for its civilian reactors, America
will be directly easing the bottlenecks in its weapons programme
(bizarrely, also agreeing to keep up fuel supplies even if India breaks
America's other anti-proliferation laws, as some of its companies have
in the past). Worse, India's experimental fast-breeder reactor
programme, ideally suited to produce plutonium for warheads though
previously claimed to be for civilian purposes, is to be exempted from
all safeguards. That will allow India in future to produce scores of
weapons a year, not just a handful. 

 Then add insult to injury. Not only is nuclear-armed India being
offered all of the civilian benefits available to countries that have
accepted the NPT's anti-nuclear restrictions. It has also accepted few,
if any, of the real obligations of the five official nuclear powers
recognised by the treaty, America, Russia, China, Britain and France.
All at least signed the treaty banning all nuclear tests; India
declined. All have ended the production of plutonium and highly
enriched uranium for weapons purposes (only China has yet to say so
publicly); India flatly refused America's request to do likewise. 

A CASCADE OF PROBLEMS
Rule-bending for India is bound to encourage some other countries to
rethink their nuclear options too. But less damage might have been done
if the non-proliferation gains had been real ones. In particular, India
should have been pressed to stop making fissile material as a condition
of any bargain. Pakistan, already signalling interest, could have
joined such a moratorium. With China--India's preferred measure of its
nuclear prowess--having stopped producing the stuff too, there was a
good opportunity to try to spin a wider web of restraint.

 Both South Asia and East Asia urgently need to explore such ambitious
confidence-building measures to take the sting out of dangerous
regional rivalries. This one could have acted as a catalyst in the
Middle East too. Israel in the past has had a stronger claim than most
for its deterrent, surrounded for much of its short history by large
neighbours aiming to drive it in to the sea. Yet its nuclear edge is
fast eroding. With an American nudge, shutting down its Dimona reactor
(it no longer needs its plutonium) could spark new thinking about a
weapons-of-mass-destruction-free Middle East that could someday help
finesse the Iran problem too. 

Instead of a virtuous anti-nuclear cycle, there is now more likely to
be a vicious nuclear one. China can be expected to insist on doing for
proliferation-prone Pakistan what America wants to do for India, adding
to a regional arms race that has led to a cascade of proliferation in
the past. Giving India a freer ride is also likely to embolden Iran and
North Korea in their defiance, with potential repercussions for the
security of all their neighbours, from Saudi Arabia and Egypt to Japan,
South Korea and Taiwan. 

No one doubts that the world's richest democracy and its largest one
have lots to offer each other as friends and partners. But assisting
India's nuclear weapons ambitions ought not to be in Mr Bush's gift.
When Congress is asked to change America's anti-proliferation laws, it
should say no. 

-----
[1] http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_ID=5605667

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5603449

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