The burden of partnership

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN

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THREE days after touching down, US President George Bush left Indian shores, leaving in his wake an aura of general contentment. From deep within his security envelope, Bush had little opportunity to see the seething rage on the Indian street. The constituencies he addressed – the middle and upper strata – were anxious to secure a US stamp of approval. And for the Indian nuclear establishment, which had squabbled bitterly with foreign policy counterparts just prior to the visit, the agreements forged on the occasion marked the beginning of a new concord, as much among themselves as between India and the US.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had initially resisted the deal that involved a segregation of military and civilian nuclear facilities. For foreign policy ideologues though, autonomy in nuclear affairs was not too high a sacrifice to make for gaining US benediction in global councils.

If the deal that was finally agreed on day two of the Bush visit succeeded in calming these quarrels and anxieties, its international repercussions were something else. Stopping in Pakistan on his way back – though not with the same cavalier inattention to local sensibilities that his predecessor showed in 2000 – Bush rebuffed any possibility that Pakistan could claim a status akin to that granted India. Two weeks later, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri warned darkly that the whole Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would ‘unravel’ since it was ‘only a matter of time before other countries [began] to act the same way.’ Since ministers in Pakistan invariably direct their most pointed barbs at India, it may seem axiomatic that Kasuri was referring to the negative example that India had set in terms of non-proliferation norms. On closer reading, his statement would seem to bear equal reference to both the US as the patron of this break-out from the NPT, and to India as the client.

Pakistan may not have very much latitude to deliver on this threat. Yet, it is striking that India’s new bonding with the US has evoked deep suspicion in circles not known to be traditional bastions of hostility. The Guardian in London, for one, commented editorially, that the nuclear agreement between India and the US was ‘about breaking rules and expecting others to abide by them.’ More picturesquely put, it was about ‘preaching temperance from the barstool.’ Indians may well delight in the bargain they had driven, said the newspaper, but there were likely to be some ‘thoughtful smiles’ in Iran and North Korea as the ‘wider implications’ sank in.

 

In advance of the Bush visit, The New York Times observed that despite all the accompanying froth, the presidential passage to India was ‘built around a bad nuclear deal’. With the deal consummated, the newspaper commented rather acidly, that Bush was turning out to be Iran’s best friend. His adventure in Iraq, launched on flimsy and fabricated evidence, had only transformed that country into a satellite of the Islamic Republic next door. And his deal with India sent ‘exactly the wrong message’ when Washington was scheduled to ‘refer Iran’s case to the United Nations Security Council for further action.’ Iran’s hopes of thwarting a global consensus on its nuclear programme rested on ‘convincing the rest of the world that the West [was] guilty of a double standard on nuclear issues,’ commented The New York Times. And in this respect, Bush ‘might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran.’

 

When viewed through a clear prism rather than the distorting lens of nuclear nationalism, these comments suggest that the world is all too acutely aware of the deep effrontery underlying the Indian nuclear deal. This notion that the world will do as it says, rather than as it does, though nothing new for the US, is certainly so for India. Consistency in standards of international conduct is a virtue valued by the weak, who seek security through agreed norms. The powerful have no use for rules, as anybody who has witnessed the US attitude of indulgence and abetment towards Israel’s exploits in West Asia would know. But the strong nevertheless are in need of justifying their double standards. Just as Israel’s unending atrocities on the Palestinians are justified by its divinely ordained title to the land and by the redress owed world Jewry for the suffering inflicted by the Nazi Holocaust, India’s great escape from the prison of the NPT stands in need of a rationalisation.

An authoritative if not exhaustive justification, which fortunately, does not venture into the theological realm, is provided by Ashley Tellis, an Indian born US national who has been on the inside track of policy in Washington DC, and now serves on the staff of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.1

Tellis derives his first rationale from a principle of neoclassical economics, which holds that a public good can be secured only at a price. In a situation of collective action, the fulfilment of this object may be impeded by the conflicting agendas that motivate diverse agents. Absent the capacity to quash recalcitrant elements, this would require a special subvention being made to those who have the least incentive in obtaining the public good. India in this reckoning is deserving of a special concession. The other two holdouts in the context of the NPT – Israel and Pakistan – both merit special consideration in US aid flows. India is an exception within the ‘three-nation problem’ that confronts the NPT, gaining neither from access to nuclear fuel and technology, nor enjoying any exceptional aid benefit.

 

This argument might have been halfway convincing if it did not conflict quite so flagrantly with the US agenda on Iran. Successive inspections by the IAEA have found that NPT transgressions by Iran, if any, are borderline in nature. Since the agency was granted access to suspect sites in early 2003, it has found little material evidence of a nuclear weapons programme. The quantum of uranium processed is nowhere near the requirement for a nuclear weapon, and the level of uranium enrichment achieved falls far short. To make the arduous transition from the 1.7% enrichment achieved to the 95% required for one – merely one – nuclear bomb, would take Iran many years, even up to a decade.

Several rounds of inspection have been conducted by the IAEA and despite serious resentments about intrusions into sovereign sites, cooperation from Iran has not been lacking. But this has not prevented the IAEA from demanding, first in September last year and then again in February 2006, that Iran should go beyond the formal stipulations of the NPT, and adopt ‘transparency and confidence-building measures’ that may be demanded at the discretion of the West.

Essentially, India is granted a special dispensation to join the global nuclear imperium, while Iran is required to submit to greater rigours than even the NPT dictates. This particular anomaly needs an explanation that goes beyond neoclassical economics. And to his credit, Tellis does make the effort, arguing for one that by allowing India to join the regime as a state with a recognised right to bear nuclear arms, the US would be giving it an incentive to ‘scrupulously control its national capabilities.’ This in turn would ‘choke off’ the only real security threat emanating from India.

 

This assessment, which flatters India’s capacities and misrepresents its intentions, needs to be treated with some scepticism. In Tellis’ analysis though, it is only a brief preamble before the crux of the issue is approached. To bring India on board would be consistent, he argues, with the Bush administration’s ‘new policy of advancing India’s economic transformation and growth in national power.’ Within this paradigm, attention needs to be focused on how India’s ‘military resources could be used collaboratively [with the US] to advance the national interests of both countries.’

If there has ever been an instance in the annals of geopolitics of one country seeking as a matter of declared policy to enhance the power of another, it would be interesting to define the correspondences and divergences with the situation that the US has today adopted in relation to India. In Tellis’ narration, the transition came in early 2005 when the US decided, after months of secret confabulations, to clear the sale of an advanced fighter aircraft to Pakistan. The expected indignation from India was met with the assurance that the ‘hyphenated relationship’ was at an end. No longer would the US assess each policy decision towards one of the adversarial neighbours in terms of the other’s perceptions. The new game would recognise India’s pre-eminence in the region, and beyond this, the US would take upon itself the mission of helping India achieve the status of a major world power in the 21st century.

Tellis argues that this would involve multiple benefits for the US, ensuring among other things, that India’s ‘nuclear weaponry and associated delivery systems would deter against the growing and utterly more capable nuclear forces Beijing is likely to possess by 2025.’ And beyond the necessity of setting up a pivot around which the containment of China could be effected, India would also lend a semblance of stability in a volatile neighbourhood. ‘The problems of regional order,’ Tellis argues, ‘are unified by an overarching theme: the need to cope with state failure in almost every political entity on India’s periphery.’

 

Taking a broader view, Tellis concedes that the special exceptions made for India could excite the jealousy of other countries. And in putting down these expectations, the US needed to adopt a ‘proliferation of counter proliferation strategies,’ with each country meriting differential treatment, depending upon its ‘friendship toward and value to the US.’

An India that is just a little excited in its self-awareness as an emerging power may well be seduced by the robust amorality of these prescriptions. But there is a price to be paid for seeking special privileges within the new global architecture, as another recent offering from the Carnegie Endowment, by Perkovich and his associates, makes clear.2

Perkovich et al (referred to hereafter by the lead author’s name alone), expect in gross disregard of reality that the US could credibly lead the new global consensus by bringing into effect the commitment to disarmament that is enjoined on it by the NPT. They deserve the benefit of doubt, if only because their book was written before the NPT Review Conference of 2005 which ended in disastrous failure, primarily because the US refused to countenance a final declaration that reaffirmed the ‘13 practical steps’ towards universal disarmament that had been agreed five years prior. Those commitments, which had been entered into by the Clinton administration, were deemed just too much of a sacrifice by the cabal of hyper-nationalists surrounding Bush.

 

The 2005 Review Conference effectively put the faltering momentum of global disarmament in reverse gear. Perkovich could perhaps have hoped for a better outcome when he suggested that the US should, following that event, ‘orchestrate a summit’ involving all the recognised nuclear weapons states, to ‘clarify the commitments they [would] make to advance universal compliance with nuclear non-proliferation norms.’ Elsewhere, he acknowledges that the word ‘compliance’ suggests an asymmetric distribution of rights and responsibilities, leaving far too much coercive power in the hands of a few and enjoining meek obedience upon the many. Though grounded in the global architecture of power today, this attitude he argues, need not be either ‘ignored or indulged’.

Curiously, Perkovich then proceeds to do just that: ignore the sensitivities involved in compelling obedience to a US scheme. He also ignores a sustained track record of contrary behaviour by the US, which has seriously vitiated the climate for nuclear disarmament. The ‘13 practical steps’ – in themselves a concession made by the nuclear weapons states to the growing impatience of the world community at the tardy progress of disarmament – included the principle of ‘irreversibility’ in arms reductions, and required that the US and Russia, as the principal offenders in the nuclear realm, should preserve the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and hasten the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). All these requirements had been seriously mauled well before the 2005 Review Conference.

 

To take just the principle of irreversibility, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) framework, allowed for a verifiable cutback in deployments of missiles by the two powers, though it was silent on the larger question of eliminating nuclear warheads. Following a prolonged war of attrition by the right wing of the Republican party in the US, Bush transformed this process – uncertain on one dimension – into a doubly uncertain one, with cuts in both delivery systems and warheads being potentially reversible. He has also at the same time, repudiated the ABM Treaty, and shown little inclination to retrieve the CTBT from legislative limbo.

All this makes for a rather flimsy moral platform from which to launch an ambitious agenda of ‘universal compliance,’ more so since Perkovich’s blueprint involves an intrusive system of inspections, interdictions and interventions, organised and spearheaded by the US. This agenda will involve cutting off access to the nuclear fuel cycle, rigorously inventorying all existing fissile material, diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security strategies, and obtaining sanctions for tough action against violators.

 

With all this, Perkovich disfavours any disarmament initiative on the part of the US, arguing that the US nuclear deterrent is an essential safeguard during the transition to a regime of ‘universal compliance’. He mildly criticises the current thinking in US national security circles, which tilts towards using tactical nuclear weapons to ‘take out’ enemy assets. His reservations on this score are derived not from ethical concerns, but from potential fallibilities of intelligence, as seen in the missile strike against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, and more catastrophically, in the invasion of Iraq.

Perkovich misses the point, so obvious from a non-US perspective, that the threat of aggression, including through nuclear arms, is the worst incentive for reluctant nations to sign on to the non-proliferation regime. And when the aggressive instinct is unbridled and freed from all norms of democratic accountability – as by all assessments it has been under the Bush administration – then the environment is irretrievably vitiated.

A few days after India’s nuclear deal was solemnised, an arms control lobby in the US put out a paper seeking to debunk one of the planks on which it had been constructed – India’s supposedly impeccable record in meeting non-proliferation norms. Taking note of India’s uranium enrichment plant near Mysore, David Albright and Susan Basu, two prominent non-proliferation advocates, painted a picture of clandestine procurement and consistent evasion of export controls by the DAE.

The account was vigorously challenged in the decidedly DAE-friendly Indian media. But that is not the most interesting point about these exchanges. What is arresting rather is that Albright and Basu, sourcing their findings from a variety of published and unpublished accounts, construct a picture of gross under-performance by the DAE facility. Two decades after it was commenced, the project is far from producing enough enriched uranium to fuel a research reactor of fairly modest dimensions. It remains decades behind in meeting the Tarapur Atomic Power Station’s requirements, not to mention the more exacting needs of India’s nuclear submarine project and strategic arsenal.

 

Alibis of course could be found if needed, but those are of little concern in this context. What is relevant is that India’s modest achievements – two decades into a uranium enrichment programme – should have provided a realistic picture of the technical vicissitudes involved. There was no reason, in other words, why India should have bought into the grossly inflated assessment of the US, that Iran was menacingly close to acquiring the fissile material required to assemble a nuclear weapon. That India did so, not once but twice, is testimony to not merely the sacrifice of principle, but also to the disregard for facts that the new camaraderie with the US involves.

Within days of Bush’s Indian sojourn, the IAEA met in Vienna to debate the Iranian nuclear programme. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke, just hours before, to Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeking to ensure that the debate remained confined within the IAEA. But a last-minute Russian gambit failed, which would have transferred industrial scale uranium enrichment out of Iran, allowing that country only the limited option of laboratory scale experiments. Rudely flouting the assurance of the NPT that every member-state has the right to access nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, the US announced yet again, that Iran could not be trusted with any stage of the nuclear fuel cycle.

The most recent affirmations of this position came just a few days after Bush’s departure from Indian shores, at the policy conference of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), which devoted a substantial part of its three-day annual event to Iran. Following the dire warnings issued by US Vice President Dick Cheney and Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, Daniel Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the US, brought to the surface the underlying theme of political bigotry. ‘While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists,’ he said, ‘it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.’ Israel and the US, in the rendition that currently dominates official perceptions, were never as close, as after the September 11 attacks in New York. The shared identities of being victims of terrorism for no other sin than being democracies seeking to resist a tidal wave of despotism, brought these two countries, already locked in intimate embrace, still closer.

Addressing a carefully chosen audience in the picturesque environs of Delhi’s Purana Qila, Bush announced just before he left India, that the US was ‘closer than ever before’ to India. Indeed, he said, there was no way that the two countries could shirk their common destiny of ‘leadership in the cause of democracy.’ Should India buy into these definitions – whether of ‘terrorism’ or ‘democracy’ – it may well find itself a house divided. And that would be a steep price to pay for the illusory security of nuclear deterrence.

 

Footnotes:

1. Ashley J. Tellis, India as a New Global Power, India Research Press, Delhi (under licence from the Carnegie Endowment for International Press, Washington DC), 2005, pp. 121.

2. George Perkovich, Jessica T. Mathews, Joseph Cirincione, Rose Gottemoeller and Jon B. Wolfsthal, Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security, India Research Press, Delhi (under licence from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC), 2005, pp. 224.

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