Coming Of A Nuclear Age

The criticism that has greeted the Indo-US joint statement in Washington should evoke no surprise. Indian commentators are so accustomed to regarding India as a weak target of American machiavellianism that they cannot stop themselves from looking for the downside of any commitment India makes to it, even if one doesn't exist. Forty years of Cold War, in which India was shoved, willy nilly, into the Soviet camp, had a lot to do with this mindset. That is why several nuclear experts, some former members of the armed forces, and defence analysts have criticised Dr Manmohan Singh for giving too much and obtaining too little in return.

Most of the criticism has focused on the clauses concerning India's nuclear status. Critics claim that President Bush's recognition of India as a 'responsible state with advanced nuclear technology' that should 'acquire the same benefits as other such states' falls short of admitting it into the nuclear club. His promise to alter domestic legislation to lift restrictions on the sale of advanced technology to India, especially in the nuclear energy field, is just a promise. Changing India's status requires the repeal or fundamental alteration of acts, passed by Congress as far back as 1972, prohibiting the transfer of such technology to nations that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This will be a protracted process and may not be successful. The most he can do, therefore, is to sign annual waivers to the sale of dual use and other cutting-edge technologies. As China and Pakistan learned to their cost, annual waivers can become Pavlovian whips to ensure 'good behaviour'.

In return, Dr Manmohan Singh has promised to separate civilian from military nuclear facilities and put the former under the scope of IAEA safeguards; to refrain from any more nuclear testing; and to work with the US towards cutting off further production of weapons-grade fissile materials. While the first, nuclear scientists like N. Prasad claim, will be horrendously expensive and may not even be feasible, the second and third give away all that the BJP government had fought, with considerable success, to avoid doing. It is no surprise, therefore, that even A.B. Vajpayee, who deserves three quarters of the credit for bringing the US to the point of recognising India's nuclear status, has turned into a critic of the agreement.

There is another way of looking at the agreement, and it is one in which the glass is not half empty but three quarters full. For 30 years, India has chafed at a distinction made between it and China, based on no principle, no moral code, but upon the status quo at a moment in time. That was 1967, when the NPT was first conceived. The intervening years have seen China abuse its nuclear status to transfer weapon-making technology to Pakistan, from where it has been sold to at least three other countries. China, a beneficiary of the NPT, has, therefore, been the greatest proliferator of all.

In the meantime, India has adhered to every ethical code the P-5 could have hoped for, but still suffered from denial of access to the latest technology, slowing its nuclear programme and locking it into expensive and outmoded technology. After the Pokhran tests, sanctions strangled technological progress in other fields, too. The unfairness of the situation was acknowledged by the Clinton administration. But it could not get past the non-proliferation lobby in the US and the powerful non-proliferation division of the state department. The Bush administration has had no such qualms. But its actions are not propelled by altruism.

What President Bush has been doing is to draw a distinction between 'responsible' and 'irresponsible' nuclear powers, that cuts across and is intended to override the distinction between nuclear haves and have-nots created by theNPT. His purpose has been to emphasise that Iran, though permitted by the NPT to manufacture its own nuclear fuel for reactors, is an 'irresponsible' nuclear power as the possibility that someone there will pass it on to terrorists, cannot be ruled out. It must, therefore, be prevented from manufacturing nuclear fuels, irrespective of their purpose and the NPT.

Emphasising India's nuclear responsibility enables him to highlight Iran and North Korea's irresponsibility. But this agreement has done far more than just establish a negative. It has also opened the doors to a positive resolution of the nuclear conundrum. What Dr Manmohan Singh has done by accepting these obligations is to define a roadmap by which other supposedly irresponsible nuclear aspirants can become responsible ones. This is to put all civilian nuclear facilities under enhanced IAEA safeguards—a move desired by IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei—and agree to the regular accounting of fissile material stocks necessary for a fissile material cut-off.

This option would be open to both Iran and North Korea, and could become the starting point of a new round of negotiations that trades such commitments on their part for genuine guarantees of security, non-interference and in the case of North Korea, economic aid from the USA and others.

I am not qualified to comment on Dr Prasad's concern for the cost of duplication. But, surely, this cost cannot be so high as to offset even the economic, let alone political, benefits to be had from the inflow of cutting-edge technology. By the same token, once European firms start taking advantage of President Bush's green light for the sale of nuclear reactors to India, pressure from American transnationals will hasten the pace of legislation in the US, too.