US deal with India draws more fire

By William Hawkins

WASHINGTON - On Monday, just two days before India celebrated 60 years of independence, its Parliament was disrupted as some members tried to shout down Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He was defending the nuclear-technology deal he negotiated with the United States against critics, some within his own coalition, who claim the deal will give the US too much leverage over Indian policy.

Under the deal, India gets access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel, without having to give up its nuclear-weapons program. It is even allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, though under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). India has also pledged not to pass on any US technology or materials to third parties.

The US will back India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and even support the creation of an "Indian strategic fuel reserve", something New Delhi wanted to guard against any supply cutoff due to future nuclear-weapons development. "The agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary in India's national interest," Manmohan told Parliament.

In the US, critics have tried to block the deal because it ends decades of restrictions that Washington has imposed on India because New Delhi has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nor opened all of its nuclear facilities to the IAEA. Former president Jimmy Carter jumped into the fray with a Washington Post op-ed on March 28, 2006, complaining, "During the past five years, the United States has abandoned many of the nuclear-arms-control agreements negotiated since the administration of Dwight Eisenhower ... The proposed nuclear deal with India is just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation."

However, Ashton Carter, an assistant secretary of defense in the Bill Clinton administration and now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, defended the deal in the July/August Foreign Affairs, writing:
Washington gave something away on the nuclear front in order to gain much more on other fronts; it hoped to win the support and cooperation of India - a strategically located democratic country of growing economic importance - to help the United States confront the challenges that a threatening Iran, a turbulent Pakistan, and an unpredictable China may pose in the future. Washington's decision to trade a nuclear-recognition quid for a strategic-partnership quo was a reasonable move.
Though originally signed by Manmohan and President George W Bush during the latter's visit to India in early March 2006, the details were not finalized until last month. The US Congress will have to approve the final terms, which will give critics another run at it.

Democratic Congressman Edward Markey, co-chairman of the Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation and a longtime opponent of all forms of nuclear power, led 23 members of the House of Representatives in sending a letter to Bush on July 25. The Congress members questioned whether the new terms go beyond what is allowed under current law, which, according to the letter, "states that nuclear cooperation shall be terminated, and the US would have the right to demand the return of all material, equipment, and technology, if India again tests a nuclear explosive".

On the task-force website, more space is devoted to denouncing India than to opposing the nuclear programs of North Korea or Iran, which are far more dangerous to US security. Indeed, helping India build up its economic and military strength is an asset to US foreign policy in both Asia and the Middle East. Washington and New Delhi face many of the same threats from radical Islam and communist China.

India already has a small nuclear arsenal and an expanding atomic-energy program. India's nuclear test was in 1974, prompted by China's deployment of nuclear arms. India then renounced nuclear weapons, and as late as 1988 was calling for their global elimination. But the rapid rise of China, and the increased militancy of Beijing's ally Pakistan in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir, heightened tensions. India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, bringing US sanctions against both. The sanctions on New Delhi were lifted in 2001, as Bush gave priority to improving US-India relations.

India was quick to show its willingness to cooperate. When the Bush administration pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, India's reaction was to endorse part of the US missile-defense initiative. India has a similar concern about the spread of ballistic missiles in its part of the world, a region whose unstable regimes may not be contained by a posture of deterrence only. Cooperation has continued to increase. The largest joint US-India naval exercises ever conducted are set for September 4-9 in the Bay of Bengal, involving two US and one Indian aircraft carriers. Warships from Japan, Singapore and Australia will also participate as a demonstration of the "arc of democracy" along the rim of Asia.

The nuclear agreement with India does have non-proliferation elements. India will place all future civilian nuclear reactors, and 14 of its current 22 reactors, under IAEA control and inspection. The agreement only covers peaceful, civilian cooperation, but knowledge cannot be isolated. This is the legitimate concern about Iran's nuclear program. So it must be accepted that India's nuclear capabilities will be advanced across the board. But India is not Iran, and blanket objections to any deal that might contribute to New Delhi's military development overlooks the fact that the US has long treated countries differently based on strategic calculations.

The US directly helped Britain's nuclear-weapons program during the Cold War. France developed an independent nuclear deterrent, and while this was often disquieting to American leaders, it was not considered a threat like the weapons deployed by Russia or China. Israel is believed to have nuclear arms, but Washington has rightly refused to consider this as the moral equivalent of an Iranian bomb. Treating friends and rivals differently is the essence of foreign policy.

China understands the significance of the US-India deal and has been lobbying against it at the United Nations and within the NSG. It wants India barred from the group, and to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear state, meaning it would have to disarm. Beijing, of course, has no intention of curbing its growing nuclear arsenal. It has an advantage and wants to keep it. But it is not in the interests of the United States to see democratic India kept in an inferior position to the Chinese dictatorship.

A majority in Congress should understand the larger strategic meaning of closer US ties to India and renew the strong positive vote it gave the preliminary agreement last year.

William Hawkins is senior fellow for national-security studies at the US Business and Industry Council in Washington, DC.

(Copyright 2007 William Hawkins.)

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US deal with India draws more fire