India’s Nuclear Dilemma Exposed
By Harsh V Pant for ISN
Even as all eyes were focused on the global economy, world trade and climate change, the G8 summit at L’Aquila sprang a major surprise on India. The G8 statement on nonproliferation committed the advanced industrial world to implement, on a “national basis, useful and constructive proposals” toward strengthening controls on enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) items and technology “contained in the NSG’s ‘clean text’ developed at the 20 November 2008 consultative meeting.”
The G8 underscored the importance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) toward the pursuit of nuclear disarmament by insisting that those states that have not yet signed the Treaty do so with haste.
It was just last September that the Nuclear Supplier’s Group (NSG) had agreed to grant a clean exemption to India, thereby allowing nuclear exports of sensitive technology under safeguards to India.
The latest G8 agreement on banning the ENR items to countries that are not signatories to the NPT effectively puts the future of the landmark US-India nuclear deal of 2005 in jeopardy.
While India will still be able to buy nuclear fuel and reactors from the G8 or NSG countries, questions will inevitably arise about the intention of the Obama administration regarding the future of the deal and if it would try to further dilute the bargain contained in the ‘India exemption’ of the NSG waiver of last year.
If the Bush administration was willing to work with India in convincing other countries as to the strength of the nuclear deal with India, the Obama administration is at best lackadaisical. It should be troubling for India that the Obama administration effectively sought to persuade the G8 countries to undertake the latest move at L’Aquila.
It was the promise of full civilian nuclear energy cooperation with India that made the deal so important for the country and that changed the basic contours of US-India ties. Now with the Obama administration trying to change the ground rules of the game, the situation is rapidly returning to square one.
Though the Indian prime minister has attempted to downplay the issue, commenting that “there is no basis for the apprehension that the Obama administration will be less sensitive to India’s concerns than the previous US administrations,” the stark reality is that distrust of the US intention vis-à-vis India is at an all-time high in New Delhi.
With the Obama administration probably trying to make a push toward the external pageComprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the external pageFissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), the trouble for India might just be beginning. In many ways, the G8 fiasco underlines the unique position that India holds in the global nuclear hierarchy. While the non-nuclear weapon states resent the special treatment that the US-India nuclear pact gave to India, the nuclear weapon states are reluctant to allow another nuclear state to emerge.
The Bush administration recognized the importance of resetting the terms of global nuclear discourse and of bringing India into the larger nonproliferation framework as a responsible nuclear state with an advanced nuclear technological base. The Obama administration, in its wisdom, has decided to take a more traditional view of the problem and in doing so has once again put India on the defensive.
A defensive India surrounded by two nuclear adversaries who have been colluding on nuclear issues for the last three decades is never going to be a part of the nuclear non-proliferation regime as designed in 1968. This is the challenge that will confront the international community as it decides to tackle the challenge of nuclear proliferation in the coming days and months.