Should the US Sell Nuclear Technology to India? – Part I

WASHINGTON: There is a growing concern in the US Congress over the nuclear deal reached this past summer during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Washington, and with good reason. It is not that building a strategic relationship with India is unimportant. But it should not be pursued in a way that undermines a U.S. national interest of equal and arguably greater importance – preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is precisely what the Bush Administration has done.

In the Joint Statement released on July 18th, India agreed to take several steps to demonstrate its commitment to being a responsible nuclear power. In exchange, the U.S. Administration agreed to seek changes in U.S. law and multilateral commitments to permit exports of nuclear equipment and technology to India – a radical departure from longstanding legal obligations and policies that precluded nuclear cooperation with states not party to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to the Administration, a key benefit of the agreement is to bring India into the international nonproliferation mainstream. But India – to its credit – has been moving in that direction for quite some time. The commitments India made in the July 18th Joint Statement add very little. For the most part, they are either reaffirmations of existing Indian positions or codifications of current Indian policies and practices. The genuinely new element – the pledge to separate military and civilian nuclear activities and place civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards – is largely symbolic. It has no effect on India’s ability to continue producing fissile material for nuclear weapons at facilities not designated as eligible for safeguards.

In any event, the nonproliferation gains of the Joint Statement are meager compared to the damage to nonproliferation goals that would result if the deal goes forward as it currently stands. The Bush Administration’s initiatives in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to tighten export controls will be harder to achieve if at the same time it is asking the Group to relax its rules where they no longer suit the U.S. By seeking an exception to the rules to accommodate America’s friendship with India, the deal will make other suppliers less inhibited about engaging in risky nuclear cooperation with their own special friends – Iran in the case of Russia, Pakistan in the case of China. And by sending the signal that the U.S. will eventually accommodate to a decision to acquire nuclear weapons, it will reduce the perceived costs to states that might consider going nuclear in the future.

In the near term, it will make it more difficult to deal with proliferation challenges such as Iran. Already the Iranians are winning support internationally by asking why they, as an NPT party, should give up their right to an enrichment capability while India, which rejected the NPT, is being offered nuclear cooperation. In general, the deal conveys the message that the United States – the country the world has always looked to as the leader in the fight against proliferation – is now giving nonproliferation a back seat to other foreign policy goals. And this will give others a green light to assign a higher priority to commercial and political considerations relative to nonproliferation.

The nonproliferation damage likely to result from the deal can be minimized if several improvements are made – either by the U.S. and Indian governments themselves, by the U.S. Congress, by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, or by a combination of these.

The first, and most important, would be an Indian decision to stop producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons, perhaps as part of a multilateral moratorium. A multilateral production halt would make a major contribution to fighting nuclear terrorism by capping stocks of bomb-making materials worldwide and thereby making those stocks easier to secure against theft or seizure.

Without such a production moratorium in place, the U.S.-India deal could actually facilitate an increase in India’s nuclear weapons capability. India’s indigenous uranium supplies are quite limited, and must now be used to meet both civil and military requirements. A newly-acquired ability to import uranium for civil needs would free up domestic supplies to be used exclusively in the weapons program, permitting a substantial build-up if the Indian government so decided.

India has said that it is willing to assume the same responsibilities and practices as the other nuclear powers. It so happens that the five original nuclear weapon states have all stopped producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons, India should be asked to join them.

Second, India should be asked to play a more active role in helping the U.S. address today’s most acute proliferation challenges, especially Iran. India’s “yes” vote on the recent IAEA Board resolution that found Iran in non-compliance with its nonproliferation obligations was a welcome step. But since that vote, the Indians have tried to mollify Iran, saying they had acted in Iran’s interest by getting the Europeans to back down from pursuing referral to the U.N. Security Council. The key test in the months ahead will be whether India makes a sustained and determined effort to persuade Iran to forgo its own enrichment capability and whether, if it becomes necessary, India votes yes to refer the question to the Security Council.

Third, the risks of the nuclear deal could be reduced by preserving a distinction between NPT parties and non-parties in terms of the nuclear exports they would be permitted to receive. By calling for “full” nuclear cooperation with India, the deal undermines the long-standing principle of giving NPT parties benefits in the civil nuclear energy area unavailable to non-Parties. A semblance of that principle should be preserved by excluding from permissible cooperation with India equipment, materials, and technology related to enrichment, reprocessing, and other sensitive fuel-cycle facilities. This would permit India to acquire uranium, enriched fuel, and nuclear reactors, but would retain the ban on transfers of those items most closely related to a nuclear weapons program.

Fourth, nonproliferation risks could be reduced by implementing the nuclear deal in a country-neutral manner – not as a special exception to the rules for India alone. A problem with the India-only exception is that it accentuates concerns that the U.S. is acting selectively and self-servingly on the basis of its own foreign policy calculations rather than on the basis of objective factors related to nonproliferation performance.

To avoid this pitfall without opening the door to nuclear cooperation in cases where it is not merited, modifications should be made in U.S. law and the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines that would permit nuclear cooperation with any state not party to the NPT that meets certain criteria of responsible nuclear behavior. The criteria would address such questions as nuclear testing, fissile material production, safeguards at civil nuclear facilities, efforts to deal with cases like Iran, export controls, measures to secure nuclear materials against theft or seizure, and cooperation in interdicting illicit nuclear shipments and eradicating illicit trafficking networks.

Taken together, these improvements in the July 18th nuclear deal would transform a net nonproliferation loss into a net nonproliferation gain. They would enable the U.S. to advance its strategic goals with India as well as its nonproliferation interests – not serve one at the expense of the other.