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A bad deal of mythic proportions
By Kelly Motz
November 8, 2006
Congress is faced with some important unfinished business as it moves through its "lame duck" session. The Senate, and then conference, will soon take up a controversial deal viewed by some as a strategic alliance builder. This is but one of many myths propagated by supporters of a nuclear deal with India.
The imminent power shift is an opportunity: responsible Members must now reject a bad deal. The deal would reopen nuclear trade with India – a trade forbidden for almost thirty years due to India’s nuclear transgressions. India built atomic bombs under the guise of peaceful nuclear energy – a model Iran seems to be following today – and continues to be one of the three countries that reject the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. For these reasons, responsible nations have refused to send India nuclear exports.
Until now. The administration's deal would forgive India’s sins in exchange for a “new strategic partnership,” according to which India would be a help, not a hindrance, to the effort to stop the spread of the bomb, and is expected to favor American sellers when it buys arms.
A close look shows that the benefits of the deal are illusory, and that it will cripple U.S. policies against nuclear arms proliferation.
The administration claims that the deal will bring India into the “mainstream” of states opposed to the spread of the bomb. In fact, the deal leaves India far outside. India still opposes the Non Proliferation Treaty, refuses to stop building nuclear weapons, refuses to obligate itself not to test them, refuses to stop making fissile material to fuel them, and refuses to join Europe and America in condemning Iran’s enrichment of uranium. The deal does not change India's negative stance on these questions; it legitimizes it.
The administration also cites India’s pledge to put 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors under inspection as a “gain for nonproliferation.” But the remaining eight reactors – forever off limits to inspection – will make more bomb fuel than India will ever need. How does looking only at what India deems irrelevant to its strategic program help nonproliferation?
The administration also claims that the deal won’t help India’s bomb program, but it will. The deal allows India to begin importing uranium to fuel its civilian reactors. This will free its scarce domestic uranium to fuel reactors that make bombs, producing a sharp increase in its arsenal. India has a long record of transmuting civilian imports into weapons. It misused U.S. and Canadian imports to build its first bomb in the 1970’s, smuggled in Soviet, Chinese and Norwegian material to make more bomb fuel in the 1980’s, and built its Agni nuclear missile in part by importing American designs from NASA for a peaceful space rocket.
Nor will the deal build up India as a bulwark against China, as its supporters claim. History has been unkind to the “counterweight” theory. Look at the U.S. decision to build up Iraq as a counterweight to Iran in the 1980's. Saddam’s increase in power triggered two U.S. invasions. Then there's the Soviet Union's nuclear aid to China in the late 1950's, which complicated their 1969 border conflict and fueled decades of competition. India and China, in fact, have much-improved relations and just signed a military cooperation pact. It is naive to think that India, the creator of the Non-Aligned Movement, will routinely back Washington's agenda vis-à-vis Beijing. States act in their own interest.
The real effect of the deal will be to torpedo our effort to stop the spread of the bomb. Once the United States drops export controls on nuclear sales to India – simply on the ground that India is now our friend – Russia will drop controls on sales to its friend Iran, and China will drop controls on sales to its friend Pakistan. That is the way international export controls work – only by mutual restraint. It is illogical to hope that others won’t sell their clients the same technologies we sell India.
Then why make such a deal? For the money. By re-labeling India as “mainstream,” instead of “outlier,” impediments to U.S. arms sales will be removed. American exporters hope to sell India Boeing aircraft, hundreds of F-16 or F/A-18 fighter jets, and other high-priced military equipment. Wealthy Indians in the United States are also throwing money at Congress to elevate India’s international prestige. But is it smart to ease the spread of the bomb just to sell planes or increase another country’s status?
Congress should reject the deal. We don’t need it to build up
our ties to India, and it will severely damage our effort to stop the
spread of the bomb. In a time when we worry every day about terrorism,
we should not be loosening international controls over dangerous nuclear
materials.
Kelly Motz is Associate Director
of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.