India's Muscle
Flexing Is Over. Let the Bargaining Begin
By Selig S. Harrison
Selig S. Harrison, a former South Asia bureau chief for The Washington
Post, is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars and a fellow of the Twentieth Century Fund.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Sunday, May 17, 1998
Despite India's five nuclear tests last week, there is still a way for the
Clinton administration to stop New Delhi from embarking on a costly and
dangerous nuclear arms race with China and Pakistan.
The sanctions imposed by President Clinton will only make India more
intransigent unless they are accompanied by realistic diplomatic trade-offs.
Indian leaders have made clear that they are ready to end testing and cut off
stockpiling of plutonium for nuclear weapons if the Clinton administration will
end sanctions and give India, as it has given China, access to U.S. civilian
nuclear technology to help satisfy the burgeoning energy demands of an
exploding population, now nearing 1 billion.
China conducted a much-criticized series of six nuclear tests from 1994 to
1996 before announcing its readiness to sign the nuclear test ban treaty.
Less than two years later, the administration has just reversed a U.S. ban on
the sale of U.S. civilian nuclear technology to Beijing in return for Chinese
commitments not to export nuclear and missile components and know-how.
Unlike China, Indians point out, India has never exported nuclear and missile
technology despite multibillion-dollar offers from Saddam Hussein and
Moammar Gadhafi.
Productive negotiations with New Delhi are still possible. Although India last
week declared itself a "nuclear weapons state," it has not yet decided
whether to deploy nuclear weapons in its armed forces and, if so, how
extensively. The purpose of testing, Indian leaders say, was to demonstrate a
capability to make sophisticated nuclear weapons and to deploy them on
short notice, especially a nuclear warhead for its Agni intermediate-range
ballistic missile.
The decision to test last week was in large part a response to domestic
political pressures that are now likely to subside. Six weeks ago, when
Pakistan tested a new missile capable of reaching deep into Indian territory,
the new Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee felt compelled to respond strongly. American warnings that testing
would bring sanctions fanned nationalist sentiment, and Indian public opinion
has overwhelmingly welcomed the tests as a reminder to the world that India
can become a nuclear superpower if it feels provoked or threatened.
I have lived in India for six years at various times as a foreign
correspondent, and I visit there frequently. Every politically conscious Indian
I know deeply resents the American attitude that the United States and the
four other nuclear powers are entitled to have nuclear weapons while India
and other aspiring powers are not. This feeling is a more important factor
driving Indian nuclear ambitions than fear of Chinese and Pakistani military
strength.
Many Indians have what might be called a post-dated self-image. Since
India is one of the world's oldest and largest civilizations, its people take its
great-power status for granted and expect others to do the same. Successive
American administrations have either patronized or ignored India while
lecturing it about non-proliferation, fueling sentiment in New Delhi that only
nuclear muscle-flexing would get American attention.
Until two years ago, the United States repeatedly pressed India and Pakistan
to give up their nuclear options. But in January 1995, then-Defense
Secretary William Perry announced an important, little-noticed reversal of
policy. He acknowledged that "the nuclear capabilities of India and Pakistan
flow from a dynamic that we are unlikely to be able to influence in the near
term. Rather than seeking to roll back -- which we have concluded is
unattainable in these two countries -- we have decided, instead, to seek to
cap their nuclear capabilities."
Nevertheless, Washington has failed to give New Delhi and Islamabad
concrete incentives to cap their nuclear weapons potential at present levels.
The technology transfer agreement with China has made it urgently
necessary for the Clinton administration to explore precisely what India
would be prepared to do in return for access to U.S. civilian nuclear
technology and U.S. cooperation in nuclear safety. Until an accommodation
is reached with India, no agreement with Pakistan is possible.
As a beginning, the administration should offer to seek congressional
approval for civilian nuclear technology transfers to India, now barred by the
1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, in return for three major concessions
by India.
First, India would agree to extend the application of international inspections,
now limited to one U.S.-supplied reactor near Bombay, to all seven of its
civilian nuclear power reactors and any new power and medical research
reactors supplied by U.S. or other foreign companies. This would prevent
the diversion to military purposes of fissile material produced with U.S.
cooperation. In accordance with Perry's acceptance of India as a
nuclear-capable power, the research reactors and reprocessing facilities
where India's militarily applicable nuclear stockpiles are produced would
remain exempt from inspections until the conclusion of a pending
international accord capping such stockpiles.
Second, India would make some form of binding de jure commitment not to
export nuclear technology, formalizing its present de facto policy. This would
place India in accord with a key provision of the non-proliferation treaty.
Third, India would have to reach a compromise with the United States on the
issue of a nuclear test ban. New Delhi has refused to sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that initiated in 1996, insisting that it be
linked with a timetable for the reduction of nuclear weapons by the existing
nuclear powers. But India might agree to sign the treaty, or to make some
other form of international commitment not to test without formally signing it,
now that it has conducted the tests it regarded as essential to make its
nuclear option credible.
Such an agreement would set the stage for broader negotiations in which the
United States would seek commitments by India and Pakistan to cap the
further accumulation of weapons-grade fissile material and to continue
refraining from the deployment of nuclear weapons. India said last week that
it is ready to join negotiations on the pending global fissile material cutoff
agreement, which would commit signatories to freeze their stockpiles of
weapons grade nuclear material and submit to international inspection. But
Indian and Pakistani commitments not to deploy nuclear weapons or limit the
level and nature of deployments would be unlikely unless the United States
and Russia moved much more rapidly to reduce their own nuclear weapons
as the prelude to multilateral reductions embracing China, Britain and
France.
The United States would benefit politically and economically from a
compromise with India that would open up the transfer of civilian nuclear
technology India in return for a cessation of testing and a cutoff of fissile
material stockpiling. Apart from improving relations with a rising power, the
United States would acquire significant influence in one of the most sensitive
sectors of the Indian economy and would offset the role of Russia and other
powers now negotiating nuclear reactor deals with India.
It is also in America's interest to facilitate a diversification of energy sources
in India and China alike, thus curbing a reliance on petroleum imports that
will increasingly deplete world supplies and drive prices up. Moreover, the
U.S. nuclear industry needs foreign contracts to keep its technical work
force intact and to survive in the face of competition. India's quest for $50
billion in foreign investment to build nuclear reactors could mean enormous
profits.
President Clinton should go ahead with his projected autumn mission to
South Asia not only to carry forward negotiations on nuclear issues but to
demonstrate a new American interest in a long-neglected part of the world.
This would be the first visit of an American president since Jimmy Carter's
in 1978. It would come at a hopeful moment when American investment
commitments in India exceed $8 billion and cultural links between the world's
two largest democracies are growing.
But in the absence of a nuclear bargain, tensions over non-proliferation will
increasingly poison all aspects of Indo-American relations. |