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| India-Pakistan |
| Dupe entry: Nuclear Sense |
| 2006-12-11 |
| The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has long been a source of great comfort for the United Nations, and almost no one else. The world's biggest proliferator, China, is a signatory. Another member, Iran, is building a weapons program and professing to play by the rules. So it's encouraging to see the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly ditch the pretense that the NPT should somehow constrain its relationship with India, arguably America's most important strategic ally in Asia, alongside Japan and Australia. We're referring to the U.S. Senate's passage of a peaceful atomic energy pact with India on Saturday. The bill, which sailed through the House and now goes to the White House for President Bush's signature, revokes America's 1980 ban on selling civil nuclear fuel and technology to the world's most populous democracy. It also marks the first time that Washington has struck a nuclear deal with a non-NPT signatory. It's a neat circle, given that the U.S. helped India develop its nuclear program from the mid-1950s and that it was India's "peace bomb" in 1974 that inspired the creation of the world's voluntary export control club, the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Since then, India has used its nukes for deterrence in a rough neighborhood. Unlike neighboring Pakistan and China, India has kept tight controls over its nuclear know-how. Unlike Pyongyang, New Delhi hasn't engaged in nuclear blackmail for food and energy. And unlike Iran, India didn't sign up to the NPT and pretend to comply; it stood on principle and never signed up in the first place. While that's not the tack we'd want every democracy to take, at least it was honest. By inking the deal, Congress has persuaded India to open its doors to IAEA inspections of its 14 civilian facilities. Eight military reactors won't be subject to inspection, but they weren't before the Congressional bill, either. And India has now given more assurances about its intentions by reaffirming its commitments to nonproliferation efforts, such as the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, and a self-imposed moratorium on future nuclear tests. The U.S. deal can be canceled if India tests another bomb, or is found guilty of proliferation. Critics worry that the deal's tacit acknowledgment of the NPT's irrelevance will set off an arms race in Asia. That logic doesn't hold up. Rather, it's the aggressive actions of authoritarian states, such as North Korea and China, that have the potential to spark such a race. Will Japan, for instance, reword its constitution and build a nuke because India is buying civilian reactors, or because Pyongyang lobs a missile into the Sea of Japan? The U.S.-India atomic energy pact is the cornerstone of deepening ties between the two countries that carries huge strategic significance. India sits astride the world's hotspots in Iran, Pakistan and China. While its interests are for peaceful relations with its neighbors, New Delhi has shown that it is on the side of the world's democracies by voting in favor of IAEA and U.N. curbs on Iran's illicit weapons programs -- despite dependence on Iranian crude oil. Which brings us to another reason to cheer the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal: It provides clean energy for India and lessens New Delhi's need to turn to Russia and Iran for energy. The latter is a real concern. India's ties to Iran run back centuries, and New Delhi has voiced support for Iran's mullahs before. India's government promised not to pass the U.S. deal unless it had assurances that its relations with Iran wouldn't be put under the U.S. aegis. The bill's language is a compromise and doesn't do that, and nor could it, anyway: India's foreign affairs are under India's purview. For those worried about proliferation, a best deterrent isn't a piece of paper, but efforts to give democratic countries -- and their voters -- the benefits of behaving responsibly. The total value of U.S.-India trade has doubled since 2001, and should double again within the next few years. Credit New Delhi and Washington for figuring out that they share much, much more than nuclear weapons. |
| Posted by:john |