Author: Sultan Shahin
Publication: Asia Times
Date: February 14, 2004
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB14Df04.html
India has for long fought against
its hyphenated relationship with Pakistan in the eyes of the US-led international
community.
With September 11, 2001, and the
role of the Pakistan-supported Taliban-al-Qaeda nexus in it, India had
hoped that the United States would see the difference between the two countries
and start treating it accordingly. But that did not happen; indeed, Pakistan
got its role as a frontline state in America's wars restored.
But with the Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan
episode and the exposure in the past fortnight of his and concomitantly
Pakistan's role as a serial nuclear proliferator, it has become clear that
unlike Pakistan, India is a responsible nuclear power. New Delhi felt,
now, finally the hyphen would be off. But this time, too, it is not happening.
US policy toward South Asia continues to be based on parity between India
and Pakistan, regardless of the so-called strategic relations with the
United States that the Indian government has been feeling so good about.
In fact, India is even being asked,
along with Pakistan and Israel, to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
and the latest additional protocols as a non-nuclear power, despite its
status of a declared nuclear-weapons power (it tested the bomb in 1998).
The European Union's Irish presidency on Wednesday urged India, Israel
and Pakistan to sign the NPT "unconditionally".
Addressing the European Parliament,
the Irish Europe minister, Dick Roche, said: "There are three countries,
India, Pakistan and Israel, that remain outside the regime, and we continue
to call upon them to accede unconditionally to the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon
states. The EU has repeatedly stated that the NPT is the cornerstone of
the global non-proliferation regime and the essential foundation for the
pursuit of nuclear disarmament." This is not what India had bargained for.
Delhi had given total support to the United States in all its endeavors,
from Washington's national missile defense to the "war on terror". A frustrated
Brajesh Mishra, India's national security adviser and Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee's principal secretary, has been forced to comment: "Clubbing
partners against proliferation with countries of true proliferation concern
is a self-defeating approach which can only weaken the cause of genuine
non-proliferation."
He said this in the wake of reports
that after Pakistani disclosures, the US is very keen that India significantly
strengthen its own export control regimes. Washington would like New Delhi
to create new laws to prevent nuclear leakage. This while even US President
George W Bush in his major weapons of mass destruction (WMD) speech on
Wednesday took care to protect the Pakistani president and military from
being accused of proliferation in which they have clearly been engaging
for at least 15 years.
A burgeoning divide between the
US and Indian perceptions on the nuclear-proliferation issue becomes clear
from the different positions of Bush, as spelled out in his WMD speech
on Wednesday, and Mishra's address to an international security conference
in Munich last Saturday, as well as Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant
Sinha's remarks during a press conference with visiting British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw.
Detailing Pakistan's "A Q Khan network",
which was driven by "greed, fanaticism or both" and "fed rogue nations",
Bush vowed to block nuclear proliferation and proposed sweeping changes
in the international nuclear regime to tackle what he called the "greatest
threat before humanity today". Staying silent on the culpability of the
Pakistani military, he merely said that President General Pervez Musharraf
had assured him he would share "all information on the Khan network" with
Washington.
The key Bush proposal is that no
new country should have the technology to enrich or process nuclear material,
and that all countries that need nuclear technology for civilian purposes
must sign the additional protocol, under which there is room for vigorous
international supervision. The US president also called for strengthening
of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), and suspending all suspect nations from its board. He asked
the Nuclear Suppliers Group - the roughly 40 nations that provide most
of the world's nuclear technology - to refuse to sell designs and equipment
to any country not already capable of making nuclear fuel. He would ask
nations, he said, to restrict the sale of nuclear technology to countries
that do not agree to vigorous international inspections.
Against this peremptory setting
of new rules unilaterally by the United States, Sinha called for a wider
international discussion on the implications of the nuclear developments
in Pakistan. Indeed, India has reacted quite cautiously to Bush's latest
initiatives. The External Affairs Ministry spokesman welcomed on Thursday
only his "emphasis on imperatives of collective action to check WMD proliferation",
but avoided any mention of specifics. Other officials are making it clear
that there is no question of India signing the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon
state and thus opening up all nuclear installations, including weapons-related
facilities, to international inspections.
That India looks at the Bush proposals
with some trepidation and merely as an excuse to introduce what one commentator
called a "US nuclear Raj" is clear from the remarks by a senior Indian
official to the media. He was quoted by The Times of India as saying: "We
would like to make sure that we are not in any way a target for a tightened
trading regime, that no ships bound for Indian ports are stopped. In other
words, we have to be sure India is part of the enforcers, not the enforced."
In a cautious speech at Munich a
few days earlier, Mishra offered India's own understanding of the new threats
and its ideas on how to respond. He stressed that the old non-proliferation
order is no longer effective - the international context has changed, thanks
to the rise of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, suicide attacks,
failing states and new incentives for WMD proliferation.
Referring to the unilateral measures
being then contemplated to deal with the challenge, the ones that were
later spelled out by Bush, Mishra said: "A multilateral consultative machinery
with international credibility can provide legitimacy to such measures."
But for it to be effective, he said, "it has to be evolved with wide and
representative consultations". For a stronger nuclear regime to be effective,
the kind that Bush has proposed, it has to be "evolved with wide and representative
consultations".
Among the non-proliferation measures
to which Mishra was referring and which will have Indian support, perhaps
the most significant is the proliferation security initiative (PSI) that
the US has developed in recent months for a cooperative military interdiction
of international air and sea traffic in sensitive materials and technologies.
Joint military exercises have already been undertaken by the US and 10
other "founding countries" to develop operational capabilities for such
interdiction. Fifty other countries are reported to have extended their
support to this initiative.
Among other such multilateral initiatives
are a set of proposals from the Group of Seven Western countries in recent
years to improve the safety and security of nuclear materials worldwide.
Also, the proposal recently endorsed by the head of IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei,
to put new restrictions against countries acquiring capabilities in what
is called a "full fuel cycle". The idea is to prevent the development of
national capabilities to produce nuclear- weapons materials among non-nuclear-weapons
states. Nations will be asked to forgo such capabilities in return for
assurances of international supply of nuclear fuel for legitimate needs.
There are other measures for the strengthening of export controls among
advanced states to prevent proliferation and for enhancing inspection procedures
by the IAEA.
Many of these provisions, particularly
those Bush has proposed, are sweeping in nature. Some of them go beyond
the NPT. These measures are part of an effort to build structures and mechanisms
outside the NPT to strengthen the global nuclear order. Mishra's remarks
at Munich do not suggest that India is completely unwilling to cooperate
with the new non-proliferation initiatives, though it may not want to sign
any binding agreements. But the core of the new Indian nuclear position
is that it wants to be treated as a nuclear- weapons power and be fully
consulted on all proliferation-related issues with its own interests being
taken taken into account.
Also, India wants the United States
to understand that India fully shares the objective of preventing the spread
of nuclear weapons. That it has stayed outside the NPT and would like to
continue doing so is another matter. India also wants the US to understand
that its record on non-proliferation has been a responsible one and its
nuclear policies and programs cannot be equated with those of irresponsible
states. India would not like the US to pursue such "a self-defeating approach
which can only weaken the cause of genuine non-proliferation". India would
like the US to treat it as a "partner in controlling the WMD proliferation"
along the lines of the identical statements issued by Bush and Vajpayee
last month.
But wanting is one thing, and believing
it will happen quite another. Almost the entire strategic community in
India is unanimous that the United States is not really interested in nuclear
non-proliferation - it is merely playing games. Pakistani nuclear scientist
and father of its bomb Khan said in his televised confession of proliferation:
"I have chosen to appear before you to offer my deepest regrets and unqualified
apologies to a traumatized nation. It pains me to realize in retrospect
that my entire lifetime achievements of providing foolproof national security
to my country have been placed in serious jeopardy on account of my activities.
I wish to clarify that there was never any kind of authorization for these
activities by the government."
This has made two things clear.
Either the Pakistani army was a partner in proliferation for the past 15
years in order to acquire hard cash from Libya and Iran and missiles from
North Korea, as most observers even in Pakistan believe, or it was unable
to detect what was going on in its own back yard. Either way, this makes
Pakistan a dangerous nation for the international community and all the
more so for India. It is India against whom the Pakistani bomb is particularly
targeted. If Khan is correct, then Pakistan's bomb can easily fall into
the hands of terrorists and rogue army officers who can use it against
India. Former Indian ambassador to Pakistan G Parthasarthy wonders whether
it can be called "license for jihad".
The question in this context naturally
is how to contain and eliminate this danger emanating from Pakistan. How
the United States' response will solve this problem, by putting a ban on
the sale of peaceful nuclear-fuel technology to all nations, is beyond
what any Indian strategist can understand. No wonder India's foremost defense
strategist, Brahma Chellaney, calls the US and Pakistan "partners in crime"
in an article in the widely circulated Hindustan Times (February 12). "Had
Syria or Iran exported even chemical-weapons technology to just one nation,"
he writes, "Bush would have threatened military preemption. In contrast,
he showers praise and money on Pakistan ... India's security has come under
pressure from US actions and inactions in its neighborhood."
Pravin Sawhney, the influential
editor of the defense journal Force, is even gloomier about the prospects
of Indo-US relations in the immediate future. He asks: "Where does all
this leave India? First, the so-called trinity talks between India and
the US, and the 'Glide Path' enunciated by [US Secretary of State] General
Colin Powell, will get stalled indefinitely. The seemingly growing Indo-US
cooperation in areas of space, nuclear energy and transfer of dual- use
technology will not happen in a hurry. Considering the US has decided to
support President Musharraf, it will do nothing that will weaken his position
within his country. He has already said that any transfer of high technology
to India by the US will tilt the precarious military balance in the region,
forcing Pakistan to take corrective measures - read, a resort to nuclear
weapons.
"Worse, the US has resolved to review
various control regimes. This will put pressure on India to make its strategic
technology control regime more transparent, and also to bring more nuclear
establishments under IAEA safeguards. This means that, on the one hand,
the US will not part with its high technology to India, and on the other,
it will be more intrusive in its strategic dialogue with India. The US
will seek to know more about India's command and control of its strategic
arsenal, it will desire to understand our nuclear weapons program better,
and offer us help for security of our nukes. Clearly, India will be hard-pressed
to resist such overtly friendly gestures."
One of the reasons India is feeling
forced at every level to make a new assessment of its relationship with
the United States is its increasingly low opinion of US intelligence capability.
Despite all the praise Bush bestowed on his intelligence community, it
is clear to all that it did not have a clue about what was going on in
Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It is now clear that it did not have a clue about
Pakistan either. The latter is even more unforgivable. India was aware
of most of what was happening in Pakistan and informed the US throughout
this period, but to no avail. Both Iraq's motivated opposition in exile
and the Pakistani military were able to deceive the United States with
impunity.
The US president says US intelligence
was aware of every move Khan was making in the past 15 years. Most Indian
strategists believe that is a lie. But if true, it is a far more puzzling
proposition and puts a question mark on US commitment to non-proliferation.
Why did the United States allow Khan to go on his proliferation missions?
Many Indians are wondering whether
earlier media reports of a conspiracy in Washington to protect Khan should
be given more credence than they have been so far. It was reported that
the Central Intelligence Agency and other US agencies could not investigate
the spread of nuclear bombs through Pakistan because funding appeared to
originate in Saudi Arabia. The Bush administration's "spike" of the investigation
of Khan followed from a wider policy of protecting key Saudis, including
the bin Laden family from which Osama is estranged.
Washington will require all its
creativity to keep New Delhi on board its non-proliferation project, even
though official India is not rejecting Bush's proposals out of hand. Washington
has already taken New Delhi for granted for far too long. It would be mistaken
to continue doing so any further. India is upset. Strangely, this is not
directed at Pakistan. Even the constant Pakistan-baiters are mostly holding
their peace, unwilling to endanger the nascent peace process that formally
begins on Monday. The target of their ire is Washington, which has seldom
listened to Indian pleas, either in the Bill Clinton or the Bush administrations.
