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The Indo-US Nuclear Deal
By Rohini Hensman With the parliamentary debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal now scheduled for 27-28 November 2007, the fate of the deal hangs in the balance. Opposition to the deal has come from three distinct quarters, but the reasons for opposition overlap. The main complaint of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against the deal is that it will open up part of India’s nuclear programme to international scrutiny and compromise India’s ‘sovereign right’ to decide the future development of its nuclear weapons programme. For the Left parties, the nuclear deal is only one link in the new strategic partnership being forged by India with the US and Israel. This would be an unequal partnership, one that makes India subservient to US foreign policy objectives. There is prima facie evidence to support this claim. US legislator Tom Lantos went out of his way to emphasise that the nuclear deal would be in trouble if India did not vote with the US in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September 2005, and to pat India on the back when it gave in to the demand. And in January 2006, US Ambassador to India David Mulford made a similar threat that the deal might run into problems unless India voted with the US in the IAEA meeting the following month, and India complied. Yet prior to the 2005 vote, in which India supported a motion indicting Iran for non-compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards, the Foreign Ministry had said that ‘finding Iran non-compliant is not justified,’ and in 2006, India had declared beforehand that it would abstain in the vote. Lest there be any doubt whatsoever that arm-twisting was going on, former US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation Stephen Rademaker declared at a meeting on 15 February 2007 at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, ‘I am the first to admit that the votes were coerced’. The objections to the nuclear deal on this score are serious. At a time when the US and Israel have been guilty of causing millions of civilian deaths in Palestine, Afghanistan Iraq and Lebanon, in clear violation of international law, an alliance with the Bush regime would be analogous to an alliance with Nazi Germany somewhere in the middle of World War II. And it gets worse. Vociferous claims emanating from Washington that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme and is arming terrorists in Iraq (despite denials coming from those who ought to know, such as IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei and the Iraqi government), a military build-up which could only be aimed at Iran, and recent punitive sanctions against the country by the US, all produce a sense of déjà vu: similar action was taken in the run-up to the attack on Iraq. There can be no doubt that Bush, Cheney and others in the current administration are determined to attack Iran militarily, although the majority of people in the US and high-ranking military personnel oppose such a step. In moral, ethical and legal terms, such an attack would be a massive crime, yet an India bound by its obligations under the nuclear deal would willy-nilly become an accomplice to it. "There can be no doubt that Bush, Cheney and others in the current administration are determined to attack Iran militarily, although the majority of people in the US and high-ranking military personnel oppose such a step. In moral, ethical and legal terms, such an attack would be a massive crime, yet an India bound by its obligations under the nuclear deal would willy-nilly become an accomplice to it. " The objections of anti-nuclear groups overlap with those of the Left parties in their opposition to India’s foreign policy being subordinated to US objectives and to the exacerbation of regional tensions. But they go much further. On the issue of energy security, they see the deal as having a negative impact. While the deal could, at most, raise the contribution of nuclear energy from 3 per cent to 7-9 per cent of India’s needs by 2020, the resulting power would be extremely expensive, even more so if the cost of uranium continues to rise as expected. Furthermore, there would always be the threat of a catastrophic accident, and the problem of the disposal of nuclear waste – which remains radioactive for thousands of years – has never been solved. Indeed, with many developed countries moving away from nuclear power, it seems anomalous that India should be moving into it: something like a throw-back to the days when India accepted the obsolete technology of more advanced capitalist countries. The same investment in clean, renewable sources of energy like small hydro, solar, wind and wave power – which now produce more electricity worldwide than nuclear energy – would ensure a safer, cheaper and more sustainable energy supply in the future. The minimal or possibly negative contribution of the deal to energy security leads to suspicions that the real purpose of the deal, for India, is to endorse its status as a nuclear weapons power and allow all domestically produced uranium to be used for nuclear weapons production. On this issue, the objections of anti-nuclear groups are the very opposite of those of both the BJP and Left parties: not that India should have the sovereign right to control its nuclear weapons programme, but that India should press for immediate measures which would lead to global nuclear disarmament; measures that would, of course, involve a regime of international monitoring. The terms of the deal, on the contrary, could provide an impetus to other proliferators by tacitly endorsing the nuclear proliferation practised by India, and make the goal of nuclear disarmament even more distant than it is now. It is easy to understand why the current US administration is so desperate to seal a strategic alliance with India, at a time when Pakistan, its traditional ally in South Asia, appears to be faltering. For India, however, the deal would be a disaster. Backing out of it under pressure from public opinion may be embarrassing, but not shameful; on the contrary, it is the only democratic option. Going through with it, on the other hand, would be detrimental to India in the multifarious ways outlined above. Clearly, the democratic option is both the wisest and the only honourable one.
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