India Gets a Pass
Nobody’s paid any attention to this, but as Mark Goldberg points out probably the most significant news of the weekend was the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s decision to give the go-ahead to the US-India nuclear deal. Daryl Kimball and Joseph Cirincione have described the deal as “a non-proliferation disaster.” I sort of reconciled myself to it being a fait accompli a while ago. It goes to show, however, that if we want to get global non-proliferation policy on the right track we’re going to have to start doing things differently. The preferred American scenario in which the extent to which a country’s nuclear activities are permitted is just a function of how we feel about them seems unlikely to be viable over the long haul. To prevent countries from going nuclear, you need a quite robust level of international cooperation and that means a fairly neutral, objective scheme that all different kinds of countries can endorse.
36 Responses to “India Gets a Pass”
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September 8th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
To prevent a country from going nuclear you need an environment where countries’ security needs are met. If you don’t want Pakistan to remain nuclear, then you have to keep India from going nuclear. To keep India from going nuclear, you had to have kept China from going nuclear. To keep China from going nuclear, you had to have kept the Soviet Union from going nuclear. etc., etc.
You have to take away the veto power in the Security Council of the “declared nuclear powers”. You have to have a truly working international police force, etc. etc. You have to have a US president who respects the word of the IAEA. You can’t have the declared nuclear powers unilaterally walking over other countries (like Iraq or Georgia).
Actually, calling a new institutional arrangement a disaster, after having studiously ignored all the other breakdowns is like talking about the problem of race in the US and talking only about black racism. You sound both stupid and hypocritical.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
“The preferred American scenario in which the extent to which a country’s nuclear activities are permitted is just a function of how we feel about them seems unlikely to be viable over the long haul.”
No shizzle Sherlock. Welcome to the real world. The problem is 98% of America how no idea what the fizzle you are talking about, are too lazy to do any research, and only care about stuff after we are knee-deep in a shizzle storm.
The the US-India nuclear deal is critical to the future of nonproliferation, and nonproliferation is critical to our national security. But, by all means, lets focus on “Alaskan Fun Facts” and chant “drill baby drill” until our heads explode.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Wasn’t the original nuclear regime pretty arbitrary too?
I mean: Only white and Chinese people get to have nukes?
That pretty much says, if you weren’t one of the countries that built big empires in the 1700s, you will never ever be allowed to be militarily equal to those countries. In other words, if you’re brown, your country must be permanently weaker.
Doesn’t sound like a very viable system to me.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
you need a quite robust level of international cooperation and that means a fairly neutral, objective scheme that all different kinds of countries can endorse.
Putting aside the merits of this particular case:
The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a 45 country consortium with members from every continent (except of course, Antarctica) and various levels of political and economic ‘development’.
How much more international cooperation do you need to make something legit?
(And for this particular case, the main oposition was from China – for obvious reasons, and Austria and Ireland, for reasons unfamiliar to me)
September 8th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Especially because it’s a function of how we feel about them at that specific time. Then things change, c.f. Iran and the Shah.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
No, it means a level of trust between countries that has never existed, and is unlikely to ever exist. Your notion that we can somehow magically create a world without nukes is a fantasy, and a childish one at that.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Why do you hate India?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Noah, that’s not what the original non-proliferation regime says at all. Here’s Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:
We’re obligated to negotiate a treaty “on general and complete disarmament.” The US Senate ratified and then re-ratified the NPT, and the treaty now carries the force of law (at least on paper).
And, IIRC, India, which never signed the treaty, mentioned the nuclear powers’ failure to negotiate disarmament when they tested in the 1990s.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”
aka Kellogg-Briand II: Electric Boogaloo
September 8th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
The United States and other nuclear powers are not pursuing disarmament as called for in the NPT. So, the NPT is, in practice, largely what Noah described.
A useful thought experiment — push the date of the NPT from the 1960s back to the 1880s. Who would have had nuclear weapons? Probably Germany, the UK, France and Austria-Hungary. Maybe Russia and the Ottomans. Would the United States, Italy or Japan, countries who perceive their global power just off in the near horizon, have agreed to the NPT? Can we expect countries who perceive themselves as global players and who possess legitimate security concerns to not attempt to obtain nuclear weapons? The treaty has been doomed from the start — it would be best to quit bellyaching about how it’s being broken and start talking about a new non-proliferation regime.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Gregor,
Mr. Yglesias appears to dislike India because he is an avid disciple of the inexplicable Islamophilia which appears to infect the chattering classes in the great powers of the West. The Hindus of India managed to throw off their Muslim overlords and keep Islamist Jihadists in check, therefore they must be bad, in Mr. Yglesias’ eyes. No doubt he, and the other fashionable Islamophiles, would prefer that India hand itself over to the Jihadists the same way that England appears to be doing today.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
“The preferred American scenario in which the extent to which a country’s nuclear activities are permitted is just a function of how we feel about them seems unlikely to be viable over the long haul. ”
Umm, as opposed to the last 40 years? Come on, get off your high horse. The NPT has always viewed nuclear weapons as proxy for great power status. However, in pratice the NPT is a joke as France and the UK aren’t great powers. I also don’t see a raging movement among NPT czars to sanction Israel, which is a country that has done more to spread nuclear technology (brazil, south africa and taiwan) than India has.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I’m not sure what you gain by trying to preserve a system that no one observed. OTOH, if you try to adjust the system to take account of a certain reality – that a nation with a billion people and no history of selling its nuclear technology can be trusted – what is so destabilizing about that?
September 8th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
That’s some high grade stupid you’re pushing there Hector.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I also don’t see a raging movement among NPT czars to sanction Israel, which is a country that has done more to spread nuclear technology (brazil, south africa and taiwan) than India has.
We don’t sell uranium to Israel, either. And it’s telling that you mention South Africa, since they were persuaded to give up nuclear weapons by that old, broken non-proliferation regime.
OTOH, if you try to adjust the system to take account of a certain reality – that a nation with a billion people and no history of selling its nuclear technology can be trusted – what is so destabilizing about that?
The fact that we’d be taking one more step toward an exceptions-based non-proliferation policy instead of a rule-based one?
September 8th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Doesn’t this deal have to be approved by Congress for a second time? Seems like there’s still plenty of opportunity to stall it.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
“And it’s telling that you mention South Africa, since they were persuaded to give up nuclear weapons by that old, broken non-proliferation regime.”
Persuasion was secondary to the dismantling of apartheid. Once apartheid was gone, the threat perception that South Africa had of its neighbors diminished greatly, removing the chief reason for that nation to hold on to its nuclear weapons.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Nuclear weapons should be eliminated. Non proliferation by itself is insufficient. America and the other powers should take the lead in disarmament. Otherwise people in India, the world’s greatest democracy, will rightly label any lecturing from the long-standing nuclear powers as hypocrisy.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I’m curious about the timing of this. One theory is that India’s profile had grown enough for the US to want to attempt this but China is not yet influential enough to block it.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Doesn’t this deal have to be approved by Congress for a second time? Seems like there’s still plenty of opportunity to stall it.
The issue is that now other countries can sell India stuff even if the US doesn’t. But the BJP (the main opposition party in India) is right to point out that the administration’s been telling Congress that the deal will conform to the conditions set out in the Hyde Act, while telling India otherwise.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:55 am
My thoughts on this topic here – http://21stcenturypolitics.blogspot.com/
No, Matthew is not stupid; but surely out of tune in this regard. He does not have to be sad ‘to have resigned’ on this deal earlier; but rather ‘glad’ that he ‘got it’; but Sara Palin did not!
And that is the thing – Matthew’s opinion is not a big problem in itself. It is as what other commentator has said – 98% of Americans are all for ‘Alaskan Fun Facts’ and ‘Drill baby drill’. With such a pathetic level of understanding of rest of the world; ‘narcissism’ of highest order and jokers like Sara Palin & McCain leaders of America; it reveals pathetic level of American public here! That is scary.
I won’t mind NPT fundamentalism of Matthew only if more Americans cared about all this. They give damn to it and then deserve leaders like that Alaskan Queen and that Old Hack. Indeed the future looks grim for America.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:13 am
There’s an elephant in the room being ignored here (if you’ll pardon the pun).
There’s a pretty strong case, in my view, that the integrity of the NPT is no longer the highest global security priority here.
If India is to expand its economy, it will use more energy. Whether we like it or not, it is not at all certain that renewable energy will be able to provide sufficient energy at the price and the time desired. Therefore, India will have to get its energy from somewhere else.
That somewhere else is either nuclear power or fossil fuels.
Getting a global deal on limiting greenhouse emissions is going to be incredibly difficult. Getting one while simultaneously denying India access to the fuel it needs to use one of the only known large-scale low-carbon alternatives will be impossible.
Frankly, creating another exception under the NPT (which, as already noted, is a farce, with the existing nuclear powers having no intention to disarm, nor do anything about the arsenal they helped to give Israel), is small beer compared to the risks that climate change poses.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Hasn’t NPT been nothing but codification of exceptions from the beginning? (Or, an exception dressed as a rule, if you will)
September 30th, 2008 at 4:05 am
I find it silly – at one point the so called developed nations want India and the world to stop Greenhouse gas emission (They have used it a lot in their development and now as they are already at the zennith of infrastructure they can do without their use) and at one point they dont want to allow these nations to use other forms of energy. What is your point ? Do not allow other countries to develop ? As per as nuclear testing goes – one can trust India – India had enough fissile material to perform sevreal dozen more nuclear tests but it stopped them right away. Their development of Nuclear weapons was only seen as a measure to restrict China who was building up its forces on India’s border.
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