Impasse over Indo-US nuclear deal?
Praful Bidwai
The News International, 11 February 2006
Despite cravenly voting against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency a week ago-in keeping with Washington's demands-, India has not ensured that the far-reaching "nuclear cooperation" agreement it signed last July will be finalised before President George W. Bush's visit to the subcontinent in early March. Late last month, US ambassador David Mulford threatened India with "devastating" consequences if it didn't vote against Iran. Disclaimers notwithstanding, India fell in line.
Yet, the chances of the deal going through have receded after Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar detonated a bombshell on Monday, when he publicly accused Washington of shifting "the goalpost" on the deal.
Kakodkar confirmed that the principal differences between the two sides pertain to the separation of military nuclear facilities from civilian ones, so the latter can be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The sharpest divergence is about including India's fledging fast-breeder reactor (FBR) programme in the civilian facilities list.
The US wants FBRs in that list because they (theoretically) generate more fissile material than they consume, and are a potential source of weapons-grade plutonium. India would like to keep them out of the inspections regime.
India earlier claimed that the FBR programme is essential for power generation and energy security. Now, Kakodkar says FBRs are essential "for maintaining the minimum credible deterrent". To that FBR-centred security calculus, he has added sovereignty: the determination of which facilities are civilian and which are military "has to be made by the Indians…" India's strategic interests must be decided by Indians alone.
Kakodkar's statement, made without prior authorisation from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), has clearly raised the stakes in the talks between New Delhi and Washington. He obviously knew this would complicate matters and impel Washington's policy-makers to harden their positions too.
In fact, he seems to have chosen this sensitive stage in the negotiation process because he wanted to hit back at his detractors who have orchestrated a media campaign to mount pressure on New Delhi to quickly finalise the July 18 deal on Washington's terms. They want it to ignore the "isolationist", "outdated" lobby of "reactionary" nuclear scientists.
Kakodkar's interview was clearly calculated to press Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stick to the first civilian facilities list which India recently forwarded to the Americans. FBRs were excluded from this, along with all facilities at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, the uranium enrichment plant near Mysore, and at least two nuclear power reactors.
Kakodkar's insistence that India stick to the original proposal, and the hostile media reaction to him from his detractors, suggest a serious division in the Indian Establishment over how the nuclear deal is to be implemented. India's policy-makers and -shapers are split between the "ultra-nationalists" (who see the agreement as capitulation to American pressure to cap India's nuclear capabilities), and the "pro-US pragmatists", who too are nuclear hawks.
There is also a third current, the growing peace movement, which opposes the deal not because it limits India's "sovereignty" (itself a questionable concept as regards mass-destruction weapons), but because it legitimises nuclear weapons, consolidates a US-India strategic alliance, promotes the wrong energy path, and encourages proliferation.
What explains the Establishment split and Kakodkar's extreme step of going public? How will that change the outcome of the Indo-US talks? Will India gain or lose on military and energy security if the agreement falls through?
The first "ultra-nationalist" group comprises a majority of India's nuclear and defence scientists-engineers and reflects the culture of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), which has always been pampered despite its poor performance. The DAE has gobbled up thousands of crores of public money to deliver a pitiful 2.5 percent of India's electricity-with a host of occupational and environmental safety problems.
The DAE has borrowed/bought technology from the UK, US, Canada, USSR, Russia, China, even Norway. But it loathes international safeguards. In general, it resists any accountability, domestic or international. It was dragged, kicking and screaming, into endorsing the July 18 nuclear deal. It's now wreaking its revenge.
The "pro-US pragmatists" believe that India should sign on the dotted line to get legitimised as a nuclear weapons-state and strengthen the US-India strategic alliance even it that means compromising on India's foreign policy options. Like many in the Pakistan establishment, they believe that joining the US bandwagon is the best shortcut to Great Power status.
This group has suddenly discovered the virtues of nuclear electricity. It always knew that the deal won't be strictly equal-although Singh promised the opposite in a Parliament statement. To win Congressional approval for the deal, India would have to satisfy Washington that the civilian-military separation is "credible" and "defensible". To facilitate this, the "pragmatists" campaigned for an IAEA vote against Iran.
The DAE wrongly presents FBRs as the gateway to energy security. FBRs are not a proved technology. They have been a failure everywhere, including in France, the world's fast-breeder "leader". However, the DAE has a trump card in the text of the deal, which says the civilian-military separation would be "voluntary" and "phased." In reality, it's turning out to be nothing of the sort.
Kakodkar has capitalised on the text and tried to checkmate the PMO! He knows Manmohan Singh cannot sack him without attracting the charge of acting under US pressure.
It's likely that the US will accept exclusion of FBRs from the civilian list. FBRs are an open-ended source of plutonium for both civilian and military purposes. If India has raised the stakes on FBRs, so can the US.
A beleaguered President Bush, whose acceptance ratings have plummeted to barely 40 percent, is unlikely to summon the political will to push the deal through if FBRs are excluded. The deal is unlikely to go through before his visit. If it's not finalised soon, the momentum could be lost altogether.
That won't be a bad thing for India. It's in no one's interest to legitimise and "normalise" India's (or Pakistan's, the US's, or anyone's) nuclear weapons. Real security lies in the their worldwide elimination. If a special exception is made for India in the global nuclear order, that will heighten the proliferation danger, not least in Iran, Israel, North Korea, and possibly Saudi Arabia. A world crawling with more nuclear powers will be even more insecure.
Nuclear power is not the answer to India's (or Pakistan's) energy problems. Globally, it's shrinking in its contribution to energy generation. It's expensive, and fraught with grave environmental and health hazards, including the problem of containing wastes that will remain radioactive for thousands of years. High oil prices don't warrant more nuclear power, but higher investment in renewable energy and energy conservation.
The nuclear deal will trap India in a bind, while greatly narrowing her policy freedom. The vote on Iran, and the growing intimacy between India and Israel, are eloquent examples of the peril of getting too close to the US on Washington's terms. This is so especially because the US is set to play a reckless and retrograde role in the world.
India should maintain a principled distance from the US. Kakodkar, despite his misguided logic, may have unintentionally made a contribution to that.
Copyright 2006
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