Whether one is for or against the Indian decision to vote against
Iran at the recent International Atomic Energy Agency meet, let us
not pretend that this is anything else but a response to a situation
created by the United States of America. Left to itself, India would
never have sought to precipitate such a showdown and would have
preferred to maintain wider options by not having to choose between
upsetting the US or Iran.
To understand the whole story properly, one has to start not from
evaluating what is in India's 'national interest' but from assessing
what the most powerful player - the US - has been up to and why. And
how does the NPT-IAEA come into the picture?
The non-proliferation treaty was a bargain in which non-nuclear
member states signed up, agreeing to renounce acquisition of nuclear
weapons in return for two carrots. The first was Article VI, whereby
the three nuclear weapons states, the United Kingdom, Russia, the US
(later joined by China and France), promised to take steps to
ultimately disarm themselves. This carrot has long been thrown out
the window.
The second carrot was Article IV, wherein the non-nuclear signatories
would be helped to build up their own civilian nuclear energy
establishments, albeit under IAEA monitored safeguards. Here, there
has always been a basic contradiction inherent in the inescapably
dual-use nature of civilian nuclear energy development. The NPT
denies countries nuclear weapons, yet the same treaty helps them
develop some of the wherewithal to become nuclear if they choose to
at some future time. For decades this contradiction was never
attacked by the nuclear weapons states or by India, which confined
its criticism to the 'discriminatory' aspect of the NPT. The only
sustained criticism of this contradiction in the NPT came from the
ranks of those who not only opposed nuclear weapons but also nuclear
energy development.
In more recent times, the Western nuclear weapons states did become
uneasy about how the NPT might be helping certain signatory countries
like North Korea and Libya to develop their potential on the nuclear
weapons front. But it is only after September 11, 2001 that the US
dramatically changed its approach to the NPT.
In the NPT 2000 review conference, the US, along with other nuclear
weapons states, went along with the 'thirteen points' that were
supposed to encourage the prospects of global disarmament. It agreed
to give some face-savers to Article VI in order to reassure critics
and enable that conference to be considered a 'success'. In the 2005
NPT review conference, the US insisted that the issue must shift from
disarmament to non-proliferation and therefore from Article VI to
Article IV, dealing with the provision of dual-use help for civilian
energy purposes. This is the inauguration by the US of a new and much
more determined process than ever before of suborning and
manipulating the NPT and the IAEA to prevent (selectively of course)
even the potential development of a nuclear weapons programme by its
perceived enemies.
In short, it is not the detection of 'cheating' or 'duplicity' by
Iran that is the dramatic and most important new development, but the
duplicitous new course that the US has taken. So what are the
principal aims of the US orchestration of this IAEA governing body
resolution and vote?
One, to hamper, if not prevent, select enemies, most importantly
Iran, from developing even the potential - inherent though it is in
any civilian nuclear energy programme - to have a nuclear weapons
system in the future.
Two, to promote and spread the falsehood that Iran is "non-compliant"
and "cheating". Many Indian observers in the media have swallowed
this canard. Iran has clearly wanted to keep the nuclear weapons
option open, even though it is far from actually having nuclear
weapons or even from deciding that it must have them in the future.
It has had a programme of building dual-use uranium enrichment
facilities on this unstated policy basis for many years. But this was
in no way cheating or non-compliance since Iran has never violated
any of the clearly stipulated conditions of the IAEA with regard to
such construction and equipping activity, which only eventually comes
under formal IAEA inspection. Indeed, by voluntarily signing the
additional protocol allowing much freer and frequent IAEA
inspections, Iran has signalled that is in fact moving in the
direction of narrowing the option to make nuclear weapons in the
future. That the E-3, the US and the IAEA have nonetheless moved
towards a resolution tabling "non-compliance" and laying the ground
for referral of the case to the United Nations security council is an
expression not of Iranian duplicity but of E-3 and US dishonesty and
IAEA suborning.
Three, that Russia, China and 10 others decided to abstain and not
vote against this disgraceful resolution, which was obviously better
than voting for it, is nevertheless a concession given to the US that
also advances its overall project, and which the latter can now try
and further build upon. The US can now more confidently hope that it
can, through further abstentions at the IAEA November meet, get a
majority to refer the case on Iran to the security council, and
indeed avoid a veto from either Russia or China if the security
council goes in for a sanctions resolution.
Four, to pave the way internationally for legitimizing a future US or
Israeli military attack on Iran in the name of preventing a
'cheating' and 'irresponsible' Iran for going in for weapons of mass
destruction. It must be understood that west Asia is the geopolitical
pivot of the US project to successfully establish an informal global
empire. And here the greatest strategic defeat that the US has ever
suffered since 1945 was not the emergence of Iraq under Saddam
Hussein but the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, a defeat that
must be reversed.
Five, no empire can be achieved or stabilized on the basis of force
alone. It must achieve legitimacy as widely as possible - among
client regimes and allies and their populations, among neutrals,
amongst the populations of actual or potential rivals, amongst the
populations whose governments are targeted. This requires covering up
one's imperial project through ideological disguises. For west Asia,
there are four important ideological banners behind which the US
hides - the war on global terrorism, weapons of mass destruction,
humanitarian intervention, regime change to promote democracy. These
banners either singly or in combination need to be repeatedly
unfurled and endorsed by an 'expanding audience'. In short, the
building of Empire needs consent and this can be active, passive or
bought.
The best is active consent - the absorption of the belief that what
is good for the US government is good for the world. Passive consent
- the belief that one cannot really take on the US though one
dislikes or hates what it is doing - will do, since resistance is
abandoned. Bought consent is what governments and their circle of
supporting strategists call 'intelligent diplomacy', namely
acceptance of US dollops in return for endorsement of US foreign
policies which are then sold to the receiving country's population as
the exercise of 'national interest'.
The US is delighted that in India, consent to its imperial project is
not merely being easily purchased, but a pro-US elite in India is
also in a myriad ways declaring that its acceptance is an active one.
No matter whether we have a Congress-led or BJP-led coalition
government at the Centre, the US is now assured (despite some
dissidence) that the alliance of the two country's elites will be
stable and enduring.
