A nuclear weapons state in all but name

The best way to get a handle on the otherwise dense safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency is to see what its American critics are saying. We already have Dr Jeffrey Lewis, the man who posted a leaked copy of the agreement on armscontrolwonk.com early Thursday morning, headlining his post “India safeguards agreement stinks.” He is concerned over the fact that nowhere is the word “perpetuity” mentioned. In other words, even the indigenous reactors that New Delhi is offering for safeguards will have a loophole which will permit us to take them out, if needed. He has called on the IAEA to scrap this agreement and come up with another, tighter, document.
What is remarkable is the latitude India has managed with regard to what it will place under safeguards. First, the Agency has accepted that India “on the basis of its sole determination” will identify and “voluntarily” offer a facility for safeguards. In the separation plan announced on March 2, 2006, India agreed to put into safeguards eight indigenous power reactors, in addition to six already under safeguards. It said that it could consider placing some future reactors as well. In addition, certain facilities like the Nuclear Fuel Complex, too, could be put under the IAEA verification regime. People like Lewis complain that under this agreement India will have the right, under certain circumstances, to pull even these eight reactors out of the safeguards regime.

The preamble to the agreement lists all the Indian requirements noting that while India would place its civilian nuclear facilities under Agency safeguards, it will also provide assurance against withdrawal of material from civilian use at any time. Further, for India to accept the safeguards, the Agency understood India’s need “to obtain access to the international fuel market including reliable, uninterrupted and continuous access to fuel supplies from companies in several nation. “ It understood that India could set up a “strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption in supply” and it also accepted that India “may take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation of its civilian reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuel supplies.” There is much of a to do over specifying the so-called corrective measures. Left wanted to know whether India would have the ability to withdraw indigenous or imported reactors from safeguards if the US or other parties reneged on fuel supply. Critics in India and abroad, for different reasons, say that India should spell it out. That would be most foolish. If you reveal the sanctions you will take in the event of the other party reneging on its part of the deal, you’re blunting your own weapon.
Critics will say that this is only stated in the preamble. Aren’t preambles statements ? The statement that India is a “sovereign, socialist, secular democratic republic “ is not without meaning. More important is that this preamble concludes noting that “taking into account the above India and the agency have agreed to as follows:” and then spells out the clauses in the agreement.

The key here is the understanding both the IAEA and India have of each other. Clearly the IAEA accepts India’s record in living up to its commitments in letter and in spirit. The practical fact it recognizes is that India will have as many as eight indigenous reactors, and the fast breeder test reactor, uranium enrichment facilities, and the Power Reactor Fuel Reprocessing plant outside the safeguards regime. So there is no incentive for India to cheat and transfer nuclear material from the safeguarded civilian programme to its military one.
With this agreement, India can have its cake and eat it too. The India-specific provisions have made an extraordinary exception for India. The IAEA is the policeman of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and what it has done is to provide a legal sanction for trade, even though we are, by its reckoning, an illegal nuclear weapons state.

Don't miss the nuclear train, there won't be another for a long time to come

Once upon a time in another continent, there was a country, almost as large as India, which was rich and prosperous. Between 1880 and 1916, Argentina was among the top ten nations of the world, a potential great power. Since then it has been steadily declining, with its politics veering between conservatism, military rule and radical populism.
Even today, the country possesses abundant resources and a well educated and talented population, but it remains a potential great nation, rather than an actual one. Somehow, it seems to have missed all the chances that it got in the past century to get back on the track to greatness. India’s story is an older one, going back more than three centuries. But these days we, too, seem to be resembling luckless Argentina, rather than our northern neighbour China which, in the short space of three decades, has nearly restored its status as a great world power.
There is a trite assumption that “Shining” or “Incredible” India, one with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, are inevitable; indeed, in some measure, we are already “there.” The reality, if we are to learn from history, could be different. With the world’s largest population of illiterate, ill and hungry people, we are only part way through the journey. Our recent successes could turn out to be a peak, rather than an upward trend line.

Circumstance

Looked at from another angle, the health of the country’s political system and processes does not appear too good. First, India’s political system seems to be suffering from a serious dysfunction. With none of the three major political formations — the Congress, BJP and the Left —being able to establish themselves, the country is being pulled apart by smaller ethnic and caste leaders whose narrow focus not only does not take into account “India” and issues related to it, but actually undermines the idea of India. Second, the administrative system of the country has become so corrupt and inefficient that the delivery of public health services, education, and even basic law and order does not exist for the poorest half of the population. Third, the inefficiencies associated with the Indian political and administrative system have led to a collapse of rural infrastructure and the creation of shoddy urban conglomerations which are, in some measure because of factors 1 and 2, becoming ungovernable. Fourth, India’s sclerotic political and administrative system is so caught up with simply surviving that it has ceased to be effective in solving outstanding political problems, or problems that are emerging. So negotiations with separatists in Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, or with the Maoists in central India, seem to be trapped on a treadmill.
Just how does the Indo-US nuclear deal connect to these varied set of issues? It is not as if the nuclear deal will resolve all of India’s problems and make us a superpower. What the deal and the way it has been handled does is to tell us a great deal about India’s self-doubts and uncertainties, and indeed points to the hubris that could bring our ambitions low. Beyond the nuts and bolts of civil nuclear cooperation, the deal represents a major effort by the leading nations of the world to bring India into the mainstream of international politics — somewhat akin to the exercise that took place in the 1970s with the People’s Republic of China. Fitting India into the world’s non-proliferation system, whose lynch-pin is the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is seen as an act that will promote global stability.

Opposition

The heavens will not come down if the deal does not go through. We can bungle on as we have. But it will leave uncomfortable questions about India’s ability to discriminate between what is good and what is bad for itself; and of the ability of its political system to work the international system. By all accounts, the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency have yielded on every single count raised by India, yet a significant chunk of our politicians, driven by short-term and narrow considerations, are unable to accept this.
Of the two main opponents, it is easier to understand, though not condone, the Left’s opposition. It is based on an irrational, and untenable belief that the US is the leader of “world imperialism”. The problem with the Indian Left and its leadership is that they are fighting a war on another planet. In that world, the Vietnam war is still continuing, Che and Fidel’s revolution has swept Latin America and the Soviet Union is flourishing. Unfortunately for the Left, in our world, a united Vietnam, has followed China’s “market socialism”, become a new tiger economy, and is a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations, a once reviled grouping of “imperialist lackeys”. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist and Fidel has just retired as the head of a nation he has left decrepit.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s opposition is completely spurious, and somewhat cynical, because it has no bugbear like “imperialism” holding it back, neither is it opposed to the idea of having the US take the lead in lifting the nuclear embargo on India. The BJP, which termed the US India’s “natural ally” and whose current prime ministerial hopeful once pressed his government to send troops to Iraq, can hardly oppose the deal on the same grounds as the Left. The BJP says it will get a better deal. But, as Strobe Talbott has pointed out, it was willing to settle for less than 50 per cent of what the Congress has got. In these circumstances to argue that a “majority” of Parliament is opposed to the deal is superficial.
India certainly needs to be grateful to the US for pushing the deal to the extent it has. No doubt the US has its own interests in mind, but India is not a callow new nation, or a failing state which can be manipulated to some nefarious end. The 123 Agreement with the US and the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement have shown that our officials, if properly directed, are capable of not only preserving, but furthering the country’s best interests.
As it is, in its totality, the deal is between the NSG cartel and India. The 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act, the India-specific safeguards agreement are all enabling processes. The actual agreement will be the “clean exemption” that the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have to give India to enable all its 45 members to resume civil nuclear trade with India. For a time the NSG was a western grouping. But over time it has gathered strength and drawn in countries like Russia, South Africa, Brazil and China and become a true international cartel.

Wishful thinking

There is an argument that, given the trends, the US and the world community will be happy to offer the deal to India at a later date. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. True, having established several benchmarks, it will be easy to pick up the thread of the negotiations subsequently. But consider two issues: First, there is nothing left to negotiate. Everything that India could have conceivably wanted has been delivered. Second, it is not impossible that we can once again arrive at a conjuncture where we can get a friendly US president, an acquiescent US Congress, and a cooperative head of the IAEA to offer us a deal. But it is improbable. History does not usually repeat itself. In the coming decades we are unlikely to have another system-destructive US president like George W Bush, who was willing to bend the NPT system, as no other US leader would have been willing to, so as to accommodate India.
This article first appeared in Mail Today March 12, 2008

One step forward, two steps back

In contrast to Lenin's dictum, "Two steps forward, one step back," the Left has succeeded in inflicting a wound on itself by its maneuvering on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its concession allowing the government to begin negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency means it has abandoned its stand demanding that the government do nothing to "operationalise" the deal. In fact, all that is left to operationalise the deal from the Indian side is to work out an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Thereafter, the US will take the agreement to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and seek an exemption from its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only the US can do that,India is not an NSG member (as yet). But India can, and has been talking to individual NSG members for the past year or so, though there is no public record of the discussions. Formally, it is the US that will have to approach the NSG and seek, as India has demanded, a "clean exemption" ie, an unconditional one. This is not likely to be easy because the non-proliferationists in the US and Europe are mobilising their efforts to ensure that an NSG exemption is conditional on India's agreeing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and commit itself to the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, if and when the latter is negotiated.Conditions are likely to be political dynamite in India and will be unacceptable to New Delhi.

The IAEA agreement is not likely to be too complicated because it will be based, as we have noted before, on the basic IAEA safeguards document relevant, INFCIRC/66. The Left has demanded, and the government has conceded, that the safeguards agreement will placed before the Left-UPA committee for approval. Just how this highly technical document be judged on by a political committee is not clear.The Left could insist on demanding provisions that are available for the de jure nuclear weapons states (under the NPT provision of having conducted a nuclear test before January 1, 1967). However, this would be a deal-breaker. Because while the US is willing to give India a de facto nuclear weapons state status, it simply does not have the power to turn the clock back and give India a de jure one. Seeking parity for the sake of parity will be a counter-productive move.
Whatever it is, Comrade Prakash Karat has given special interviews to indicate that there is no change in the Left's policy. That is hard to accept considering that he had declared that any step to operationalise the deal would lead to a withdrawal of the Left's support.
My guess is that the government is readying for an election by March-April and at the appropriate moment, it will move to clinch the deal and precipitate an election.

Bitter October

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, say reports, is a bitter man. He feels particularly let down by allies, since he expected that the opposition would be unsparing towards the Indo-US nuclear deal anyway. There are two things he can do—swallow his bitterness like a kaliyug Shiva and stay in office, or spit it out and quit. Either way, there are implications for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. He may not be much of a political heavy-weight, but he is clearly indispensible for the Congress president who does not trust a Pranab Mukherji and is not likely to hand the government over to the lightweight and incompetent Shivraj Patil.

But the fact is that there is an irretrievable breakdown in the relations between the Prime Minister and the Left on one hand, and between the PM and his coalition allies who finally slipped the knife into his back earlier this month. There is, no doubt, an element of unhappiness with Ms Sonia Gandhi as well who went along with Lalu, Karunanidhi, Pawar and Co in the process, resulting in the current impasse. Worse, a day or so later on October 12, during the Hindustan Times conference, when asked as to who she depends on for political advice, named her son, daughter and son-in-law and did not even make a passing reference to her prime minister.

The Left played dirty by going along with the deal through 2005, 2006 and most of 2007 and pulled the rug under his feet after the enormous achievement of the Indian “123 Agreement” which is extremely favourable to us. His allies—Lalu, Karunanidhi and Pawar—not only went along with him, but were represented or actually part of the Union Cabinet that approved every step of the negotiations, and finally endorsed the “123 Agreement.” On July 25, a combined meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security and the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs okayed the 123. Incidentally, that very evening, Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader D. Raja were given a special presentation on the deal by officials at the Prime Minister’s residence. There are no reports of the Left having declared themselves dead-set against the deal at this stage. On August 19, according to The Hindu:

The key constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on Sunday night threw in their lot with coalition chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and expressed full confidence in their ability to address “all legitimate concerns” voiced by the Left parties.

The goings on of October 9/10 therefore were a surprise to Singh, though they should not have been. The allies may claim that it was one thing to give the endorsement above, quite another to have the cold water of an election thrown on their face. But the fact is that if they had held their nerve, they could have emerged winners, instead of the dispirited and confused bunch they appear now.

Now there are straws in the wind to suggest that the UPA is recovering some of the coherence it lost at that time. This is apparent from the outcome of the latest meeting of the UPA-Left committee on October 22. Prior to the meeting there were a lot of bombastic declarations demanding that the government announce the termination of the Indo-US nuclear deal, or leave it to the next US administration-- statements tantamount to a Congress party surrender. But the outcome of the meeting was anodyne, suggesting that it was the Left that backed off. The conclusion of Monday meeting declared that:

Issues currently before it [the committee] would be addressed in an appropriate manner and the operationalisation of the deal will take into account the Committee’s findings.

This is actually a restatement of the positions the committee has taken from the very outset and its reiteration indicates that the Congress is not budging and the Left could be up the creek without a paddle.

Reports in several papers now claim that the time frame of the nuclear deal will not be adhered to as regards India-specific safeguards negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scheduled for October, negotiations with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) slated for November and taking the deal to the U.S. Congress in January 2008.

Nicholas Burns seems to have repeated this view to a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. According to Reuters, Burns is reported to have said that the US was approaching election time and that it was tough to pass legislation at such times. Adding,

We don't have an unlimited amount of time...We'd like to get this agreement to the United States Congress by the end of the year.

He is right, but the technical timeline—which means the time required to get the technicalities of the deal worked out—actually extends all the way to the end of 2008. However, as the months pass, there is an inevitable loss of momentum and the chances of it being taken up by the Congress recede. The steps needed now are for the approval of an India-specific safeguards agreement by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Between you and me, this agreement is more-or-less ready and could be approved within a week of India’s request. While there is a formal 45-day process to summon the Board of Governors meeting, the IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei is backing the deal and will provide a short cut.

There is an NSG meeting scheduled in November and it is possible that the US will get pre-approval from their colleagues based on the prospective IAEA safeguards agreement. The NSG approval will not be simple because the members want to connect it to the Fissile Material Cut Off and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But a measure sandwiching the INFCIRC/ 66, the IAEA's basic standard agreement with some language on the FMCT and CTBT could pass.So the whole process can be telescoped into about a month. As for the US Congress, mid-2008 can be seen as the outside limit of prudent planning.

There has been some talk about how the Democratic party would look at the deal. The Hyde Act, that enabled the 123 Agreement to be arrived at was passed by an overwhelming vote of the US Congress. Observers expect that the non-proliferationists in the new putative Clinton Administration would make life difficult for India and Hillary has already signaled her views through an article in Foreign Affairs, saying she would push for the CTBT in 2009. However these observers do not realize that countries like the US do not make policy moves out of whim but considerable cogitation and analysis. What Bush II did was based on what Bush I had initiated. In addition, he built on the goodwill generated by Bill Clinton’s overtures to India. The Indo-US nuclear deal is part of Washington’s strategic grand design. India may be a cog in this, but an it is an increasingly important one.

So now we need to look at the political timeline here in India. Given the public postures, there is no chance that the Left will approve of the deal. So at some point the UPA must say they are going ahead, and when they do so, the Left will announce a withdrawal of support. The government need not fall immediately, but it will begin the clock ticking for the next elections. My guess would be that it could well be after the Gujarat elections whose results should be known by December 23. This times well with the end of the winter session of Parliament. So the technical and political timelines can be made to intersect in early January, leading to elections in May.

Almost every election in India is a paradigm shift and so will the next one be. The best the Indian people can hope for is the emergence of one, two or three fronts that have some ideological coherence and are coalitions with some dharma, not just opportunistic alliances that are used as stepping stones to political power.

Mysterious goings on in New Delhi

What is happening with the Indo-US nuclear deal ? The prime minister and Sonia Gandhi’s statements on Friday have set the cat among the pigeons. Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit , the PM said: “If the deal does not come through, it will be a disappointment. But sometimes in life you have to live with them. It is not the end of life.” Sonia Gandhi, too said that the Congress would try to address the concerns of its allies and the party “The dharma of coalition is to work together, try and understand and accommodate each other’s view.”
In our view, this seeming flip-flop of the Congress party and the government can be understood if you believe, as I do, that there is now a deal within a deal. In other words, the Congress and the Left have struck a deal to back off from their confrontation and arrive at a workable compromise that will see the deal move on to its logical culmination, perhaps on a slightly delayed time line. This is no doubt the achievement of Pranab Mukherji, Lalu Yadav, Sitaram Yechury and Sharad Pawar. So the process will involve formal agreement in the Left-UPA committee that is supposed to look into the deal. You need to read between the lines to get the Left's true reaction. Note, Mr. Karat has not said anything.

There are several straws in the wind to suggest that. First, a CPI(M) politburo meeting scheduled for October 18 has been postponed. Second, speaking at an Indian Express function, Kapil Sibal says that the Left has accepted the primacy of the 123 Agreement over the Hyde Act. “The Left has now agreed to the position that where there is a conflict between the Hyde Act and the 123 agreement, the 123 agreement prevails. That position has been agreed to.”

Till now the Left has been arguing that they are not against the deal per se, but the Hyde Act that allegedly commits India to follow the US foreign policy agenda. That this was factually untrue mattered little because most of us believed that the Left’s positions were motivated by blind anti-Americanism rather than reason. Once reason comes into play, and there are grounds to believe that it has, the Left’s loses its sharp edge.

My guess-- and this is a guess-- is that we will now have a compromise formula, where the Left will endorse this point, and in return the government may go along with a Parliament statement or resolution that purports to defang the toothless Hyde Act.

In the meantime, behind the scenes negotiations are going on with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the India-specific safeguards which Dr. Mohammed El Baradei keeps on saying are not that much of a problem."We are ready. I don't think we would take very long. It would be weeks, not more than weeks." My own belief is that some behind-the-scenes negotiations have already taken place based on what diplomats cutely term "non-papers"-- working drafts which are not attributable to any government or institutions. So, there would be a show of formal consultation, but the agreement would be done in a matter of a week or so after India gives its go-ahead. As for the NSG, that as per agreement, is America’s baby, though we will have to put in effort as well, but behind the scenes.

It is too early to say that all's well that ends well. But there should be no doubts that relations between Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) General Secretary who forced the confrontation and the Prime Minister are irreparably damaged because of the note of bitterness that they brought into the issue. Usually in politics these things don't matter, but both are ideologues in their own way, and it does tend to matter.