Abstract
Now that the United States has given India a free pass around nuclear controls, other states will be lining up to profit from proliferation.
Prime minister winston Churchill identified the central irony of the first nuclear age most memorably in 1955, when he hopefully predicted, “Safety will become the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” Churchill's “sublime irony” regarding the saving graces of nuclear overkill has been overtaken by events, but smaller ironies continue to abound in the second nuclear age, where the threat of catastrophic terrorism has replaced the danger of superpower rivalry.
One such irony is that the system of export controls that was instigated following India's 1974 nuclear test may now be vitiated to give India a helping hand. Another irony is that the United States–the country most responsible for constructing this essential export control bulwark against proliferation–may become strongly complicit in its demise.
The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which maintains this system of controls, is the most unusual cartel in world history, since its raison d'être is to prevent profit-taking when proliferation would result. The NSG is now being shaken up by a nuclear cooperation agreement finalized by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March 2006 and passed by Congress in December 2006. This agreement will exempt India from the restrictive rules of nuclear commerce that apply to all other states that have neither signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor accepted full-scope safeguards on all of their nuclear facilities. (Full-scope safeguards require inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency at all nuclear facilities within the recipient country.)
There is no precedent for a single-country exemption in the global rules of nuclear commerce. Thus, the Bush administration's assumption that future profit-taking in questionable cases will be limited to India smacks of wishful thinking. Once painstakingly devised constraints on nuclear commerce begin to loosen, other “exceptions” to these rules are likely to follow. Future exemptions may well be granted to other states that are outside the NPT or that backtrack from safeguard commitments.
DULY noted
By unfortunate coincidence, the primary potential profit-takers in the NSG are the permanent five (P-5) members of the U.N. Security Council, the only states recognized by the NPT as nuclear weapon states. The NPT cannot remain meaningful without the support of the P-5. If they place profits ahead of nonproliferation, they will leave the global nonproliferation system even more badly battered. Simply put, as export controls go, so goes the NPT. The U.S.-India nuclear deal therefore constitutes another direct hit on the NPT, which has been battered by Iran and North Korea.
India's 1974 nuclear test clarified how easily nuclear-related transfers for peaceful purposes–in this instance, a power reactor provided by Canada and heavy water provided by the United States–could be misappropriated for making nuclear weapons. The NSG's original members–Britain, Canada, France, West Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States–joined in common cause to prevent similar misuse of their exports. Over time, the NSG grew to 45 members, and with U.S. prodding, it developed increasingly comprehensive guidelines for nuclear and dual-use transfers.
In the wake of the U.S.-India nuclear deal, we may look back at the decade of the 1990s as not only the apogee of global efforts to prevent proliferation but also as the high-water mark for constraints on nuclear commerce. Multilateral support for stronger NSG guidelines gained traction in 1991 after the discovery of Iraq's covert nuclear weapons program. Meeting in Warsaw in 1992, NSG members agreed to expand the list of items that would be under their purview. A year later in Lucerne, the NSG, then 28 nations strong, agreed to export only to states that accepted full-scope safeguards.
NSG members permitted two categories of exceptions to this rule: For “exceptional cases … deemed essential for the safe operation of existing facilities … if safeguards are applied to those facilities”; and when obligations and contracts for nuclear supply were drawn up on or prior to April 3, 1992. The safety exemption and grandfather clause have been used sparingly, with India the primary beneficiary. India's Tarapur reactor complex figures prominently in these transactions. The safeguarded complex became progressively harder to supply after India's 1974 test and subsequent improvements in the NSG export control guidelines. Canada, the United States, France, China, and Russia all have supplied Tarapur with fresh fuel in the intervening years. A 1994 Chinese shipment occurred before Beijing joined the NSG. The Clinton administration tacitly supported this unusual deal between two wary neighbors, concluding that it was better to help India out of another fuel crunch by going outside NSG membership than to prompt New Delhi to engage in reprocessing of spent fuel from Tarapur.
In 2001, Russia claimed a safety exemption to provide fuel for Tarapur, over the reported objections ‘of most NSG members. The U.S. State Department decried this commercial transaction as constituting “a violation of Russia's nonproliferation commitments” and being in “disregard of its Nuclear Suppliers Group commitments”; the transaction proceeded nonetheless. Russia again claimed a safety exemption to profit from another Tarapur refueling in March 2006, less than two weeks after the U.S.-India nuclear agreement was finalized. This time, the State Department's reaction was muted, characterizing the Russian transaction as, “at best, arguable,” even though Moscow's disregard for NSG guidelines was no different than in 2001. To a lesser extent, Pakistan also benefited from creative adjustments to NSG guidelines. Beijing signed a contract with Islamabad to build a second power plant at Chasma less than a month before joining the NSG in May 2004.
The more proliferation concerns grow, the greater the need to tighten export controls. Yet, the Bush administration is reversing this equation for India's benefit.
Looking back over the three-decade history of the NSG, it is remarkable how rarely its rules have been bent or broken. If, however, exceptions become the rule, or become based on the exporter's perception of whether recipient countries are “good” or “bad,” NSG controls will unravel. Cynics argue that the ease with which proliferators achieved their goals through underground commerce explains why above-board NSG controls have succeeded. Alternatively, they point to a key weakness in the NPT system that enables states to import nuclear power technology that can also be used to make nuclear weapons. There is truth to these arguments, but they under-value the durability and progressive toughening of NSG guidelines.
The importance of these guidelines can be better appreciated if we postulate their demise. If, for example, suppliers could reap the benefits of nuclear commerce with NPT outliers, why should they forego profits from NPT parties that backslide on their commitments to adopt full-scope safeguards? A great deal is therefore riding on the Bush administration's hopeful assumption that it can limit the loosening of nuclear commerce's rules to India. If this assumption is wildly optimistic, and if P-5 profits trump proliferation concerns in other cases, the NPT's weaknesses will be compounded. Any adjustments to NSG guidelines ought to be linked to compensatory measures that strengthen nonproliferation norms in other areas. Instead, the Bush administration has asked little of India and has received less. New Delhi hasn't budged on signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or joining in a voluntary cessation of fissile material production for nuclear weapons–steps that all other major powers have taken.
The more proliferation concerns grow, the greater the need to tighten export controls. Yet, the Bush administration is reversing this equation for India's benefit. The NSG operates by informal rules of consensus, so the administration could find itself in additional negotiations with other NSG members who demand side deals in return for their consent to the India deal. New Delhi will likely preempt NSG deliberations by completing deals directly with France and Russia, to which the Bush administration could hardly object. The demise of consensus rule at the NSG or subsequent country exceptions could cripple the NSG.
Senior Bush administration officials view the U.S.-India nuclear deal as a significant part of the administration's legacy. Unfortunately, they may be right.
