Lolly, lolly get your nuclear fuel here.
I hope Indian PM Manmohan Singh travels light, because he returns to India laden with goodies.
During his state visit to the US, Singh wrung a promise from President Bush to:
… seek agreement from Congress to adjust US laws and policies, and [to] work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India …
The full text of joint statement and the press conference with Bush and Singh are both available on-line.
The Bush Administration is prohibited by US law and its international obligations from providing civil nuclear assistance to India, because New Delhi refuses to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In fact, the international obligation in question — the voluntary Nuclear Suppliers Group — was created as a response to India’s 1974 “peaceful” nuclear explosion.
The Bush Administration is eagerly courting India because … well, frankly, I don’t know. I am told the intellectual argument for the Bush Administration policy is reflected in Ashley Tellis’ India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States.
Tellis argues the “change in approach” arose “from three evolving perceptions within the Bush administration”:
First, the administration had come to realize that India would not give up its nuclear weapons so long as various regional adversaries continued to possess comparable capabilities. The fact that the administration initially viewed both of India’s antagonists — Pakistan and China — with considerable suspicion only made senior U.S. officials more sympathetic to New Delhi’s predicament.
Second, the administration was now of the understanding that India’s nuclear weapons did not pose a threat to U.S. security and the United States’ larger geopolitical interests, and could in certain circumstances actually advance American strategic objectives in Asia and beyond. The administration’s own antipathy to nuclear arms control agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (which happened to dovetail with Indian interests on these issues), coupled with its strong expectation of an eventual renewal of great-power competition, allowed both realist and neoconservative factions within the administration to take a more relaxed view of New Delhi’s emerging nuclear capabilities.
Third, the administration now appreciated that the range of technological resources associated with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems that were present in India in both the public and private sectors posed a far more serious threat to American safety—were these resources to be leaked, whether deliberately or inadvertently, to hostile regimes or nonstate actors—than New Delhi’s ownership of various nuclear assets. These perceptions, which became dominant in administration thinking in regard to India post-9/11, made tightening the Indian export control regime far more important from the viewpoint of increasing U.S. security than leaning on the Indian state to cap or roll back its strategic programs.
From these three perceptions grew the conviction that the United States ought to focus primarily on safeguarding India’s tangible and intangible WMD capabilities, even as Washington struggled to find ways of accepting New Delhi’s nuclear weaponry within the constraining framework of the existing international nonproliferation order.
Dana Milbank and Dafna Linzer at the Washington Post have a story about the agreement and its implication for the global nonproliferation regime.
– posted by Jeffrey Lewis.
Update: Scott Gearity has more.
For days now the web has been lighted up with stories of Terrorist and nuclear weapons. I’m glad that President Bush just shown exactly where the United States stands in stopping the sale of materials and technology into the Muslim part of the world.
I think I can see the Presidents logic here. It’s better to sell nuclear technology to a country that already has the bomb rather then to a country who wants the bomb. Make new bombs are a no, no make better bombs, well thats ok.
India’s loyality to the United States is only as good as the last tech support contract it gets from HP or Microsoft.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“Stewart’s Platoon”
State players with nukes are really just not the big worry anymore. These guys arn’t the ones that are going to use them against us or even against a country that is not a nuke player. The issue is nuke weapons getting into the hands of non-state players and a good relationship with those that have the bombs might help us keep the bombs from the non-state players that we are so worried about.
Minor point: India is not a Muslim nation.
As someone who has 11 years travelling the continent called India riding a HD, I will support it. I have seen this countrie’s hunger for success & I know they want peace in the world, like we do. Lets support plurarlism, not stalinism!
India developed the bomb in 1974, not now. They have had an exemplary track record (100 times better than china and pakistan) with nuclear non proliferation. How long are we going to keep rewarding nations like pakistan for fear of what bad they can do and ignore India which can do good? In any case, this is inevitable.