Disarming Conflict

For that reason, the exemption – namely, that civilian nuclear co-operation is to be reserved for states that honor the global norm against nuclear weapons and adhere to full-scope safeguards administered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meaning full inspections of all of a country's nuclear facilities – was resisted with some vigor by Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland (Canada was notably absent from the effort).

Observers used terms like “catastrophic”[i]and “disaster”[ii]to describe the decision that was ultimately taken, and a Washington Post op-ed was headed, “Risking Armageddon for cold, hard cash.”[iii]The UN’s former Under Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, the widely-respect Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, issued a last minute e-mail warning that “a gaping hole is being created in the NPT through which Israel and Pakistan will drive unless the US Congress or a new US Administration revise the proposed deal ensuring the survival of the NPT beyond 2010.”[iv]

The reasons to be wary of the decision are manifold.

1. Accelerated production of fissile material for weapons purposes: Perhaps the most immediate impact of civilian nuclear cooperation with India will be the accelerated production of bomb ingredients. That danger is most clearly outlineda 2006 report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials based at Princeton University.[v]Based on its calculations, over the next decade India will be in a position to boost its inventory of bomb materials sufficient for an arsenal of more than 300 warheads – potentially an arsenal to rival or exceed those of the UK, France, and China. The point is not that India will definitely do so, but the world has now seen how extraordinarily tenacious India has been in insisting that any civilian nuclear cooperation arrangements would place absolutely no restraints on its military nuclear programs. Few observers believe that China will ignore the emerging possibilities next door.

Another related outcome of the NSG decision is the setback it delivers to efforts toward a fissile materials cut off treaty (FMCT). India has declared its openness to join negotiations on such a treaty, but it steadfastly refuses to join the nuclear weapon states that have signed the NPT in declaring a moratorium on the production of fissile material for weapons purposes until such time as a Treaty can be negotiated. A declaration in support of an FMCT without a moratorium has little meaning since the start of negotiation on a treaty is hopelessly stymied in the UN Conference on Disarmament. Furthermore, China, which is already wary of an FMCT even though it is formally open to negotiations, will be even more cautious if India is now granted the opportunity to expand its production of fissile materials.

2. Test ban treaty opportunity squandered: Continued nuclear warhead production will generate internal Indian demands for more warhead testing – which explains India’s dogged insistence that the NSG decision not be conditioned on a not to test. India has affirmed its ongoing unilateral and voluntary moratorium on testing, but one of the NSG’s most flagrant betrayal of responsibility was its failure to call India’s bluff and require it to formalize its political statement on a testing moratorium as genuine obligation. India’s refusal to sign the CTBT is a central, though not the only, obstacle to the Treaty’s entry into force – a treaty that is repeatedly declared by the international community as being one of the most urgent measures in the struggle to prevent both vertical and horizontal nuclear escalation or proliferation.

3. A violation of binding international rules:The NSG decision is in violation of at least three binding and hard won decisions by the international community in relation to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In 1995 NPT States decided, as a condition of the indefinite extension of the Treaty, that"acceptance of the [IAEA’s] full-scope safeguards and internationally legally binding commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons" is "a necessary precondition" for civilian nuclear co-operation. Nonproliferation experts now understandably ask where a self-selected group of 45 states within the NSG got the authority to override this requirement.

The NSG decision on India also opens the door to violations of Article I of the NPT. Article Irequires that states “not it any way…assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.” India, under the terms of the NPT, is required to meet the criteria of a non-nuclear weapon state. Thus if under the US-India deal Canada were to provide India with uranium (which would facilitate accelerated warhead production using domestic uranium), Canada would arguably be in violation of the NPT.

In addition, the NSG states clearly ignored Resolution 1172 of the UN Security Council. It was passed in 1998 following nuclear tests by India and Pakistan,calling on India and Pakistan “immediately to stop their nuclear weapon development, to refrain from the deployment of nuclear weapons, to cease development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons….” The resolution also called on India and Pakistan to join both the NPT and the CTBT.

4. Selective nonproliferation:With this decision, key players in the nonproliferation regime have bought into the Bush Administration’s policy of selective nonproliferation. Nonproliferation efforts, thus, are not to be guided by a set of rules that applies equally to all, but are to be based on judgments about good guys and bad guys. States that are regarded, or are being courted, as friends to key powers are allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. For those outside the select circle, it is an all-options-are-on-the-table commitment to preventing proliferation. The NSG has heretofore been built on a rule – no trade or cooperation with any state that does not place all of its nuclear programs and facilities under safeguards – but from now on that rule is to be applied selectively. There are no special powers of insight or clairvoyance required to know what Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan will be thinking.