While two cats fight for a piece of cheese, the monkey makes away with it. That is what we know. But when the United States and China fight, India gets no such advantage. That in sum is the story of India’s current longing to be a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
The culprits are the US and China and their aspirations, to retain its status as a superpower and to reach that status, respectively. Not the failure of Indian diplomacy, as reams of immature media and other analyses have been telling us over the last few days.
India is a nuclear weapons state (NWS). It has a detailed nuclear deterrence in place. It is based on a no-first-strike principle. It has an enviable non-proliferation record which neither the US nor China have. India has domestically developed highly skilled nuclear technology which it does not share with other countries. Its civilian reactors are transparent and open to IAEA inspections. India has formally ratified an Additional Protocol with IAEA to this effect.
In 2008, the NSG waived the 1992 requirement by NSG that banned nuclear cooperation with any country that had not accepted the IAEA safeguards. This exemption allowed India to have nuclear trade with members of the nuclear suppliers. India follows the NSG guidelines already, even when it is not a member. The waiver is conditional on no transfer of sensitive technology to India. Also, the waiver will not be valid if India violates its own moratorium on future nuclear testing.
There are several other commitments India is tethered to. They include gradual separation of the country’s military and civilian nuclear facilities, associating itself with the United States to give final shape to the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and having in place strong legislation to secure nuclear material.
Now, India wants to be a member of the NSG. Its unassailable nuclear status and responsible non-proliferation record qualify it to enter the group. That it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is an insignificant issue, as this analysis will show.
The immediate stumbling block for India’s membership is unquestionably China. That country opposed India’s membership bid on the ground that the latter has not yet signed the NPT.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying asserted last week that the “NSG is an important component of the non-proliferation regime is founded on the NPT….this is a long term consensus of the international community which was reaffirmed last year by the NPT review convention”.
Strangely betraying irritation for a country whose diplomacy is founded on the twin principles of a conspiracy of silence and unapologetic aggression, one of the official Chinese mouth-pieces, Global Times, wrote: “…India wants to be the first exception to join the NSG without signing the NPT. It is morally legitimate for China and other members to upset India's proposal in defense of principles.”
If this mouth-piece is to be believed, China is hurt and envious of India between the two Asian giants receiving adulation the world over and specially from the west. “Recent years have seen the Western world giving too many thumbs up to India, but thumbs down to China. India is spoiled. Although the South Asian country's GDP accounts for only 20 percent of that of China, it is still a golden boy in the eyes of the West, having a competitive edge and more potential compared to China. The international ‘adulation’ of India makes the country a bit smug in international affairs.”
Through the mouth-piece, its Chinese political masters perhaps wanted to convey their angst at the single superpower status of the US and American ambitions to use India as a foil against China. Telling India that the US is not in a position to “commandeer the global agenda”, it writes:
"[The] US backing adds the biggest impetus to India's ambition. By cozying up to India, Washington's India policy actually serves the purpose of containing China.” For good measure, it adds, "The US is not the whole world. Its endorsement does not mean India has won the backing of the world. This basic fact, however, has been ignored by India”.
In what is considered the first –ever personal attack on India and the right-wing ruling party which is in power at the Centre, China through the mouth-piece intends to convey that the “nationalists” in India have not yet developed a mindset of a country aspiring to be a "major power".
Having said that, the article binds itself in contradictions: “Some Indians are too self-centred and self-righteous. On the contrary, the Indian government behaves decently and is willing to communicate. Throwing a tantrum won't be an option for New Delhi…India's nationalists should learn how to behave themselves. Now that they wish their country could be a major power, they should know how major powers play their games.” (emphases mine)
The article’s tenor when it talks lowly of India gives a rare glimpse into China’s internal anxiety about India’s size and development and ambitions. However, its reflections on the US are a lesson for India too. India should do well to remember that the United States went to so much trouble to secure the NSG exemption for India to go along with the Indo-US civil nuclear deal because it was facing elections and wanted to take the credit. The then Bush administration wanted an approval from its Congress for the civil deal too before the country went to polls. Such an urgency is not there now. Secondly Barack Obama is a lame duck president who is now bothered about securing his own legacy than helping India out yet again.
To that extent, the attempts if any by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to persuade President Obama to yet again to come to India’s help on the NSG issue, would have anyway proven ineffective. In fact they did, given the vituperations in the Global Times.
However, whether good or bad and even if ill-advised, Prime Minister Modi’s personal meeting with the Chinese leadership on India’s NSG membership issue is pertinent to the extent that India correctly identified the real root of the problem: China.
All the reasons put forward by China, specially about the NPT condition, to block India’s membership are simply ridiculous. China should look back at all those years ago when it behaved like an untamed bull before being lassoed and forced to sign the NPT.
In fact it was not just China. France, which figures in the original five Nuclear Weapons States, too had refused to sign the NPT when the latter was first put up for ratification in 1968. In 1975, Henry Kissinger had overt and covert talks with the French. At that time, France saw the US as the nuclear culprit, trying to form a club of “nuclear haves”. Eventually, it was convinced to sign the NPT in 1991.
When India pointed out to China that France too had not signed the NPT when it became a member of the NSG, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said, “When France joined the NSG it was not a party to the NPT: France was the founder member of the NSG so the issue of acceptance to the NSG does not exist."
France may have had its reasons then, but it certainly makes India’s case strong. After all, what else is a precedent?
What about China?
It was after France signed that pressure began to mount on China to sign the NPT. It was the last Nuclear Weapons State which had yet to sign it and it wanted to remain outside the NPT. French and American leaders – specially French foreign minister Roland Dumas and US under-secretary of state Reginald Bartholomew – made trips to China. Japan was another country which spared no efforts to convince China. China was unmoved for months, only saying it was carefully considering acceding to the NPT.
While it was thus dithering, it suffered a global embarrassment when it became known that China had helped Algeria for a period of five years in building a big, nuclear research reactor. China tried to soften the blow by explaining that the reactor was well within the IAEA safeguards, but fresh distrust about China being a responsible nuclear exporter emerged.
The pressure mounted on China. It faced threats of political isolation as a communist power. Its human rights records were circulated afresh to show the country in a poor light. The western countries began threatening to curb the much needed dollars and exports to China. Thus, it was in August, 1991 that China announced it would be signing the NPT and ratified it in March, 1992.
The incessant argument last week was that allowing India into the NSG without having signed the NPT – the second exemption after 2008 – would undermine the group itself.
The argument is laughable considering that both IAEA and NPT have in the last five decades totally failed to end proliferation and ended up becoming tools of American aggression. There are many examples of this uni-polar assertion, from Haiti to Kosovo to North Korea to Iraq to Afghanistan to Iran. It is for this simple reason that the west is forced to turn a blind eye to China’s openly illegal military and nuclear commitments to Pakistan and to China nudging Pakistan to seek NSG membership in order to queer India’s pitch.
The NPT’s latest review conference in New York in April-May, 2015 yet again failed to draft a declaration on phased nuclear disarmament. Algerian Ambassador Taous Feroukhi who chaired the conference, according to a report by the United Nations University, “identified substantial gaps that remained in three areas: effective measures towards nuclear disarmament, humanitarian aspects of nuclear weapons use, and reporting by the recognized nuclear-weapon states. Notably, the rejected draft outcome document generally sidestepped each of these issues.
The NPT backers have never answered India’s question: On what ethical grounds is a distinction made between nuclear haves and have-nots? This is with reference to the NPT restricting the legal possession of nuclear weapons to those countries which conducted nuclear tests before 1967. In 2007, Pranab Mukherjee, then India’s foreign minister, said on a visit to Japan: "If India did not sign the NPT, it is not because of its lack of commitment for non-proliferation, but because we consider NPT as a flawed treaty and it did not recognize the need for universal, non-discriminatory verification and treatment.”
The NPT was believed to be the corner stone of wholesome nuclear disarmament. It has failed in that. The world is still stuck reviewing the NPT. When will it move forward to other areas such as global, comprehensive safeguard agreements and additional protocols, ratification of the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, and negotiation of the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. The world has beyond, into the possibly dangerous world of nuclear terrorism. The more the uni-polar approach to thwart non-nuclear states or bully them for all wrong reasons, the more the danger of the terrorism monster amidst us. When the corner stone itself is a failure, what is the legitimacy of IAEA, its guidelines, the NPT and its sanctimonious sanctions? When it is enjoying the benefits of the NSG without being a member of the group, and being a more responsible nuclear state than certain members, India should instead ask directly for scrapping the NPT itself and to bring in a treaty which is in consonance with current times and current status of newly nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states.
Such kind of a proactive role by India would strengthen the global movement for complete non-proliferation. Over a 100 countries have signed the human pledge to destroy nuclear arms. What happened? Nothing. Because there is no moral leadership to what can be called the new “NAM” – to borrow a Nehruvian-era acronym -- Nuclear Aligned Movement for total non-proliferation. Such leadership cannot come from the super power or self-proclaimed super powers, but by a country like India which has the size, the strength and an as yet theoretical world stature to provide that leadership. Provided the “nationalists” as the Global Times called them, do not make diplomacy personal.
The NSG would make a tangible contribution by ignoring the NPT clause for India’s membership. It is imperative that democratic nations have a stronger voice within the group. It is ironical that the group was created after India’s nuclear tests in 1974 and it is today in internal throes because of India’s membership. But that does not take away from the truth that global groups and associations, including and specially the NSG, can no longer be exclusive realms of superpowers and the most developed countries and their yes-men. Rather, they should not be allowed to be.