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India-US Relations Blog

Is Nancy Powell the right choice for India?

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Although fluent in honeyed words, in substance, the Obama administration is proving to be a disappointment for India. None of the promises of the George Bush years has been realized: neither hi-technology cooperation nor an effort to ensure that the Indian military be given access to sufficient equipment in order to maintain parity with an expanding PLA.

Now, the choice of a career foreign service officer, Nancy Powell, as the new U.S. ambassador to India underscores the fact that President Obama has left U.S.-India relations with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while he focuses on the far more consequential relationship between China and the U.S.

In Beijing, Gary Locke (a former Cabinet-level official known for his antipathy towards Delhi and sympathy for Beijing) has a direct channel of communication with the White House, unlike Powell, who on occasion may find it difficult even to reach Hillary Clinton, given her relatively modest status in the ranks of power players in Washington.

During Powell’s stint in Islamabad, the soft-spoken envoy became very close to President Pervez Musharraf and her “See-No-Evil” reporting ensured that the Bush administration saw both Musharraf and the Pakistan military as reliable assets of the U.S. in the region. She believed that the Pakistan army could be relied on to faithfully implement the policies cooked up in the Departments of State and Defense, and raised very few red flags. So complete was her trust in the suave commando whom she clearly admired, the coup-leader who became the President of Pakistan.

It is no secret that decision-makers on the South Block (location of the Ministries of Defense and External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office) share with the North Block (the Home Ministry) a deep distrust of the Pakistan military, especially the army. Administrations in India have not seen any improvement in the ground situation, where irregular elements continue to infiltrate the Line of Control in Kashmir, besides entering India via road from Bangladesh and Nepal. During her period in Islamabad, Powell almost totally ignored such ISI activities against India, concentrating on the situation in Afghanistan and satisfying herself (after briefings from President Musharraf) that Pakistan was fully on board as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. Doubts about such an assessment began only long after she left her post in Pakistan’s capital. After that, she moved on to Nepal, at a time when the Maoist groups were gaining in strength, thanks to the short-sighted policy of the former monarch in clandestinely backing them against democratic forces in Nepal, whom King Gyanendra regarded as a bigger threat than the Maoists.

Although in the course of her career in the State Department, Powell has had the distinction of being ambassador to both Ghana and Uganda. Her preferred region of interest has remained South Asia, where she evolved a distinctly Pakistan army-centric view of the overall situation. Not surprisingly, her appointment as envoy to India has been welcomed by U.S. experts such as Steven Cohen, Michael Krepon, and Teresita Schaffer. All three of them have vigorously praised the Pakistan army in the past, including the military’s quest for a resolution of the Kashmir issue on lines favorable to itself. In an op-ed in a newspaper in India, Shaffer has called Hillary Clinton’s choice “admirable”. No doubt President Musharraf too would agree, given his close personal friendship with the diplomat. Certainly, he will be ready to proffer her advice on how she should go about her task, something that he is known to do whenever he visits Washington.

Although some within the strategic community in India have delusions of grandeur about the role played by Delhi in the Obama calculus; the Powell appointment has once again shown up the differential treatment between approaches towards China and India. While the first country is a personal priority of President Obama, such that he closely monitors policy to that emerging superpower, in the case of India, Obama confines himself to mere words. The actual policy is left to Hillary Clinton who seems to regard Europe (and in particular the U.K. and now France) as not merely experts on India, but as useful interlocutors. While the expertise of the Secretary of State is most pronounced in the matter of specialty restaurants at the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi (her favored haunt while visiting the country), she has very definite views on India’s role. It is that Delhi needs to behave in the manner that the U.S. and the EU decide is proper for it and forget about seeking parity with China. In that sense, the Powell appointment illustrates the much lower position of India in the strategic calculus of the Obama administration, as compared to China which has always had high-powered envoys, beginning with George H W Bush.

Nancy Powell knows the Pakistan military well and she has kept up her contacts with top generals in India’s western neighbor. However, she has cultivated far fewer links with the Indian establishment, except at the formal level. While key elements of the strategic community in India would like the Obama administration to give up its Euro-centric view of India (as a country that needs to be guided and led by the hand, in the manner of a frisky adolescent), such a development seems remote under Powell’s watch. She has been steeped in the State-Defense culture of seeing India near-exclusively from the prism of India-Pakistan relations and can be expected to follow Hillary Clinton’s instincts and insert herself into the subject almost from the day she assumes office in Delhi from Peter Burleigh, the acting envoy, who too shares with Nancy Powell close ties with the U.S. intelligence community and is a distinguished professor at the University of Miami, which has one of the best International Relations programs in the U.S.

It is no secret that the road map of the Indian-strategic community in Afghanistan and Kashmir is very different from that of the Pakistan army. Seeking to bridge this gap has been a task that Powell’s admirers in the U.S. academic community have been trying for decades to accomplish. In the final year of his present term in office, President Obama’s most urgent priority seems to be an orderly retreat from Afghanistan. Powell is among those who have long regarded it possible to enlist the Pakistan army in such a mission, if only India were to make enough concessions. Her task in Delhi may be to follow the example of another Clintonite envoy, Frank Wisner, who spent much of his tenure seeking to persuade India to make concessions on Kashmir.

Although there will be the obligatory cheers of welcome for the Powell appointment, deeper than the manufactured headlines and the anodyne statements, there is resentment that President Obama has distanced himself from the longstanding U.S. policy of sending distinguished Thought Leaders to India, rather than career diplomats such as Frank Wisner and Nancy Powell. The omens for a true India-U.S. alliance remain bleak, given Obama’s handover of India policy to his Secretary of State and her favorites. Where is the “change” that we were promised, Mr. President?

You seem to have gone back to Bill Clinton’s policy, of seeing India only within the prism of relations with Pakistan.

India-US Relations Blog

Missed Opportunities, Promising Trends

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The year was filled with missed opportunities but also promising developments in U.S.-India relations.  2012 is shaping up to be the same.

 

President Obama’s state visit to India in early November 2010 appeared to impart new dynamism to a bilateral relationship that had been listless since his inauguration. The trip offered an effective tonic for Indian concerns that he had forsaken New Delhi in pursuit of G-2 collaboration with Beijing. The president spoke of India as “an indispensable partner of the 21st century” and dramatically endorsed its long-standing bid for permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council. Reporting on his giddily-received address to a joint session of the Indian Parliament, the Times of India noted that the “audience lapped it up, with no less than 25 rounds of applause in a barely 45-minute speech. The cherry on the cake, of course, was the ‘Jai Hind’ [Hail India] with which he concluded.”

But the promise of re-energized partnership quickly dissolved as leadership capacity in Washington and New Delhi dramatically waned. In retrospect, the trip’s maladroit timing and messaging should have been a tip-off. That the president’s Democratic Party received an electoral “shellacking” just days earlier meant that he arrived in India a much diminished political figure – a condition that became increasingly evident as time progressed. The White House also put out the word that the trip was essentially a jobs-hunting mission rather than one connected to grand strategy, telegraphing how domestic economic anxieties would continue to take attention away from the foreign policy agenda.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also was about to undergo his own political declension. A week after the state visit, the multi-billion dollar 2G telecommunications scandal exploded, igniting a crisis of governance and corruption that continues to engulf Mr. Singh’s administration. For the past year, Singh has been forced to deny that he is a lame duck even as his Congress Party colleagues openly pine for his replacement by Rahul Gandhi and his coalition partners – especially Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress – feel increasingly free to defy him. As 2011 unfolded, it became more and more clear that Singh’s government was adrift and ineffectual.

The leadership void has contributed to the “Delhi disillusionment” that is now a staple of Washington’s foreign policy conversation as well as the transactional approach some advocate vis-à-vis India. Experts now debate just how steadfast this “indispensable partner” really is. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns even felt it necessary to make a rhetorical nod to this discussion with this title to a recent address: “Is There a Future for the U.S.-India Partnership?”

Whatever its technical merits, New Delhi’s rejection of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its lucrative fighter aircraft competition – an issue on the Obama administration lobbied aggressively – was handled so ineptly that it reportedly hastened Ambassador Timothy Roemer’s departure from New Delhi. Indeed, many discerned a deliberate snub of Washington. Ditto for the stringent nuclear liability law that is so divergent from international norms that it effectively locks out U.S. participation in India’s nuclear power sector – something that the nuclear cooperation agreement was suppose to bring about. Last week’s debacle on retail sector liberalization underscored U.S. concerns that New Delhi has permitted domestic political concerns to impede closer economic interactions, while the WikiLeaks revelations about the Indian debate over the nuclear accord further undermined confidence in New Delhi’s credibility as a serious strategic partner.

All of these episodes only sharpened questions in Washington about whether New Delhi is as compelling a geopolitical collaborator as the Bush administration had envisioned. They also help explain why the Obama administration has yet to bother nominating Roemer’s successor.

To be sure, the Indians have valid reasons to complain about the paucity of American leadership. President Obama’s announcement of an accelerated disengagement from Afghanistan – a decision driven more by the exigencies of domestic politics than by a careful assessment of U.S. security objectives in South and Central Asia – affects India’s security interests in unpalatable ways. Looking towards the exits, Washington does not seem overly concerned about the exact details of a possible political settlement while New Delhi is all too focused on how the strategic terrain in its neighborhood is shifting to its detriment. This lack of solicitude explains why, according to one analysis, “few tears are being shed in the top levels of the Indian establishment over the state of ties with the US.”

Yet beyond the top-level ructions, the past year also witnessed the growing density of bilateral affairs, especially the accelerating pace of economic interactions. Even with the global economy in the doldrums, 2010 was a banner year for the trade relationship, with two-way goods exports surging nearly 30 percent to $48.8 billion. Merchandise exports were also up significantly in the first half of 2011 compared to the same period last year. All told, India is now America’s 12th largest goods trading partner and one of the fastest-growing destinations for U.S. exports. This is a welcome trend, as increased private-sector linkages are key to limiting the risks that today’s political and diplomatic frictions could escalate and disrupt the overall partnership.

Notwithstanding the disappointments over the fighter competition, the United States has also become a critical player in the ambitious military buildup India is undertaking. New Delhi was the third largest buyer of U.S. weapons this year, with purchases amounting to $4.5 billion – a level ahead of such long-time American allies as Australia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Japan. Indeed, over the past year or so the Indian government has either purchased or taken possession of a number of key weapons systems: the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter, the C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft, and the C-17 Globemaster III strategic transport aircraft.

Finally, as the constant parade of Cabinet officers and senior officials between the two capitals attests, bilateral relations have acquired a scope and depth that were unimaginable less than a decade ago. Among other things, Washington and New Delhi now hold regular consultations on policy vis-à-vis China, Deputy Secretary Burns has just concluded talks in New Delhi about strategic and economic cooperation, and a trilateral U.S.-India-Japan security dialogue will meet for the first time next week. Indian foreign policy elites are growing more comfortable with the notion of strategic intimacy with the United States. And the expansion of Chinese strength will undoubtedly push New Delhi to tighten its security relations with Washington in the years ahead, though the process will neither be as smooth nor as speedy as many Americans would like.

All of these factors are contributing to the steady accumulation of bilateral bonds. The key question for the approaching year is whether Washington and New Delhi will exhibit the constancy of leadership needed to capitalize on these favorable developments. Alas, the prospects do not appear promising. With 2012 shaping up to be one filled with turbulent politics in both countries, the focus of President Obama and Prime Minister Singh will continue to remain inward.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Afghanistan Antagonists

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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai

India has begun maneuvering to fill the potential power vacuum in Afghanistan.

As an earlier post argued, the quickening U.S. disengagement from the Afghan conflict that President Obama signaled four months ago will inevitably spark an intense regional scrimmage for influence as that country’s neighbors scramble to fill the resulting vacuum. The last few weeks have witnessed India making its opening moves in this jockeying by signing a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan and by repairing strained relations with Iran.

The strategic partnership that India and Afghanistan sealed last week – the first of its kind that Kabul has entered into – will significantly enhance New Delhi’s profile in Afghanistan. The arrangement provides for increased cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, as well as for expanded Indian training and equipping of Afghan security forces. It opens the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth (which may be worth nearly $1 trillion) and newly-discovered hydrocarbon resources to Indian companies. New Delhi also pledged to work with Iran to develop trade routes to Afghanistan that bypass Pakistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who signed the agreement during a two-day trip to New Delhi – his second visit this year – praised India as a “steadfast friend and supporter” of his country, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised that India would “stand by the people of Afghanistan” even after the 2014 pull-out of U.S. and NATO forces.

Although Karzai insists that the partnership is not directed against Pakistani interests, it coincides with a serious deterioration of relations between Kabul and Islamabad. In the past week, the Afghan government has accused Pakistan of being behind the September 20th assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Karzai’s chief envoy to the fledgling peace negotiations with the Taliban, as well as a foiled plot to kill Karzai himself. Standing in New Delhi, Karzai termed Pakistan a “twin brother” to his own country, but that was hardly enough to disguise the fact that his government was openly spurning Pakistan’s professions of friendship in favor of a wide-ranging covenant with its arch-nemesis.

The partnership underscores that New Delhi, unlike Washington, has no exit strategy in Afghanistan. Since the start of the Afghan conflict ten years ago this month, India has emerged as the country’s largest regional donor. It has invested more than $1 billion in assistance, mainly in infrastructure and development projects, including constructing the new parliament building in Kabul. It has also undertaken small-scale training of the country’s police, army leadership and bureaucrats. Prime Minister Singh traveled to Kabul this past May seeking to broaden India’s engagement. There he unveiled a significant expansion of Indian aid, committing an additional $500 million over the next few years.

Besides shoring up the precarious Karzai government, New Delhi is also moving to patch up strategic ties with Tehran, whose interests in Afghanistan are roughly congruent. India has traditionally relied upon Iran to help blunt Pakistan’s influence in Central Asia and to serve as a bridge to trade and energy opportunities there.  Relations between New Delhi and Tehran have been strained for the past few years as India, at America’s behest, supported several international censures of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Prime Minister Singh turned down a number of invitations for a state visit to Tehran, and his government engaged in a convoluted exercise to avoid having Indian payments for crucial energy imports from Iran run afoul of U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

Yet the prospect of a geopolitical vacuum in Afghanistan is driving the two countries closer again. Singh met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly annual conclave in New York last month and pointedly accepted a renewed invitation to visit Tehran in the near future. The two countries have also established a new payments mechanism for Iranian oil exports and are setting up a joint commission to explore even closer economic and security links.

Pakistan has long considered Afghanistan to be its strategic backyard. With so much of its national security posture driven by an obsessive focus on India, Islamabad is bound to regard New Delhi’s growing involvement there as a grave provocation. Pakistan regularly charges (see here and here) that India is using its large diplomatic presence in Afghanistan to funnel covert support to separatists in the restive province of Baluchistan, and the new India-Afghanistan partnership will be taken as further confirmation that New Delhi is intent on encircling and dissecting the country. Likewise, the renewed coordination between New Delhi and Tehran will be interpreted as a return to the role they played a decade, when their support for the Northern Alliance helped frustrate the Taliban regime. (Indeed, there are increasing signs that the remnants of the old anti-Taliban movement are being reconstituted.)

Given the region’s geopolitical dynamics, India has strong strategic interests in ensuring that any government in Kabul is capable enough to be a bulwark against Pakistan. And so India’s maneuvers are predictable enough. Inevitable, too, is the blowback from Islamabad. The nascent thaw in bilateral relations that has developed in the wake of the mid-July visit to New Delhi by Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar is now in jeopardy. Also expect increased attacks by Pakistan-based jihadis targeting Indian interests in Afghanistan, like the bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 that killed 58 people, including the Indian defense attaché, and in October 2009 that left 17 Afghans dead.

India-US Relations Blog

America-India – Did the Bush Administration Oversell or Did the Obama Administration Botch It?

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This week Michael Green and Daniel Twining wrote an opinion article in the Washington Post titled Why aren’t we working with Japan and India? It is an attempt to discuss the reasons for, what they call, the current “listlessness in our two biggest strategic partnerships in Asia.” This is a serious article but deeply flawed.

The article’s key paragraph on India begins with “India has also disappointed.”. It ends with the statement “The refrain in Washington is that the Bush Administration oversold the potential for strategic partnership with New Delhi.”

We disagree. The Bush Administration established the Strategic Partnership with India. It was the most far-reaching step taken by any American President regarding India. President Bush viewed China and India as two huge countries that would play a global role in the 21st century. In his simple yet profound way, he asked which of these two countries would be a better partner for America? The answer was simple, India.

So President Bush in his direct, decisive manner made India a Strategic Partner of the USA. The Bush Administration threw away the old, failed strategy of trying to balance India with Pakistan and looked at India as a key ally, an emerging power on par with China and the only counterweight of size to China.

This is exactly how India perceives itself. This congruence of vision was the sound long term basis for the America-India Strategic Partnership implemented by President Bush. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, expressed the view of the Bush Administration at that time: “Within 20 years, the rise of the new U.S.-India partnership will be considered among the most important developments in U.S. foreign policy in our time.”

Then came President Obama. His framework for the world was completely different than that of President Bush. The Obama Administration spent its first year in trying to woo China. The Obama Administration was convinced that President Bush had gone too far in favoring India and they restored the old policy of maintaining a balance of power between Pakistan & India.

This was not just rhetoric. This has been the consistent policy of the Obama Administration since the inauguration. Witness the clear statement from Secretary Hillary Clinton in April 2010 that the manner in which India & Pakistan have pursued atomic weapons has “upset the balance of nuclear deterrence”. The Bush Administration had realized and accepted the fact that India was going to build a nuclear deterrence against China. The Clinton statement showed that the Obama Administration considered India only from the old Pakistan-India balance of power framework.

In short, the Obama Administration unilaterally destroyed the very foundation on which President Bush had built his America-India strategic partnership. But neither Government was willing to publicly accept this reality.  So both America and India continued to pay lip service to the concept of the America-India strategic partnership.

The sudden u-turn in America’s framework stunned the Indian Government and the entire Indian Establishment. In their naivete, they had assumed that America as a whole had finally understood India and embraced India’s vision of its role in the world. But where foreign policy is concerned, there may be only one India but there are two Americas. It took the Indian Government a year to realize that the America-India strategic partnership they had accepted was only with Bush’s America and not with Obama’s America. Then the Indian Government began hedging its bets and moving away from the Obama Administration. Since then, the relations between America and India have remained “listless”.

Another factor in the decay of India-US relations has been Washington’s definition of “partnership”. This is borne out by the Washington Post article which assumes a partner of America should not oppose American initiatives but align with them regardless of how the initiatives impact the partner:

Yet, in the first two years of the Obama Administration, the Indians have opposed the United States on climate and trade initiatives (the initiatives were in direct conflict with Indian objectives), failed to enact liability legislation needed for American companies to develop India’s nuclear industry (a political and ethical impossibility in democratic India), resisted meaningful economic reforms (true), cozied up to Burma’s junta with gas and arms deals (a strategic necessity for India just like cozying up to Saudi Arabia is a strategic necessity for America) and rejected U.S. combat aircraft in India’s biggest defense deal to date (the last generation aircraft offered by the U.S. were judged as inferior by the Indian Military).

President Bush had astounded the Indian Government by treating India as a real partner. He understood what India could and could not do. He focused on what was achievable which was plenty. India responded in return and we are convinced that every major Indian deal would have been won by the Bush Administration. In contrast, the Obama Administration kept imposing its own initiatives on India and expected India to to follow. This pressure backfired.

Today, the Obama Administration is facing the virtual collapse of its framework. They have realized that China is a major strategic competitor and perhaps an adversary. So the Obama Administration has gone from wooing China to building a network of allies to contain China. This is the main purpose of Secretary Clinton’s trip to India and Asia.

The Obama Administration’s cherished policy of making Pakistan stronger and more stable has collapsed. But the Administration’s tactical objective has not changed. The Obama Administration still considers Pakistan as their most reliable ticket to exit Afghanistan.

America’s rapid exit from Afghanistan and the Obama plan to give Pakistan all the aid necessary to facilitate this exit remains the most difficult barrier between America and India. Secretary Clinton is trying to get India to steer away from Af-Pak and to get more active against China in the Pacific. The immediate strategic objective of India is to maintain and increase its presence in Afghanistan.

When strategic objectives are in such conflict, how can a strategic partnership make sense? This is the main reason for the current “listlessness” in America-India relations.

(This post originally appeared on Macro Viewpoints and has been republished with the approval of the author.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Non-Proliferation Lobby Analysts Seek to Corner India on CTBT

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By Rajiv Nayan

The international community is discussing how to bring India into the multilateral export control regimes. During his November 2010 visit to India, United States president Barack Obama made a few speeches and issued a joint statement with prime minister Manmohan Singh, which contained a number of significant policy pronouncements. The further accommodation of India in the U.S. and multilateral export control regimes was a notable feature of these pronouncements.

President Obama announced that the U.S. would support India’s candidature in the four multilateral export control regimes—the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement. India meets all the criteria for the membership of the MTCR. India may have to add a few items to its dual use technology control list called Special Chemical Organisms, Material, Equipment and Technology (SCOMET) to meet the membership criteria for the Australia Group. For membership in the NSG and Wassenaar Arrangement the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) puzzle needs to be solved. For India, the membership of the NSG is strategically relevant.

After Obama’s announcement supporting India’s membership, the French and the Russians also gave their support, and the idea gained ground that India may be given the membership incrementally. It was generally believed that the Australia Group would come first, followed by the MTCR and the NSG and the Wassenaar Arrangement in that order. However, the Indian establishment wants membership to come as a package. The incremental approach has an inherent danger: the membership of the strategically less relevant regimes would become possible but the membership of the strategically more relevant regime, namely, the NSG, would be problematic because of the NPT issue. The Wassenaar Arrangement’s NPT criteria would also have to be amended to enable Indian membership. As for the MTCR, politics, instead of criteria, may be used to delay or block India’s membership.

The Indian government’s position, by and large, seems to have the support of the Indian strategic community. Now the package approach is seen as being preferable to the incremental approach. As this message has been sent across the world, the concerned players may have two options: either deny India the membership of all the regimes or prepare to give it the membership of all the regimes. India’s new profile as a significant economy that is performing well even during difficult global financial times and as an equally important producer, client and consumer of advanced technology may force these actors to accommodate India in the regimes. Indeed, India’s entry would only enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the regimes.

The process of the accommodation seems to have begun. Indian officials and those of relevant regimes countries have started interacting to facilitate India’s membership. Quite expectedly, analysts and non-governmental experts are being consulted over the way(s) to include India in the regimes. Although there is very little information about the official-level interactions, the non-governmental community has however begun to write about this. A good example is the short essay “NSG Membership: A Criteria-based Approach for Non-NPT States” by Pierre Goldschmidt for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although the essay maintains a semblance of objectivity, the piece unfortunately reflects the prejudice prevalent in a section of the U.S. nonproliferation community. The very first paragraph opens with the cliché: ‘The nuclear policy community widely believes this [the 2008 NSG guidelines] exemption undermines the credibility of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.’

Other non-proliferation writers cite the China-Pakistan deal for building additional reactors at the Chashma complex and Pakistan’s prevention of negotiations for the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) in the Conference on Disarmament (CD). Even a novice in the field would know that Pakistan and China would have cut the deal irrespective of the India-specific exemptions. The Pakistan-China deal has been cut on the basis of some grandfatherly clause of a previous unseen agreement. Similarly, Pakistan would have found some excuse or the other to block FMCT negotiations. For example, this year, it has included U.S. support for India’s membership in multilateral export control regimes as another reason for blocking FMCT negotiations.

In fact, Pierre Goldschmidt has proposed a set of fourteen criteria for membership of the NSG for the non-NPT countries. He claims that these fourteen conditions can ‘correct the inequality created by the Indian exception’. Eleven of the criteria are part of the Indian policy while the other three look unrealistic and may not be taken seriously in India. In reality, these additional conditions are designed to constrain India. The old agenda of the anti-Indian non-proliferation lobby is being pushed through such new arguments. The argument is based on the grievance as to why India was allowed to get away so easily during the September 2008 special plenary session of the NSG. It is a case of sour grapes.

The argument in the Goldschmidt essay is to persist with the unfinished agenda of the July 2005 agreement of the anti-India non-proliferation lobby. Thus, the second criteria proposes that: “To become a full member of the NSG, a non-NPT state must…have in force a Voluntary Offer Agreement (VOA) with the IAEA whereby the non-NPT State undertakes to place all new nuclear facilities located outside existing military nuclear sites on the list of facilities to be safeguarded by the IAEA… .” This amounts to a reopening of the separation plan. This is unacceptable to India.

Goldschmidt’s essay claims that the India-US nuclear deal gave India some ‘guarantees’ that were not granted to other non-nuclear weapons states. Elsewhere in the essay, the author expects India to take up the obligations of other nuclear weapons states as defined by the NPT. This contradictory position dominates the article. The author, in fact, expects India to take on obligations which have not been assumed by members of the NSG. It is beyond comprehension as to why India should not have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons for its security. Has any other nuclear weapon country given this assurance to gain NSG membership?

Similarly, has the United States ratified the CTBT to retain its membership of the NSG? Did China give this undertaking before joining the NSG? When China was made a member, it was in the news for supplying nuclear and missile items to non-NPT and Non-Nuclear Weapons States. Interestingly, afterwards, not only the U.S. government but also a predominant section of the U.S. non-proliferation community went mute, Chinese proliferation was downplayed and China was declared to be an important stakeholder of the non-proliferation system. Any signature without ratification basically means nothing. So, criteria 8 and 9 are meaningless. Actually, the CTBT is a dead issue. The U.S. nonproliferation community has failed to revive the treaty. Flogging the dead horse only spreads dirt and stink. The treaty and related phenomena need a quiet burial.

To resolve the challenge posed by the NPT criteria, the best solution would be to amend the NPT and accommodate India as a nuclear weapon state. However, this does not appear likely in the near future. Pending membership of the NPT, India’s good standing with the treaty may be factored in. India, after becoming a nuclear weapons state, declared its intention to unilaterally follow articles I, III and VI of the NPT. Targeting India seems to be the only motive of this essay; the set of criteria is not relevant for Israel because it is a different case. For NSG membership, it will not modify its strategy of ambiguous nuclear weapon status. The non-proliferation community should avoid recommending any steps which would benefit a rabid proliferator like Pakistan. Continuing to do so will further undermine the credibility of the non-proliferation community.

(This article originally appeared at www.idsa.in . IDSA and USINPAC are content partners.)