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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Knocking on APEC’s Door

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India’s absence from APEC is a serious omission for the organization. Its entry should be on the agenda of the upcoming APEC Summit in Honolulu.


apecHaving made the calculation that America’s security and prosperity would be enhanced by partnership with India, the United States over the last decade has promoted New Delhi’s admission into global governance structures. For the Bush administration, this meant doing the heavy lifting required to enroll India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal cartel governing the global nuclear regime whose original purpose of existence was to exclude New Delhi from its ranks. The Obama administration similarly helped usher India into the Group of 20 forum on the international economy and, most recently, endorsed its long-standing bid for permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council.

The time has now come for Washington to sponsor New Delhi’s entry into another international institution from which it has been barred for much too long.  India for decades has desired formal involvement in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which engages over half of world gross domestic product and a large fraction of global trade. But its application has continuously been passed over due to a lack of consensus inside the grouping, which currently numbers 21 members. Some APEC countries have expressed concerns that the institution is too unwieldy as it is and cannot accommodate India or the dozen other interested countries lined up at its door. Others argue that India is not really a Pacific Rim country and is therefore outside of APEC’s geographic parameters.

But with India poised to become one of the world’s top economies in the years ahead, its absence is a serious lacuna for the organization. New Delhi already participates as a full member in regional leadership groups like the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, both important venues for political and security discussions. It is also a full ASEAN dialogue partner.

Southeast Asia has historically been an area of deep Indian trade and cultural influence but was neglected diplomatically during much of India’s independent existence. Seeking to make up for lost time, New Delhi launched the “Look East” policy in 1992. It has proved to be a very successful initiative, paving the way for significant and rapidly-growing economic and diplomatic linkages in the region. The ten member-countries of ASEAN now constitute India largest export market. Southeast Asia takes in more than half of Indian exports, up from around 40 percent just a decade ago.  Indeed, India’s total trade volume with East Asia now exceeds that with the United States or the European Union. And New Delhi’s trade diplomacy has been on a tear recently in Asia, with major economic agreements being signed with Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. It has commenced negotiations with Indonesia to boost the $12 billion in trade the two countries conducted in 2010.

India has also emerged as a major security player in East Asia and is fast becoming a key factor in the region’s geopolitical calculus. A landmark India-Japan security accord was signed in 2008, and important strategic partnerships have been established with Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore. Indeed, Tokyo and Singapore lobbied for New Delhi’s membership in the EAS, over Beijing’s objections, in order to counterbalance Chinese influence in the organization. The United States and India now hold regular consultations on Asia-Pacific policy and a trilateral US-India-Japan security dialogue will be instituted next month in Tokyo.

The Indian navy has been conducting exercises with its U.S. and Japanese counterparts for a number of years now in the Pacific Ocean, and as the brief encounter two months ago between the INS Airavat, an amphibious warfare vessel, and the Chinese navy off the coast of Vietnam demonstrates, the navy is becoming a regular presence in the region’s waters.

APEC’s membership moratorium expired last year. With Washington currently holding the forum’s chairmanship, the Obama administration should be preparing the diplomatic groundwork to place India’s admission on the agenda of the APEC Summit that will take place in mid-November in Honolulu. To avoid interminable negotiations about whether other countries should be let in at the same time, the U.S. might repeat its persuasive line about New Delhi’s entry into the global nuclear order: India is simply so important that it merits a special dispensation.

As a previous post argues, New Delhi’s membership in APEC should be part of an overall agenda for advancing US-India economic engagement. But it would also pay major strategic dividends. In his address to the Indian parliament last November, President Obama urged India not only to “look East” but also “to engage East” for the sake of enhanced security and prosperity throughout Asia. Secretary of State Hillary Rodman Clinton underscored this theme in her visit to India two months ago. Speaking in Chennai (formerly Madras), a port city that has significant economic ties with Southeast Asia, Clinton urged India to take on a larger role in shaping the regional architecture for the Asia-Pacific. Reiterating Mr. Obama’s formulation, she stated that “we encourage India not just to look East, but to engage East and act East as well.”

India-US Relations Blog

The New Normal

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US – India relations have now settled into a stubborn pattern of routine interactions and small-bore ideas.

The inaugural session of the annual US-India Strategic Dialogue in Washington last summer imparted new energy to bilateral affairs following a period of treading water.  President Obama used the occasion to announce his visit to India and emphasized that partnership with New Delhi was one of his “highest priorities.”  In the meeting’s warm afterglow, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns (now nominated as Deputy Secretary of State) remarked that “even the sky is not the limit for our ambitions and our possibilities.”

Clinton-Krishna_photoThe Strategic Dialogue had its second convocation last week in New Delhi, co-chaired by Secretary of State Hillary Rodman Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna.  Judging by its modest output, bilateral relations are now on a low-flying trajectory.  Not too long ago, soaring rhetoric and visionary initiatives were the staples of such high-level confabs.  But ties between the two capitals have now settled into a stubborn pattern of routine interactions and small-bore ideas.  In its wrap up of the Dialogue’s events, the Hindustan Times observed that “There is a clear and obvious sense of drift in relations” and that the bilateral exchanges the countries have established in a myriad of fields “don’t seem to generate much in tangibles.”  Call it the new normal in US-India relations.

Secretary Clinton noted that her meetings with Krishna “felt like we were in a monsoon with all of the many issues and reports that were being made by our officials outlining the extraordinary progress that has occurred.”  But it was hard to avoid the monsoon-sized cloud of mutual frustration hanging over the proceedings.  Even the Bush-Singh nuclear deal, intended to be the capstone of a new partnership, has now become a source of acrimony, with both sides accusing the other of breaches of faith.

From the U.S. perspective, India’s nuclear liability law is inconsistent with global norms and has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in the country’s lucrative nuclear energy sector.  Washington wants New Delhi to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC), a multilateral accord regulating liability for nuclear accidents, apparently in the belief the Indian government will submit to the notion that international law should somehow override the strictures of newly-enacted domestic legislation.  Mrs. Clinton even went so far as to suggest that the International Atomic Energy Agency vet the liability law for its compliance with international practice.  Both ideas are quixotic, as they represent a severe misreading of what the political market will bear in India’s sovereignty-conscious democracy.  Moreover, since the CSC is far from gathering the requisite number of ratifying countries to trigger its entry into force, it is unclear why Washington thinks New Delhi’s ratification will have any practical result.

For its part, New Delhi is peeved about U.S. sponsorship of restrictions just promulgated by the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal cartel regulating global nuclear commerce, regarding the export of uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing (ENR) technologies. Much of the future expansion of India’s nuclear energy sector is premised upon access to such equipment, something which many in the country thought was secured via the nuclear accord.  The United States has assured New Delhi that the new restrictions will not undercut the special status India now has in the international nuclear order.  But the Bush-Singh deal never extended to the delivery of ENR technology, a point that Prime Minister Singh’s government found expedient to obscure during the tumultuous vote of confidence three summers ago. Mrs. Clinton departed India hinting that unresolved problems still plague the issue.

The discussions also did little to assuage Indian concerns about the impact of the U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan, or persuade New Delhi that it should assume a greater leadership role in Asian security affairs as a bulwark against China’s growing power. Of course, the two issues are linked: New Delhi is very unlikely to be more active further afield when its security position in the subcontinent is under mounting threat. The assassination of two of Hamid Karzai’s closest confidants – one of whom his half-brother – just days prior to the Dialogue’s convening rattled New Delhi, and the Obama administration’s progressive disengagement from Afghanistan will only complicate Indian security calculations.

Although the Clinton visit produced an announcement of a new trilateral dialogue involving New Delhi, Washington and Tokyo – as well as the establishment of formal bilateral exchanges on the Middle East and Central Asia – the innate caution of India’s foreign policy elites will most likely disappoint American expectations about what the Indian government brings to the table.

Two items involving the itinerary of Mrs. Clinton’s traveling party illustrates the US-India policy disconnects.  First, a few months ago New Delhi rejected Washington’s efforts to broaden the Dialogue by involving the two countries’ defense ministers. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was reported all set to accompany Clinton to New Delhi in April when the Dialogue was originally slated to take place. And as it turned out, Gates’ successor, Leon E. Panetta, was in Kabul just a week before the Dialogue and could presumably have rearranged his schedule to attend the gathering in New Delhi had the Indians wanted to expand the forum’s remit.

Second, Mrs. Clinton gave public emphasis to her point about India stepping up its security role in Asia in an address in Chennai (formerly Madras). According to U.S. officials, Chennai was chosen as the ideal platform for this message given its strong commercial ties to Southeast Asia.  But The Telegraph reports that, due to Washington’s desires to expand U.S. commercial interests in West Bengal, Clinton had at first wanted to visit Kolkata (Calcutta). This proposal was nixed by the Indian government, however, fearful that it would be seen as a provocation to the Indian Left.  Clinton’s second choice of Amritsar was quickly dropped due to a lack of local enthusiasm. The decision to go to Chennai was hastily done and came as a surprise to U.S. diplomats in India.

In the run-up to last week’s meetings, some experts in Washington (see here and here) exhorted the Obama administration to use the gathering as a means of expanding strategic engagement with India. But the opportunities for doing so are quite constrained by the domestic distractions both governments confront. In India, the Singh government is engulfed by various corruption scandals that have all but paralyzed decision making. The titanic political struggle to push the nuclear accord through parliament has resulted in “Washington fatigue,” sapping any readiness to undertake similar high-profile initiatives. And despite Singh’s personal commitment to furthering bilateral ties, he is neither the master of his own government nor of his party.  Many of his Congress Party colleagues are not fully invested in the future of the relationship.  Even in the foreign policy area where he once had some latitude, Singh cuts an increasingly isolated figure. The recent WikiLeaks revelations have added to his political problems, as some interpret the cables as depicting him being excessively accommodating of U.S. interests.

In Washington, predicaments at home and abroad have combined to push India fall down the Obama administration’s priority list.  A reciprocal sense of “India fatigue” is also spreading. New Delhi’s rejection of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition and the prolonged inability of U.S. companies to cash in on the nuclear deal have made Washington policy elites increasingly weary of India’s capacity for strategic engagement. It is no coincidence that Secretary Clinton arrived in New Delhi just as a debate erupted about whether India was or could ever be a genuine “ally.”

Given the state of things in both capitals, the “new normal” looks to be with us for the next few years, at least.

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.)