More Nukes to Pakistan?
The list of the overwhelming challenges President Bush is leaving for the next president was long enough before he added, with the acquiescence of the U.S. Senate, providing India with nuclear material and knowhow. There are so many ways this is a dangerous policy that it is hard to know where to start. The "winner" is the fact that Pakistan's military responded by deciding that it must keep up with India, and hence will seek to expand its nuclear program, one way or another. This is a truly alarming development, in a world in which alarms abound, because Pakistan is by far the country in which terrorists are the most likely to get their hands on nuclear arms, either by capturing them, having them slipped to them by cooperative elements in the military or intelligence services, or by overthrowing the failing government.
One may say, wait a moment; the US is not giving India nuclear arms. Hence, why would Pakistan seek to countervail them? The fact is that India's access to highly enriched uranium is limited. As a result of the U.S. providing Indian civilian reactors with such materials, India can and will use its own uranium in its military nuclear facilities to make more bombs.
The U.S. has a vital security interest in curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It has been pressing Iran and North Korea for years to stop such developments, and it has rallied its allies to help it in implementing such nonproliferation policies. However, if the U.S. helps another nation expand its nuclear program, it will end up undermining the already weak norm against nuclear weapons, making it even more difficult to demand that other nations give up their military nuclear ambitions. In the words of Senator Byron Dorgan,
"[The] message is you can misuse American nuclear technology and secretly develop nuclear weapons, you can test those weapons, you can build a nuclear arsenal in defiance of U.N. resolution and you will be welcomed as someone showing good behavior with an agreement with the United States of America."
He added that the agreement is a "green light to say 'You may produce additional nuclear weapons.'"
The notion that it is ok for "good" governments to have nuclear bombs, that we need only worry about rogue and failed ones, is a risky supposition. Governments come and go. The government of Iran--when the U.S. helped the Shah to start a nuclear program--was a close ally which overnight became a dire enemy. I am not suggesting that India will follow the same course, but the notion that it can be relied upon to be a close U.S. ally has little to support it. For decades, India was much closer to Russia than to the U.S., and there are large and growing segments of the populations who, let's put it gently, do not love us.
In short, the Bush "legacy" has just been extended by adding one more mess to the pile, and the next administration is being saddled with one more problem that it will need to fix--only this one is more troubling than many of the others.
Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu. www.securityfirstbook.com
Last months headlines in the Indian press:
"End of Nuclear Apartheid," "Nuclear Dawn" and "India Enters N-Club."
Yippee!
October 3, 2008 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
scariest line in the debate:
BIDEN: The line that should be drawn is whether we A, first of all have the capacity to do anything about it number one. And number two, certain new lines that have to be drawn internationally. When a country engages in genocide, when a country engaging in harboring terrorists and will do nothing about it, at that point that country in my view and Barack's view forfeits their right to say you have no right to intervene at all.
Just what capacity does Obama think we have to invade Pakistan or at least infringe their borders AND keep them trying to co-operate with them.
It is clear that Biden will not be a brake.
October 3, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's consider some numbers here: if the US "provides" nuclear material to India, does that mean the "US" dips into their stockpile of such materials, all created out of air and water, and gives them gratis to India? Nope, the numbers involved are the $$$ that India will "borrow" from the US, which will have been borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia, which will have largely come from US citizens buying goods in the market, and India will transfer those $$$ to an American corporation which will manufacture and sell those materials to India.
Republicans may at times be concerned about terrorism, but they never stop being concerned about how to transfer more money to the wealthiest 0.1% of their friends in corporate America.
October 3, 2008 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The norm against nuclear weapons is weak because the US, Europe and Irsrael all have nuclear weapons. Indeed, there really isn't a norm against nuclear weapons. There are haves and have nots.
I'm really not that worried about functioning Democracies developing the weapons that we already have. Yes, as you say, governments do change. But your example of the Iranian Shah is ridiculous on a number of levels. First, any assistance we gave the Shah with a nuclear program obviously didn't give the subsequent government much of a leg up -- the Shah has been out of power for decades and Iran is still years away from a functioning nuceal arsenal. Second, the Shah was a dictator and when dictatorships are supplanted by other dictatorships you get the kinds of idealogical swings that Democracies don't usually exhibit. India will not suddenly become an enemy.
By the way, professor Etzioni -- you're worried about rogue states, not "rouge" states (you make that mistake repeatedly).
October 4, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The real problem is with the increase of Pakistan's nuclear arms program that India's imcrease will fuel.Our alliance with Musharraf is the real analogy with the Shah, and public opinion against us increases daily with each report of U.S. drone attacks on their territory.
And Pakistan is the country that helped put the Taliban in power.
October 4, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right. We absolutely never should have had such close ties to the Musharaff dictatorship.
October 4, 2008 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Once it became known that nuclear explosions were possible, it was inevitable that any nation wanting nuclear armaments would eventually have them. Our national goal from that point on should have been to make sure no other nation would have a reason to want them. The UN was formed primarily for that purpose.
Unfortunately Americans were fearful that their ability to make massive amounts of money were threatened by Socialism and Communism, so they continued their propaganda campaign casting those economic systems as "evil". That, as much as anything, led to the nuclear arms race that ensued.
Now that the USSR is history, and Communism has been demonstrated to be fatally flawed, the nuclear arms race should have stopped and existing nuclear armaments destroyed. But, that would have removed one way for Americans to amass great wealth, so we have continued to develop ever more ways to kill with nuclear weapons.
Add to that, the religious conflicts in the world, and the inevitability that many nations would seek and obtain their own nuclear weapons became true again. If the Bush administration had been willing to work at it, we might have at least stalled that arms race, but they weren't. I believe that was most likely because there was a lot of money to be made by selling nuclear materials and technology to the arms racers. So the race continues.
October 4, 2008 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
My understanding of the India-US deal is that it actually shuts down India’s weaponization program. Any tests by India or any diversion of uranium for military use could result in cut off of supplies and lead to sanctions. The treaty will remain in force for forty years and India cannot pull out unilaterally. India has already renounced the first use of its weapons.
Risk management is a major part of the treaty. India can keep its existing weapons and use some plants for military purpose but I doubt that those plants will escape inspections. Imo, this is a round about way of making India adhere to NPT in future and for that India gets help in verifiable civilian use of the technology. Of course, many US and Western suppliers would benefit from the deal too.
The issue really is that this deal leaves Pakistan with a completely unsupervised weaponization program and that is something the US and others will have to find a solution for.
In the last seven years, Pakistan’s Command and Control structure for nuclear weapons has been created solely by the US management expertise, technology, and perhaps financial aid too. That possibly provides a measure of confidence to the US administration, though a public vote of confidence in Pakistani command and control structure would not be prudent.
While the need for nuclear plants for energy was never in doubt in India, where 70% of its rural areas lack any access to power rendering industrial progress impossible, Pakistan’s power needs are not as acute. Pakistan is currently suffering from power shortages but those needs can be met with non-nuclear resources. However, a long term solution to the weapons and military use of the technology needs to be developed.
Would a similar deal for Pakistan be a smart move? Imo, it is too early to make this call. We need to help Pakistan establish its democratic institutions to reduce the military interference in the decision making process first.
The rogue elements that the western media talks about are not the Taliban or the religious fundamentalist. Chances of their taking over Pakistan are minimal in the near future.
The rogue element in Pakistani power structure is the Pakistan army which has controlled the country for the last 50 years. As we are all aware, the army made some of the costliest decisions that have destabilized that country. Their constant support of the Taliban and other groups of Mujahideen from 1980s and initialing a war with India in 1999 to topple an elected government in Pakistan provide some insight in to the Pakistani military mind.
October 4, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink