Eminent Indian nuclear scientists have been expressing their concern about the contents and direction of the Indo-US nuclear deal signed last July. Strategic analysts, former diplomats, prominent politicians and knowledgeable commentators have repeatedly cautioned the government about the minefields ahead. Ought not the government pause and clear these doubts? There is little effort towards this end, and we all seem to be running blind. <br /> <br /> The concern is not that India and the US have a nuclear deal or that the two countries have begun to warm up to each other. Not at all. The issue is that this deal will lead us to the NPT through the backdoor, cap our weapons potential and reduce India to a perpetual secondary status, and that supporters of the deal have not read the fine print. The manner in which the deal was signed, and the manner in which it has been made to stand on its head with all the new conditionalities, also make it suspect. <br /> <br /> We are told that the sceptics do not understand the big picture and are out of the loop. The fear is that the deal will tie us down in a bind forever and that in our eagerness to clinch the deal we are rationalising irrationality. <br /> <br /> After the deal was signed last July, Parliament was told that there was going to be reciprocity. India would submit its plan of separating civilian and military nuclear facilities, after which the US would seek amendment of US laws in the Congress. It would be the US's responsibility to approach the Nuclear Suppliers Group for waivers. After this, India would negotiate safeguard agreements with the IAEA. Instead, what has happened is that the US House of Representatives and the Senate have proposed Bills that put the deal upside down as we understood it. The US executive wants us to fall in line and we have begun to do so already. Negotiations with the IAEA have begun. <br /> <br /> The trick item in the US House of Representatives Bill of June 26 is that the President would have to submit periodic reports to the Congress beginning January 2007 and thereafter every year. The reports would have to describe, in considerable detail, India's nuclear-related activities in the previous year and the extent to which progress in achieving US foreign policy objectives had been made. <br /> <br /> These objectives include achieving a moratorium on production of fissile material for nuclear explosive purposes by Pakistan, India and China; adherence to the FMCT to which both India and the US will be signatories; India's full participation in Proliferation Security Initiative and its interdiction principles; India's conforming to the Wassennaar Arrangements (conventional and dual-use weapons) and the Australia Group policies (chemical and biological weapons); and India's full compliance in the US policy on Iran's nuclear programme. There is also the mandatory punitive clause, should India decide to test. <br /> <br /> Whatever be the Sense of the Congress, the intention is unambiguous -- it seems designed to not only control India's nuclear capabilities, but also makes it appear that our foreign and strategic policy is being outsourced to the US. Our executive will be answerable to the US Congress through the US President. <br /> <br /> This confirms the earlier misgivings of many. Indian fears are sought to be assuaged by suggesting that not all sections of the Bills are binding; that we need not worry; the Congress is simply acting out of pique at not having been consulted initially; that these are only paper formalities and that we will get over them when the actual time comes. <br /> <br /> We can never be sure of this especially if one recalls the statements Nick Burns and George Joseph made soon after the deal was signed. The slide continues. <br /> The challenge is to preserve Indian interests in the context of US global security and foreign policy objectives, because the US is offering this deal to India only in the pursuit of its own interests, and not out of any altruism. It is widely acknowledged that US global interests are immutable and there is bipartisan support. From the time that Thomas Jefferson said, "What a colossus shall we be" in 1816, to the National Security Doctrine of September 2002, a common thread runs through US foreign policy doctrine -- of global dominance. George Kennan, one of the most respected strategic thinkers in the US, asserted in 1948 that the US had to maintain the prevalent position of disparity. "To do so, we have to…dispense with all sentimentality, cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation," he said. This remains the underlying goal as elaborated in the various security doctrines that speak of dominance and pre-emptive action in the present neo-con era, and not what Condoleezza Rice may say of balance of power. This merely softens the hard stance and means there has to be balance of power between regional powers with no peer competitor for the US. <br /> <br /> Large countries like Russia have begun to feel irked at the increasing intrusiveness of the US. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who mid-wifed the birth of independent Soviet States, in a recent interview with The Times, London, spoke of the US building a new empire. The US set out to befriend the Vietnamese but destroyed them, like they have the Iraqis and Afghans now. Japan and Germany were first devastated, then helped in reconstruction. It was Henry Kissinger who had remarked that it was dangerous to be America's enemy but it was fatal to be America's friend. It may be worth remembering this as we seek to improve our ties with the US. <br /> <br /> The US has always held an ideology that has a global mission of deconstructing 'evil States' and reconstructing them as American clones. This ideology is, today, backed by unchallenged military power and an increasing propensity to use it as a first option. <br /> <br /> Protagonists of the deal now perpetuate myths about it and, unable to convince critics, abandon logic in favour of jargon, with convoluted explanations in place of reason. They seem to be opting for selective reality. It is better to be a doubting cold warrior than a neo-con acolyte. <br /> <br /> We are forgetting that we are being sucked into a situation that will hobble the independence of our foreign policy. Evidence of this is in the manner in which we scored a self-goal on the Iran nuclear issue. We had a say in the IAEA and then let the issue go to the UNSC. Today, India is not even consulted on this subject after having voted to please the US. We were unable to attend the SCO summit where some of the most prominent Asian leaders and Russia were present, for fear of annoying our new friends. We could not test Agni-III until General Pace had visited India. There is no joy for us in our ill-advised quest for the UNSC. We are to be a major market, not a major power. <br /> <br /> India is described in glowing terms nowadays, flattered as an emerging power, an India rising; the Grand Illusion perpetuates. We are on the front pages of The Economist and Time, who not many years ago referred to India with condescension. Will India fly, they now ask. <br /> <br /> We need to remember that Icarus became careless when he soared too close to the sun, so when the wax melted, he lost his wings. He had forgotten the advice Daedalus gave him; do not fly too close to the sun or too close to the ocean. <br /> <br /> </font> <font size="2" class="greytext1"> <em>The author is Advisor to Chairman, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. <br /> <br /> Source: The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, July 19, 2006 <br /> </em> <br /> <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em> <br />
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