Sunday, August 07, 2005

on india-us nuclear deal [sic]

aug 6th, hiroshima day

my comments on the so-called deal, to be published. this is copyrighted material, not under the creative commons license.

wasn't much of a deal for india, we caved in meekly.

The India-US agreement on defense and nuclear issues

Does this mean that India is now an accepted nuclear power?

No, it means Indians were out-negotiated as usual

By Rajeev Srinivasan

There is the pithy statement contrasting 'committed' and 'involved': when you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is surely committed. Similarly, in this much-ballyhooed agreement, the US is involved, but India is committed. This is the essential asymmetry and unfairness of the deal. Indians accept the obligations of the P5, but get none of the rights.

For, everything that the Americans have said is weasel-worded: "we'll work with Congress and allies to do xyz", whereas Indians have obligated themselves to do things. The Congress and its pack of baying non-proliferation ayatollahs will not agree to anything substantive. But India will open its kimono to intrusive inspections by the IAEA. Note: the last time there were intrusive inspections, they invaded the country: Iraq. The IAEA finds 'weapons of mass destruction' on demand.

The Americans are also not exactly well-known to adhering to treaties. They reneged on a treaty to supply Tarapur with nuclear fuel. Remember the Kyoto Accord, the Law of the Sea, the International Criminal Court? The US signs things and then refuse to bring them into force, hiding behind the fig-leaf of a recalcitrant Congress. They shrug, "You know the Congress and tough guys like Bernie Sanders, what can we do?" 

The only dim ray of hope I see is that Indians could reciprocate: "We couldn't get the thing ratified in Parliament, very sorry. You know those difficult people like Sitaram Yechuri." That would be one way to slime out of inconvenient treaties. But Indian negotiators wouldn't dream of such behavior, for that might jeopardize any plum future UN sinecures.

The US also cannot unilaterally declare India to be a nuclear power, even if they by some remote chance wanted to. The Non-Proliferation Treaty has carved in stone the nuclear apartheid between the Gang of Five and everyone else. To change the US's 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act is hard enough. Now imagine convincing China, mortal foe and author of the infamous Security Council Resolution 1172 which harshly and insultingly condemned India's 1998 blasts. 

Separating civilian and military nuclear facilities, accepting IAEA inspection of all civilian facilities, adhering to the Additional Protocol: all this is more than the P5 do. It is a total cave-in by innocents out-negotiated by canny Americans. This is 'cap, rollback, and eliminate' by other means: long the mantra of the State Department. India has given up its leverage for nothing in return. This is normal for Nehruvians: this is exactly what they did in giving up valuable treaty rights in Tibet to the Chinese in return for absolutely nothing.

New century, new Himalayan blunder. In fifty years, it'll be obvious why this deal was a disaster.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maoputra's Response to the AEI: underestimating the Chinese threat post.
Just when you think this idiot couldn’t possibly go any lower, he does. It takes a twisted and depraved mindset to call for Muslim terrorist attacks on others when your own people (who he claims to champion) are supposed to be suffering from them.
But on a second thought, I pity him. It must be painful being an “Indian Nationalist”. The Aryan Invasion Theory must tear at his heart everyday. Sure he can lie to himself and google for obscure webpages that claim against all linguistic and scientific evidence that somehow the invasion never occurred. But since he is reasonably educated, deep inside, he knows that these are just idiotic lies invented to satisfy some wounded egos that can never stand up to rigorous scrutiny and that the Indian civilization was not created by indigenous Indians. This, I believe is what makes Srinivasan such a pathetic and twisted person.
But this is becoming pretty obvious as even his fellow Indian nationalists on this board are starting to question his insane “foaming at the mouth” harangues.
Maoputra

Anonymous said...

Meow -Putra,
Not one word of substance yet. Just negations. As I have said earlier, the onus is on you to refute things logically, with enough proof. Don't be an imbecile.

Anonymous said...

We are already allowing inspections by IAEA of Tarapur and Kalpakkam (not sure of others) - the only new condition is that we have to separate our "civilian" and "military" reactors and it will be up to us to categorize the reactors as "civilian" or "military". Also it appears to be the culmination of the NDA govt's talks with the US. Both NDA and the UPA govt did well

Anonymous said...

Rajeev...

Have you lost your mind?
I think u r indulging in mindless Congress bashing.Not surprising,when a person like Vajpayee has turned out be a big hypocrite: opposing the nuke deal which his govt actually initiated.
I think India stands to benefit out of the civilian nuclear nuclear techn since it will reduce our dependence on oil.