Can you hear those voices of America?

US Ambassador David Mulford’s “Vote against Iran or else on nuclear deal’ statement was not jus imperial hubris. It was also part of a well-choreographed script originating in Washington. The latest pressure in the State Department advice that India should reconsider its oil oil deal with China in Syria.


The recent comments of the US Ambassador on the India-US deal of July 18 are a clear indication that the kid gloves are off and the knuckledusters are on. Perhaps there was a hint of exasperation at the Indians for not trembling and obeying. But the comment from Condoleezza Rice in Washington one day later that, “In order to move on to a new phase in which civil nuclear power would be available to India, India has to make some difficult choices,” would suggest that Mulford’s remarks were a part of a well-choreographed script and not a stray angry remark nor merely his personal opinion nor was he quoted out of context. It was not just imperial hubris as many felt. Mulford had a message to deliver and he did precisely that.

This leaves no doubt that the US has made a direct linkage between how India votes at the IAEA on Iran and the deal to supply civil nuclear energy to India. Earlier also on January 6, Rice had linked the Iran vote with supply of civil nuclear technology. Our initial response to Mulford’s remark was neither spontaneous nor sufficiently angry and it took a sharp letter from former PM Vajpayee to elicit a sterner response. One gets the uneasy feeling that the US Ambassador’s remark and the thinly veiled threat from Rice may have been prompted by a perception in Washington that we are now appearing to renege on some earlier promises on the nuclear deal. And Mulford’s subsequent remarks on January 29 suggest that the Americans have taken direct control of this campaign.

Pressure on India has come in different ways. Earlier it was on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline issue. The pipeline never was really a brilliant idea anyway especially considering that only the other day at Davos, Gen Musharraf referred to India as the enemy country. But that apart, it was India’s decision -- good or bad, right or wrong. Even though we say we will not give into pressure but apparently we did cave in on the IAEA vote on Iran in September last year.

The worrying aspect of all this is that India has similar energy deals with other countries not in the list of American favourites. The latest pressure being the gratuitous State department advice that India should reconsider its oil deal with China in Syria. The point is whether China too has been served similar advice as Siddharth Varadarajan (The Hindu January 28, 2006) asked. Should we now react by reconsidering the Boeing deal? Many will recall how the US State Department assiduously promoted the ultimately unsuccessful UNOCAL deal with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Yet no-one dare object.

Here one must pause and consider whether the US would have been able to coerce the same way had we not signed the July 18 agreement. Probably not, because there would have been no linkages to work on. The Mulford reprimand does suggest that the Next Step in (the much vaunted) Strategic Partnership, takes steps only the US way and gives a clear indication of the shape of things to come. One wishes we had tested the waters first with an agreement on something les vital to India’s security interests before taking the plunge and then grandstanding about it.

As for the July 18 CNE deal, shifting goal posts and interpretations of who will do what, when and how much, have dogged the deal from virtually the first day. It was a deal hastily brokered in the dead of the night and when day broke the full implications of the separation of the civilian and weapons nuclear facilities and the road map prepared by the Americans began to sink home. The Indian nuclear weapons programme is an offshoot of the civilian energy programme and the two are intermixed and inseparable. Additionally, there is enough uranium in the country therefore there is little need for import as this would increase our dependency on foreign powers.

Nuclear scientists like Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan say that the deal, if interpreted the way the US would like to, threatens to emasculate India’s nuclear weapons capability now and for the future by freezing the weapon usable nuclear materials at the minimum level and by curtailing the activities at the various nuclear facilities in the country. Apart from the various reactors in operation or under construction, the Americans could target facilities including the Rare Materials Plant near Mysore which produces medium enrichment uranium fuel for our nuclear submarine reactors, or the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology where the laser enrichment programme is run or the Nuclear Fuels Complex, Hyderabad; or the fast breeder programme and so on.

There are some in India who argue that the Americans will help us become a major power. They overlook that the US has striven all these years to be the only global power and it is not about to surrender this by talking of a balance of power. The only balance of power that the US knows is to balance other regional powers among themselves so that no single regional power is strong enough to challenge US interests. Besides, the US has a record of occasionally choking off vital supplies on the basis of its domestic laws made internationally applicable.

Yet these visionaries here insist that the deal is the best thing that has happened to India in a long, long time and that India had spent far too many years in the strategic dog-house. Some even propose that we could put a limit to our nuclear deterrent. Our day of reckoning had come and this deal will be the key to our heaven on earth. The only problem is that there are greater chances that we will be sent to purgatory after having made ourselves even more dependent upon imported sensitive technology. Gullibility in an individual can be endearing and harmless but at the national level it can be fatal.

There will be no nuclear weapons grade status nor would India be treated to any of the special privileges that the nuclear weapons states enjoy today. Besides India is being asked to fulfill certain preconditions in the hope that the vote in the US Congress and agreement within Nuclear Suppliers Groups would be available. There is no guarantee. It is as if the Indian establishment is going to be answerable to the US Congress and not to the Indian Parliament.

It is doubtful if the US Administration, beleaguered as it is on many other issues, can pull off anything with the US Congress unless it is seen as substantially curbing the Indian weapons’ programme in the name of transparency in the civilian sector. It is also doubtful if India can agree to a plan that curbs this capability in perpetuity. Therefore, it is far better to sit back and take stock of the situation, rework the deal if possible and if not, have the courage to discard it. India-US relations are far too important to be tied to a single agreement that has gone wrong. And if they are then they are on an unsound footing anyway. We could learn from the Israelis who have kept their American friends away from their nuclear programme and yet the US-Israel friendship has flourished. Ours could at least endure.

Source : Hindustan times 1st feb 2006