Is the Nuclear Deal really in the National interest

The never-ending soap about the nuclear deal looks bizarre and would be humorous were the matter not so serious

It is true that not many people have read the 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act or the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Fewer understand them. Yet amazingly, luminaries of the Samajwadi Party, having hidden their nuclear knowledge for years, attained enlightenment after a brief half-hour meeting with our former President. It was a convenient meeting at a convenient hour.

The SP says it will support the government but not join it, having learnt from the Left the exquisite art of wielding power without responsibility. Dissidents within the SP say they are opposed to their leadership but not opposed to the nuclear deal. The Akali Dal says they are a constituent of the NDA but will not vote against the government in deference to the Prime Minister. The SP has defined the national interest more specifically. They want certain ministers divested of their portfolios and would like to select their own man as the next director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, presumably to help in those cases involving the party hierarchy. Quite obviously, a case of personal party interests masquerading as the national interest.
We cannot solemnly declare that we will not share the details of the privileged IAEA Safeguards Agreement with the Left since they are not a part of the government, but then find that the agreement is already on the Internet for all to see. We cannot describe the deal as a national issue yet not talk to the main Opposition party, but prefer instead to have closed-door meetings in safe houses to woo the willing. We cannot say it is a national issue and then convert this into a Muslim, Sikh or a communal (read Hindu) issue or about Telangana. Where is the Indian in all this?

The never-ending soap about the nuclear deal looks bizarre and would be humorous were the matter not so serious. Since there is general cynicism in the conduct of statecraft, there can be an equally cynical interpretation of this elaborately-scripted charade. Both the Left and the Congress Party know they have to contest the forthcoming state elections in opposition to each other. They cannot make inflation and energy prices an issue for parting company because that is self-defeating. The other catchy national interest is the 123 Agreement, but this is more an excuse than a reason. As the opposition to the deal grew, so did the nightmare that the successors to the throne may be the "communal party". The alternative to this was for the Left to walk out once it was ensured that the SP and a motley crowd of parliamentarians would support the UPA in any vote of confidence. The nation would thus have been saved from the "communalists." There is no national interest in all this. It is only about several deals within a deal.

In the midst of all this high drama, some aspects of the Indo-US nuclear deal have been forgotten. For instance, why has all the pushing and shoving come from the United States if the deal is so much in India’s national interest? There has never been any satisfactory explanation from anyone — specially from the US, a country known to and able to act in its own perceived interest while pretending to be inspired by altruistic motives.

Many of us may have forgotten what Nicholas Burns had to say a few days after the Bush-Manmohan Singh nuclear agreement in July 2005. The gameplan was clear when he said that the 123 Agreement "brings India ... back into the non-proliferation mainstream in a way it was not before. And that is a tangible gain for India, as well as the US and the rest of the world." He had also said that "eventually 90 per cent of India’s nuclear reactors will come under safeguards." In other words, this is FMCT (Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty) through the back door, by reducing India’s capability to produce fissile material.

There are several other things that could go wrong or at least work out differently. For instance, India may be able to push through the agreement with the IAEA and the NSG but not leave enough time for the US Congress to ratify the 123 Agreement. This would leave India free to deal with the French and Russians for supply of material and construction of reactors. Surely the Americans, having taken all these steps, are not going to sit back and watch all lucrative deals go to others when the 123 was to be part of an effort to revive the languishing US nuclear industry. Coincidentally, the US Energy Act of 2005 was designed to revive the country’s nuclear industry and what better prospects than selling reactors to India and China, where the market could be worth $150 billion.

The deal exposes India to uranium supplies from a cartel notorious in the past to resort to price manipulations. In recent years, the price of uranium has risen six times above the usual average of about $25 per kg. With demand in India and China expected to rise, the price of uranium, already increasing at a rate higher than that of crude oil, will increase further.
Mr Burns had also said that American companies would be selling the "finest nuclear technology" to India. But latest reports indicate that American negotiators are wary of supplying high-end technologies to India despite claims by Indian protagonists, and would rather supply technologies that cannot be replicated. It is extremely doubtful that the Chinese will ever agree to an arrangement in the NSG which enables the transfer of state-of-the-art dual-use technology to India as this has strategic implications for China.

Spin masters would have us believe that the Chinese favour the deal. It is well known that the Chinese have opposed every international Indian move seeking a higher profile or role. There has been no progress on the Sino-Indian boundary question, despite our unequivocal surrender of Tibet, and there were 150 intrusions along the border last year — indicating that things are far from being normal. Whatever the Chinese may say publicly, they do not wish to see a rival in Asia. Their view of a multipolar world is quite different from ours. For them, multipolarity consists of two poles — themselves and the US — with lesser poles hovering around somewhere below, but with the US out of Asia. It is, therefore, puzzling to find that the Chinese actually support the 123 Agreement unless they have figured out that this would limit India’s strategic options in the future.

Recent comments by Strobe Talbott that the next US President — whether Democratic or Republican — may be harsher on India on CTBT and implement the deal only if India agrees to abide by this treaty, should be worrying. Is this another push and shove? Or just bluff and bluster?

Source : Asian Age , 16th July 2008

America fails the IQ test

The US has a knack of rejecting unpalatable , On Iran for Instance.

The recent US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that Iran is some years away from having the capability to make the bomb (earliest by 2009, but more realistically by 2015) upset many of the ‘shock and awe’ brigade of neo-cons in Washington. Critics of the report have either dismissed it as a politically motivated exercise or as the revenge of those who oppose or dislike George W. Bush’s policy. Israeli strategists and analysts have largely refused to accept the report as the final word. CNN had to hurriedly cancel its two-hour programme, ‘We Were Warned: Iran Goes Nuclear’, after the publication of the NIE report.

Bush has continued to say that Iran was, is, and will remain a threat. But the rhetoric about an impending “third world war” will have to cool down now. It is not going to be easy to ignore the joint report of intelligence community considering that the US government spends $ 40 billion annually on collecting intelligence. Several former CIA analysts and experts have praised the NIE findings for resisting back channel politics and reporting ‘as they saw it’ — not based on a single source but multiple sources that include technical, documentary and electronic. Others feel that this reversal will dent the credibility of US intelligence on countries like Iran. Many see this is an intelligence exercise honestly delivered.

Yet, the use and abuse of intelligence reports is nothing new. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, the famous Downing Street memo of July 2002 recorded after the British MI6 chief had visited the US that the British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had stated that “C reported on his recent talks in Washington… Military action was now seen as inevitable. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”

The worry today about Iran’s nuclear ambitions is the result of US policy in Iran in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported the idea of Iran developing nuclear power and the US hoped to sell billions of dollars worth of nuclear reactors, spare parts and nuclear fuel to Iran even though the Shah had declared rather indiscreetly that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld persuaded Ford in 1976 to offer Iran a deal that would have earned GE and Westinghouse contracts worth $ 6.4 billion — a boon in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island disaster. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuel cycle — something that the US does not want Iran to have today. The argument now is that Iran’s desire to have its own enrichment facility for nuclear power proves that it wants to develop a bomb. The Shah fell and the Ayatollahs took over, the Soviets moved into Afghanistan and suddenly it appeared as if the arch rival would be sitting on the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The US had no plan B, except to convert the pariah General Zia-ul-Haq into an ardent frontline ally.

Every major intelligence agency of the day knew what the Pakistanis, led by A.Q. Khan and the entire nuclear-military establishment, were up to. But the Reagan administration, fixated on defeating the Evil Empire, chose to ignore all transgressions. The CIA discovered that the State Department was actually tipping off Pakistani agents in the US. Richard Barlow, a young diligent officer repeatedly and meticulously produced accurate intelligence assessments about Pakistani clandestine activity. Yet, his reports would mysteriously get substituted or altered. Barlow had missed out the realpolitik. Eventually, he was harassed and rendered unemployable and now lives in a trailer in Montana.

Year after year, Reagan certified that Pakistan was not making the bomb so that Congress would not stop the aid to Pakistan even though US money for the jehad was being diverted to make the bomb. The fact that Pakistan had cold tested in 1983, hot tested in 1984 in Lop Nor, that the China-Pakistan nuclear links had burgeoned with Beijing having supplied blue prints, radioactive isotopes and technical assistance; and that the US supplied F-16 aircraft that had been made nuclear capable, was concealed. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark say this and a lot more in their explosive account, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Policy.

Having mastered their skills at uranium enrichment, Pakistani leaders were now looking for buyers of this technology. Seymour Hersh first wrote about this in the New Yorker in 1993. But no one bothered. Army Chief General Aslam Beg and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul put together a blueprint to include Iran and Afghanistan in a strategic tie-up in keeping with Zia’s dream of supplying the bomb to the Ummah. Iran had been won over as a customer and additional money would be available for the jehad against India. Acting as the interlocutor between China and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan arranged the sale of 36 long- range nuclear capable CSS-II missiles to Saudi Arabia at a cost of $ 3 billion. In 1988, Zia proposed that the Saudis could be secretly supplied with nuclear warheads as they were not interested in the technology. For the devout Sunni Zia, it made good sense to equip the Sunni Saudis — the Iranians were, after all, Shias.
The post-Afghan jehad period was one of US indifference. Recently, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, under a gag order for five years, has revealed details overheard on wiretaps she translated during her time at the FBI just after 9/11. She has disclosed a maze of nuclear black market espionage involving US Defence and State Department officials, where information about nuclear technology was eventually sold to Pakistan and used by A.Q. Khan for development of nuclear weapons. The secrets were then given to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and potentially al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, just weeks prior to September 11, 2001.

The urge to reject unpalatable intelligence harms the recipient. Cover-ups and misuse of intelligence invariably lead to warped policies and we may actually see a nuclear blow-back of US policies in our neighbourhood which may extend far beyond. Blowbacks affect both the perpetrator and the recipient, as in Pakistan today.

Source ; Hindustan Times , 18th Jan 2008

Fission for compliments

Of course India needs US friendship. But why through the N-deal

It would seem that push has finally come to shove. Not too long ago, Washington launched its Ultimate Weapon with the landing of Henry Kissinger in New Delhi. He, of the guttural charm and Germanic weltenschaung, did not come just to receive a bouquet from the Leader of the Opposition. He came to generally render gratuitous advice to sign on the dotted line of the nuclear deal. Henry Paulson, George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, was here too, lauding the benefits to India from the deal. Fatwas from Washington and heavy breathing in New Delhi gives US officialdom the finesse of a battering ram.

There has been controversy about the implications and benefits of the 123 Agreement or how this agreement and its enabling legislation, the Hyde Act, will be interpreted by the US and India in the future. The intense debate, mostly outside Parliament, was divisive for the country, threatening at one stage the continuation of the government. Essential questions, even basic ones like the price per unit of nuclear energy, remain unanswered. Doubts about long-term strategic implications have been lost in hopeful obfuscation that the deal holds the key to superstardom.

Assuming that the deal is the best thing that has happened to India in a long time, why has the US been pushing it with such single-minded dedication? Why is the US willing to welcome India to this elite club as an honorary member when the pursuit of nuclear non-proliferation has been an article of faith with that country? Why the hard sell? What is it that we are all collectively missing? Surely the obvious gains — Indian markets, defence sales to India and engaging India (as the Chinese fear) as part of the US strategy to encircle China — could have been achieved without the Indo-US nuclear deal. Logically, therefore, there must be a larger US interest beyond the obvious.

The US naturally wishes to maintain its global superiority. Nations attain this status not through magnanimity or virtue but through the use of military might, superior technology, fixity of purpose and ruthlessness. The Republican Party’s foreign policy commandments have their origins in the neo-con thinking of the Defence Planning Guidance of 1992. One of the many guidelines was that “we [the US] must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. Another document of importance, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences — Strategy Forces and Resources for the New Century’, in 2000 reaffirmed that the 1992 document provided the blueprint for maintaining US pre-eminence and preventing the rise of a rival power. All this led to the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which also laid out the justification for an endless war on terror against phantom enemies and the need to strike at them pre-emptively anytime anywhere. Simultaneously, the US must continue to have access to cheap energy and control its distribution. Any disruption of this is perceived as a threat to US security.

Fortress America was suddenly vulnerable to terrorist zealots on September 11, 2001, and a terrorist armed with a nuclear device was the ultimate horror. Pakistan was seen as the home of al-Qaeda, an unstable country with a thriving terrorism industry, possessing nuclear weapons and a dubious record of proliferation. This became an intolerable risk and US interests dictated that not only al-Qaeda and Taliban be destroyed, but that nuclear weapons in Pakistan be secured.

The new Bush doctrine formulated immediately after the 9/11 attacks (Nuclear Posture Review, March 2002) postulated that the US would not accept that governments in which they did not have confidence or countries where they could not verify facilities should hold nuclear weapons. Pervez Musharraf had come on board for the war on terror but the US wanted control of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, and quickly. It even wanted to place sufficient force on the ground to control access. Yet, since Pakistan was needed for the war on terror, its leaders could not be seen as having submitted themselves to nuclear blackmail for fear that this would arouse Islamic anger further.

There were reports that in March 2002, American troops, primarily drawn from Special Operations Command, along with scientists from Nuclear Emergency Search Teams arrived in Pakistan. According to George Friedman (America’s Secret War), they were deployed to all of Pakistan’s nuclear reactors. Inventories were quickly made and the Americans concluded that Pakistan was not in a condition to deliver a nuclear device to al-Qaeda, given the US monitoring of Pakistani facilities. The US discovered that there were “advanced Chinese plans for other devices that had not been built at that time but these would have made Pakistan much more dangerous by increasing the reliability and sophistication”. Friedman asserts that the US had secured Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, although it was only nominally observing them. Musharraf agreed to keep this a secret and also purge the ISI. It also appears that at the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, she was asked about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities should something happen to Musharraf. Eventually, she reassured Senator Kerry that the matter had been taken care of, but did not elaborate. Recent debate in the American media about the safety of Pakistani nuclear weapons, accompanied by official assurances that they are safe, suggests that the US may have reason to be confident.

If correct, this should be good news. But no one was ever going to confirm this to the Indians as it would break the India-Pakistan hyphenation and leave India as the pre-eminent regional power. Besides, the National Security Strategy of 2002 categorised China and India as potential US rivals, though they were listed as current allies, and mentioned Russia as an emerging threat. US strategists would have some concerns about a militarily-strong, economically-powerful India 20-30 years from now, which might just as well go into a China-Russia-India or a Russia-Iran-India triangle with all its potentially anti-American possibilities. By then, India might even be able to master the three-stage cycle through breeder reactors that use thorium and not be dependent on imported uranium. This would leave India with adequate fissile material and energy production as well as make it independent of American control. All this could have devastating consequences for US interests and had to be prevented, alongside capping India’s nuclear weapons capability.

India had both to be stopped and enrolled as an ally, but the Pakistan route was impossible. The chosen route was the 123 deal, read with the India-specific Hyde Act flowing from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The Hyde Act says very clearly that one of the objectives is to “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” India’s nuclear capability. It also mentions five times that if the US stops supplying nuclear material to India following a treaty violation, it will not allow other members of the NSG to supply this. Nicholas Burns reaffirms (Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 2007) that with the deal, India will come into the international non-proliferation mainstream. There were sermons on India’s foreign policy on Myanmar and Iran, with the suggestion that India should buy US combat aircraft.

The debate should not be about whether or not we need modern technologies and American friendship. Of course we do. Instead, the debate should be whether or not the deal, in its present form, ensures, enhances or impairs India’s strategic interests.

Very often it is argued that if the deal breaks, then Indo-US relations will suffer a setback.
Any relationship that is based on just one issue is seriously flawed.

Source : Hindustan Times , 27th Nov 2007

A War of Nerves

Iran wants to engage with the world. but the US is in no mood to relent

Richard Perle, known in Washington power circles as the ‘Prince of Darkness’ and associated with the neo-con American Enterprise Institute and the Project for New Century, had authored a book with his associate, David Frum, soon after President George Bush launched his ill-fated Iraq war. The book, An End to Evil, is the Perle-Frum prescription about how to win the war on terror. They recommended that the US must take bold and decisive action against Iran. They said this in 2003 when the duo was still considered (and probably still are) among the most influential insiders in the Bush White House.

It is true that Iran came clean about its nuclear programme only when its clandestine nuclear liaison with Pakistan and the Libyans had let the cat out of the bag. Although Pakistani delinquency has been swept aside, there has been endless high-pitched rhetoric and speculation about when, or if, the US will attack Iran to end its so-called quest for the N-bomb, and to overthrow the current regime. Washington glowers at Tehran, demonising the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more or less like Saddam Hussein. The US has rejected the IAEA finding that clearly concludes in Article IV(4) that: “The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has, therefore, concluded that it remains in peaceful use.”

There are renewed allegations of Iran interfering in Iraq by supplying the Shia militia with money, weapons-training and explosives and weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this has not galvanised the Iranians into submission. There are other provocations to goad Iran that range from rejection of the IAEA findings, tougher sanctions, which now have the French on board, and if this were not enough, insulting Ahmadinejad after inviting him to address the University of Columbia. There have been leaks about the possibility of a pre-emptive strike that could include thermonuclear weapons, which according to some is harmless to the surrounding human population. Warplanes are said to be in position since 2004 and extensive wargames were conducted in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean in mid-2006. The Pentagon is supposed to have 2,000 bombing targets. The idea is to force Iran to retaliate and then use overwhelming force when it does.

Undoubtedly, Iran must be feeling surrounded these days much more than before. To the north is Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) member, concerned about the Iranian nuclear programme. Close to Iran are two former Soviet republics, Armenia and Azerbaijan but now friends of the West. Along with Turkmenistan, they are members of the Nato’s Partners for Peace Programme. Afghanistan in the east is home to Nato and US troops, where the Sunni, radical Taliban are becoming increasingly effective and the President, progressively ineffective. The other eastern neighbour, Pakistan, also hosts US bases, and,US-backed insurgents have used Balochistan as a base for forays into Iran. Across the Persian Gulf are six Arab kingdoms: Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — all worried about Iran’s growing clout in the region. To the west is Iraq, with its 150,000 US troops and with reports that troops will be moved towards the Iranian border. Finally, the US armada in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean is poised to pulverise. Encircled thus, it is natural for Iran to try to break the cordon and reach out to Russia and China in a kind of a quadrilateral that includes the other energy-rich nation, Venezuela. The latest in this round of high drama has been another book by Norman Podhoretz, the widely acknowledged doyen of the Neo-Con Corps in Washington. His book — World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism — is the latest neo-con warbook about the battle against global Islamist terror. Podhoretz, who considers that the Cold War was World War III and that World War IV has begun, met President George Bush recently. Word is that he urged the President to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Podhoretz is no quaint old man; he is a foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani, who, some say could be the Republican front-runner for the presidential election. Podhoretz may have his reasons to predict that Iran would crumble under US ‘Shock and Awe’ (Iran edition). But it is difficult to accept this prediction after the exposures of the limitations of US military power in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Events in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant that the decline of US prestige and power is the most discerning aspect of the first decade of the 21st century. There has also been a decline in the US’s ‘soft’ power with Al Jazeera challenging the supremacy of BBC and CNN in the region. Apart from Iraq, this loss is most noticeable in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the three countries that Henry Kissinger had described as the pivot to the world’s (meaning US) security. No wonder President Karzai of Afghanistan, on a visit to Washington, and, in the presence of Bush, was emboldened to describe Iran as a helper and a solution. At about the same time Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was on an official visit to Tehran buying insurance in case the US found him dispensible. A week after Bush and Karzai had met, the Iranian President was in Kabul calling on his Afghan counterpart.
Given the importance of the region, the decline in the supply of oil in the future and production peaks and the growing needs for energy of other nations like China, the US has to keep the oil-producing West Asia and Eurasia under its control. There has always been bipartisan support for this policy in Washington; in fact, many of the projects and policies that the Republicans are now pursuing in West Asia were initiated by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Therefore, it is not easy to dismiss these leaks as simply designed to scare. They have their own momentum should Iran, in US perceptions, continue to be intransigent.

The alternative to bombing is negotiations but this, too, may be difficult now. Four years ago, in May 2003 the Iranian authorities proposed a package deal to freeze their nuclear programme in exchange for an end to US hostility. The Iranians offered full transparency about their nuclear programme and full cooperation with the IAEA, on Iraq, terrorism and even material support to Hamas. In return, the Iranians wanted their country to be removed from the ‘axis of evil’ list, end of all sanctions, US support for reparations from Iraq for the Iran-Iraq war, access to peaceful nuclear technology and that the US pursue anti-Iran terrorists like the Mujahedeen-e- Khalq. Instead, the US rejected this offer and now threatens ‘just’ Wars when things are going horribly awry for them and the Iranian position in the region is much stronger.

This kind of rhetoric in the US has prompted commentators like Philip Giraldi to portray a scenario should the Iranians not roll over and play dead. This would force the US to strike the country. The escalation of conflict that Giraldi depicts in his essay What World War III May Look Like quickly engulfs the entire region, reaches the US and ends with a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. “World War III has begun” is the last sentence of Giraldi’s script. He might as well have predicted Armageddon.

Source : Hindustan Times , 16th Oct 2007