by CKR
Siddharth Varadarajan’s pointer to his blog opens a possible dialog on an important issue: how to extend protections of the sort found in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to the nations that have not signed it. Those nations are India, Israel, and Pakistan, all of which possess nuclear weapons.
The discovery of the A. Q. Khan nuclear supplier network underscored the need to deal with the non-NPT nations in preventing proliferation. The question is how to do this without undermining the NPT.
The historical argument is that recognizing states that have developed nuclear weapons outside the NPT will give incentive to other nations to do the same. However, all the countries of the world except these three have now signed the NPT, so in a sense that argument is outdated. For a non-nuclear-weapon state to develop nuclear weapons would either violate the NPT or require that state to withdraw from the treaty.
Nonetheless, many of the parties to the NPT feel that bringing three non-NPT states into the treaty as nuclear weapon states would reward them for flouting the treaty. A deal with India, therefore, requires some delicate maneuvering. This is cumbersome, but not necessarily bad; it is the stuff of diplomatic compromises.
Thus, in President Bush and Prime Minister Singh’s joint statement, India is referred to as “a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology,” obviously the phrase worked out to substitute for “a nuclear weapon state” in the terminology of the NPT.
It might be hoped, as well, that a deal with India could be a model for the remaining two non-NPT states. Care to plug holes that might lead to proliferation is therefore in order, and it may be that some provisions may be directed at the situations of Pakistan and Israel as well as the situation in India. India, having neither the siege mentality of Israel nor the history of proliferation of Pakistan, is in an excellent position to develop a balanced program.
However such a deal may be negotiated, it will require giving up some privileges that may be associated with national sovereignty, like allowing inspections of nuclear facilities. India will have to designate its nuclear facilities civilian and military, the former to be inspected and the latter not. It is becoming obvious that this will be the centerpiece of negotiations. There will be some difficult decisions on the Indian side, since their nuclear facilities have developed outside the safeguards regime.
Although the United States and India are negotiating bilaterally on this issue, the resolution will include inspections by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. It would be more desirable to negotiate a new, or revised, NPT multilaterally, especially given the suspicions that the Bush administration has generated with its unilateral actions. Mr. Varadarajan comments:
Central to this approach is the notion that the new nuclear "threats" must be dealt with not through rule-based, multilateral institutions such as the Conference on Disarmament but through ad hoc, U.S.-led coalitions that arrogate to themselves the right both to draw up new rules and regulations and to enforce them with military means if necessary.
This is indeed a problem, but India is aware of its interests and has been a careful negotiator in the past.
I’m hoping Mr. Varadarajan will be willing to discuss these issues between here and his blog. There’s more to say.