By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Conventional wisdom screams that it was bad for George W. Bush to sign the India nuke pact recently, because the agreement undermines—nay, violates the long-standing nuclear non-proliferation treaty and could lead to an arms race. All eyes are on Iran, of course, as the next nuclear state. But North Korea gets plenty of baleful states, too. North Korea is the only country that has actually withdrawn from the treaty.
Meanwhile, the arms race is on.
The three “non-signatory” states already have nuclear weapons. That’s Israel, Pakistan and India. They should be punished, according to said conventional wisdom, and certainly not rewarded for by-passing the NPT. At least India should suffer the consequences of opting out. Bad countries don't get goodies.
There’s a little problem with this formulation---the awkward little perpetual exception of Israel. So, why can’t India do some special pleading, too?
And hey! How about a little appreciation for honesty? Three states, nearly fifty years ago, let it be known that the proposed non-proliferation regime, in which a few states that already had nuclear weapons would play nanny to the rest of the world, wouldn’t, in the long run, endure. Duh! Do I hear a appreciative guffaw from the political realists in the gallery?
But, if India, then Pakistan, pessimists warn, ominously, and Pakistan has indeed told Washington that parity makes sense to Islamabad. What President Zardari needs to hear, in response, is that apples aren’t oranges. India is pretty stable. For all its complexities and problems—and indeed corruption, India is seeding the world with engineers from its IITs, not with terrorists from al Qaeda training camps. The agitations in the hills surrounding Assam are laughable charades compared to the war going on in the mountainous tribal territories that straddle the Durand line.
Meanwhile—and this is a far more important point—the world has changed since the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was ratified in 1970. Did anyone seriously think India would not develop nuclear weapons so long as China has them? Was it possible that Pakistan could deny itself the prestige and blackmail potential if India has them? Was it possible that cover-up of Israel’s possession of nuclear arms could remain a secret decade after decade—and not inspire Muslim states like Iran to achieve parity, with “justification,” thanks to the absolutely marvelous political gift of the brutal occupation of Palestine?
As for Iran, put yourself in the shoes of the leadership. Would you trust the U.S. to ensure your supply of anything connected to nuclear capacity—or anything else of vital importance, for that matter? Some people don’t think it’s credible that Iran might actually want to use nuclear reactors for electricity. Let them use all that oil, these critics say, forgetting that it’s absolutely criminal, in an age of dwindling oil reserves, to squander oil on anything that a substitute can’t be found for. If I were an Iranian leader, I’d jolly well develop nukes for electricity; then, with as much as possible of my precious oil, I could hold the world to ransom
Once upon a time, the premise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was viable: nuclear knowhow, back then, was limited mostly to the US, the UK, China, Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) and France. Since no one else could design or produce the things, the fortunate five could control the regime pretty well. And, let’s not forget, it was in their interest to do so. So long as no one else had the ability to make nuclear weapons, they were on the top of the heap. How nice for them!
Nice for them, but, to my mind, psychologically untenable, ultimately, for other countries. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty created two tiers: the empowered and the unempowered. That is never a stable formation. Especially when the outs, by far, outnumber the ins.
It worked for awhile, for course. Then the world changed. The relevant knowledge became more widely dispersed. Power relationships changed. Economic power shifted. Internal regimes changed and so national ambitions changed. The sense of loyalty and commitment to the old treaty, naturally, diminished, since treaties, like marriages, do not always last forever. What had been easy to enforce early on, for technological and other reasons, lost the force of inevitability and legitimacy.
And so, in recognition of the changed world we live in today, the Bush administration has lobbied its allies to support its decision to help India develop peaceful nuclear technology, while ignoring its nuclear weapons programs. What’s truly objectionable here, to my mind, is the whimsical ad hoc exceptionalism of the decision-making process, which undermines itself even when it pursues an occasionally worthy objective, a truly destructive characteristic of the Bush administration in general. Helping India can be justified, I think, though I’m not going to pursue that argument here, since any argument that could be made would come across much more strongly in the context of arguing with some rigor that the old treaty is sadly in need of being brought up to date with the realities of the world.
In short, isn't it possible that it's time to bring the nations of the world together to negotiate a new treaty, one that is based on mutual abhorrence of nuclear weapons, not on the coincidental fact that some countries have the technology and most don’t. We need a treaty in which countries declare, not that we won’t have the capacity, but that we won’t use the damned things, because we all know that they are basically too damned powerful, so we aren’t going to make or buy a lot of them, though we reserve the right to blackmail, so we can’t be blackmailed. And also very important: we aren’t going to give fissionable material to non-state actors because we know bad things can boomerang on us and we don’t want that.
There's nothing terribly idealistic here. It's just that no one, really, wants to be nuked out of existence. No one wants to see a city disappear. No one wants a death toll of millions in a minute. That's the basis for undertaking a tough job.
And yeah! After renegotiation, we might have to trust a lot of people from many more cultures and traditions. Yet, despite US worries to the contrary, India and Pakistan have not nuked one another, just as the US and the USSR never did. For the most part, countries are not led by suicidal madmen or psychopaths. And, for the most part, they respond well to respect.
As for the non-state actors, that fear will always be with us. But it can be handled.
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