Dasu Krishnamoorty
When George W. Bush returned home from his trip to India, he found that the ports deal had brought down his approval rating to a record low. He also found that media sniping at the nuclear deal he had wrapped up with Delhi was raging unabated. He could, of course, draw some cheer from Henry Kissinger and Condolezza Rice joining the media debate on his side. Thomas Friedman, who admits he has a soft spot for India, declined to support the deal in its present form. More than any other newspaper, the New York Times seemed troubled by Bush’s ‘Santa Claus’ act. In the first week of Bush’s return, the Times ran two editorials and three articles critical of the deal. As the newspaper that sets the agenda for the thinking sections of the American society, its support or opposition makes the difference for every administration, Republican or Democratic.
What happens to Bush’s authority at home is going to determine whether he will be able to convince Congress to make an exception in favour of India. The US media barometer indicates negative weather for Bush. He is under fire for the ports deal with the Dubai company, for the lack of preparedness when Katrina struck the US Gulf coast, for his inability to end the Iraq war and for illegal wire-tapping. He seems to have run out of political capital and to lose command over his party men as evident from their support to Democratic campaign to squash the ports deal. They had pre-empted a Bush veto by telling him they had numbers on their side.
This is the rough weather that makes the Bush effort to win Congress approval rather difficult. To the set of objections earlier editorials had raised, the New York Times added the effect the Delhi deal would have on Gen. Musharraf’s ability to explain to his people why he had failed to wrest the same concession that Bush had offered India. Saying that Bush need not have traveled halfway around the world just to embarrass one of US’s most important allies against terrorism, the Times thought that Bush should have just stayed home. But where is the call here to equate Pakistan with India when unlike Pakistan, India had never encouraged proliferation?
Columnists maintained that the Bush deal allowing India to buy American fuel for its civilian reactors would help India to use its domestic supplies of uranium to make bomb fuel for new weapons. This overlooks the fact that India is already a nuclear power that can make bombs. From the Indian side, the objective is to acquire multilateral legitimacy for what it has already been doing and to avoid being seen as a clandestine nuclear operator. India’s entire nuclear deterrence is built by its own scientists with technology of its own. For now, Delhi is satisfied that throwing open 14 facilities to international inspection does not erode its sovereignty. The eight other facilities over which India has control adequately preserve its sovereignty.
Defending the Delhi understanding, Henry Kissinger in a lengthy article in the International Herald Tribune asserted that historically India was not a natural candidate to participate in global ideological missions and cited the neutrality of Hinduism in support. But the leadership of the nonaligned movement that held for more than three decades itself is a proof of India’s global initiatives. The membership of the United Nations and its several agencies and India’s quest for permanent membership of the Security Council contradict Kissinger’s thesis. Kissinger made a point I had made in an earlier article in The Hoot, that is, India will not back any US effort to use it as counterweight to China. India’s consent to the new deal rests on the knowledge that globalization renders many of our congealed foreign policy attitudes irrelevant. Peace and friendship with its neighbours is as important for India as increased engagement with the US.
There is underemployment in the US and if as Condolezza Rice has pointed out in the Washington Post, India buys just two of the eight reactors it proposed to acquire, that would give jobs to many thousands of Americans. It makes sense to assume that the entire agreement was reached on the understanding that India would buy technology and fuel from the US. Our agreement with India is unique because India is unique, said Ms Rice. The present Indo-US engagement is based on the knowledge that international transactions do not necessarily erode the sovereignty of the parties to the transaction. It is time that critics in India should invest the Manmohan Singh government with the commonsense adequate to preserve the country’s foreign policy independence. "Any notion that the new deal we have with the US amounts to surrender of our independent thinking is totally misplaced," he said replying to the discussion on the working of the ministry of external affairs in the Rajya Sabha.
Even while India, with a stake in fighting terrorism strengthens the hands of the US that has a similar agenda, it has dissociated itself from the American misadventure in Iraq. Friends need not agree on all issues. If the US has ends to be served by the deal, India too has, though different. The deal is not based on altruism but on recognition of emerging global realities. Ms Rice has clearly spelt out the scope of the deal saying it does not help India make more n-weapons even as the n-fuel and technology it would acquire from the US would benefit only civilian reactors.
The Economist put on its cover a caricature of Bush riding a nuclear bomb. Its editorial asked the US Congress to say no to the Delhi agreement. Its latest and longest editorial came close to saying that Bush had betrayed Pakistan and that India had built its nuclear capabilities by misusing technologies and material provided for civilian purposes like Iran and North Korea did. The Economist also accused the US of violating NPT by helping India with nuclear-weapons tinkering. It warned that China might do for Pakistan what Bush had done for India. Agreed, India will make bombs. What will it do with them in a way different from what it had not done so far? India’s goals in the military sphere are defence-oriented and not hegemonic. Except China, none of the nuclear powers have objected to the deal. France and Russia are ready to do the same as the US would do if Congress endorses the deal.
Thomas Friedman argued that NPT signatories cannot sell civilian nuclear technologies to non-NPT signatories. I hope Bush knows it as do other nuclear powers. There is no question of India violating the NPT because it had never signed it. It is embarrassing for India-bashers to admit that fact. More than anything else, India is the only country to declare it will not be the first to strike and that it will not strike a non-nuclear country. If the deal benefits India, it benefits the US too. It is for this reason Bush made the trip.