Mutual distrust continues to haunt the 10-year-old Indo-US nuclear deal
By Pravin Sawhney
Sanjaya Baru (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media
advisor) wondered why on the 10th anniversary of 18 July 2005 nuclear
deal there was little celebration in Delhi when in the US, the Carnegie
Endowment think-tank brought together bipartisan supporters of the deal
including US vice president Joe Biden to mark the momentous occasion which
resulted in strategic partnership between India and the US. He pointed out that
few in India were clear about the deal (technical aspects), and still fewer
understood a transactional relationship which is what the deal was about.
Meanwhile,
Ashley J. Tellis, an astute US commentator intimately involved in the post-deal
negotiations believes that ‘the nuclear deal transformed India overnight from
being a target of determined US non-proliferation policy to becoming a partner
in America’s larger geo-political endeavours.’
Was it really so
considering geo-political partnerships require strategic trust? Ironically,
India had reached out to the US before and after 1998 nuclear tests to be
rebuffed with grand brush-off which, not coincidently, saw the unholy
partnership between China and Pakistan come out of the closet. This generated vast
distrust in the India-US bilateral relationship which the deal, given its unrealisable
agenda and counter-productive pace, brought out into the open.
The roots of the
nuclear deal go to India’s 1998 nuclear tests. When the Vajpayee government
came to power, US President Bill Clinton sent commerce secretary and friend,
Bill Richardson to India. His agenda was to find out if the BJP-led government
would do the nuclear tests as committed in their election manifesto. Richardson
got assurances at the highest level that decision for nuclear tests would depend
upon the recommendations of the first-ever Strategic Defence Review. Prime
Minister Vajpayee, however, encouraged Richardson to meet Jaswant Singh (his
senior advisor on foreign and defence affairs) ‘in private’ according to Strobe
Talbott’s book, Engaging India.
Jaswant Singh
went alone to meet the Richardson team at the residence of the US ambassador to
India. His mission: to tell them that ‘he was under instructions from Vajpayee
to serve as a discreet — and if necessary, secret — channel to Washington, to
be used for anything sensitive that the US leadership wished to convey to the
Prime Minister.’ India was clearly proposing geopolitical partnership to the US.
Jaswant Singh believed that close geopolitical ties with the US would help India
transform its status from a balancing to a leading power.
Jaswant Singh —
a rare politician in India who understood geopolitics — was aware of two strategic
issues where understanding with the US was necessary. The first was India’s
need for high technology, which since 1984 (the two countries signed a
memorandum of understanding on science and technology) had been a recurring
talking point between the two counties. The second issue concerned China. In
his book, Defending India published
soon after the tests, he wrote, ‘from the early fifties, when Indian policy
helped an emerging China, to now when the century ends, a relationship of
equals no longer obtains. Clearly, India’s management of Sino-Indian relations
has been a failure and the nation continues to pay the price.’
Immediately after
the tests, unsure of how he would be received by an angry Clinton
administration, Jaswant Singh got in touch with American expert, George
Perkovich to explore possibility of his meetings at the US State Department.
Without waiting to hear from the US administration, Jaswant Singh reached the
US on 6 June 1998 where in a series of media interactions he explained India’s
viewpoint — how the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
and the imminent universal acceptance of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban
Treaty (CTBT) had forced India to safeguard its security interests. This,
Jaswant Singh did after the Clinton administration had made Prime Minister
Vajpayee’s letter to President Clinton where he had cited China as the main
reason for conducting the May 1998 nuclear tests public.
If the US felt
let down by India’s nuclear tests, the disclosure of Vajpayee’s letter by the
US President was seen as a snub of India’s geopolitical aspirations. With
India’s strategic intent out into the open, China decided to play hard ball: restrict
India’s geopolitical ambitions through its proxy Pakistan while ensuring that
India-US ties did not get too cosy for its comfort.
Jaswant Singh’s
meeting with Richardson had not helped. What is more, within days of the test,
Clinton dispatched secretary of state, Madeleine Albright to a specially
convened US Security Council session where China held the (rotatory) chair. According
to Talbott, the US team ‘spent hours talking the Chinese out of their
preference for more India-bashing and harsher demands in the document.’ The
drafted UN 1172 Security Council resolution of 6 June 1998 made impossible
demand — that India and Pakistan join NPT as non-nuclear weapons states — and
Kashmir as the likely flashpoint found mention in a UN resolution for first
time after the 1972 Simla Agreement. Hereafter, UN 1172 resolution became
China’s stick to beat India with. Most recently, China on 3 June 2015 said that
‘the Nuclear Suppliers Group regarded NPT status as a crucial standard to
accept new member state (referring to India and Pakistan).
To take the
nuclear deal story forward, once tempers cooled in Washington and sense prevailed
that the nuclear genie could not be put back in the bottle, Jaswant Singh and his US interlocutor
Strobe Talbott ‘met fourteen times at ten locations in seven countries on three
continents’ (as Talbott put it) to come to an understanding. These interactions
helped in formulation of the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP)
announced on 13 January 2004 between Prime Minister Vajpayee and US President
George W. Bush.
The NSSP covered
three strategic areas, namely, civilian space programme, civilian nuclear
activities and high-technology trade as well as dialogue on missile defence. Trade
in defence hardware was deliberately not included in NSSP, perhaps because it
was felt that trade in weapon platforms should follow trade in technology. This
was meant to ensure that enough strategic trust is build before India purchased
war-fighting platforms which would need uninterrupted supply of spares. India
learned this lesson from US’ close ties with Pakistan where after the Pressler
Amendment, the US refused delivery of F-16 aircraft for which money was already
paid.
The NSSP
followed the High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG) — meant for commercial
trade in high technology for civilian use — established between the two countries
in November 2002. According to the then US undersecretary of commerce, Kenneth
Juster (FORCE, July 2004), ‘in some respects, the NSSP builds and expands upon
the work being done in the HTCG. The HTCG set up a framework for reviewing and
analysing how technology commerce between the US and India could be expanded
across a broad range of categories, including information technology,
biotechnology, nanotechnology, and defence technology.’
Thus, the NSSP,
a process capable of fulfilling India’s need of high technology and US’ need of
tightening of Indian laws for better export controls (a non-proliferation
requirement) was meant to, in a subtle progressive manner, help India and the
US come geopolitically closer without ruffling China.
The slow
movement on NSSP did not diminish its importance. According to the then US
ambassador, David Mulford (FORCE, October 2004), ‘India is the only country
with which the United States has Next Steps in Strategic Partnership initiative,’
adding, ‘a key strategic relationship has to be built into a comprehensive
relationship. Strategic, as you know, applies to a particular type of
relationship. This relationship has been defined as the NSSP initiative.’ Simply
put, the US’ focus was to build a comprehensive bilateral relationship of which
the NSSP and military cooperation were two important components. This approach
was adopted to reduce trust deficit needed for strengthening the bilateral relationship.
Given the high level
of distrust, especially on the India side which felt let down in the aftermath
of the tests, the NSSP was possibly the best approach for the relationship to
grow. This was confirmed by the then NSA, Brajesh Mishra, who was less trusting
of the US than Jaswant Singh. According to Mishra (FORCE, August 2005), ‘there
were three phases in NSSP. In general terms there was a difference of opinion
in what they (the US) were looking and what we were looking. At the end of
NSSP, we were looking at lifting up of all restrictions on India’s civilian
nuclear and space programme. This is not what they had in mind. They were
looking at end-use verification and fissile material. So when phase one was
over, they said that a new phase has begun. What they meant (in that) is a
promise to work with Congress and their allies in Nuclear Suppliers Group.’
Given India’s
stated minimum credible deterrence, which Mishra said ‘is a flexible concept’,
‘the NDA (Vajpayee) government had offered to put a few of our existing nuclear
reactors under safeguards. The idea was that from the unsafeguarded reactors
there would be enough fissile material for India’s minimum credible programme.
We have 14 reactors in operation and about nine under (various stages of)
construction (this was in August 2005). I would have said that all future reactors
either built by us or with others’ cooperation will be put under safeguard.
This way we would have had 10 to 11 unsafeguarded reactors. But this was not
acceptable to the US.’
Just when the
two sides started work on phase two of NSSP, the Vajpayee government was voted
out of power. The incoming Manmohan Singh government with J.N. Dixit as the NSA
while taking ownership of the NSSP, initiated talks with the Bush
administration on phase two of the NSSP in September 2004. However, given the
US Presidential elections, it was left to the second Bush administration to
move the bilateral dialogue forward.
When the second
Bush administration entered office, two major changes transformed the on-going
dialogue between India and the US: Condoleezza Rice, a Bush family friend was
elevated from the post of NSA to secretary of state, and on the sudden demise
of Dixit, India got a new NSA, M.K. Narayanan, a former intelligence officer
who was unaware of NSSP’s technical nuances. It was in such milieu that Rice,
on her first oversees tour arrived in Delhi on 16 March 2005, and took the
Indian dispensation by storm by her declaration that the US would help India
become a major power.
There was
excitement in Delhi and alarm in Islamabad and Beijing. While India had harboured
ambitions of becoming a major power, it found it hard to believe that the
foremost power of the time, while acknowledging India’s potential, had promised
to help it achieve glory. Pakistan was worried that by de-hyphenating it from
India the US might lose strategic interest in it. And China saw its containment
in the partnership between India and the US.
After Rice’s
spectacular announcement in Delhi, the NSSP was ended abruptly and talks on the
nuclear deal — Rice brainchild — began. In her book, No Higher Honour, Rice writes, ‘The key from our point of view was
to get India within the IAEA… better to have India in the tent in some fashion,
even if New Delhi could not formally sign the NPT… at least, new construction
of (Indian) reactors would be under safeguard. India already had more than
enough nuclear material for its military programme. It needed help on the
civilian side and we needed the strategic breakthrough with this emerging,
democratic power.’
Rice’s trick had worked. The nuclear deal offered
by her was too tempting for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let it go easily.
While suggesting nothing more substantive than the NSSP, the nuclear deal by
its over-reach, all-inclusiveness, fast pace and pretence of equality between
India and the US was probably a dishonest proposition. According to the deal,
India was to place certain numbers of its nuclear reactors under International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In return, the US promised to end
India’s nuclear apartheid by acknowledging it as a nuclear weapons power,
agreed India have access to high and dual-use technologies, and offered to cooperate
on civilian nuclear energy to meet India’s growing energy demands.
It seemed that
India would get the moon: it would become a nuclear weapons power (with freedom
to maintain its credible minimum deterrence); be free to decide on more indigenous
nuclear reactors for strategic purposes; be part of the global restricted
technology cartels, namely, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Missile Technology
Control Regime (MTCR), Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement (all led by
the US); maintain strategic autonomy implying independent foreign policy; not
be clubbed with Pakistan; be free to buy nuclear fuel (Uranium), run the
nuclear closed fuel cycle (including reprocessing and subsequently the
indigenous three-stage Thorium cycle), and purchase state-of-art nuclear
reactors and Enrichment and Reprocessing (ENR) technologies for its energy
needs. It appeared to be a win-win situation for India.
In reality, from
the US perspective, the deal was about non-proliferation by coercing India to
identify maximum numbers of its rectors for civilian use, getting India to de
facto sign the CTBT even when the US Senate had rejected it, getting India’s
foreign policy closely aligned with that of the US, doing commerce in civil
nuclear reactors and defence (through a 10-year Defence Framework signed
separately but highlighted in the 18 July 2005 framework document), and
eventually having India as a junior strategic partner if not junior ally in the
Asia-Pacific region.
What Mishra has
foreseen seemed to come true. Going public within days of the 18 July 2005 framework
document (joint statement with the nuclear deal) being signed in Washington,
Mishra said (FORCE, August 2005), ‘My view is that if you offer to identify and
separate the civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes, it will
have long term national security impacts.’
Having flown
across half the globe, Prime Minister Manmohan had a similar apprehension
sitting in Washington’s Willard hotel, a block away from the White House on 17
July 2005 night when he was to sign the framework document which was meant to
transform the bilateral relationship next day. He suddenly developed cold feet
and according to Rice refused to meet her since he felt ‘he cannot sell (the
deal) it in New Delhi.’ Reason: the US had shifted the goalpost and wanted
India to ‘keep just two or three reactors outside safeguard’, India’s then NSA,
Narayanan recently disclosed on the 10th anniversary of the deal.
While Rice
managed to coax the Indian Prime Minister to sign the framework document, the
hard work for India as the junior partner had just begun. While the excruciatingly
long process with dramatic highs and lows — on account of US’ constant shifting
of goalposts and meeting its global non-proliferation obligations which were
contrary to the nuclear deal promises — which concluded on 10 October 2008 has
been amply documented, a few instances indicative of the US duplicitousness
deserve highlighting.
Having signed
the framework document, Manmohan Singh returned home to enormous scepticism
strewn across India. The Congress President Sonia Gandhi — the real power
centre — and numerous Congress MPs were unsure about the deal. The Left parties
— coalition partners of the government — were upset about closer ties with the
US and wanted more transparency on the bilateral relationship. The opposition,
led by the BJP, declared the framework document a sell out to the US. And, the diplomats
and scientists were deeply divided on the strategic implications of the deal.
In such a domestically charged atmosphere, US President Bush arrived on 2 March
2006 in Delhi to settle the deal’s separation plan — which reactors to come
under safeguards and which would not. This turned out to be an acrimonious
bilateral exercise as according to the framework document, India was to
unilateraly take this decision.
Sanjaya Baru
says in his book, The Accidental Prime
Minister, ‘The Indian side still (as Manmohan Singh had insisted before
signing the 18 July 2005 framework document) wanted a 14:8 division between
civilian and military reactors, while the American side had not budged from its
position of 18:4. Moreover, the Indian side was keen on keeping the two
research reactors out of the IAEA safeguards.’ While the US ultimately relented
to the Indian position — India would place 14 of its nuclear reactors under
IAEA safeguards by 2014 —, it appeared a pyrrhic victory.
When Manmohan
Singh was informing the nation that with the separation plan, only 65 per cent
of Indian reactors would be under safeguards, the US’ main interlocutor,
Nicholas Burns told the media that ‘in one generation 90 per cent of Indian
reactors would be under safeguards’. Burns was clearly hinting that India’s
right to decide future indigenous reactors for strategic purposes as agreed to
in the deal would be opposed by the US.
India was thus being
subjected to restricted fissile material stocks even before the world had
agreed to the terms of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. This is not all. The
India-specific Additional Protocol that India signed with the IAEA was
extremely intrusive and could through technical means monitor progress of the
unsafeguarded reactors. Moreover, the US relented on keeping India’s research
reactors out of safeguards because they have yet not harnessed the indigenous
three-stage Thorium cycle (example of technology over-reach). Things might
change in the future.
Interestingly,
while Bush was pushing India’s case for exemption from the global restrictive
regimes (NSG for waiver to India to do nuclear commercial trade) and the US
Congress, the US, under its global commitment, was also urging the NSG to
review its export control rules to check proliferation. Finally, in July 2011,
the NSG announced its new export norms: only those nations which had signed the
NPT would be eligible for ENR technologies. This came as a bombshell for India.
While allowed to trade with the NSG, India would be denied reprocessing and
enrichment technologies needed for utilisation of closed fuel cycle because it
had not signed the NPT.
In simple terms,
while India could buy nuclear fuel from the world, it could not use it fully as
without reprocessing technologies it would be unable to use the nuclear waste
for energy production. This was when, as scientists protested, India has its
own limited reprocessing capabilities and is not entirely bereft of them.
Regarding
India’s quest for membership of the NSG — the club which works on consensus
principle — China has (July 2015) made it clear that signing of the NPT would
be essential for new member states. What China has left unsaid is that India
could become NSG member if it signs the NPT under US 1172 article as
non-nuclear weapon state.
Even as the
non-proliferation noose was being tightened on India (through signing of India-specific
Additional Protocol with the IAEA, shifting US goalposts by re-interpretation
of the separation plan and NSG export guidelines placing NPT signing benchmark),
there was bilateral disagreement over how much India was obliged to align with
US’ security concerns. India said that it would abide by the bilateral 123
agreement that it has signed with the US, while the US insisted on giving
precedence to its own domestic law, the Henry J. Hyde Act of 2006 (essential
for the US administration to sign the 123 agreement) which required India to
respect US’ security agenda. This resulted in India’s flip-flop Iran policy as
Delhi was torn asunder between its relationship with the US and the need for
bilateral strategic ties with Tehran.
If this was not
enough, two other contentious issues propped up: US’s disappointment over
defence ties with India, and India’s 2010 Nuclear Liability Law. While the
bilateral Defence Framework was signed in April 2005, three months before the
July 2005 framework agreement, it got mentioned under the framework agreement.
For this reason, the powerful US defence lobby which had played a major role in
the passage of the nuclear deal through the US Congress expected, in a
transactional fashion, to be rewarded. When none of the two US platforms which
had participated in the over USD 40 billion Indian Air Force’s Medium
Multi-Role Combat Aircraft competition made it into the final in beginning 2012,
numerous US Congressmen and leading analysts accused India of betrayal. A lot
of pressure was put on New Delhi to consider another US platform — the F-35
aircraft — for the IAF.
Similarly, the Indian
2010 Nuclear Liability Law was found unacceptable to the US which argued that
in the event of an accident, the liability, as per global norms, should be of
the operator. Thus, when Manmohan Singh’s term in office ended in May 2014, few
mentioned the nuclear deal as the outgoing government’s achievement. Those who
did obfuscated matters by arguing the nuclear deal as a prime reason for
overall improved ties between India and US. The truth remained that both the
strategic and commercial aspects of the nuclear deal had remained unfulfilled.
Nuclear commerce, which India had touted as the key reason for the deal, had
not started. And, India, despite having accepted non-proliferation measures,
namely, signing the Additional Protocol with the IAEA and undertaking the
separation plan, had not operationalised the deal: the promised NSG waiver fell
short of expectations. While India could do nuclear fuel commerce, there
remains uncertainty about India getting reprocessing technologies to recycle
spent fuel. Moreover, the high and dual-use technologies that were promised to
India under the deal have not come; the HTCG had done more for bilateral trade
in these areas.
Speaking at the
Hindustan Times summit in Delhi on 7 December 2013, the architect of the
nuclear deal, Condoleezza Rice admitted that, ‘the technology cooperation (with
India) was tied to the Indo-US nuclear deal.’ While the US got the deal it
wanted, India is still to get the technology it was promised under the NSSP, well
before the deal happened.
Instead of an
objective analysis of the nuclear deal, the Modi government on assuming power
in May 2014, went along with the popular perception that the deal had
transformed relations between India and the US. Before Prime Minister Narendra
Modi embarked on his US visit in September 2014, India, on 22 June 2014 ratified
the Additional Protocol signed (on 15 March 2009) with the IAEA, signalling its
intention to bring the deal to closure so that nuclear commerce with the US
could commence. Between September 2014 and the visit of US President Barack
Obama as the chief guest on India Republic Day on 26 January 2015, ‘experts,
legal and nuclear, from both countries sat down and worked out an understanding
(on India’s Nuclear Liability Law),’ as the US ambassador in India Richard
Verma put it. It is another matter whether it would be acceptable to the business
community in both countries.
Notwithstanding
epithets like ‘natural allies’ used by Vajpayee for Indo-US ties, ‘strategic
partnership’ cited by Manmohan Singh and the recent ‘strategic plus partnership’
by US ambassador in India, Richard Verma, the spectre of mutual distrust has
not gone away. Instead of a gradual mutual understanding, which is what the NSSP
was about, the Indo-US nuclear deal took the big leap into the unknown.
