[Mb-civic] India Is Not a Precedent - Robert Kagan - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

India Is Not a Precedent
Circumstances Justify the 'Double Standard' of Our Nuclear Deal

By Robert Kagan
The Washington Post
Sunday, March 12, 2006; B07

Imagine a huge nation, a huge democracy, increasingly prosperous, 
increasingly powerful and increasingly sympathetic to the ideological 
and strategic objectives of the United States and its democratic allies 
around the world. Imagine that this powerful, prosperous, democratic 
nation sits on the same continent with Russia and China, two huge 
geopolitical problems waiting to happen. Imagine that this nation 
possesses a navy capable of helping patrol strategically vital waterways 
and a military force capable of acting as a deterrent against powerful 
neighbors. Finally, imagine that this nation, despite its power, has no 
record of using it for aggressive purposes but has been a remarkably 
peaceful and often constructive member of the global community.

Would we or would we not want to have the closest possible relationship, 
partnership, even alliance with such a country as we head into an 
uncertain future?

The answer, as Bismarck would have said, is a no-brainer. That is why 
earlier this month the Bush administration made a deal with this nation, 
India, to provide it with civilian nuclear technology. In the process, 
the administration effectively let India off the hook for its 
decades-old nuclear weapons program and made an exception to its 
otherwise strict refusal to provide civilian nuclear technology to 
nations that do not abide by certain international guidelines. The 
result, critics have asserted, is that other nations may be encouraged 
to follow India's path and that the nuclear nonproliferation "regime" 
has therefore been damaged.

No doubt it has been damaged. But the question is whether the benefits 
outweigh the costs. I will leave to others the matter of whether this 
deal will really encourage, say, Brazil or South Africa to resume 
nuclear weapons programs they long ago abandoned, though I'm inclined to 
doubt it. The bigger question likely to consume endless hours of 
hearings on Capitol Hill in coming weeks is what effect the deal will 
have on the problem of Iran. Some will argue that the Indian nuclear 
deal harms efforts to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program because it 
erects a double standard: We are willing to let India do what we are not 
willing to let Iran do.

The question is interesting in theory. In the real world, it's not that 
interesting. The notion that the Indian deal will set back prospects for 
a diplomatic deal with Iran assumes that such prospects exist. All 
available evidence suggests otherwise. The Iranian government appears 
committed to building nuclear weapons and will not be deterred by 
threats -- except possibly the threat of removal by military means -- or 
won over by blandishments. It has risked international isolation and 
economic sanctions and even the remote threat of U.S. air and missile 
strikes to keep its program going. Are we supposed to believe that the 
main obstacle standing in the way of a happy resolution to the Iranian 
nuclear crisis is now the Indian deal?

As for double standards, yes, we have double standards. The nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty erected a gargantuan double standard. It 
declared that possession of the world's most devastating and militarily 
decisive weapons would be limited to the five nations that already 
possessed them. And this was a particularly mindless kind of double 
standard, since membership in the nuclear "club" was not based on 
justice or morality or strategic judgment or politics but simply on 
circumstance: Whoever had figured out how to build nuclear weapons by 
1968 was in. At least our double standard for India makes strategic, 
diplomatic, ideological and political sense.

Nor should we delude ourselves that the nuclear double standard has been 
preserved over the years by a treaty. If other nations have denied 
themselves nuclear weapons programs it is because (a) they did not 
believe they needed them, (b) they did not have the wherewithal to build 
them or (c) they feared punishment at the hands of the nuclear powers if 
they tried to build them. To the degree that nonproliferation has 
succeeded, it has been due less to the treaty than to the concerted 
actions of the nuclear powers. And to the degree that it has failed, 
that is also due to the actions of the nuclear powers, which provided 
materials and technologies to states such as Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

In fact, the nonproliferation "regime" may now be collapsing. That 
doesn't mean we should precipitously abandon it. We have an interest in 
slowing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the nonproliferation 
regime remains one tool of persuasion. But as in the past, and as always 
in international affairs, there must be some adjustment to reality. One 
aspect of the present reality is that India has long been a nuclear 
power, and this deal doesn't make it more of one. Another part of the 
present reality is that North Korea and Iran are probably going to be 
nuclear powers, too, and in any case the nonproliferation "regime" is 
not going to stop them.

Were Congress somehow to reject the administration's deal in some effort 
to maintain a consistent principle on nonproliferation, it would have no 
effect on Iran's decisions. But that futile gesture would have a 
devastating effect on U.S. relations with India. In our less-than-ideal 
world, where, we are often told, America needs good friends and allies, 
that would be a terrible bargain.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall 
Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031001865.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060312/f2658562/attachment.htm