Fueling The Arms Race
Aaron Scherb
August 01, 2006
Aaron Scherb is a legislative assistant at the Friends Committee on National Legislation and works on defense and foreign policy issues.
India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons in 1998; they fought several wars in the past decade and came to the brink of nuclear war in 2001. Nonetheless last week, as Congress learned that Pakistan is building a nuclear reactor capable of producing up to 50 nuclear weapons per year, the House approved a controversial proposal that would allow India to build nearly 50 nuclear weapons per year with U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel. The U.S. should not be aiding a nuclear arms race in one of the most unstable parts of the world.
South Asia is extremely volatile. Pakistan is believed to possess about 50 nuclear weapons, and India is thought to have a similar number. The U.S. has proposed selling to Pakistan F-16 jets capable of dropping nuclear weapons. The Pakistani scientist who sold top-secret nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya, and Iran several years ago, A.Q. Khan, remains sheltered in Pakistan, and international inspectors are unable to determine the extent of his dealings. Pakistan’s construction of a huge nuclear reactor and the proposed U.S.-India nuclear deal that would enable India to build up to 50 nuclear weapons per year contribute to this volatility.
Neither India nor Pakistan has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international agreement of 188 countries that bans the export of nuclear technology to nations that don’t agree to international inspections of their nuclear programs. Nonetheless, the Bush administration is attempting to supply India with nuclear fuel and technology under the guise of energy assistance. If this agreement were truly about energy, then the United States should have more strongly encouraged India to stop producing fissile material, the main ingredient needed to produce nuclear weapons. However, when U.S. negotiators were in New Delhi and made this request, the Indians said no, and negotiations moved to the next subject. Because India has limited supplies of domestic uranium, it must decide whether to use this fissile material for civilian nuclear energy or nuclear bomb production. The U.S. supply of nuclear fuel to India would allow it to conserve its uranium to build nuclear bombs, while the U.S.-supplied fuel would then be used for civilian nuclear energy. The U.S. would be indirectly assisting India’s nuclear weapons program.
Another troubling part of this nuclear agreement with India is that it undermines the U.S. position toward Iran’s nuclear program. In brokering this proposed deal, the Bush administration is creating a double standard and providing other countries with incentives to ignore or leave the NPT. As the Bush administration tries to halt the nuclear program in Iran (a signer of the NPT), Iranians are galvanized in support of their nuclear program as the Bush administration says one thing but then does the opposite by providing a non-NPT country with nuclear know-how. The message Iran hears couldn’t be clearer: Pull out of the NPT and then you’ll get what you want from the U.S.—if you wait long enough.
When the NPT entered into force in 1970, only five countries that already had nuclear weapons were recognized as being nuclear weapons states. Since then, several other countries—North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and India—have built nuclear weapons, but by the NPT’s definition, they are non-nuclear weapons states because they didn’t possess nuclear weapons at the time the NPT entered into force. The five recognized nuclear weapons states—China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the U.S.—all have stopped producing fissile materials. If this deal is ultimately approved, India will receive de facto nuclear weapons status but will not have to stop producing fissile materials.
As expected, on July 26 the House overwhelmingly approved H.R. 5682—legislation that will weaken the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and allow the U.S. to export nuclear fuel and technology to a country that hasn’t signed the NPT. Unfortunately, the House rejected several nonproliferation amendments that would have ensured the U.S. would not be triggering an arms race in South Asia. One such amendment, offered by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., would have prevented the U.S. from transferring any nuclear fuel and technology to India unless it agreed to halt its production of fissile material for nuclear weapons production. Despite having the support of 37 Republicans, the Berman amendment failed. Fortunately, the nuclear deal with India is far from finalized. The Senate will have the chance in September to modify legislation similar to what the House considered.
Curiously, the day after the House voted to advance the U.S.-India nuclear deal, the State Department released a report—which was nearly 10 months overdue—that sanctioned two Indian firms for missile-related transactions with Iran. The timing of this report is suspect, and a congressional aide predicted that one of the failed amendments dealing with Iran would have passed if the report had been issued before the House vote. The Bush administration is sacrificing nonproliferation principles to a strategic partnership with India and to nuclear energy interests.
Pakistan responded to the proposed deal by asking the U.S. for a similar nuclear cooperation agreement, which the U.S. promptly rejected. China and Pakistan, already nuclear allies, are reported to be talking about a similar deal. The damage the Bush administration has caused to the NPT is evident: A country can ignore the NPT and make bilateral agreements to serve one’s own interests.
In response to these two events, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the bipartisan House Nonproliferation Task Force, stated that, “The nuclear arms race in South Asia is about to ignite, and…the Bush administration is throwing fuel on the fire.â€
As the 61st anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches, has the Bush administration forgotten that the U.S. is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons? Especially at a time like this, the U.S. should do anything it can to prevent an arms race between two countries that nearly used nuclear weapons against each other.
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