15th October 2009
D.Raghunandan

As we go to press, yet another fortnight-long international climate negotiation meeting, the last before the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 which is to decide on global arrangements for the post-2012 period, has got over in Bangkok. There is little forward movement from where we were a few months ago. Indeed, if anything, the global talks have slid backwards in many important ways. The much hyped goal, announced at the Major Economies Forum meet of G8 and G5 developing countries in July, of restricting global temperature rise to 2 degrees C by 2050 has vanished into thin air. The main culprits, the advanced industrialized countries of the global North, are becoming more recalcitrant by the day. Far from committing themselves to the required 40% emission cuts by 2020 relative to 1990 levels, the EU is now only making tepid offers of 20% cuts while the US’s recent House Bill only promises 3%! Worse, serious efforts are now underway, and were notable in Bangkok, to totally abandon the Kyoto Protocol and its principles of common but differentiated responsibility of industrialized and developing countries (DCs), with binding emissions cuts by the former along with technology and fund transfers to the latter to compensate for the damage caused by historical emissions from the ICs.

And as usual, India is not making any news despite recent gestures and claims by the government of wanting to be a “deal-maker” rather than a “deal breaker” which it is projecting as a serious Western accusation against it.

All this has been predictable and indeed was predicted by speakers at a recent Seminar held in Constitution Club in Delhi on September 18, 2009, organized by Delhi Science Forum (DSF), All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.

Seminar background and structure The Seminar was part of a year-long collaborative exercise by the Peoples Science Movement (PSM) and TISS, initiated at a brainstorming Workshop in Mumbai in May 2008. Considerable amount of further research and study, publication of material and grassroots campaign by AIPSN constituent organizations then followed, leading up to a joint Workshop in Mumbai in July this year. The Mumbai Workshop, where papers were presented by PSM organizations, professional groups, think-tanks, academics, NGOs, planners and media personnel, drew up a Statement Towards an Alternative Indian Climate Policy and decided to initiate a Campaign.
The Delhi Seminar sought to focus on these specific policy and action proposals, and to widen the support around the Statement. With this in mind, the organizers had also invited political parties and mass organizations to participate. The Seminar was attended by over 50 expert, NGO and academic participants. A special session saw interactions with CPI(M) Politbureau Member and Rajya Sabha MP, Com. Sitaram Yechury, CPI National Council Member and Rajya Sabha MP Com.D.Raja and All India Kisan Sabha Joint Secretary Com.N.K.Shukla all of whom addressed the participants on the issue of climate change.

Four inter-linked “lead presentations” were made at the Seminar on the salient features of the alternative policy platform contained in the Mumbai Statement. Dr.Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, presented an overview of the current state of play in the global negotiations. Dr.T.Jayaraman of the Centre for Science, Technology & Development, TISS, Mumbai presented the results of a rigorous mathematical modeling exercise by TISS and DSF researchers that brought out the possible outcomes in terms of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and hence climate change, that would result from different emission reduction scenarios adopted by developed and developing countries (see DSF website www.delhiscienceforum.net for the full article and the Text of the Statement). D.Raghunandan of Delhi Science Forum then put forward recommendations for an alternative Indian policy stance on climate change at both the international and domestic levels. Finally, Dr.Sharachchandra Lele of the Asoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, spoke about the alternative developmental paths that these policies would call for, especially within India. Without going into details of individual presentations, the thrust of the arguments were as follows.

Current Status A clearer idea of trends in the global negotiations are emerging,  and it does not make a pretty picture. Leading industrialized countries (ICs), including the “green” Europeans, have been backtracking for several months now on earlier commitments to undertake deep emission cuts. Compared to its earlier offer of 40-50% cuts from 1990 levels, broadly as called for by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the EU offer is now a mere 20% and that too with offsets, i.e. measures that allow ICs to substitute emission reductions in their own nations by supposedly equivalent actions in developing countries (DCs), such as planting trees.  Such offsets will not only bring down actual emission reductions by almost half, but will also shift the burden of mitigation to DCs. The US is yet to commit itself to entering any global Treaty arrangement and even the newly adopted Bill only promises a meager 3% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.

The transfer of funds and technology by ICs to DCs, as compensation for historical emissions and consequent environmental damage, is simply not being addressed seriously by the ICs. Along with other moves, notably pressure by the US on large DCs such as China and India to also accept binding emissions cuts, these positions of the ICs amount to not merely diluting the Kyoto Protocol principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” but actually abandoning it in favour of a totally new arrangement clearly more in favour of the ICs. The US stance is likely to become the de facto IC global position driving the negotiations.

India’s international stance has been extremely weak even as it formally reiterates the Treaty principles emphasizing equity and the use of per capita emissions as a yardstick.  The principle of compensatory funding and technology transfer by the ICs is correct, and many Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) simply cannot cope with or survive climate change without them. But for India, which now sits on the international high table of the MEF and G-20, to continually harp on the need for money and technology before it can do anything sounds quite incongruous. Indeed, conferences of SIDS and LDCs covering over 82 countries, while continuing to put the onus of the climate crisis on historical emissions by the ICs, are now bracketing large DCs with the ICs as part of the problem. While official India appears to be overly sensitive to US charges that it is not doing enough, it appears unresponsive to this growing perception among much smaller and techno-economically weaker developing countries. 

The modeling exercises presented at the Seminar brought out clearly that even if the ICs achieve the substantial cuts of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, the future atmospheric GHG concentrations and hence the prospects of irreversible climate change will depend substantially on emissions from large DCs. China’s emissions already exceed those of the US and emissions growth rates in India and China are 4-6% per year. The models showed that emissions of large DCs, the so-called “emerging economies” must peak and start declining not later than 2030 if the IPCC’s stabilization target of atmospheric GHG concentration levels of 450 ppmv is to be achieved. Even on a per capita basis, Indian emissions are likely to surpass those of the ICs sometime in the 2030s notwithstanding the PM’s much-touted promise of Indian per capita emissions never exceeding that of the ICs!

Alternative Indian Policy The Mumbai Statement, strongly reiterated in the Delhi Seminar, therefore argues for a new negotiating position by India that would respond to the science of the climate crisis, as well as to the politics of the global negotiations while also harmonizing with India’s own developmental priorities.

Suggestion is that India (and hopefully other large DCs including China) offer to reduce its projected emissions in 2030 by 25%, but conditional upon the developed countries adhering to the IPCC targets of 40% reduction by 2020 and 90% reduction by 2050, both compared to 1990 levels. To further demarcate the “differentiated responsibility” of even the large DCs from those of the ICs, India’s targets need not be binding like those of the ICs but could be incorporated into its National Communications that it is obliged to submit periodically to the UNFCCC.

Such a stance would impart a new dynamic to the international negotiations. India and other large DCs no longer need to be constantly on the back foot, defending against accusations by the ICs but can go on the offensive and put the onus fully on the ICs where it belongs. This position acknowledges the hitherto mostly ignored IPCC call for developing countries to also bring about “deviations below the baseline” in their future emissions and for countries to take actions according to their “national capacities”. It is also not a response to US or other IC pressure, nor a compromise with them, but a recognition of the depth of the crisis and of the capability of India (and other large DCs) to take effective mitigation action.

It is noteworthy that Mexico has placed a similar offer on the table and, as we go to press, so has Indonesia.

Importantly, it also answers to domestic developmental needs. India’s per capita emissions are low because almost 50% of households have no access to modern energy such as electricity. If their energy consumption is to go up, and it badly needs to, then emissions will rise sharply unless energy consumption by some relatively high-consumption sectors of the economy or sections of society is moderated, and this is essential too. One cannot have the same kind of differential within India as exists internationally between the developed and developing countries. Therefore policies and strict monitoring of regulations are required for mandatory and targeted improvement of power generation efficiencies, efficiencies of vehicles and energy-consuming appliances, new building codes to reduce cooling requirements, shift to renewable energy sources. Longer term measures would also be required for promotion of public transport, inter-modal shift from road to rail transportation of passengers and goods, urban planning etc. Whereas a few aspects of these are being addressed to a limited extent by some of the Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, this is inadequate in terms of quantitative targets, mandatory regulations for important industrial and corporate sectors and, perhaps most important, for bringing about greater distributive justice in energy and development.

The Seminar decided to launch a Campaign for Progressive Climate Action and Policy in India to build up support for the above position within the broad perspective as spelled out in the Mumbai Statement.

Political Parties & Mass Organizations Com.N.K.Shukla of AIKS addressing the participants emphasized that farmers in India were already experiencing the impact of climate change. He noted that farmers need to be assisted by experts and PSM groups to addressed their problems mostly related to adaptation in three aspects viz. (a) actions that farmers could undertake on their own (b) activities by research organizations and (c) effective and expeditious action by governmental agencies. Unfortunately farmers were today being largely left to their own devices in responding to climate change with little or no guidance or assistance. Com.Shukla called upon the Campaign Committee to take up this effort and assured full participation of AIKS in these activities.

Com.D.Raja appreciated the views emanating from the Seminar. He said that the government was taking many steps, and these need to be carefully studied, especially watching out for compromises on Indian sovereignty. He noted that some discussions on India’s positions and actions on climate change were likely in Parliament in the coming Session and assured participants that the Left Parties would meaningfully intervene in these debates and would welcome inputs in this regard.

Com.Sitaram Yechury welcomed the broad conclusions of the Seminar. He strongly felt that while India should not succumb to pressures of US-led imperialism or compromise with it, it was important that India should take a principled and independent stand on this global crisis caused by capitalism. He strongly felt that, in the name of resisting pressures from advanced countries, the Indian corporate sector should not be given free reign to pursue environmentally destructive forms of industrialization, or focus only on profits to the detriment of the health and well-being of the people, or to continue in a business-as-usual mode with regard to energy conservation and emissions. He also asserted that Left Parties and other progressive forces should see to it that such development policies are adopted which promote equity and social justice within the country. He welcomed the launch of the Campaign and assured it of support in the months ahead.

October 04, 2009

War Drums over Iran’s Second Nuclear Facility


Prabir Purkayastha

THE war drums are out in Washington, with the same people beating them as did for the last Iraq war. Even the excuses are same: nuclear weapons in Iran. The missing WMD's in Iraq have not daunted their spirit one bit. Obama virtually read from the Bush book, claiming on September 25 that western intelligence agencies had uncovered a “secret enrichment facility” when the same had already been reported by Iran to IAEA on September 21, a good four days before the Obama announcement. Sarkozy and Gordon Brown dutifully echoed Obama. The chorus of the world media was entirely predictable, finally a smoking gun for Iran's nuclear bomb ambitions. Even the normally more critical papers --- The Guardian included --- echoed the Obama-Brown-Sarkozy line; it was the western intelligence agencies who had “outed” Iran, Iran admitting its nuclear only when it was about to be exposed.


WITHIN IRAN’S RIGHT UNDER IAEA

The simple facts of the case are that Iran is obligated to report any nuclear facility to IAEA only six months before it introduces any nuclear material in it. This is the original safeguards protocol it signed with the IAEA. From 2004 to February 2007, it had agreed voluntarily to abide by the additional protocol, which would have demanded the disclosure of such a facility before starting its construction. It had also agreed then to a modification of the Clause 3.1 in the original protocol, with one that had a similar provision.

Iran never ratified the additional protocol (which incidentally the US also did not for a long time) and is within its legal rights to go back to the original safeguards agreement. Iran withdrew from the additional safeguards after it felt that all its attempts to negotiate on its nuclear energy programme were coming up against only threats and further demands from the US and the West.

While withdrawing from its voluntary commitments on the additional protocol, Iran also withdrew from the modified Clause 3.1. This is where there is a dispute --- IAEA had stated at that time that Iran could not unilaterally withdraw from the modified Clause 3.1 but needs IAEA’s consent. This is why El Baradei has stated that Iran was in violation of the safeguard agreement by not disclosing its Qom facility earlier, though he also clarified, "I do not think based on what we see that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons programme."

Whether Iran violated the safeguards agreement or not is a tricky legal point and Iran can well argue that it has not violated any clause in its original safeguards agreement. It has reported its second enrichment facility, built near the holy city of Qom, well before its completion and therefore is in compliance with what it had signed on and had passed in its parliament. All other obligations were voluntary and not binding. The problem for Iran is that this argument will not be decided in a court of law, but by the IAEA board and its appellate body, the UN Security Council. Going by their past record, this will be a political decision in which the US will have the dominant say.

The more important issue is not whether Iran has violated its safeguard agreement with IAEA; it is whether Iran is moving towards nuclear weapons by building this facility. The western media has equated the second enrichment facility with Iran building nuclear weapons. The facts are, again, quite different --- while the second facility allows Iran greater enrichment capability, all its nuclear materials will still be under IAEA safeguards. Declaration of the Qom facility as an enrichment plant ensures that no diversion of nuclear material is possible from it.

US POSITION ON NON-PROLIFERATION

Do the US intelligence agencies really believe that Iran is near acquiring a nuclear weapon? The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, compiled by 16 intelligence agencies of the US, came to the conclusion that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. That Iran had a nuclear weapons programme was itself a controversial claim, as the agencies did not produce any evidence to this effect. It has recently been again confirmed that there is no evidence that Iran has restarted such a programme. Newsweek, reported in its September 16 story, “The officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that US intelligence agencies have informed policy makers at the White House and other agencies that the status of Iranian work on development and production of a nuclear bomb has not changed since the formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's "Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities" in November 2007” (Intelligence Agencies Say No New Nukes in Iran,  Newsweek, September 16, 2009).

Iran undoubtedly wants to build its nuclear capability. That is why it is developing and installing enrichment facilities. It has a legal right under the NPT to do so. The problem with the US position on Iran is that while the US itself has not observed the NPT obligations --- good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament --- it wants an NPT plus regime for others. In this new global order, only the favoured few would have access to fuel enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies. As we explained last week, even after falling in line with the US’s strategic objectives, India does not qualify for access to ENR technologies. While India might be allowed to keep its indigenous ENR technologies, Iran’s possession of such a technology is seen to be destabilising the world and an existential threat to Israel. Or so Israel and the US have the world believe. That is why, even though Iran legally has the right to enrich nuclear fuel, it has to be coerced into giving up this right. This is the crux of the US position: the man in the White House might have changed, but its policies remain the same.

In this world view, Israel is not seen to be an existential threat to any nation. It can possess 200 -300 weapons, continue to flout international law, threaten Iran’s nuclear facilities, carry out targeted assassinations and is yet seen to be a “democracy” unlike others in West Asia! It is this blatant partisanship of the US and the West that gives Iran a legitimacy that it would not otherwise enjoy. Iran and other nations in West Asia have repeatedly asked that West Asia be declared a nuclear weapons free zone, and have been always turned down. The issue is not one of Israel’s security, but its ability to dominate the region. This demands that it not only be the pre-eminent military power in the region but also the sole nuclear weapons power there. Iran does not need to produce nuclear weapons to endanger this dominance. If it has nuclear weapons capability even without possessing one, it will disturb Israel’s position as West Asia’s dominant hegemon.


WHY THIS IRAN CARD?

The question is: If the second enrichment facility is no proof that Iran is building nuclear weapons, why all this ado? Here, obviously, a more complex game is in progress. Obama had promised that he would get out of Iraq and start diplomatic negotiations with Iran. He had also promised to bring peace to Palestine. Now that he is domestically under attack from the right on his health care programme, he is unwilling to go beyond symbolic gestures for peace in Palestine. He has not asked for much from Israel --- just a temporary freeze on settlements. No discussion on vacating the occupation, on removal of settlements, let alone the more thorny issue of Jerusalem and the right to return of Palestinian refugees. As Israel is not willing to concede even this much, he is now playing the Iran card. The trajectory being charted is to build up war hysteria and the need to take “pre-emptive” action. While the military option is being put back on the table, the real action will be racheting up of the sanctions in the near future.

For the sanctions, Russia had to be brought on board. This has been partially done by abandoning the missile shield that the US was building in Poland and the Check Republic. While the public posture the US maintained was that the shield was against Iran, everybody knew that its real purpose was military superiority over Russia. With the US now withdrawing the missile shield programme, Russia could conceivably thaw on Iran. The only joker in the pack is China. However, China generally does not play a lone hand and may well go along with the West on Iran as it has done in the past.

The chorus over Iran’s nuclear threat and its “secret” enrichment facility is creating the atmospherics for a harsher sanctions regime. This is more to placate Israel than to achieve any real objective of getting Iran to give up on its enrichment programme.

The US policy of satisfying Israel and getting into a confrontation with Iran will only strengthen Iran’s resolve. In an earlier stage of discussion, Iran had virtually agreed to a multilateral enrichment facility and a token research programme. It is still not moving to weaponise its nuclear programme. If it is continually threatened by the US and Israel with military action, it may very well conclude that it’s only security lies in nuclear weapons. The current policy of public coercion may end up by achieving the reverse of what the US aim supposedly is.

The Obama administration has brought back the military option with its attendant sabre rattling. The problem for the US is that no military action can prevent Iran from turning nuclear. It is too big and the US no longer has the capability of marching into another West Asian country. Any action it takes, and that includes Israeli military action, can only delay matters. This is what even the US secretary of defence, Robert Gates says (on CNN’s “State of the Nation,” September 27, 2009), “The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so.” The only country that can help in Iran not going nuclear is ultimately Iran. This is what the US will have to come to terms with --- the sooner the better. A lesson it still does not seem to have learnt, the Iraq disaster notwithstanding.

September 27, 2009

Prabir Purkayastha



A great deal of controversy has been stirred up recently regarding the yield of Pokhran II, after K Santhanam,  the former DRDO scientist and the DRDO co-ordinator for the 1998 nuclear tests went public questioning its success. This is not the first time that the yield from the thermonuclear (or the hydrogen bomb) in the Pokhran II test has been questioned. The international experts had even then raised doubt on this count, a doubt that had been echoed privately by other experts. Most of the current debate is centred on the central premise that India needs hydrogen bombs for a credible deterrence. The question that we have to ask is the minimum credible deterrence based on the size of the bang we can produce or the very fact that India has nuclear weapons? What level of civilian deaths that will take place due to a bigger bomb will satisfy the proponents of the big bomb theory?

A section of the nuclear establishment have always been in favour of the big bomb theory – the bigger the bomb the higher the deterrence. A reality check will show that a nuclear bomb is not possible to use militarily; if you believe in deterrence theory, the deterrence effect comes from possessing nuclear weapons and not their size. To discuss the threshold of damage in any nuclear exchange is to get derailed into how many weapons we should have and what should be their size, what should be India's second strike capability and so on. This is the path of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. It is this mad MAD nuclear and missile race that broke the back of the Soviet economy during the cold war.

CONTROVERSIAL RESULTS

While the nuclear race for a bigger bomb is not a goal that we should favour, it is also true that the government of the day including the nuclear establishment believes that the people do not deserve to know the truth and it is fundamentally the preserve of a select few. That is why the results of the nuclear tests – the earlier Pokhran I and now Pokhran II have become controversial.

First the simple facts. India in Pokhran II exploded five devices. While three were miniaturised devices, two are important from the stand-point of size. One of them was a straight forward fission device (Shakti 2) using plutonium of approximately 12 kilotons (equivalent to 12,000 tons of an explosion with TNT). This sets at rest questions about Pokhran I yield, which has also been estimated to be lower than the official claims.

The other device (Shakti 1) was a two-stage boosted fission-fusion device. A boosted fission device has a small amount of tritium (a heavy isotope of hydrogen) in it to boost the fission in the fissile material. In a hydrogen bomb, the trigger is a primary, which is generally a boosted fission device. The boosted fission in the primary creates the condition for the second stage –  an adjoining secondary chamber filled with  fusion material. In this secondary, there is a fusion reaction that increases the yield of the device significantly.

There have been doubts regarding the yield of Shakti 1 right from the beginning. Most outside experts computed the yield of the device to be to be around 30-35 kilotons and not 45 kilotons as claimed by the Indian side. It is true that they do not have full information regarding important data required to come to any definitive conclusions. BARC has far more data and is in a position to estimate the true yield of explosion much more accurately. Neither is it possible for BARC to release all data which would verify the yields independently without giving away information regarding weapons design. For the general public, there was a reluctance in believing foreign experts, particularly as they did not have full data needed to come to a definite conclusion. This is where matters rested before Santhanam went public.

It is now clear – after Santhanam's public disclosure – DRDO did not agree with the  claims of BARC regarding the yield of Shakti 1. From what Santhanam has now made public and what various scientists have been saying in private, we have to conclude that the hydrogen bomb was a partial success and did not provide its true yield. The first stage – the boosted fission primary worked but the fusion stage produced only 15-20 per cent of the expected yield. Instead of the expected about 45 kilotons, Shakti 1 produced about 25-30 kiloton yield, consistent with what others have been saying from their analysis of the seismic data.

Just to put these figures in perspective, let us look at the yields of the only two bombs ever exploded in war – the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombs. The Hiroshima bomb was about 13 kilotons and the Nagasaki one was 25 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb killed an immediate 70,000 and with conservative estimates  another 130,000 by 1950. The death figures of Nagasaki are comparable. The circle of total destruction in the two cities was about 1.6 to 2 kilometres, with another outer circle of about 3 kilometres where fires and other effects destroyed most buildings and structures. And all this was done by bomb yields lower than the test device of Shakti 1!

VANITY STRATEGY?

Obviously, if we are thinking of the strategic value of nuclear weapons, even with the boosted fission device and a partial fusion of the secondary, India has the capability of producing a bomb with 50-100 kilotons capacity. With a boosted fission design alone, a capacity of 45-50 kilotons can be achieved by just scaling up the fissile material and the tritium in its core. The question we need to ask is whether we are truly talking about the need for a hydrogen bomb or is it vanity strategy – others have it and if we want to play with the big boys we must have it too!

It is not surprising that BARC and the nuclear establishment are caught on the wrong foot. Having claimed full credit for a hydrogen bomb, they cannot now go back and accept its partial success. The BJP and the Congress have both agreed with the US that they will do no more testing, irrespective of what they may claim in public. The BJP has even more to lose – once they accept that Pokhran 2 failed, then its advance over Pokhran 1 is non-existent. Why then did they subject the country to sanctions imposed after Pokhran II? The role of ex-president Kalam and Dr R Chidambaram has been controversial from the beginning. They have used their stature to endorse claims they probably were aware were not correct. Having done that and taken the bow from the nation for a successful hydrogen bomb test, they can now not go back and sing mea culpa.

Santhanam and others are now asking that India should conduct more tests to perfect its hydrogen bomb. This is where we must part company. Yes, quite possibly the tests that were done were not fully successful. However, the belief that only a successful hydrogen bomb test will put us in some elite club is foolish. The issue is not more tests, but can India own up to the disarmament view – all countries possessing nuclear weapons must give them up. It is not a altruistic utopian requirement but crucial to the survival of the globe. It is here that India is caught in a double bind – it wants to be an official nuclear power and also argue that it will not sign the CTBT. The only way it can bargain on CTBT is if it stands up says what it always did earlier – all nuclear weapons states including India, Pakistan and Israel should give a time bound program for getting rid of their nuclear weapons. Under such conditions, India would be willing to sign the CTBT.

Why are we saying that all countries need to give up nuclear weapons? Simply put, the nuclear threshold today is much lower now than earlier. The technology for producing fissile material is not only known but also costs far less than it did at the time of the Manhattan project. The technology – either uranium enrichment through centrifuges or plutonium in reactors – is becoming much more easily accessible. The NPT regime has no bar on either enrichment or running reactors. Therefore, unless the nuclear weapon states agree for disarmament, we are likely to see their monopoly go as more and more states break through the current nuclear firewall.

Almost 40 years after the signing of the NPT, the global “bargain” -- that non-nuclear countries would not develop nuclear weapons, and that five nuclear-armed countries would take good-faith disarmament steps for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons -- is in deep crisis. While the non-nuclear weapon countries kept their side of the bargain, nuclear disarmament of the nuclear weapons countries was, at best, meagre. Even this halting disarmament process between the US and Russia has come to a standstill after 1991-92 and is now threatened. The US strategic doctrine (The Nuclear Posture Review), which states that nuclear weapons can be used against non-nuclear weapon countries, and even in a first strike (“preventive” and “pre-emptive” war), is now its accepted doctrine (“National Security Strategy of the United States of America“ document prepared in 2006).  This is a brazen assertion that the United States is not bound by either international law or any canon of civilised behaviour amongst nations: others should give up nuclear weapons but the US reserves the right to use such weapons even against the countries who have given them up.

BREAK TIES WITH  AMERICA

We had warned at the time of the India US nuclear deal that the price India was paying for this tie-up was giving up its strategic independence while gaining only nuclear fuel. It was clear from the beginning that India was not going to get enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology and was being pushed into an expensive and dependent path of nuclear energy development. More than a year has passed since the government survived the confidence motion on the nuclear deal. The balance sheet today is that apart from nuclear fuel, India has not gone any where on the deal. India has not even taken up the issue of  ENR with the US, after US managed the G7 to endorse a ban on ENR technology for India. The French Areva and Westinghouse/GE reactor deals are shrouded in mystery. It appears that these companies want a complete exemption of liability in order to supply equipment, for which India would have to pass a special nuclear liability act. If the only gain from the deal was nuclear fuel, India would have been far better off to argue this case before the NSG.

India has some tough choices. It can either play ball with the US, accept its junior partner status and sign on the dotted line – in this case the CTBT. In that case it will have to revise its strategic understanding. Or it can break with the US. It can do this the way Santhanam and the nuclear hawks want – test again and go into a nuclear doghouse. Or it can put at centre stage the global disarmament agenda. Both these mean breaking with the US, something that this government does not want to do. What we need is that India breaks with the US and also puts global disarmament on the table. This is the only sane course for India and indeed all humanity.