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Open Letter to Congress
Washington,
DC
March 10, 2006
The Administration will soon present to the Congress a request
for action to implement the agreement between President Bush and
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh providing for civilian nuclear
cooperation with India. The signatories to this letter urge your
support for the necessary legislation. This recommendation is
based on our extensive experience and expertise relating to
non-proliferation policy, security issues in Asia, the domestic
economic and political environment in India and India-U.S.
relations.
Congress should support the agreement to promote U.S. strategic
interests, U.S. non-proliferation goals, U.S. energy security
and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions leading to
global warming. Failure to implement it would be a body blow to
the development of the strong relationship with India so
important to achieving U.S. goals in Asia and beyond. We present
herewith the case for the agreement and our response to the
arguments put forward in Congressional testimony by critics of
the accord.
As Mohammed El Baradei, Director General of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, said following the President’s visit to
New Delhi, “this agreement is an important step towards
satisfying India’s growing need for energy. It would also bring
India closer as an important partner in the non-proliferation
regime… It would be a step forward toward universalization of
the international safeguards regime.”
The Strategic Case
The implementation of this agreement is necessary to promote a
strategic partnership with a dynamic, self-reliant India that is
playing an increasingly significant regional and global security
role. Such a partnership has already begun to develop as a
natural consequence of shared democratic values, compatible
market economies, growing technological interdependence and a
congruence of geopolitical interests. Extending this partnership
to cooperation in civilian nuclear technology has now become
urgent. With its population now past one billion, India needs a
massive expansion of its civilian nuclear program in order to
cope with an escalating energy shortage that could in time
threaten its economic and political stability.
Against the background of China’s rise, including the projected
expansion of its naval reach in the South China Sea and the
Indian Ocean, a strong, stable India will advance the
traditional U.S. objective of an Asian balance of power in which
no one nation is able to exercise overwhelming dominance. Since
both the United States and India are seeking constructive
relations with China, neither Washington nor New Delhi wants
their new partnership to become an anti-Beijing security
alliance. At the same time, as a series of joint naval exercises
have shown, the U.S. and Indian navies are positioned for
growing cooperation from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of
Malacca. In the event of disruptions in the movement of critical
energy supplies through Asian sealanes resulting from wars or
piracy, this cooperation will enhance the ability of the United
States to respond effectively. Apart from such direct military
cooperation, the United States and India have a common strategic
stake in combating Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, the Persian
Gulf, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Two previous administrations have attempted to move toward a
strategic partnership with India while keeping in quarantine any
dealings related to civilian nuclear technology or dual-use
technology with possible applications to Indian nuclear or
missile programs. This approach has failed because India, a
subcontinental giant with a middle class larger than the
combined population of France, Germany and Britain, is endowed
with a wealth of indigenous talent in science and technology and
feels confident that it will achieve major power status with or
without external help.
The Non-Proliferation Case
Implementation of the US-India civil nuclear agreement will
advance the objectives of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT) by opening the door to India’s participation in the global
non-proliferation regime. Contrary to the Congressional
testimony of some specialists:
*
The NPT does not bar the United States and other signatory
nations from providing civilian nuclear technology under
safeguards to non-signatories such as India. It is for this
reason that the United Kingdom, France and Russia have endorsed
the agreement. Congress went beyond the NPT by requiring
safeguards on all of a country’s nuclear installations as a
condition of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation. This has had
consequences that conflict directly with U.S. nonproliferation
goals. The United States can sell civilian nuclear reactors to
China, which signed the NPT but has supplied nuclear weapons
technology to Pakistan. At the same time, the United States has
barred such sales to India, which did not sign the NPT but has
never transferred nuclear technology to others.
The technical and legal justification put forward for this
paradoxical result is that China’s 1964 test took place before
the cutoff date for classification as a “nuclear weapons state”
specified in the NPT, while India’s 1974 and 1998 tests did not.
We recognize that critics of the agreement have legitimate
concerns about possible unintended consequences that cannot be
foreseen. On balance, however, we believe that such concerns are
less compelling than the clear, tangible, immediate benefits to
the non-proliferation regime that will result from the
agreement.
*
The agreement will expand safeguards coverage of the Indian
nuclear program by requiring India to place all existing and
projected reactors designated by India as civilian under
international safeguards in perpetuity. Initially, India
insisted that reactors built without foreign involvement be
exempt from safeguards, but withdrew this proviso during the
negotiations with President Bush. These safeguards will remain
in force in perpetuity and will be linked to assurances of
continued supply for safeguarded civilian nuclear facilities.
With or without U.S. help, India will be forced by burgeoning
population growth to expand civilian nuclear power exponentially
for electricity generation, and it is important to bring this
expanded capacity under international inspection.
*
Prime Minister Singh has fulfilled his commitment in the accord
that India would “identify and separate civilian and nuclear
facilities in a phased manner.” After bitter internal battles
with nuclear nationalists in India, the Prime Minister has
presented a credible eight-year timetable designating which of
India’s existing nuclear facilities are now restricted to
nuclear power generation, which ones will be shifted over to
civilian purposes at specified stages, and which ones will be
left for military use. India’s nuclear hawks wanted a much
shorter civilian list. By 2014, 65 percent of India’s existing
installed thermal nuclear capacity, 14 of 22 reactors, will be
restricted to civilian purposes. As Undersecretary of State
Nicholas Burns stated on March 2, safeguards will apply to all
future civilian power reactors, thermal reactors and “breeder
reactors that are classified as civilian” by India. The reactors
to be placed under safeguards include several that India built
with its own know-how and resources. In the past it has refused
to place them under safeguards, but will do so now in order to
be able to get foreign fuel and components.
Critics object to the fact that the agreement gives India the
freedom to build new military reactors and exempts key research
and development facilities with a military potential from
safeguards, such as any breeder reactors not classified as
civilian. Given the magnitude and projected growth of its energy
needs, however, India appears likely in its own self-interest to
use fast-breeder reactors it may subsequently build for civilian
purposes, as its current plans envisage.
Another often-expressed objection is that the agreement will
enable India to use its indigenous uranium for military
reactors, since civilian reactors will be able to rely
increasingly on imported uranium fuel. But as The Washington
Post has pointed out, “leaving a potentially large
plutonium-making program outside the scope of multilateral
inspections is not a setback relative to the status quo,” since
India would have been free to continue making as many nuclear
weapons as it deemed necessary regardless of the July accord,
using breeder reactors as well as uranium-fueled reactors.
The critics object to the very concept of a civilian-military
separation plan that implicitly acknowledges the military
component of the Indian nuclear program. But this
acknowledgement was long-overdue. India has been a de facto
nuclear weapons state since 1974, and U.S. policy under two
administrations has already given de facto recognition to this
reality.
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Critics also argue that the accord will lead countries that
accepted the NPT and gave up their own nuclear aspirations to
consider reactivating their weapons programs. In our view, what
could put pressure on these countries is not the deal with India
but the geopolitical situation in their own regions. Thus,
Brazil and Argentina would appear unlikely to reopen their NPT
adherence, and should, in any case, have access to nuclear
technology, given their compliance to date with Article One.
By contrast, North Korea, an NPT signatory, says it has
developed nuclear weapons, pointing to perceived security
threats that have nothing to do with the U.S.-India agreement.
Similarly, if South Korea, Taiwan or Japan were to convert their
U.S.-aided civilian nuclear programs to weapons development, it
would not be in response to the agreement but to changing
geopolitical factors.
Finally, critics believe that the bargain with India may invite
countries that already have nuclear weapons, like North Korea
and Pakistan, or are seeking to develop a nuclear weapons
option, like Iran, to demand equal treatment. But India’s record
of observing Article One stands in sharp contrast to Pakistan’s
role as a wholesale proliferator and to the failure of Iran and
North Korea to abide by their International Atomic Energy Agency
commitments.
*
The agreement will strengthen India’s commitment to
participating in international efforts to prevent proliferation.
India has not exported nuclear material or technology, but
because it has been treated as an object of suspicion by the
Nuclear Suppliers Group and other nonproliferation institutions,
it has not directly participated in their work. The agreement
not only commits India formally to align its export rules and
practices with those of the Nuclear Suppliers Group: it also
opens the way for Indian participation in the Proliferation
Security Initiative, and in efforts to guard against nuclear
leakage. India’s decision to support the majority in the
International Atomic Energy Agency’s recent vote to report Iran
to the U.N. Security Council shows how important this enhanced
nonproliferation posture can be.
The Energy Security Case
The agreement opens the way for India to meet its energy needs
in ways that will advance long-term U.S. energy security goals.
At present India gets only 2.6 percent of its electricity from
nuclear power, but it is likely to increase this percentage at
least ten fold in the next two decades. Even if it only gets
part way toward this goal, this would be a significant reduction
in its potential need for oil and gas, most of it now obtained
from the Persian Gulf.
As more and more Indians drive automobiles, its demand for oil
is rapidly growing. India will increasingly be competing with
the United States and other consumers for petroleum from the
Gulf and other sources. President Bush emphasized energy
security in his press conference with Prime Minister Singh at
the conclusion of his recent visit to India. “Congress has got
to understand,” he said, “that it is in our economic interest
that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take
the pressure off the global demand for energy. Increasing demand
for oil from America, from India and China, related to a supply
that is not keeping up with the demand, causes our fuel prices
to go up and so to the extent that we can reduce the demand for
fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer. This is what
I’ll be telling our Congress.”
The Global Warming Case
As India industrializes, its greenhouse gas emissions are
steadily increasing, making it one of the world’s major
polluters, albeit far behind the United States. India, like
China, argues that it is in a developmental stage, seeking to
catch up with more advanced industrial powers, and cannot be
held to the same standard as the developed countries in any
global warming agreement. To the extent that India shifts away
from fossil fuels, its negative impact on global warming will be
reduced, and the prospects for international limitations on
greenhouse gas emissions will improve.
To sum up, the arguments made against the agreement are
outweighed by the arguments in its favor. Civilian nuclear
cooperation with India will strengthen its political and
economic stability; further U.S. strategic interests, U.S.
non-proliferation goals and U.S. energy security, and help to
combat the growing danger posed to mankind by global warming.
This letter reflects the personal views of the undersigned and
does not represent the views of the institutions with which they
are affiliated
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SELIG S. HARRISON
Convenor
Director
Asia Program
Center for International Policy
Senior Scholar
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
WALTER ANDERSEN
Associate Director, South Asia Studies
School of
Advanced International Studies
Johns Hopkins
University
Former Director for South Asia
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State
GARY K. BERTSCH
Director
Center for International Trade and Security
University of Georgia
University Professor of Public and International Affairs
University of Georgia
MARSHALL BOUTON
President
Chicago Council on Foreign Relations
Former Director for Policy Analysis, Near East and South Asia
Department of Defense
HONORABLE WILLIAM CLARK
Former U.S. Ambassador to India
Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs
STEPHEN P. COHEN
Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
Former Member, Policy Planning Council
Department of State
THOMAS DONNELLY
Resident Fellow in Defense and National Security
American Enterprise Institute
Member, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
AINSLEE EMBREE
Professor Emeritus of History and former Director of the
Southern Asian Institute
Columbia University
Special Consultant to U.S. Ambassador to India Frank Wisner
HAROLD GOULD
Visiting Scholar
University of Virginia
LEONARD G. GORDON
Senior Research
Associate
Southern Asian Institute
Columbia University
FREDERIC GRARE
Visiting Scholar
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Former
Counselor for Cooperation and Culture
Embassy of France, Islamabad, Pakistan
ROBERT M. HATHAWAY
Director, Asia Program
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
South Asia specialist, Foreign Affairs Committee,
U.S.
House of Representatives
WALTER HAUSER
Professor Emeritus of South Asian History
University of Virginia
HONORABLE KARL F. INDERFURTH
Director, International Affairs Programs
Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University
Former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs
ROBERT KAGAN ,
Senior
Fellow Carnegie
Endowment for
International Peace
HONORABLE DENNIS KUX
Senior Scholar
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Ivory Coast
EDWARD LUTTWAK
Senior Advisor
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Former consultant to the Secretary of Defense, the National
Security Council
The State Department and the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.
MCKIMM MARRIOTT
Professor Emeritus of South Asian Anthropology
Department of Anthropology
University of Chicago
LLOYD RUDOLPH
The University of Chicago
SUSANNE RUDOLPH
William Benton Distinguished Service Professor of Political
Science Emerita
The University of Chicago
HONORABLE HOWARD SCHAFFER
Deputy Director
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
Georgetown University
Former U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh
HONORABLE TERESITA C. SCHAFFER
Director, South Asia Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and
South Asian Affairs
Former U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka
HONORABLE FRANK WISNER
Former U.S. Ambassador to India
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