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The Rediff Special/Gaurav Kampani

The Sino-American Nuclear Deal: Implications for India

The Clinton-Jiang summit is over and the hiatus in Sino-American relations -- a consequence of Beijing's brutal massacre of pro-democracy supporters at Tiananmen -- has finally been bridged. The United States has abandoned its ideas of soft containment and confrontation with China in favour of comprehensive engagement. Washington now regards the reinstitutionalisation of relations, strategic dialogue, and multilateral integration as the key to deepening bilateral relations with China and thereby forestalling the latter's potentially disruptive behaviour within the international system.

The summit produced the expected list of achievements -- a resumption of the security dialogue, a hot-line between Beijing and Washington, a military maritime safety agreement, armed forces exchanges, and agreements in information technology, rule of law, drugs, crime, and the environment. But at its heart was the decision to implement the 1985 agreement on peaceful nuclear co-operation that for the first time will allow US vendors to sell nuclear reactors to China.

The 1985 nuclear deal was held in limbo for twelve years because the US Congress had insisted on certain conditions before any nuclear transfers to China took place. In particular, it required the president to certify that nuclear commodities provided to China were to be used only for peaceful purposes. The US was also to be under no obligations to consider favourably any Chinese request to carry out reprocessing and enrichment of US supplied nuclear materials or materials produced from US equipment beyond 20 per cent. Congress also demanded that the president certify that China was not engaged in the proliferation of nuclear weapons abroad. But until now no president, neither Reagan nor Bush, could reassure Congress that China had stopped supplying rogue weapons to rogue regimes.

Despite Chinese violations of its Missile Technology Control Regime and Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments, President Clinton has now decided to issue the necessary certifications to Congress and make the 1985 nuclear deal workable. The reasons for this shift in US policy are apparent. First, the US is convinced that there has been a marked and positive shift in China's nonproliferation behaviour. China signed the NPT in 1992. In May 1996, it also agreed to qualitative caps on its nuclear weapons programme by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. China is now also committed not to assist any unsafeguarded nuclear facility in Pakistan, Iran or elsewhere. In Iran's case, China has halted planned nuclear co-operation that would have given a real boost to Iran's nuclear weapons programme. Although Iran is a NPT signatory and free to seek international assistance for its nuclear programme, China has halted co-operation with Iran in a bid to assuage US fears that Iran is developing nuclear weapons clandestinely.

China has also begun to implement a nationwide system of comprehensive export controls on nuclear related equipment, technical information, and personnel exchanges and recently joined the Zangger Committee -- a multilateral cartel that controls trade in nuclear technology. According to US state department officials involved in recent negotiations with China, the US and China have also agreed for the first time to put down in writing as to what constitutes an unsafeguarded facility, and the definition of the term assistance. Most significantly, China's committment in May 1996 (after the supply of ring magnets) not to provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities was expanded just before the summit to include all activities related to nuclear explosives.

By deciding to implement the deal, the Clinton administration has also responded to the powerful pressure exercised by US nuclear vendors who want a slice of the lucrative Chinese market. For US corporations such as Westinghouse and General Electric this would mean tens of billions of dollars in nuclear trade. Access to this vast Chinese market -- estimated at between $ 60 billion and $ 80 billion in the next two decades -- could mean a degree of viability for US corporations otherwise facing a slump in the nuclear reactor market in Europe and North America.

And finally, Washington is convinced that nuclear engagement is the best way to elicit modifications in China's deviant nuclear behaviour and prevent the sale of technologies of mass- destruction for commercial purposes. Although the current agreement only covers the export of nuclear technologies, administration officials believe it has opened the doors for US negotiators to seek a dialogue with China over the export of ballistic missiles and enhance its nonproliferation behaviour.

But why has China decided to accede to US nonproliferation demands at this juncture? According to Jennifer Weeks of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, China faces soaring energy demands and would like US nuclear vendors to compete with France, Russia, et al so that it can drive reactor prices as low as possible and play all the world's would-be suppliers against one another. China is also interested in standardising its nuclear reactor designs on superior American technology. Ironically, not only is China coming around to accepting that it may not be in its interests to support the emergence of new nuclear weapon states, but it may also have agreed to technology supply curbs and certification from the US as a "seal of approval" to gain international recognition as a major player and a legitimate power in the international system.

No matter what the Sino-American calculus in hammering out the nuclear deal is, it has important ramifications for India and the rest of South Asia. The unequivocal message is that the United States might be willing to offer technological sweeteners to induce behavioural changes in the nuclear hold-out states. Washington might also be willing to accept the nuclear status quo if other leverages, especially those related to the market, dictate such an eventuality. Interestingly, the rationale behind Washington's recent about-turn applies as much to China as it does to India. If there is one market whose energy needs in general and nuclear energy demand in particular is likely to rival China's, it is India. In China's case, US nuclear vendors had argued that nuclear power generation would help reduce its greenhouse emissions. That argument is germane to India as well.

What provides additional grounds for optimism is the subtle shift in US nonproliferation policy vis-a-vis India. From a stated policy to "cap, reduce, and roll back" nuclear proliferation in South Asia, the Clinton administration has now moved to delink the nuclear issue from its overall bilateral relations with New Delhi. This shift in US policy is never direct, but subtle and evident in conversations with proliferation experts in the various think-tanks in Washington. Washington, if these experts are to be believed, no longer wants India to give up or sign away its nuclear option.

What it now insists is that India and Pakistan not raise their nuclear profile in South Asia. In short, the US is slowly coming around to acquiesce a regime of non-weaponised or recessed deterrence in South Asia and would like neither side to destabilise the nuclear balance by either the overt deployment of nuclear weapons or their integration into combat forces.

All these years US nonproliferation policy was dominated by nuclear pessimists. Proliferation pessimists argued that nuclear proliferation in South Asia was dangerous. Nuclear weapons would lead to military instability in the subcontinent and that the South Asia was the most likely place for a nuclear war in the future. But nuclear optimists have now begun to challenge these orthodoxies.

There is now increasing recognition that a regime of non-weaponised deterrence is in operation in South Asia. Many also believe that the dangers of a nuclear war during the 1987 Brasstacks crisis and the 1990 Kashmir crisis were vastly exaggerated. And contrary to assumptions that nuclear weapons are destabilising, experts now recognise that proliferation has actually stabilised the military situation on the subcontinent and placed a cap on large-scale conventional war.

Finally, proliferation specialists are now willing to admit that New Delhi has exercised exemplary restraints on its latent nuclear weapons capability. Despite having rejected the NPT, India has only carried out a single nuclear test and not followed it with additional tests to refine its nuclear capability further. Similarly, although India has rejected the CTBT, by not testing, it is tacitly complying with the global nonproliferation regime. And unlike China which has brazenly exported technologies and weapons of mass-destruction for commercial gain, India has scrupulously refrained from such forms of trade.

Thus an Indo-American nuclear deal on the Sino-American model is certainly feasible. But it would require flexibility and imagination on the part of both New Delhi and Washington. A change in US policy was foreshadowed in the authoritative report of the Council of Foreign Relations Task Force last year which urged the US administration to abandon attempts to roll back nuclear proliferation in South Asia and concentrate instead on establishing a more stable and sustainable plateau for Indo-Pakistani nuclear relations. Now the United States has indicated that is might be willing to widen the scope of its current strategic dialogue with India to discuss the peaceful use of nuclear power.

The winds of change are already in evidence. New Delhi must take its cue and seize the day!

The Rediff Special

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