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| PM must cut n-deal down to size | | |
- By Brahma Chellaney
Rarely before has an agreement-in-principle between two countries attracted such exaggerated notions of what it will deliver as the Indo-US nuclear "deal" has done. Every aspect of the still-blurry deal has been subject to exaggeration: what impact, positive or negative, it will have on the non-proliferation regime; how it can help address India’s energy needs; what it will do to strengthen the US-India strategic partnership; or how it can contribute to stabilising international oil prices. The exaggeration has come from every prism the deal has been viewed.
Almost 15 months after it was signed, the deal not only remains in the works but also its future has come under an increasing cloud. Despite a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign by India and the US Chamber of Commerce, the Senate recessed a week ago without taking up the draft enabling legislation, a situation likely to push the deal’s final fate on Capitol Hill into 2007. Congress also has to approve a separate technical pact, the proposed bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement, over which US and Indian negotiators continue to have sharp differences.
The double Congressional sanction is just one of the three processes which the deal has to clear before it can take effect. But there has been little progress even on the other two fronts — the deal’s approval by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, and agreement by the International Atomic Energy Agency to fashion "India-specific" safeguards (inspections) and Additional Protocol, a decision that will need to be endorsed by the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors that includes China and Pakistan. While the deal has yet to formally come up for consideration before the NSG, the India-IAEA negotiations are still at the exploratory stage.
The current morass suggests the deal is unlikely to be in force even on the second anniversary of its signature. Indeed, it is doubtful at present whether the deal’s final terms — the cumulative outcome of actions by the US Congress, NSG and IAEA — will be acceptable to India.
In that light, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needs to reassess the wisdom of continuing to push the deal as the centrepiece of his foreign policy. When it is clear the deal has a long and treacherous road to traverse, it ill behoves New Delhi to expend the kind the political capital it continues to do. When Dr Singh travels overseas, he, like a pushy salesman, seeks local support for the deal, as he did days ago in South Africa. This isn’t pretty statecraft or high diplomacy.
The US Senate’s failure to take up the pending bill for vote, let alone to recognise India’s concerns over the riders it contains, ought to inspire sober reflection in New Delhi over its persistent fixation on an increasingly uncertain deal. If the Senate fails to pass the bill in the "lame-duck" session after the November 7 Congressional elections — a high probability — the entire process must start anew in both Houses next year.
The time has come for Dr Singh to consider a basic question: is the deal still worth the effort? The government has already frittered away at least a couple of million dollars on international lobbying in support of the deal. Among other things, India has engaged the firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers International to spearhead a well-oiled campaign on Capitol Hill. India’s political investment has been even heavier. Yet six issues stand out starkly:
1. Far from securing any benefit for India, the deal has refocused international attention on the country’s nuclear-weapons programme.
India escaped with just a slap on the wrist for its defiant 1998 nuclear weapons tests, with the United States beginning to lift sanctions within three months of imposing them. Much before Dr Singh came to office, India’s nuclear weapons programme had become such an indissoluble reality that there was little international discussion about it.
The deal, however, has helped put the international spotlight again on Indian nukes, with any international discussion now centred on how to limit the size and sophistication of India’s capabilities. That has also meant unflattering comparisons with Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. With the annual Congressional reporting system on India that the US House and Senate are seeking to institute, there will be continual focus on this country’s "rate of production" of fissile materials and actual assembly of "nuclear-explosive devices," as well as the "amount of uranium mined in India" and whether imported uranium has affected the "rate of production of nuclear-explosive devices."
2. More deal-related complications are likely to arise in the coming months.
The actual framework of the deal will be shaped by the actions of the US Congress, NSG and IAEA. But India is already unhappy with the contours of the deal as they are emerging on Capitol Hill. In addition to some of the controversial provisions in both the enabling bill passed by the US House and the draft version pending before the Senate, the final legislation is unlikely to allow India to build a nuclear fuel reserve or reprocess spent fuel at will, even under IAEA safeguards.
The NSG, for its part, might seek to impose its own conditions on India or, alternatively, adopt tough, country-neutral criteria to grant an exemption from its rules. New Delhi will discover that finalising a safeguards accord and an Additional Protocol with the IAEA is not going to be a smooth affair. The effects of the deal-related complications indeed are likely to outlive Dr Singh’s term in office.
3. The stability of the US commitment to the provisions of the original agreement-in-principle has grown weaker.
The longer it takes to bring the deal into effect, the more likely the US executive and Congress will shape the deal to increasingly weigh against India. The July 18, 2005 provisions already stand modified. The US will seek to justify yet further revisions on grounds of making the proposed cooperation with India more palatable domestically and to its NSG partners.
4. Rather than strengthen the Indo-US relationship, the deal is beginning to sour the atmosphere, despite the natural convergence of US and Indian strategic interests.
A deal that was supposed to underpin the US-India "global strategic partnership" has begun to appear more and more as an effort to anoint a patron-client relationship. This has been underscored by US ambassador David Mulford’s admission that India can only hope to be a client under President George W. Bush’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). According to Mulford, India’s decision not to apply IAEA safeguards to either its tiny experimental breeder reactor or under-construction 500-MWe commercial breeder has foreclosed its admission to GNEP as a founding member.
Extraneous issues have also begun to wear down the deal’s political value. The issues centre on US policy actions — from seeking to erode India’s conventional-military edge through multibillion-dollar arms sales to Islamabad to successfully persuading New Delhi to reverse course and treat Pakistan as a fellow victim of and partner against terror. Even if the US wanted Ban Ki-Moon to be the next UN Secretary-General, did it need to veto Shashi Tharoor’s candidacy? Couldn’t it have emulated China’s tactic?
5. The purported needs for which India signed the deal have eased.
India’s sole indisputable need has already been met — supply of low-enriched uranium fuel for the US-built, twin-reactor Tarapur power station. That supply has come not from America, which pledged on July 18, 2005 to the "expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for the safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur," but from Russia in the face of US opposition. The Russian decision, the outcome of a promise made in 2005, was conveyed to New Delhi days before Bush visited New Delhi last March. The latest Russian fuel supplies will last until it is time to shut down Tarapur, already the oldest boiling water reactor (BWR) plant operating in the world.
The other cited need — to help overcome a natural-uranium crunch at home — was always a dubious claim made by some to justify Dr Singh’s surprise decision to sign a deal whose "final draft came to me from the US side" after he reached Washington, as the PM admitted in Parliament. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) maintains that India has sufficient natural-uranium resources to fuel 10,000 MWe of indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs) over their lifetime. But by the time the new under-construction PHWRs come on line in less than three years, India’s installed capacity will only be 4,310 MWe.
That India faces no uranium crunch is manifest from two facts — the growing sales figures of the public-sector Uranium Corporation of India Limited, and the rise in operating capacity factors this year at India’s commercial power reactors. Despite a price freeze, the value of UCIL’s natural-uranium sales have continued to soar over the past five years, highlighting increased production and revenue. For instance, UCIL sales jumped nearly 20% between fiscal 2003-2004 and 2004-2005.
Add to this picture one other element: the decks are being cleared for the mining of new uranium ore found in Nalgoanda, Andhra Pradesh.
6. The deal will, in any case, contribute very little to meeting India’s burgeoning electricity needs.
The DAE plans show that India intends to import only eight power reactors, adding a mere 8,000-MWe capacity. Even if the deal were to take effect tomorrow and India were to place orders within a year (instead of by 2012 as planned), the imported plants will come on line only by the middle of next decade. In fact, by 2012, even with the import of these eight reactors, the share of nuclear power is projected to actually decline in India — from the current 2.9% to 2.5% — because the contribution of other sources of energy is rising faster.
With electric-power generation seriously below peak demand, India needs to rapidly expand its generating capacity. While India needs a diversified energy portfolio to hedge against unforeseen risks, the highly capital-intensive nuclear power is not an answer to the growing electricity needs. Imported reactors dependent on imported fuel, in any event, are a path to energy insecurity. Renewables offer the best bet for energy security.
Compare the excessive attention nuclear power is receiving in the current energy debate in India with the quiet way a private-sector Indian company, Suzlon Energy, has introduced wind power as a serious alternative. Thanks to Suzlon, now the world’s fifth largest wind-turbine manufacturer, demand for wind turbines is accelerating in India, with installations rising almost 48% last year.
The much-hyped nuclear deal needs to be cut down to size. And the person who should do that is none other than Dr Singh, whose credibility at home has taken a beating because of his overzealous salesmanship.
The Indo-US relationship will continue to grow, with or without this deal. That relationship is driven by larger international geopolitics. The deal has only injected complexity and controversy into a relationship whose direction had already been set — towards closer engagement. If the deal collapses, the direction of the US-India partnership will not be disturbed. But if the collapse happens after a long, distressing roller-coaster ride, embitterment would be the deal’s legacy.
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