Author: Brahma Chellaney
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: March 15, 2008
URL: http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/the-truth-talbott-hides.aspx
The Prime Minister has done well to assure
Parliament that he will continue to "seek the broadest possible consensus
within the country" over the nuclear deal with the United States. A critical
matter like this, which is going to affect the future of India's nuclear programme
and tie the country to perpetual, legally irrevocable international inspections,
demands such a consensus. The partisan rancour over what has become an increasingly
divisive issue needs to be defused. While giving that assurance, the Prime
Minister referred to a recent claim by former US deputy secretary of state
Strobe Talbott that, had the Clinton team offered only "half" of
what the Bush administration has proposed now, the Vajpayee government "would
have gone for it." The truth is that Talbott says just the opposite in
his detailed exposition in Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb,
a book he published in 2004.
Talbott has a long record of mounting non-proliferation
pressure on India. Before becoming deputy secretary, Talbott travelled to
Moscow, as ambassador-at-large, to persuade the Russians to renege on their
$75-million contract to sell cryogenic-engine technology to India - dangling
carrots and warning that "a viable Indian missile capability could one
day pose a security threat to Russia itself." It didn't matter that cryogenic
technology has civilian space applications and no nation has employed it in
ballistic missiles.
To Talbott, India had to be penalised for
retaining its nuclear-weapons option. Yet when India gatecrashed the nuclear
club in May 1998, Talbott took the lead - after the shock over the tests had
dissipated - to help shift the US policy goal. In place of the lost aim to
stop New Delhi from crossing the threshold, a new objective was devised: Prevent
India's emergence as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state by bringing it into
the US-led non-proliferation regime.
With that purpose in mind, Talbott, as the
Clinton administration's troubleshooter, held extended, closed-door negotiations
with then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh during 1998-2000. The discussions
that stretched to 14 rounds at ten locations in seven countries have been
described by the recently-retired US undersecretary, R. Nicholas Burns, in
an article published in the November-December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs,
as "Washington's first truly sustained strategic engagement with the
Indian leadership."
That "sustained strategic engagement"
was essentially about getting India to accept a set of rigorous non-proliferation
benchmarks, by Talbott's own admission. But where the Clinton administration
failed, the Bush team is on the scent of success. The impulse to stitch up
the deal before it unravels under wiser Indian reflection has triggered a
crescendo of calls by US officials: "The clock is ticking;" "the
timelines are short;" "we are kind of playing in overtime;"
"there's still a lot of work but not a lot of time;" "India
must move ahead;" and it's "now or never."
Let's compare the benchmarks the Clinton team
tried to impose with the non-proliferation conditions the Bush administration
has attached to the deal.
Talbott says in his book, "If there is
a deal to be done with India, my guess is that it will be a version of the
one offered by the Clinton administration and rejected by the BJP-led government.
The four US-proposed non-proliferation benchmarks put forward in 1998 - joining
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, making progress on a fissile material treaty,
exercising strategic restraint (by that or some other name), and meeting the
highest standard of export controls … should remain the basis of the
American policy into the future. That means the US government should persist
until the four areas of restraint become the basis of the Indian policy."
Here is Talbott admitting the Vajpayee government
rejected the deal that was on offer then and saying the four Clinton-set benchmarks
should remain the basis of US policy "into the future" - until India
has caved in. In the book, Talbott presents himself as an unapologetic champion
of hawkish positions - from mocking New Delhi for wanting to be grandfathered
out of the NPT restrictions, to insisting the US cannot give India "a
free pass into the nuclear club."
He lampoons Indian leaders he met. "Vajpayee's
pauses seemed to last forever … I had never met a politician so laconic."
Prime Minister Inder Gujral's 1997 meeting with President Clinton was a washout
"in part because Gujral spoke so softly that everyone on the US side
had trouble hearing what he was saying." Defence minister George Fernandes
"regaled US with the story" of how he had been strip-searched in
the US. "He seemed to enjoy our stupefaction at this tale." Sonia
Gandhi went from being "diffident and evasive" to being "steely."
If Talbott has kind words for anyone, it is
Jaswant Singh, whom he describes as the "persistent and beleaguered champion
of moderation." He indeed flatters and pumps up Jaswant Singh, "the
Indian statesman," saying it was "Jaswant" (as he calls him)
who promised India's signature on the CTBT. Talbott candidly admits the US
game-plan was "to get the Indians to accept the CTBT along with meaningful
restraints on their nuclear and missile programmes in exchange for our easing
sanctions and throttling back on the campaign of international criticism we
were orchestrating."
Domestic opposition in India, however, put
paid to Jaswant Singh's CTBT pledge. Not only that, the American side ended
up empty-handed on the other restraint measures despite the protracted, 14-round
talks. Talbott, whose approach in the negotiations was to smooth-talk the
other side into submission, rues that Jaswant Singh "lost out" to
the "conservatives within the BJP."
Now let's see where the four Clinton-prescribed
benchmarks stand today. What sticks out is that the Clinton benchmarks have
not only been embraced wholeheartedly by the Bush administration, but also
deftly incorporated in the deal, with each benchmark finding unequivocal mention
in one or more of the key documents - the July 18, 2005 joint statement, India's
Separation Plan, the Hyde Act and the so-called 123 Agreement.
l Benchmark 1 - a permanent test ban. That
benchmark is central to the Bush deal with India. The expansive Hyde Act drags
India through the backdoor into the CTBT. The Act admits it goes "beyond
Section 129 of the Atomic Energy Act" in mandating that the waiver for
India will necessarily terminate with any Indian test. The test ban is also
built into the 123 Agreement by granting the US the dual right to seek the
return of exported goods and to suspend all cooperation forthwith. In fact,
with the Hyde Act going beyond the CTBT to define in technical terms what
constitutes a nuclear-explosive test, India is to be held to CTBT-plus obligations.
What Jaswant Singh could not deliver has been
ceded by a government whose real centre of power, Sonia Gandhi, paradoxically,
was instrumental in scuttling the Vajpayee-led effort to build a political
consensus for CTBT signature. Vajpayee's hopes collapsed the moment Sonia
Gandhi spoke up at the consensus-building meeting he had called. She said,
"Why hurry when the US Senate itself has rejected this treaty? Heavens
will not fall if we wait."
l Benchmark 2 - restraint on fissile-material
production. The Bush deal imposes this check in eclectic ways - from getting
India to shut down one of its two research reactors producing weapons-grade
plutonium to securing New Delhi's commitment to work "with the US for
the conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty." The
Hyde Act proviso for regular presidential reports on India's "rate of
production" of fissile material or on any changes in "unsafeguarded
nuclear-fuel cycle activities" opens New Delhi to sustained pressure.
Much of India's cumulative historic production
of weapons-grade plutonium has come from the Cirus research reactor, to be
dismantled by 2010 after having been refurbished at a cost of millions of
dollars barely four years ago. Eight indigenous power reactors will also become
unavailable for strategic-material needs.
l Benchmark 3 - strategic restraint. The Bush
deal seeks to hold India's feet to the non-proliferation fire through the
instrumentality of the Hyde Act and 123 Agreement. The controls built into
the deal, as Senator Joseph Biden has admitted, will help "limit the
size and sophistication of India's nuclear-weapons programme."
While permitting conditional and partial civil
nuclear cooperation, the Hyde Act, seeking to hobble the growth of Indian
delivery capability, mandates the continued applicability of US missile sanctions
law against India. The deal primarily is aimed at ensuring that India's nuclear-deterrent
capability remains rudimentary and regionally confined, thus helping promote
security dependency on the US, including for missile defence and conventional
weapons. Fostering security dependency is the key to winning and maintaining
an ally.
l Benchmark 4 - "meeting the highest
standard of export controls." India has agreed under the deal to enact
"comprehensive export-control legislation" and to unilaterally adhere
to the rules of US-led cartels. While the original deal cited two such cartels,
the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and Missile Technology Control Regime - both
of which continue to exclude India from their membership - the Hyde Act has
expanded the list to include more, including the controversial Proliferation
Security Initiative.
So, as is clear, all the four Clinton benchmarks
are at the heart of the Bush deal with India.
In fact, the Bush deal has far more to show.
While the Clinton team could not persuade the sphinx-like Vajpayee to place
under international inspection more than the two indigenous power reactors
he was willing to offer under a potential deal, the Bush administration has
won the Manmohan Singh government's agreement to subject 35 nuclear facilities,
including eight existing indigenous power reactors, to permanent external
inspection. New Delhi will also shut down Cirus and remove the fuel core from
Apsara, Asia's first reactor.
The Bush team could extract such commitments
from India by taking the tack Talbott suggested in his book that he wrote
with "the cooperation of the department of state," which later -
in his words again - "subjected the manuscript to a review to ensure
that the contents would not compromise national security."
With the benefit of hindsight, Talbott had
advised that the White House use the dual bait of UN Security Council permanent
membership and a strategic partnership to "coax India into the non-proliferation
mainstream." That is exactly what President Bush did.
Before offering the deal, Washington led India
up the garden path on UNSC membership and massaged its ego with statements
that it was both "ready to help India become an important power in the
21st century" and open to "a decisively broader strategic relationship."
Since the deal was unveiled, a growing number of publicists have been pressed
into service to market it as "India's passport to the world."
As a result, what hush-hush negotiations with
Jaswant Singh could not achieve, aggressive public diplomacy may pull off,
with Burns singing the ditty that the deal is "wildly popular among millions
of Indians who see it as a mark of US respect for India." That explains
why an inveterate non-proliferation ayatollah like Talbott today is hawking
the Bush deal, betting that India's short public memory will help obscure
the inconvenient truths.
