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truthout .org
6 September 2005
BUSH-SINGH NUCLEAR DEAL CREATES FRESH SINO-INDIAN STRAINS
By J. Sri Raman
The US Congress session beginning September 6 is set to discuss
legislative changes that the recent US-India nuclear deal will need.
India will be watching the Congress proceedings in this connection
with interest. The concern of some Indians, however, will be about
whether the US lawmakers will consider at all the consequences of the
deal for peace and stability in South Asia and in a larger part of
Asia.
The consequences for South Asia have already become clear. We
have noted them in these columns, while talking of Pakistan's
response to the deal, finding its most resounding expression in the
testing of a long-range missile of nuclear capability. The larger
Asian consequences are becoming clear as well.
The potential of the pact for creating larger strains in the
continent found an unlikely illustration at a seminar in Mumbai
(formerly Bombay) on Sunday. The seminar witnessed an unprecedented
kind of an exchange between India's defense minister Pranab Mukherjee
and China's Consul-General Song Debeng.
At the seminar on privatization in defense production, Mukherjee
talked of the "Chinese invasion" of 1962 leading to a setting up of
several new ordnance factories. In a remarkably undiplomatic
reaction, Debeng shot up from the audience and objected strongly to
the use of the word "invasion" to refer to the Sino-Indian conflict.
"Who is difficult to negotiate with - India or China?" he demanded
from the open floor.
That was a far cry indeed from the days when the Chinese
diplomats kept Indian observers busy analyzing the significance of
their inscrutable smiles. Debeng's outburst can be seen as an
indicator of suspicions and strains in the post-deal period.
This might sound an exaggeration - but only to those not
following the increasing defense of the deal in Sino-Indian terms by
a string of experts close to the establishment. The pact has been
projected as a product of the US-India agreement of January 2004,
titled Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP). And a partnership
of these proportions, it is suggested, cannot but aim at an altered
Asian balance of forces, besides beating Pakistan down to its size.
Officially, more often, the deal may be described as one designed
to promote India's civilian nuclear energy programs. But it is
defended even more forcefully as a guarantee that India will be
granted membership in the "nuclear club," hopefully as a prelude to
membership in the UN Security Council. The pact of July 18 between
George Bush and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is seen as
preparing the ground for this dual membership by promising US
assistance in helping India's rise as a pre-eminent power in the
region. Nuclear hawks do not read the reference to the "region" in
reduced, South Asian terms.
They never did. One of these was Mukherjee's predecessor in the
previous government, George Fernandes. Soon after India's nuclear
weapons tests in 1998, Fernandes came out with a fierce, unprovoked
attack on China and its "expansionist designs." Former Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to pull him up himself, and anti-Pakistan
logic was hastily restored as the official line of defense of the
tests.
Anti-China hawks have influential supporters in the USA. These
include strategic analyst Ashley J. Tellis and former US ambassador
to India Robert D. Blackwill. A report to the Carnegie Foundation by
Tellis and an article by Blackwill, it has been pointed out, preceded
the pact. Both Tellis and Blackwill have mentioned the growing
economic and military might of China as cause for US concern.
Blackwill, in particular, refers to the danger from Chinese airfields
in Tibet and a China-developed port in Pakistan, besides China's
reinforced relations with Myanmar (formerly Burma) on India's east.
It is more than suggested that the issue is of equal concern to India.
It is not, of course, as if influential support were not
forthcoming for promoting the divisive potential of the deal in South
Asia. Present US ambassador to India David C. Mulford, no less, has
taken pains to project the pact as a tilt towards India and against
Pakistan. In a newspaper interview, he has praised India's "long and
distinguis`ed history as a non-proliferator," and added that this
"does not apply in any way" to Pakistan. He has also sounded almost
like New Delhi in denouncing "incursions" of terrorists from Pakistan
into Kashmir.
He speaks for many others in the US establishment perhaps when he
says that "both the US and India have a strong, mutual interest in
some progress and success in Pakistan." Not a line designed to deter
more demonstrative missile tests in Pakistan.
The US Congress will doubtless discuss the implications of the
deal for proliferation elsewhere. Of no less concern should be the
consequences of the pact for peace in the part of Asia that includes
the world's two most populous countries.
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