Nukes for India

It's a sign of George Bush's weakness that leaders across both parties are starting to question nearly every decision he makes. For example, the dissent over Bush's nuclear agreement with India is getting flak from both sides of the aisle about equally.

The deal (outlined here by Condoleeza Rice) doesn't require India to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and requires India to submit only some of its civilian nuclear facilities to international inspection; this means that India could be using some of the civilian facilities to build more bombs. Many on the Western side, including the uber-pragmatic Economist, have said that making this "special exception" for India severely weakens the international non-proliferation regime. This is said to be especially dangerous at a time when the West is desperately trying to persuade Iran to abandon its own nuclear aspirations. Meanwhile, some on the Indian side think that India gave up too much sovereignty in the deal.

Others say that the deal is an important step in the right direction. It imposes safeguards and inspections on some (not all) of India's nuclear activities. It brings India closer to being one of the accepted nuclear powers, making India more likely to act responsibly. And it will bring the U.S. and India closer together as allies, allowing greater cooperation between two giant multiethnic democracies that, despite their similarities, have been too suspicious of each other in the past.

So, you may ask, which side does Mr. Noah support in this unusually level-headed policy debate?

As usual, I support closer India-U.S. cooperation. And (also as usual) I'll tell you why:

1. India is one of the fastest-changing countries on the Earth. Just six years ago, India would have been up in arms over the bombing of a Hindu holy site, and nuclear war might have erupted. Not this time. Now India is starting to think of itself not as a quixotic champion of the third world, not as a neutral "balancer" country, but as a sophisticated responsible emerging superpower. Spurred by India's high-tech-driven economic growth, democracy and capitalism are replacing pseudo-socialist "neutrality" as India's defining ideology, making India's leaders and citizens more measured and restrained than in the past. We need to encourage this trend, not discourage it.

2. Iran is going to continue its nuclear program regardless of what the U.S. does with India. Anyone who thinks that Iran would have halted its bomb-making efforts if the U.S. hadn't established a "double standard" for India is just whistling in the dark. Only the West cares about supporting its own internally created "rules." Even established nuclear powers outside the West have supported proliferation - like when China essentially gave nukes to Pakistan. So we should stop assuming that, just because we follow our own rules, everyone else will too. It doesn't work that way. After all, frowning at India didn't stop North Korea from building nukes, did it?

3. I agree with the people who say that bringing India partially into the responsible nuclear fold is more important than getting on our high horse about the NPT regime (IAEA director general Mohammed El Baradei happens to agree). After all, the original NPT regime is pretty arbitrary itself - it said only the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, and France were "allowed" to have nukes. The deal, as currently constructed, makes India more nuclear-responsible than it used to be; without the deal, that's just not going to happen. Let's take what we can get, and make a friend in the process. After the deal is signed, and India-U.S. friendship progresses, we can always press for even more responsibility on India's part.

4. Some might ask, "Why don't we just try to make India sign the NPT?" To which I answer: A) they're not going to do that until they improve their nuclear deterrent to about the same level as China's, France's, and Britain's, and B) we already tried exactly that for almost a decade and it didn't work (even before the U.S.'s international prestige was weakened). Reality has to enter into our calculus at some point.

Basically, I'm too excited about India's transformation to pretend that it's still the 1990s. Bush, in proposing this deal, isn't just being Bush - he's doing something that the U.S. is starting to collectively realize that we have to do, like when Nixon went to China. Let's hope that the U.S. can still recognize a good deal when it sees one.

P.S. - I realize I'm a little late blogging about this subject, but most of it unfolded while I was behind the Great Firewall of China...