Manmohan agenda to please US
Bharat Karnad
Sep 20, 2013
[Terrorism-related intelligence sharing has been turned into a one-way street, with India benefitting little from it]
Prime minister Manmohan Singh canvassed furiously for almost a year for another state visit and a meeting with the US president. It is revealing that the Barack Obama administration initially showed little interest, not convinced that it needed to expend political capital hosting a head of an Indian government on its way out. But Singh’s insistence on a valedictory trip was persuasive because of the gifts he promised Washington.
Singh’s first trip as PM to Washington in July 2005 rode on the George W Bush regime’s geostrategic assessment of India’s importance in the unfolding strategic scene in Asia and America’s geopolitical desire to cultivate India as part of a hedging strategy against China.
This was a situation tailor-made for New Delhi to extract an equitable deal in terms of easing US-led restrictions on commerce in high-technology and nuclear goods. Instead, it was Washington, exploiting the pronounced Indian desire for a rapprochement at any cost with the US, which imposed conditions on a strategically dim-witted Manmohan Singh dispensation resulting in extraordinary concessions as part of the nuclear deal.
The bulk of the dual-use natural uranium-fuelled civilian Indian reactors were thus pushed into the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear safeguards net, and continuing with the test moratorium has ensured the flawed fusion weapon design cannot be rectified. India’s claim of high-yield thermonuclear weapons status in the event is a hoax.
But it achieved for the US, temporarily at least, its long-standing non-proliferation goal of curbing India’s nuclear capability. However, the US hasn’t delivered on the quo for the Indian quid: India does not enjoy the “rights and privileges” of a “nuclear weapon state” promised in the July 8, 2005, Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement, and has not gained entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but New Delhi hasn’t complained.
Faced, moreover, with high deficit and unemployment at home, Washington has turned the Indo-US “strategic partnership” into an essentially transactional relationship with the nuclear deal being used to bully and badger New Delhi into buying high-value American goods.
Worse, Obama has encouraged punitive legislative initiatives at home against outsourcing by American companies to India — even coining the pejorative “Bangalored” for it — and to limit H-1B visas to Indian software engineers, which will hurt the Indian information technology sector — one of the few still bright spots in the country’s otherwise bleak exports picture. Even the terrorism-related intelligence sharing has been turned into a mostly one-way street, with India benefitting little from it.
Any other prime minister faced with such evidence of bad faith would have been wary of dealing with Washington.
But not our Manmohan Singh!
He seems happy to be in a play scripted by Obama.
Among the gifts he will carry to the US are
(1) a “commercial contract” to buy Toshiba-Westinghouse AP 1000 enriched uranium-fuelled reactors, with the Indian monies reviving a comatose US nuclear industry even as the indigenous advanced pressurised heavy water reactor programme is starved of funds,
(2) an undertaking, contrary to a cabinet decision, to replace cheap refrigerants used by Indian industry and military with expensive eco-friendly refrigerants that while ensuring windfall profits for a few US companies holding the patents will undercut the consensus agreement reached at the climate summits that Western countries will subsidise green technology in developing states,
and
(3) contracts for another $5 billion worth of military hardware (15 Chinook heavy lift helicopters, six additional C-130J medium-lift transport planes, 22 Apache Longbow attack helicopters, and 145 M-777 light howitzers) on top of defence deals of over $8 billion already in the bag.
It isn’t clear just how any ruse to obtain American reactors, in whatever manner Section 17 of the Indian Nuclear Civil Liability Act 2010 is interpreted, can empower the Nuclear Power Corporation to limit the liability of the supplier in case of nuclear accidents owing to faulty technology, which the Indian law expressly bars.
Surely, an executive order can’t overturn Indian law or legitimate, via the backdoor, adherence to the Convention on Supplemental Compensation limiting liability to $300 million, as demanded by Washington. Any such deal, therefore, is headed for the Indian courts where it will be voided.
But Manmohan Singh cares less — he won’t be there to face the consequences of the mess he has created.
As regards the newfangled refrigerants, what’s galling is the PM took this decision and signed the G-20 summit communiqué containing the stratagem to undermine the Copenhagen Summit agreement despite MEA’s warning that, besides hurting the Indian military forces, such a move would lessen pressures on the US to reduce carbon emissions.
Indeed, it mirrors the manner in which Singh signed the July 5, 2005, Joint Statement with Bush that was opposed by Dr Anil Kakodkar, then chairman, atomic energy commission. For Singh, his trips to the US seem to be occasions to sell India short.
The Prime Minister’s solicitousness towards America may have many reasons, but two spring to mind.
Firstly, as he himself revealed in his statement on the coal scam in the Rajya Sabha, the recent G-20 summit in St Petersburg and the like is where he is accorded respect as an economist and leader which he doesn’t get at home. The US has endowed his participation in such prestigious forums, moreover, with value less because of Manmohan Singh’s eloquence or in expectation of any nuggets of economic wisdom he might let drop — after all president Bush only half-jokingly confessed he couldn’t understand a word the Indian PM said to him in all their meetings! — but because Singh has served the US interests well.
This brings us to the second, more salient reason:Because no Indian government since 1947 has bothered comprehensively to articulate and grade India’s national interests, Singh has treated it as a floating value, and felt free to adopt Washington’s metrics to define India’s interests on critical issues. This policy stance, accompanied by American flattery and high-gloss diplomatic frippery Washington excels in designed to turn any Third World leader’s head, is something Singh apparently finds irresistible.
Bharat Karnad is professor at Centre for Policy Research
and blogs at www.bharat karnad.com
Copyright © 2012 The New Indian Express. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RELATED AND FROM THE ARCHIVES PLEASE :
RELATED AND FROM THE ARCHIVES PLEASE :
First breeder reactor a far-fetched dream?
Kumar chellappan
24 December 2012
CHENNAI
Shortage of plutonium and stringent conditions in the India-US Civil Nuclear Co-operatioon Deal has delayed the commissioning of India’s first 500 MW Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) being built at Kalpakkam, 80 km from Chennai. Though the FBR was scheduled to go critical in mid-2009,the project is getting delayed inordinately due to severe shortage of Plutonuim, the main fuel of the reactor.
A reactor physicist, with more than three decades of experience in BARC, Trombay, told The Pioneer that the commissioning of the reactor was getting delayed because of shortage of plutonium.“To generate one MW power in FBR, we need two Kg plutonium. The 500 MW FBR at Kalpakkam needs 1000 Kg plutonium to get going. The DAE has no plutonium stock in its inventory and this is causing the delay,” said the scientist who commands respect all over the world. He said efforts were on to make the reactor work partially. “This means it may generate hardly 100 MW power,” he said.
A metallurgy engineer who quit the DAE to take up teaching assignment too said the delay was due to the shortage of plutonium. “The India-US civil nuclear deal has affected the progress of the fast breeder reactor. With the bifurcation of reactors as civilian and military establishments, the DAE would not be able to divert the plutonium fuel generated in other reactors to the FBR at Kalpakkam,” he said.
Reactor engineers and scientists had described the FBR being built at Kalpakkam as one of its kind reactor in the world. “Once this reactor is commissioned, we will not be at the mercy of anybody for fuel or other reactor components,”a senior scientist had told in the run up to the installation of the reactor vessel in 2008.
The works of the FBR, a unique reactor which breeds more fuel than what it consumes, was launched in 2004. The construction works suffered a setback following the tsunami attack of 2004 December. But the construction works were resumed in May 2005 and progressed as per the original schedule till 2007. The safety vault, the reactor vessel and other critical components were installed as per the earlier schedule.
In 2009, Dr Baldev Raj, the then director of Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), which has been entrusted with the construction and installation works had declared that the reactor would become operational by 2011. “Though we are capable of commissioning it in 2009 itself, we are proceeding slowly so that we can get expertise in each and every stage of the works,” Dr Raj had told during a press meet.
Interestingly, scientists of the DAE claim that they have 25 years of experience in running fast breeder reactor. A book “Fast Breeder Test Reactor” published by IGCAR in 2010 claim that “25 years of successful and purposeful operation of Fast Breeder test reactor and Radiometallurgy Laboratory is a significant mega stone in the annals of fast breeder and closed fuel cycle technologies not only in India but indeed the world.” It also claims that Fast Breeder Reactors would offer India , the energy security it is looking for.
Prabhat Kumar, distinguished scientist and managing director, BHAVINI, the public sector undertaking entrusted with the construction and commissioning of the FBR said the reactor would be ready by September 2014. “Works are progressing smoothly and there is no hitch of any kind,” he said. Engineers and scientists in the FBR claim that they have built an earthquake resistant reactor.
Though the Union Cabinet has approved the DAE proposal to build four more FBRs, the process of site selection has not begun.
The delay in the commissioning of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and the FBR prove that the NPC’s plans to generate 40,000 MW power by 2030 is a far-fetched dream.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.asianage .com/?sam= 2:1:235:260080&headline=Burns~ to~visit~ India~before~ US~panel~ meets
The delay in the commissioning of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and the FBR prove that the NPC’s plans to generate 40,000 MW power by 2030 is a far-fetched dream.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.asianage .com/?sam= 2:1:235:260080&headline=Burns~ to~visit~ India~before~ US~panel~ meets
Opinion
Strategic reduction of India
By Bharat Karnad
The current Indian foreign policy is propelled mainly by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s conviction that becoming part of the "unipolar" international order presided over by the United States will benefit the country. Cooperation in the high-value nuclear technology field is seen as the cherry atop the new policy cake. The PM has failed to see that Washington, for its part, is intent on using the nuclear deal to draw India into the 1967 Non-Proliferation Treaty net and to zero out the chances of India’s ever acquiring a consequential nuclear deterrent — a recipe for the strategic reduction of India.
Given the insularity of our rulers, the wonder is that, other than getting the economists-playing- deterrence strategists in Manmohan Singh’s inner circle into a huff and rousing the Opposition parties in Parliament into a state of wakefulness, such warnings compelled Manmohan Singh to define in Parliament the red lines the US should not cross. But, this is precisely what the US Congress has done with the reconciled bill likely to retain at least some of the offensive clauses, confident that the Congress Party-led government will compromise to protect its considerable investment of political capital in this deal. The reason for this American confidence may be the approach of the PM’s special envoy, Shyam Saran which, according to Washington insiders, was to seek enough room for "interpretation" to steer a manifestly unacceptable "123" agreement past a confused and confusable Opposition at home. Apparently the Manmohan Singh regime’s tactics are to get the deal past Parliament by presenting it as a fait accompli. Acting as if the nuclear deal was already a done thing, the minister of state in PMO Prithviraj Chavan claimed in Parliament that a new core was being fitted in the Apsara reactor in Trombay as part of what he called reciprocal actions required by the deal with the US. He also revealed that talks were underway with France, South Africa, etc., for civilian nuclear collaboration. Washington has also been promised that at least two reactors of the initial purchase of eight-light water reactors will be from American companies, leading to US nuclear industry representatives camping in the country, talking procedures and modalities with the Nuclear Power Corporation.
The truth is, Saran was informed by the US under secretary of state Nicholas Burns of the offending Sections 105, 106, 107, 108, and 115 in the US Senate draft version of the bill before it was voted on, but other than pleading for a tempering of the language to provide Manmohan Singh the cover for accepting it, he raised no particular objection. This notwithstanding the fact that the aforementioned Sections, in breach of the understanding in the Joint Statement, have codified both India’s status and treatment as a non-nuclear weapon state under the NPT and, more significantly, India’s formal acceptance of such status and treatment by the US, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and the International Atomic Energy Agency, signalling acceptance by India of the NPT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty norms and restrictions without its being a signatory to either!
These Sections, among other things, mandate IAEA safeguards in perpetuity for the designated "civilian" nuclear reactors and facilities, intrusive policing and inspection by IAEA and, when that’s not possible, by American personnel, monitoring of the activities relating to India’s mining its indigenous uranium ore, and verifiable evidence on an ongoing basis of India’s not encouraging proliferation by countries like Iran. Further, the stockpiling of uranium fuel for imported reactors will not be allowed — closing the option of stockpiling foreign low-enriched uranium or processed natural uranium far in excess of immediate needs in order to avoid the ill-effects of unexpected termination of fuel supply, and India will be unable to access the latest uranium enrichment, plutonium reprocessing and heavy water production technologies.
Worse, the government’s original raison d’etre for the deal that imported reactors will make up the energy deficit in 20-25 years is patently false. Even with an additional 20 imported reactors, electricity from nuclear sources will still account for no more than 5%-6% of the total energy produced in the country in 2035 — not sufficient incentive, surely, to "freeze and cap" the Indian weapons programme. And should India test again which it will have to do, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on imported reactors will have to be written off, the "nuclear cooperation" will, willy-nilly, end, and all the imported materials and plants and assemblies will have to be repatriated to the original supplier at India’s cost. Considering that mostly adverse effects will follow from this deal, why is Manmohan Singh sticking to it, limpet-like, risking political rejection in Parliament and personal infamy for himself? Perhaps, because the PM is simply not clued into power politics. How else to explain his acceptance, in the first place, of the Joint Statement predicating all civilian nuclear cooperation on India’s never testing again — a prohibition guaranteed to prevent this country from acquiring a credible deterrent, leave alone newer, more sophisticated, nuclear armaments in the future?
The PM and his benighted advisers may, therefore, gain from a simple six point-primer in international relations and nuclear security:
1. International relations is jungle-raj and, like in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, might is right.
2. In this tussle, hard (thermonuclear military) power with reach matters the most, offering the country absolute security and immunity against pressure. It is decisive in the rank-ordering of countries; soft power only embroiders and augments this hard power of the state.
3. Powerful countries may humour weaker states but do not help them become strong, thereby adding to the competition.
4. States generating cutting-edge technology do not sell or transfer it to any other country for any reason. Ask America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom about being denied the atom bomb in the Forties and, more recently, the set of critical Joint Strike Fighter technologies, both of which it helped finance and co-develop!
5. India’s economic card has historically been trumped by the foreigner’s military card, meaning the decisive military technology and capability of the day. India lacked a meaningful navy in the 17th century. It did not help that the country was an economic superpower at the time. The military card that cannot be beaten today is the triad of frightening megaton thermonuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-powered submarines, which has to be secured on a war footing. It will provide the security overhang beneath which the Indian economy can grow rapidly, unmolested.
6. Resumption of open-ended testing is a technical imperative, necessary to obtain boosted-fission and fusion weapons that are safe, proven, and reliable — qualities, incidentally, missing in the existing Indian deterrent. Ties with the West disrupted by the Indian tests will quickly return to normal, because the advanced economies are hooked profitably into the comparatively advantaged techno-economic sphere in India, because of the lure of huge profits that make the Indian market irresistible to NSG states and render long term embargoes unsustainable and, because, pushed to the wall, India could turn into a mean trouble-maker — the sort of entity former US President Lyndon Johnson advised it was better to have inside the tent pissing out rather than having it outside pissing in.
So, Mr Prime Minister, straighten up, inject some steel into your spine, behave as the leader of a great power on the rise, one willing to deal with fellow big powers only on equal terms.Continue speaking softly, Manmohan Singhji, but see how much more traction you get by carrying a megaton thermonuclear weapon-spiked stick in your hand. You have so far acted the leader of a feeble country — an India of the past. Re-tooling your mind is of the essence. Obtaining political leverage and the military wherewithal to service India’s great power ambitions requires burying the nuclear deal.
Bharat Karnad is Professor at the Centre for Policy Research and author of Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, now in its second edition
No comments:
Post a Comment