Shock and Awe was such an outstanding success? remember the wonderful Fourth of July-type photos of Baghdad?s skyline ablaze, and the thunderous sound of heavy bombs exploding? Guess we showed ?em, eh?? that our outstanding foreign policy expert, George W. Bush, is now blundering into a re-write of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.When POTUS recently ran into some heavy weather of criticism here at home, he employed the time-honored method of distracting attention by scampering off to a foreign adventure, this time in India, and struck a deal allowing nuclear trade with that country. This really bends the rules which have for over two generations restrained the spread of nuclear weapons, perhaps not with total success, but certainly the world under the umbrella of the NPT has been kept from a terrifying nuclear arms race, and probably from a war employing the A-bomb. Bush dismisses all that with this new treaty, soon to be up for approval by the Senate.
Our President, notable for his risk-taking, is evidently gambling that suddenly permitting India to import nuclear fuel and new technology previously denied to it by NPT and American law, will bind the rising power of the world?s largest democracy closer to America, and provide some kind of future benefit to the US in an unstable part of the world. Implicit in this argument is that other things will remain the same, once everyone ?gets used to? America?s latest unilateral action. But is this realistic? Here are the United States and others at the International Atomic Energy Agency demanding that Iran NOT be allowed to bend the rules as it coyly develops a bomb-capable nuclear energy program. Then there is North Korea boasting of its nuclear capabilities and firing off intermediate-range missiles right and left. And consider Pakistan, America?s supposedly necessary ally against the Taliban, which fought a war with India not too long ago, and which has already developed a bomb and allowed their physicist to slip the technology into more radical Muslim hands. Won?t their nose be out of joint? Is this how the US treats its long-suffering allies?
What will happen now? Will China, for example, decide to do for Pakistan exactly what America did for India? Will Iran point, with some justification, to India?s special exemption and demand the same latitude? How will Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example, react, thinking of their own national interests. And Israel? Do the benefits (yes, there are some) of treating India as a special exemption really outweigh an almost inevitable atomic arms race in an already volatile area of the world? Did POTUS once more fail to think more than one move ahead, as happened with Iraq?
What would be an alternative to Bush?s current course of action? Admittedly, the wheels were already coming off the post-Hiroshima system for controlling nuclear proliferation, but this could have been an opportunity to restrain rather than encourage the development of nuclear arms throughout southern Asia. ?The Economist? of March 11, 2006 suggests that India (and others?) could be offered the benefits of civilian nuclear technology in exchange for a moratorium on making ?fissile material,? with more stringent inspections and safeguards; even Israel could have been maneuvered into closing down its nuclear program with adequate security guards, thus creating a ?weapons-of-mass-destruction-free Middle East that would someday help finesse the Iran problem, too.?
Mr. Bush?s plan requires America to continue to supply India with fuel for civilian reactors, even if India breaks other anti-proliferation laws and builds a stockpile of nuclear weapons; it also requires that Congress modify those anti-proliferation laws; and it flies in the face of long-standing American policy through many different administrations. But if Congress refuses, then the United States will have another opportunity to think ahead, and put off Armageddon for a little while longer. Mr. Bush may like to play poker, but he clearly doesn?t play chess.