Volume 2(3)
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T TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL
REGIMES DR SEEMA GAHLAUT The real value of nuclear (and space) capabilities have been debated in India for so long that some arguments have become almost axiomatic, and hence, not subject to renewed scrutiny and assessment. First among these is the argument that Indian nuclear capability is primarily for developmental purposes, i.e., energy and other civilian uses. The second argument is that Indian nuclear weapons capability is an unintended offshoot of the civilian nuclear effort, and that the latter was forced upon the country by regional and global developments [1]. The third argument is that India can rely on its own indigenously developed technology for all its future economic and technological needs. India's internal and external situation has changed because of the nuclear tests, discussions on the draft nuclear doctrine, the need for sustained development of infra-structure and "second generation" of economic reforms, and the political turmoil in Pakistan. It is, therefore, necessary to re-examine each of these axioms, and evaluate whether India needs to adapt to the world regulated by "technology-control" regimes. This paper is divided into five sections. The first section will examine the validity of each of the three arguments and assess if they continue to remain useful as guides for future policy. The second section will discuss what the main nuclear technology related regimes seek to control, and how. The third section will evaluate costs and benefits for India of cooperating or defying these regimes. The fourth section will evaluate what costs and benefits are faced by the regimes vis-à-vis India. The final section will discuss what each side may have to do to begin the process of cooperation/co-optation. Examining the Axioms It has been argued for almost fifty years now that India's nuclear capability is primarily for developmental purposes. However, several facts cast strong doubts on this thesis. First, since the very beginning, the atomic energy establishment in India had phenomenal autonomy, not at all usual for civilian programs in other democracies. Second, Dr. Homi Bhabha, father of the Indian nuclear program, was a strong advocate of weapons capability. He remained the sole custodian of the program until his death, answerable only to the Prime Minister. Third, even after Dr. Bhabha, the program’s budgets and goals were never subject to parliamentary scrutiny until the 1980s. Fourth, the Indian Atomic Energy Act of 1962, which still governs all nuclear activities in India, allows the central government almost absolute powers in defining the use and regulation of these activities. Finally, the abysmal record of nuclear power generation in India makes it harder to accept that energy development was the top priority of this program. The implication for the future is that (a) weapons capability is unlikely to be rolled back in the near future, and (b) if energy option has to become viable, significantly new ways of managing the civilian energy and the weapons program have to be found. A related argument is that India's weapons capability is an unintended offshoot of the civilian capability, and was forced upon the country by the regional and global context. The first part of the argument may be sustainable. It was only in the late 1970s when experts agreed that there was little distinction between "peaceful nuclear explosions" and the testing of a weapons device. Indeed, the architect of the 1974 Indian test, Dr. Ramanna, himself acknowledged as much in the early 1990s. However, the ability to make more than crude warheads and to test neutron bombs cannot be unintended and accidental. The human and financial resources necessary for this effort indicate that it is a result of planning, however incremental. On the other hand, the crucial question is why did India feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons as a response to regional and global threats? Why did it not choose to "make peace" with the prevailing international order during the Cold War? Even keeping aside Japan, Germany, and Italy – the vanquished Axis powers in World War II -- why did a range of countries find non-nuclear ways to respond to their threat environments, but not India? The answer does not, I submit, lie in the overly peaceful or militaristic nature of India, but in the Indian assessment of costs and benefits of favoring one option over the other. The prevailing international order during the Cold War did not offer significant advantages for India if it chose to be coopted (or "capitulated"). The implication for the future is that India needs to assess whether similar conditions prevail at the end of the Cold War. India’s nuclear and scientific establishments are justifiably proud of their achievements in a range of areas of fundamental and applied research. There are many areas where the scientists have used their ingenuity and perseverance to overcome the obstacles posed by technology embargoes and lack of financial resources. However, there is little evidence to support the projected argument that India can rely solely on its own technology and resources for future growth. First, future growth implies commercial applications of indigenously developed technology. This is an area where the Indian S&T community has not been too successful. Second, the scale at which power generation (and supply) have to increase in order to meet national infrastructural needs will require enormous investments of capital, for which the advanced industrial economies are the obvious source. Significantly, these economies are also the founding-members of all technology control regimes. Third, a significant concern related to nuclear energy development worldwide is the issue of safety. While there have been few reports of nuclear accidents in India, more people are concerned about the safety of the environment around nuclear sites. Moreover, the nuclear establishment has explained the low outputs of nuclear power plants as a result of the official policy of maintaining very high levels of safety, even if it means sacrificing output. If the energy program has to increase capacity and output, substantially higher investments in safety technology will become mandatory. Finally, there is a worldwide trend towards consolidating R&D on nuclear safety technology across countries because no country or group of countries is able to come up with adequate resources to do this alone. The problem is compounded by the stridency of anti-nuclear environmental groups, adverse public reaction to nuclear energy, and the world energy market where non-nuclear sources of energy remain more competitive economically. All these factors indicate movement towards recognizing interdependence rather than unilateralism. Technology Control Regimes in the Nuclear Sphere There are three main multilateral agreements that regulate trade and transfer of nuclear and nuclear-related technology. These are the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Zangger Committee, and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). Of these, the NPT is an international treaty in that it is formal and legally binding, and has a large and diverse membership. The Zangger Committee and the NSG are informal agreements among a small number of states that are suppliers of nuclear technology and materials. These two regimes seek to contribute to the NPT’s aim of promoting nonproliferation. The NPT was established in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. It represented the bargain between the Non Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) and the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS), viz. nuclear trade and peaceful uses of nuclear technology will be promoted by the latter if the former promised not to develop weapons capability. A further bargain was that the NWS would themselves move towards getting rid of their weapons capability. As the record shows, neither side adhered fully to the bargain. The NWS cited Cold War security concerns to indulge in massive vertical proliferation, building a larger and deadlier arsenal than the NPT had envisioned. The NWS also created the intermediate category of de facto NWS (e.g., Japan and Germany), that have (or had) nuclear weapons on their territory courtesy their NWS allies. Some NNWS within the NPT (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) tried to build secret arsenals. Nuclear-capable states outside the NPT (barring France and China, who joined NPT only in the 1990s) tried to develop their weapons capability secretly, parallel with their civilian nuclear programs. India, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and Pakistan were in this category. Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa gave up their weapons ambitions in the 1990s. Consequently, the pressure on the three remaining holdouts has become more intense. The Zangger Committee was established in 1971, outside the NPT-framework, by nuclear supplier states that were also NPT members. Their aim was to define and agree upon some basic ‘rules of the game’ about regulating peaceful nuclear trade and technology transfer with all NNWS, whether members of the NPT or not. They also wanted to ensure that the technology supplied for civilian purposes would not be diverted to weapons-related uses. Therefore, they agreed amongst themselves that all suppliers should require IAEA safeguards on specific facilities in recipient states where the material was to be used [2]. The recent planned sale of Russian nuclear reactors to India was allowed under international law through this regime, because it was originally negotiated in the 1980s, before Russia entered the newer regime (NSG) which requires more stringent conditions for nuclear sales. The Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) was established as a direct reaction to the Indian test of 1974. The test "demonstrated that nuclear technology transferred for peaceful purposes could be misused." [3] Accordingly, the NSG tried to improve upon the Zangger Committee by doing three things. First, it allowed non-NPT suppliers to join (read France). Secondly, it added many dual-use items that do not relate to nuclear weapons themselves, but can contribute to related technologies. Finally, it required that the recipient state put all its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards, and not just the one affected by a particular sale or transfer. This is called the "fullscope safeguards" requirement. Cost and Benefits to India: Cooperation versus Staying Out The conventional perspective in India is that Zangger and NSG are curtailing technology flow, and continue to promote the commercial interests of the advanced industrial countries behind the smokescreen of "proliferation concerns". It is time we get over this bewilderment. The founding members of these regimes are mostly advanced industrial economies of Western Europe and North America. Unsurprisingly, they have acted in concert to identify which technologies can help build WMDs as also which states are most likely to use these technologies to build WMDs. States with similar interests work together, whether it be the Non-Aligned Movement or the G-8. That the regimes are trying to stop developing countries from acquiring technology that might make them commercial competitors of the developed countries should also be expected. Recall the Indian folk tale about the cat that taught the lion all the tricks of attack and survival. At the end of the lesson, the lion tried to test his skills against the cat itself. The cat survived by climbing a tall tree – a skill she had deliberately not taught the lion. It was the only insurance she had against being outgunned by her disciple! The regimes, however, have increased their membership to several ‘developed’ developing states. It has been a marriage of convenience because marginalizing these states had begun to undermine the goals and/or the legitimacy of the regimes on the one hand, while on the other, these states assessed that the advantages of cooperating with the regimes outweighed the advantages of staying out. The lesson is not that the regimes remain unfair (they are), or that they have interests that go beyond proliferation (they do), but that developed developing countries like India have to make a pragmatic assessment of their options, rather than expecting, or waiting for, a utopian world. For many Indians, there is little need to cooperate with "unfair" regimes. The simple assessment is that the economic liberalization process has set into motion changes in India's economic profile that will compel the world to come to it. The implication is that India should focus its energies on strengthening itself, and that it can ignore the outside world. That the world’s opinion about India’s real or imagined potential to be an economic powerhouse has changed is undeniable. After the recent crises in Southeast Asia, more financial analysts have noted the advantages of unspectacular, though steady, growth rate of the Indian economy. The related concern regarding political instability in New Delhi has also been put to rest by the peaceful election of National Democratic Alliance with a working majority. The contrast with Pakistan, following the recent military coup, is also that much starker. However, there are at least two factors that will mandate continued Indian dialogue with the rest of the world. First, massive investments are required for infrastructure development in India in the next decade. While this is purely in the business sphere, with little connection with security-related technology, the investing states (mostly Western) are bound to use issue-linkages – demanding concessions on security-related issues in return for economic investments. The only way of avoiding this would be to find resources from states/entities that do not share the Western vision of international or regional security. The indefinite extension of the NPT in May 1995 and the universal concern expressed at Indian nuclear tests indicate that few states are willing to go against the prevailing trends. Secondly, it is the software and electronics sector that is leading the Indian economic growth. This is also the sector that is most likely to be affected by controls on dual-use technologies. Further, Indian Americans spearhead the give and take between this sector and the US Silicon Valley. Whether they applaud India’s independent security stance or not, they are bound by US laws, that are unarguably the toughest even among the members of technology control regimes. Moreover, one must remember that these individuals (or their parents) left India partly because of their frustration with the closed economy and excessive/irrational government controls. It is also unlikely that they will continue to support a seemingly one-sided arrangement where they bring more business to India without expecting changes in Indian policy. Finally, the areas of greatest mutual attraction between India and the global high tech entities go beyond producing low-tech gadgets and computers to the Indian middle class. It is in the possibility of high-tech R&D collaboration and co-production. Although India’s record is excellent at the theoretical and prototype level, most technology analysts would agree that its capacity to commercialize is not yet competitive. Consequently, the technological attractiveness is not at the scale where the world will overlook Indian security policy as a harmless idiosyncracy. The overall implication is that India needs to do more domestically before it can be complacent about international criticism. To answer the usual questions that come with the inevitable comparison to China, one has to remember that China has had a head start of about 15 years in economic liberalization and does not suffer from the often-debilitating democratic "malaise" of political fragmentation and crises of governance. Cost and Benefits for Regimes: Marginalize, Punish, or Co-opt? Whatever their intention and capabilities at the time of their establishment, each of the technology control regimes has been faced with the problem of dealing with the so-called "dual-use" technologies. Technology has advanced exponentially since the advent of the computer age. It has also diffused faster from developed to developing countries. Relatively low-tech countries could conceivably acquire cruder versions of the WMDs, enough to cause terror and threaten neighbors. Hence the list of regulated technologies has grown over time and includes many items that have legitimate civilian uses (as well as potential WMD uses). Many of these concerns have been justified by the actions of states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. On the other hand, there is very little to support the fashionable liberal statement that nuclear weapons are no longer a currency of power or even militarily useful. The US debate on the CTBT, the increased Russian appropriations for maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, and the Chinese attempts at nuclear espionage – all put a lie to this. Add to this the complete absence of international debate on why France and Britain need their nuclear weapons, and why NATO continues to reject a "no-first use" policy, and we can understand India’s resistance to the demand for unilateral disarmament. In this situation, it becomes harder to see just one side of this picture – whether "proliferation-dominated" or "development dominated". The only realistic way of resolving this is the transparency of motivations from both the supplier and the recipient. Yet, in both cases, national sovereignty and security concerns prevent this transparency. As a result, many members of the supplier regimes have begun to favor the idea that they should deny technology only to the few ‘rogue’ states. For all other recipients, the focus should be on developing political and technological means of confirming and ensuring authorized uses of exported technologies. Electronic tags, end-use verification, regular and intrusive (even surprise) inspections by the IAEA, and sharing of information about domestic and international violators, are some of the means that can prove more effective and cause less acrimony. Besides, the nuclear power industry is facing intense domestic criticism and possible elimination all over Western Europe. Green Parties (environmentalists), the fossil fuel lobbies, and the nuclear abolitionists have found common cause in declaring this a "sunset" industry that has no future in the West. The explosion of population and energy needs in the rest of the world makes it very attractive to energy-deficient countries like China, South Korea, Japan, and India. There is thus a natural affinity between the nuclear power industry in the West and the Asian countries that want to develop nuclear energy capacity. Reportedly, GE-Westinghouse and French companies have done detailed analyses of the Indian energy market, in anticipation of a political compromise between the regimes and India. A related reason why the regimes might be interested in a working compromise with India is that India has the potential to undermine their effectiveness by becoming an unregulated supplier. That it has refrained from doing so thus far cannot and should not be taken for granted. Besides, the domestic fallout of the Chinese espionage case in the United States has allowed conservatives to criticize US policy of preferring engagement with authoritarian China over a democratic India. While it may be mostly rhetorical and partisan, this provides an opportunity for pro-India activists to create a space for negotiation. Domestic reaction to India’s tests and the subsequent economic recovery after sanctions has given the clear message to the international community that some kind of credible nuclear deterrent capability is inevitable. Their effort has to now focus on ensuring that it remains "minimal" as stated. The nuclear bargain – energy versus fewer weapons -- could be useful. Finally, the fate of the CTBT and the proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) will also require Indian agreement. Conclusion: What is Desirable and What is Feasible There is little common space between what (ideally) India desires and what the regimes desire. India wants the status of a Nuclear Weapon State, no curbs on its weapons program, and all the cooperation on its nuclear energy and space programs. The regimes do not want to set a bad precedent by giving in to India’s demands, and certainly do not want to be seen as appeasing a longtime critic of their goals, means, and intentions. The one thing both sides agree on is export controls – that nuclear and related technology and materials should not be traded or transferred to those that might use them for weapons purposes. Although it has been a target of these regimes, and has had substantial capacity to export, India has never done so. This is despite its excellent relations with "rogue" states like Libya and Iran. It also has a fairly well developed system of regulations and procedures for controlling dangerous exports. Similarly, the United States was required to take back the spent fuel from Tarapur and has not done so even now. India has stuck to its side of the bargain and not claimed it. It also maintains IAEA safeguards on all imported facilities. The significance of all this is that India can be expected to abide by its commitments, so re-transfers to third parties and diversions from civilian to weapons facilities will not be the problem once it signs an agreement. The sticking point, therefore, is the status of its weapons facilities and those facilities that have been indigenously developed. One way of dealing with this would be to classify the facilities according to the level of mutually acceptable IAEA safeguards. Thus, all power reactors, new and old, could be placed under more intrusive safeguards while the designated weapons facilities could be isolated as unsafeguarded. The rest of the indigenously developed facilities could be put under voluntary graduated safeguards that will grow as both sides overcome distrust. The other likely problem will be in devising means of ensuring that there is no exchange of scientists and technical personnel working in weapons and non-weapons facilities. Unarguably, this will be the hardest task for all parties, because it has never been attempted before. Finally, India will have to harmonize its list of controlled items with those of the regimes. The regimes, therefore, will have to modify their full scope safeguards criterion, although only NSG requires it, but not Zangger. China has been able to buy US power reactors under Zangger criterion of facility-specific safeguards, and despite breaking its "nonproliferation" promise by supplying nuclear materials and technologies to Pakistan and Iran. On the other hand, North Korea has got aid and assistance despite keeping some weapons facilities secret even now. US companies may be barred by the national law, but others will probably not be as hampered if India agrees to most of the demands of the regimes. Besides, both NSG and Zangger are guidelines that seek to influence national decisions, but cannot force denials if a supplier state uses its national discretion to export. It would, therefore, depend on judicious interpretation of absolute and minimum requirement vis-à-vis India. If the regimes are pragmatic, they will realize that the only legal condition facilitating their cooperation with China (but not with India) is the arbitrary cut-off date of the NPT (January 1, 1967). On all other counts, India is a better and safer bet than China for nuclear and other cooperation. Notes [1] The most comprehensive cost-benefit analysis
on India’s options on the Dr. Seema Gahlaut is the Associate Director of South Asia Program, and Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Trade and Security, University of Georgia, USA. |
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