Bush to India
THINKING GLOBAL
By FREDERICK KEMPE
Bush to India
February 28, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Perhaps problems were inevitable ahead of President Bush's trip to India this week, based as it was on the president's bold wager on geopolitical re-engineering over existing international agreements.
Mr. Bush is making a reasonable bet he has more to gain through embracing the world's most populous democracy as a global partner in his fight against tyranny and terrorism than he has to lose from abandoning three decades of nuclear nonproliferation doctrine that did little to contain India's nuclear ambitions.
The words "Bush to India" don't roll off the tongue with quite the alacrity as "Nixon to China," the 1972 presidential trip that reopened relations with the Middle Kingdom. Yet U.S. officials say the trip crowns what is becoming the most important strategic initiative of the president's second term. With Mr. Bush's place in history under assault in Iraq, India has become a more promising place to take a stab at legacy.
Mr. Bush is attempting nothing less than the reconfiguring of the global chessboard from the period of uncontested U.S. global leadership after 1990 to the messier, multipolar world that's emerging with China and India joining the European Union, Russia and the U.S. as major powers. Iraq has had many lessons, not the least of which is that the unipolar American moment is quickly passing.
The president correctly reckons that while China remains a wild card and Europe may decline, India stands out as the most natural potential U.S. partner with its multiethnic secular democracy fueled by a growing market economy and threatened by Islamist terrorism.
Yet history isn't coming easily.
Indian and U.S. negotiators in past days have worked to clear away obstacles that had made it impossible for months to fill in the details for the landmark nuclear agreement the president reached with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last July in Washington. The fact some deal may yet get done, against considerable opposition from both sides' nuclear establishments and India's political left, is a measure of how much Mr. Bush is investing in the relationship.
Devilish Details
What Mr. Bush promised in July was to give India virtual membership in the club of recognized nuclear-weapons states created by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ending its outlaw status and opening access to nuclear commerce. India agreed in return to abide by rules that require it to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and "voluntarily" make the civilian plants subject to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
Strategists celebrated the coming together of the world's two largest democracies, ending decades of mutual distrust during which India was a Soviet friend and leader of the anti-American nonaligned movement. But nuclear establishments on both sides dug in their heels. The agreement has triggered a political crisis for Mr. Singh, whose government depends on a bloc of communist parties that viciously opposes any strategic alignment with Washington.
The Indian nuclear community, accustomed to operating under secrecy, wanted to strictly limit how many of its 22 facilities, including those under construction, would be deemed civilian, at first offering up only two, says a person familiar with the matter. (India is believed to have some 80 nuclear weapons already and sufficient fissile material for 2,000 more.) They charged that American negotiators were trying to cap what they could produce, impairing their ability to deter nuclear Pakistan or maintain a hedge against nuclear China.
A person familiar with the matter says U.S. congressional leaders, who were angry they weren't consulted by Mr. Bush on the original deal, would oppose any agreement that didn't have India declaring at least two-thirds of its plants civilian. Indian press reports say that Prime Minister Singh has given the U.S. his draft of a nuclear separation plan that would put 14, or some 64%, of the 22 plants under safeguards. U.S. proliferation experts will bristle particularly at India's apparent omission of a fast-breeder reactor due to go into operation in 2007 that will be a particularly rich source of weapons grade material. U.S. opponents fear the deal could endanger the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terror, and fuel a regional arms race that also will involve China.
Bush administration officials argue the dangers are greater in failing to seize the opportunity to embrace India.
To gain that prize, Mr. Bush -- never afraid to challenge established regimes -- wasn't about to let the India's renegade status under the U.S. 1978 Non-Proliferation Act stand in his way. In July, he also reached agreement with Mr. Singh on other initiatives, ranging from trade to military cooperation. The U.S. could soon be selling India F-16 and F-18 fighter jets and planning a joint space mission.
Yet the nuclear deal is the key that unlocks the broader relationship.
India's nuclear establishment argues that separating civilian and military facilities is costly, complex and time-consuming because many of India's plants are dual use. Negotiating a deal has been complicated further because Indian experts hadn't debated sufficiently among themselves how many weapons were enough for India's defense purposes. Without having decided that, it was difficult for them to determine what capacity to set aside for military use.
A person familiar with the matter says one possible deal would give India more time, perhaps until 2010, to make the military-civilian separation but in exchange would require India to keep fewer plants for military purposes. The Indians also want the right to reclassify facilities as military should security threats escalate.
India as Partner
Even if the deal gets done, it's by no means certain the U.S. will get the strategic partner it wants. While Mr. Bush is looking for an ally to spread democracy and fight tyranny, India regards the Bush trip more as blessing of its emergence as one of the world's great powers.
India encouraged Washington's hopes recently by joining the vote to report Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council. Yet, at the same time, it demonstrated its independence from Washington by reconfirming a multibillion-dollar natural-gas deal with Iran that would deepen its dependence on a country, Indian officials remind their American counterparts, with which it has a 4,000 year history.
The Bush administration thus far has been careful not to push India faster than the market will bear, either on Iran or the nuclear agreement, betting that common interests over time will bring the two countries closer. Trade expanded some 25% in each of the past two years, some 2.5 million people of Indian extraction live in the U.S. (and make up its best-educated and most affluent minority), and the Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed Indians, of all major countries, to be the most positively inclined toward Americans, with 71% viewing them favorably.
The president still has political minefields to negotiate in India, but with some skill this geopolitical gamble can pay off.
Write to Frederick Kempe at Thinkingglobal@wsj.com with your thoughts
By FREDERICK KEMPE
Bush to India
February 28, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
Perhaps problems were inevitable ahead of President Bush's trip to India this week, based as it was on the president's bold wager on geopolitical re-engineering over existing international agreements.
Mr. Bush is making a reasonable bet he has more to gain through embracing the world's most populous democracy as a global partner in his fight against tyranny and terrorism than he has to lose from abandoning three decades of nuclear nonproliferation doctrine that did little to contain India's nuclear ambitions.
The words "Bush to India" don't roll off the tongue with quite the alacrity as "Nixon to China," the 1972 presidential trip that reopened relations with the Middle Kingdom. Yet U.S. officials say the trip crowns what is becoming the most important strategic initiative of the president's second term. With Mr. Bush's place in history under assault in Iraq, India has become a more promising place to take a stab at legacy.
Mr. Bush is attempting nothing less than the reconfiguring of the global chessboard from the period of uncontested U.S. global leadership after 1990 to the messier, multipolar world that's emerging with China and India joining the European Union, Russia and the U.S. as major powers. Iraq has had many lessons, not the least of which is that the unipolar American moment is quickly passing.
The president correctly reckons that while China remains a wild card and Europe may decline, India stands out as the most natural potential U.S. partner with its multiethnic secular democracy fueled by a growing market economy and threatened by Islamist terrorism.
Yet history isn't coming easily.
Indian and U.S. negotiators in past days have worked to clear away obstacles that had made it impossible for months to fill in the details for the landmark nuclear agreement the president reached with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last July in Washington. The fact some deal may yet get done, against considerable opposition from both sides' nuclear establishments and India's political left, is a measure of how much Mr. Bush is investing in the relationship.
Devilish Details
What Mr. Bush promised in July was to give India virtual membership in the club of recognized nuclear-weapons states created by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ending its outlaw status and opening access to nuclear commerce. India agreed in return to abide by rules that require it to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and "voluntarily" make the civilian plants subject to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
Strategists celebrated the coming together of the world's two largest democracies, ending decades of mutual distrust during which India was a Soviet friend and leader of the anti-American nonaligned movement. But nuclear establishments on both sides dug in their heels. The agreement has triggered a political crisis for Mr. Singh, whose government depends on a bloc of communist parties that viciously opposes any strategic alignment with Washington.
The Indian nuclear community, accustomed to operating under secrecy, wanted to strictly limit how many of its 22 facilities, including those under construction, would be deemed civilian, at first offering up only two, says a person familiar with the matter. (India is believed to have some 80 nuclear weapons already and sufficient fissile material for 2,000 more.) They charged that American negotiators were trying to cap what they could produce, impairing their ability to deter nuclear Pakistan or maintain a hedge against nuclear China.
A person familiar with the matter says U.S. congressional leaders, who were angry they weren't consulted by Mr. Bush on the original deal, would oppose any agreement that didn't have India declaring at least two-thirds of its plants civilian. Indian press reports say that Prime Minister Singh has given the U.S. his draft of a nuclear separation plan that would put 14, or some 64%, of the 22 plants under safeguards. U.S. proliferation experts will bristle particularly at India's apparent omission of a fast-breeder reactor due to go into operation in 2007 that will be a particularly rich source of weapons grade material. U.S. opponents fear the deal could endanger the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terror, and fuel a regional arms race that also will involve China.
Bush administration officials argue the dangers are greater in failing to seize the opportunity to embrace India.
To gain that prize, Mr. Bush -- never afraid to challenge established regimes -- wasn't about to let the India's renegade status under the U.S. 1978 Non-Proliferation Act stand in his way. In July, he also reached agreement with Mr. Singh on other initiatives, ranging from trade to military cooperation. The U.S. could soon be selling India F-16 and F-18 fighter jets and planning a joint space mission.
Yet the nuclear deal is the key that unlocks the broader relationship.
India's nuclear establishment argues that separating civilian and military facilities is costly, complex and time-consuming because many of India's plants are dual use. Negotiating a deal has been complicated further because Indian experts hadn't debated sufficiently among themselves how many weapons were enough for India's defense purposes. Without having decided that, it was difficult for them to determine what capacity to set aside for military use.
A person familiar with the matter says one possible deal would give India more time, perhaps until 2010, to make the military-civilian separation but in exchange would require India to keep fewer plants for military purposes. The Indians also want the right to reclassify facilities as military should security threats escalate.
India as Partner
Even if the deal gets done, it's by no means certain the U.S. will get the strategic partner it wants. While Mr. Bush is looking for an ally to spread democracy and fight tyranny, India regards the Bush trip more as blessing of its emergence as one of the world's great powers.
India encouraged Washington's hopes recently by joining the vote to report Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council. Yet, at the same time, it demonstrated its independence from Washington by reconfirming a multibillion-dollar natural-gas deal with Iran that would deepen its dependence on a country, Indian officials remind their American counterparts, with which it has a 4,000 year history.
The Bush administration thus far has been careful not to push India faster than the market will bear, either on Iran or the nuclear agreement, betting that common interests over time will bring the two countries closer. Trade expanded some 25% in each of the past two years, some 2.5 million people of Indian extraction live in the U.S. (and make up its best-educated and most affluent minority), and the Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed Indians, of all major countries, to be the most positively inclined toward Americans, with 71% viewing them favorably.
The president still has political minefields to negotiate in India, but with some skill this geopolitical gamble can pay off.
Write to Frederick Kempe at Thinkingglobal@wsj.com with your thoughts
posted by Mahesh Shetty at 6:37 AM
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