Nixon to China, Bush to India
Fareed ZAKARIA
BUSH IN INDIA: There has been remarkably little discussion in the
United States of what is perhaps the major strategic initiative of the
Bush second term.
The administration is pursuing an objective, which, if successful,
could bear some similarities to Nixon's opening to China in 1973: a
proposed nuclear agreement with India.
This might sound like an esoteric issue for policy wonks, but it is a
big deal. If successful, it could well alter the strategic landscape,
bringing India firmly and irrevocably onto the world stage as a major
player, normalising its furtive nuclear status and anchoring its
partnership with the United States.
But the policy, which is currently in some trouble, has to succeed.
And for that to happen, strategists on both sides will have to prevail
over ideologues.
The Bush administration has been farsighted on this issue. With China
rising and Europe and Japan declining, it sees India as a natural
partner. It also recognised that 30 years of lectures on
nonproliferation and sanctions have done nothing to stop, slow down or
make safer India's nuclear program.
Most important, it recognised that India was a rising and responsible
global power-India has never sold or traded nuclear technology-that
could not be treated like a rogue state.
So the administration has proposed reversing three decades of
(failed) American policy, and aims to make India a member of the nuclear
club.
The benefits for the United States-and much of the world-are real.
This agreement would bring a rising power into the global tent, making
it not an outsider but a stakeholder, and giving it an incentive to help
create and shape international norms and rules.
For example, India is becoming more worried about a nuclear Iran for
this reason, and not because it is being pressured to do so by the
United States. When India was being treated like an outlaw, it had no
interest in playing the sheriff.
Of course, some nonproliferation ideologues in Washington view the
administrations's shift with great skepticism.
For them, it rewards India for going nuclear and sets a bad
precedent. But the truth about nuclear weapons is that there has always
been an exception for major powers-Britain, France, Russia, China. The
only real question is, does India belong in that group?
Also, what is the alternative policy toward India that has any chance
of changing its status-more lectures on nonproliferation? It is this
logic that has apparently persuaded Mohamed ElBaradei, the world's
nonproliferation czar, to support this deal once it has been negotiated.
But the agreement would yield far bigger benefits for India. India's
nuclear program has grown in total isolation. Now it would get
integrated with the world, gaining access to materials, technology,
know-how and markets.
The agreement would open up new worlds of science and energy. It is
not an accident that Jacques Chirac is arriving in India this week,
hoping to begin nuclear cooperation with it, if the U.S.-India
negotiations succeed.
But India has many more ideologues, who are fighting against its
forward-looking prime minister, Manmohan Singh. First there is the
Foreign Service bureaucracy, which seems stuck in the 1950s-using stale
concepts like nonalignment, colonialism and Third World solidarity. (No,
this is not a joke, they really do think this way.) Add to them India's
nuclear scientists, who have gotten very comfortable in their cloistered
world.
As in any protected industry, the scientists don't want to be exposed
to international transparency, largely for fear that it would reveal
that their products and processes actually are not cutting-edge.
Then there are India's communists, who are in some ways stuck in the
1850s, when Karl Marx was writing his tracts on class conflict, for whom
reflexive anti Americanism is still a guiding principle.
There are technical issues that divide the Indian and American
negotiating teams, largely relating to the separation of India's
civilian and nuclear facilities. But these details can be sorted out.
The administration's point man on this issue, Under Secretary of
State Nicholas Burns, an excellent diplomat, will visit India this week
in the hope and expectation of being able to resolve the differences.
"We're 90 percent of the way there," Burns told me last week.
"We've got just 10 percent to go. This has been a uniquely
complicated negotiation between two equal parties. But we are committed
to it. And as long as both of us show flexibility in the details, I'm
confident that we will come to an agreement." Many in India are worried
about American pressure to take a stand against Iran. I asked Burns
about any "linkage."
"We're well beyond all that," said Burns. "India joined with the
majority of the board of the Atomic Energy Agency (to censure Iran),
including a majority of non-aligned countries-like Brazil, Egypt and Sri
Lanka-to vote as it did. And we are all now focused on a diplomatic path
to address Iran's violations of its treaty obligations."
Indians at the highest level-Burns counterpart, Shyam, is an equally
able diplomat-speak with a similar sense of strategic vision. But on
both sides, strategists battle their own ayatollahs. It might be worth
remembering all the costs that the U.S. and China had to deal with in
1973.
For the U.S., there was the sellout of Taiwan and the reversal of
decades of American policy. On the Chinese side, there was the
abandonment of the basic ideology and strategic posture of the communist
revolution. And yet, both sides saw the benefits and moved forward. And
look at how it changed the world.
Courtesy Newsweek February 27, 2006. |