NSG bid: Wrong long view from Delhi

On a day that Britain decided to divorce the European Union another important development was playing itself out in faraway Seoul, South Korea, where the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was meeting to decide on India’s admittance to this exclusive club as its member.

Before coming to the outcome of the Seoul meeting it would be worthwhile to recount what exactly this club is all about. On its website this 48-nation assembly describes itself as follows: “The NSG is a group of nuclear supplier countries that seeks to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of two sets of guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports.”

“The NSG guidelines also contain the so-called ‘Non-Proliferation Principle’, adopted in 1994, whereby a supplier, notwithstanding other provisions in the NSG guidelines, authorises a transfer only when satisfied that the transfer would not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The ‘Non-Proliferation Principle’ seeks to cover the rare but important cases where adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or to a nuclear-weapon-free zone treaty may not by itself be a guarantee that a state will consistently share the objectives of the treaty or that it will remain in compliance with its treaty obligations.”

Founded in response to the Indian nuclear test in May 1974, the NSG first met in November 1975. Nations already signatories to the NPT saw the need to further limit the export of nuclear equipments, materials or technology. Colloquially referred to as the “London Club” due to a series of meetings in London from 1975 to 1978, the confabulations resulted in agreements on the guidelines for export; these were published as the Zangger List and the Trigger List by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Listed items could only be exported to non-nuclear states if certain IAEA safeguards were agreed to or if exceptional circumstances relating to safety existed.

The Trigger List remained unchanged until 1991, although the Zangger List was regularly updated. The non-revelations about the Iraqi weapons programme following the first Gulf War led to a tightening of the export of so-called dual-use equipment. At the first meeting since 1978, held at The Hague in March 1991, the participating governments agreed to changes, which were published as the Dual-use List in 1992. Since then a regular series of plenary meetings take place and the lists are periodically updated.

In the wake of the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement, the NSG gave a clean waiver to India on September 6, 2008 that allowed the US and other NSG countries to export nuclear materials to India essentially for civilian and peaceful purposes. That effectively paved the way for operationalising the agreement.

The waiver came about primarily because India has an impeccable record of non-proliferation. It was considered to be a responsible emerging power. At that point in time, too, there were naysayers and recalcitrants, but the then US President, George Bush, did the heavy lifting, including calling up the Chinese President to ensure that no one stood in the way of consensus.

What has changed between then and now is that a number of NSG members have expressed reservations about giving India membership. China, of course, has been most vocal and vociferous in leading the pack.

The argument being put forth is that there is a distinction between a waiver and membership and therefore a criterion needs to be formulated. How to deal with non-signatories to the NPT may be a cogent reason, but, as is the case with international politics, most such rationalisation is filtered through the prism of national self-interest of the member states.

It is here that India’s failure becomes starker. After creating all that hype and hoopla over the past one month, including visits to Switzerland and Mexico by the Prime Minister and personal entreaties to Chinese President Xi Jingping, the entire effort has all but come to zilch.

Contrast this with 2008 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not stir out of New Delhi to lobby for the waiver but used his acute understanding of international affairs to dismantle the entire architecture of nuclear apartheid that had been put in place after “Smiling Buddha”, as the 1974 peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) by India was codenamed.

A system created three decades ago as an angry reaction to India’s assertion of strategic autonomy was skillfully demolished by taking on both belligerents outside and inside, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which had moved a no-confidence motion in Parliament accusing the then United Progressive Alliance government of selling out India’s national interest.

All that the current Prime Minister and his foreign policy team had to do was to take that process forward, but they faltered. The reason is not very difficult to discern — the National Democratic Alliance government has failed to finesse the delicate trapeze act that is required to manage the relationship between the big powers, particularly United States qua China and independently with Russia.

China has been going through a strange metamorphosis because of its declining economic numbers. The legitimacy of the Communist Party from 1980 onwards rested on a very simple premise: We will be able to make the quality of your life better than that of the preceding generation. With growth declining, assertive nationalism has become a way of managing internal discontent. Given that India is also an emerging power, it suits China, both domestically and internationally, to ring-fence India into South Asia.

The NDA government also neglected to gauge the larger ramifications of the proposed $46 billion investment by China in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Not only does it broaden the strategic and military relationship between the two countries but also creates an automatic Chinese buy-in into Pakistani foreign policy objectives in South Asia.

The manner in which the NSG discourse has been structured with regard to the evolution of principles to deal with non-NPT countries has once again hyphenated India with Pakistan, a paradigm that the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement and the clean waiver had surmounted.

Moreover, even the response of Russia has been ambiguous — while they have been historically supportive they do not seem to be willing to walk that extra mile any longer. Even President Barack Obama did not go that extra stretch that his predecessor did despite America’s public pronouncements of support for India’s inclusion in the NSG.

Given that there was a domestic consensus on the NSG issue, unlike in 2008 when there were raucous allegations of a sell-out, it may just be worth Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s while to seriously reflect upon how they have got their long view of foreign relations from New Delhi all wrong.

The writer is a lawyer and a former Union minister. The views expressed are personal. Twitter handle @manishtewari