India, Front and Center
While all eyes were on the economy, the Senate made a rare, farsighted and bipartisan move, voting 86-13 to approve the deal lifting a ban on civilian nuclear trade with India that dates from New Delhi’s first nuclear test explosion in 1974. The House had approved it earlier by a more than 2 to 1 margin. The deal allows India access to technology for civilian nuclear power in return for UN inspections of some of its civilian nuclear facilities.
While all eyes were on the economy, the Senate made a rare, farsighted and bipartisan move, voting 86-13 to approve the deal lifting a ban on civilian nuclear trade with India that dates from New Delhi’s first nuclear test explosion in 1974. The House had approved it earlier by a more than 2 to 1 margin. The deal allows India access to technology for civilian nuclear power in return for UN inspections of some of its civilian nuclear facilities.
There are problems with the agreement – military facilities remain off limits to inspection; India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other countries (South Africa, Taiwan and Brazil) had to give up their weapons programs for the benefits of the NPT; the U.S.-relationship with Pakistan is damaged; and the inevitable complaint that it sets a bad example for dealing with North Korea and Iran.
Despite the flaws, the agreement is testimony to the understanding of President Bush and Congress that large, complicated, democratic, free-market India is on our side of the great divide of our time. And that it matters.
American relations with Pakistan are not in trouble because of India. The Pakistani government is ambivalent about al Qaeda within its borders and even if it seriously decides to tackle the radicalism that pervades various facets of national life, it isn’t clear that it would be able to do so successfully. The new, civilian government of Pakistan has hard choices to make. To the extent that they choose wisely, the United States should be ready to assist.
The cases of South Africa, Taiwan and Brazil are instructive – two of them can be said to be enormously better off without having nuclear weapons. The jury is out on Taiwan from the Taiwanese point of view.
To mention North Korea, Iran and India in the same sentence is to understand how silly the comparison is. The leadership of North Korea and Iran should be charged at the International Criminal Court – the first for engendering a famine that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people; the second for inciting genocide against the Jewish people. Both are corrupt and aggressive; neither should be trusted with so much as a bullet, let alone nuclear weapons capabilities. And neither is trusted.
India has moved from leadership of the “nonaligned” (read pro-Cold War Soviet) world to leadership in the emerging world. Investing in the health and education of its people, India has created an educated, democratic middle class of hundreds of millions of people, energetically participating in the global economy. As home to the second largest Muslim community in the world, India stands firmly against terrorism and Islamic radicalism. India is “one of us” in the broadest sense of the liberal, modern world.
Democracy matters – the nature of society tells you how a country is likely to behave. We believe India is unlikely to make us sorry that the President and Congress assisted in its pursuit of nuclear energy by removing the laws of a different era and a different India.