Regional fallout of Indo-US nuclear deal

US President George W. Bush has signed the Henry J. Hyde US-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006. A week earlier the US Congress had completed all legislative stages in its enactment with overwhelming majority.

In its final stages, the text underwent small changes that enable the two contracting states to offer interpretations that meet concerns voiced in both the countries since their eventful agreement of July 18, 2005.

What is steering the nuclear deal through parliamentary procedures is the tacit agreement that in the emerging global strategic environment both nations should act as pillars of a world order presided over by the United States.

Before one turns to regional responses to the new US law which opens up substantial nuclear commerce with India, still a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), a brief reference may be made to the controversies about it.

In the US and elsewhere, opposition came from the anti-proliferation lobby on the ground that country-specific exemptions from the existing laws would weaken the non-proliferation regime and that members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group would be encouraged to open their taps to other potential clients.

Instead of creating loopholes for India, Washington, it was argued, should strengthen "norms" and deny arrangements which would enable the recipient country - in this case, India - to enhance and enlarge its nuclear arsenal.

In India, the most vociferous opposition came from political circles anxious to guard India's sovereignty in conducting its nuclear affairs and from nuclear hawks who believe the agreement curtails India's freedom to develop nuclear arms to levels the world situation may require.

In particular, the nuclear community was apprehensive it would prevent India from carrying out further nuclear tests. Arguing that economic power has always been trumped by decisive military technology and capability, an Indian hawk has observed that "the military card that cannot be beaten today is the triad of frightening megaton thermonuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear-powered submarines, which has to be secured on a war footing".

The logic of this route to India's major power status is belied by the fate of the Soviet Union which possessed all the elements of this so-called triad of decisive power.

The view from the neighbouring nuclear-capable Pakistan is that the agreement approved by Bush is discriminatory and that it may be instrumental in fuelling an arms race in the region.

There is a special focus on eight Indian facilities that will be outside the scope of safeguards and inspections and on the likely diversion of its free fissile material to the manufacture of up to 50 additional nuclear war heads annually.

Pakistan is well advanced in nuclear technology and any softening of the suppliers' restrictions should help it even in its efforts to expand the nuclear base, even if the US continues to reject its pleas for cooperation similar to that inscribed in the Hyde Act.

Ambitious plans

In South Asia , faith in nuclear deterrence is translating into more ambitious plans to expand nuclear-capable delivery systems, ie high precision intermediate-range missiles.

India may even aspire to inter-continental range because the strategic area envisioned by its security experts includes all parts of China and also because of the inevitable interface between its Space programme and the development of long-range missiles.

Paradoxically, progress in delivery systems may persuade Pakistan to limit its arsenal of war heads to a minimum. It would be ruinous for Pakistan to seek a nuclear balance with India in imitation of the outmoded doctrines of US-Soviet Cold War.

Since untold millennia, this great sub-continent has had a geographical unity that makes all talk of a second strike capability superfluous. A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan is estimated to leave a hundred million dead in a matter of days. Pakistan can have its nuclear deterrence but there is no additional benefit in pegging it above the absolute minimum.

It is unrealistic to expect Iran to ignore the nuclear capability of its friends, India and Pakistan, or its foes, particularly Israel. Its nuclear programme is probably short of weaponisation capability by five years but the rapid strides made by it in intermediate-range missiles is widely interpreted as indicative of nuclear ambitions.

It is also idle to think that the neighbouring Arab states would forego knowledge of nuclear technology for ever. Trends in the region and elsewhere in the world suggest that developments in South Asia are enhancing interest in the acquisition of nuclear know-how.

It has been claimed that the Indo-US deal would bring India within the parameters of NPT without New Delhi signing it. The fact of the matter is that it has added to the existing disarray in the international non-proliferation regimes. South Asian nuclear progress is one of the contributory factors in transforming the chill in the Geneva-based disarmament talks into permafrost.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.