Asia Centre

In their respective articles, Tian Jingmei and Zhao Qinghai analyse the prospects and influence of the agreement between America and India on civilian nuclear cooperation.

A comparison between their thinking essentially reveals four points of convergence which express the caution of the Chinese defence community vis-à-vis this bilateral agreement, with its many multilateral consequences. By omitting from their reflection two important areas of the problem, they reveal a certain difficulty on China's part in formulating its position, including its official position, on the subject of the agreement. The silence in Beijing which followed the American and Indian announcements tends to confirm this.

The global framework of the agreement

On July 18 2005, Washington and New Delhi announced that they were going to begin global civilian nuclear cooperation. An agreement was reached on March 2 2006, and in July 2006 the US House of Representatives began an amendment procedure which is likely to last some time still.

In return, India must proceed with a separation of its civilian and military programmes, submit the former to the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sign the latter's additional protocol, maintain its moratorium on nuclear tests and (continue to) maintain non-proliferation by meeting the criteria of the NSG and of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

Four points of convergence

India is winning more than it is losing. Its commitments are in fact more symbolic than real, since they are not legally binding (according to Tian Jingmei). Some are even of a cosmetic nature: the law on the control of exports is simply India's response to the demands made by Resolution 1540 passed by the UN Security Council in April 2004, and should not therefore be credited to this agreement. Moreover, there are substantial contradictions to be found in the Indian concessions: thus the support shown by Delhi for a future treaty banning the production of fissionable material contradicts the continuation of its production in India. Finally, the agreement as it is at present envisaged will be easy to circumvent and even to divert. Indeed, since India has the possibility of reclassifying any nuclear facility in the civilian or military domain, it will be easy for her to recycle in the arms circuit any nuclear fuel conceded under the agreement[1].

Delhi's objectives are not subjected to any very penetrating analysis, since they seem so commonplace: ending its "nuclear isolation" (核独立), diversifying its energy sources, rationalisating its nuclear generating facilities and loosening the constraints caused by its limited urianium resources.

Tian Jingmei concedes nonetheless that this is unprecedented progress where India is concerned. But when his arguments are considered, he finally merely underlines what Zhao Qinghai says (quoting Condoleezza Rice) : it is no doubt also because Washington's Indian policy had previously been a total failure.

The United States are losing more than they are winning. Not in the sense of a zero sum game, where India's gain would be their loss, but because of their global security interests. This calculation subordinates profit and loss to the possible effects of this agreement on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and on the predictable competition which will affect the Indian nuclear market. On the one hand — and this is the common basis of both articles — the structure of the NPT is seriously shaken by the agreement; on the other, the sale of two nuclear reactors to India is not sufficient to justify this agreement (it is even "negligible" says Zhao Qinghai, quoting former President Jimmy Carter). Both authors note that the United States has never had the intention of slowing the development of India's nuclear arsenal, and both quote American Secretary of State Nick Burns[2]. Thus emerges the question of American interest in an agreement which renounces the principles previously preached by Washington[3]. Zhao Qinghai skilfully quotes American experts[4] referring to the shadow of a desire for the containment of China, without restricting himself to this aspect of motivations in Washington:  also reviewed are aims linked to non-proliferation (the Treaty is deadlocked at present), to energy (reducing India's fossil fuel needs) and to the economy (nuclear fuel and experts to be placed).

A long process, but a favourable trend

Numerous obstacles lie in the way of the realisation of the agreement, but it is enjoying increasing support. Congress was initially careful to maintain control to the end of the legislative process by denying the Bush Administration automatic acceptance of the agreement ninety days after it was signed. The agreement thus consists of a "very very delicate" balance, constrained, controversial, and lengthy. American non-proliferation experts consider it an unfortunate precedent and perceive a possible "chain reaction" which would lead to a loss of security for the United States.

The alternating work characteristic of the American checks and balances system, which is the object of very detailed analysis from Zhao Qinghai, will impose this concern on the President to the end. However, a tougher text providing for suspension of the agreement in the event of the slightest deviation on India's part risks discouraging the investment of private capital. Moreover, new conditions[5] imposed in extremis by Congress would be certain to antagonize India, since the most hardline elements among Indian nationalists already fear alignment with Washington.

A similar balance must be struck in reaching agreemeny with the IAEA. While the latter has welcomed the US-India project, more guarantees tailored to India's particular situation remain to be found and negotiated.

The members of the NSG will also have to be convinced, one by one. While the UK, France and Russia[6] already support the agreement, other states among the forty members are more reticent and will take time to convince.

All these brakes do not threaten the process itself, however. Both Tian and Zhao emphasise that time is on its side: the supporters of the agreement are rallying the initially undecided, while opponents are increasingly isolated.

Less predictable consequences for the region than for the NPT

Both authors agree in their assessment of the haze of danger the agreement spreads over South Asia. Starting from the principle (and quoting Islamabad) that Pakistan will not fail to react, they judge that the agreement will perhaps lead to an arms race, before adding — in Tian Jingmei's case — that in any case there will inevitably be regrettable consequences on subregional stability. This point of view, which could be summarised as "maybe not, but certainly", underlines the impossibility of imagining any outcome other than the worsening of the nuclear antagonism between India and Pakistan. No other possibility is envisaged by Tian or Zhao, who note the American refusal to accord the same treatment to Pakistan as to India.

However, certainty returns on the subject of the global consequences on the NPT. Both writers once again quote Nick Burns, who has justified the difference in the treatment given to India, Iran and North Korea by the difference in the responsibility of their international behaviour, and object that visible "discrimination" will have a negative effect on global support for the United States. Tian Jingmei considers that, far from bringing India closer to the mainstream of the international treaty, as Washington has claimed, the agreement will on the contrary distance several states from it, thus betraying the principles and the contract[7] which underlie the NPT (核不扩散条约的基本原则和交易). Moreover, Zhao Qinghai stipulates that it is untrue to say that India avoids proliferation[8].

The status of a nuclear power without the obligations, the status of a non-nuclear power without the constraints

India is thus going to obtain all the advantages of a nuclear power without signing the NPT and without any commitment to working in good faith towards gradual nuclear disarmament. The flexibility conceded to it in the separation of its two applications guarantees that it will not run short of fuel or fissile material. As a non-nuclear power (in the meaning of the NPT), it has even more exorbitant privileges since it is now a de facto nuclear power. This situation is untenable in the long term, and Zhao predicts that the barrier between the five nuclear powers and the three threshold states will quickly vanish. This can only be the death warrant of the legal structure based on the separation between nuclear and non-nuclear powers. This dynamic seems to be the one which worries both writers the most, since as Zhao Qinghai notes, there is little likelihood of India becoming a pawn in American global strategy.

What nobody talks about

The position of China is singularly absent from the remarks made by Tian Jingmei and Zhao Qinghai. One could have expected it to be dealt with, in particular in terms of dissuasion, nuclear trade, the NPT, China's security interests, etc. While it seems to be impossible for a Chinese writer to make the slightest reference to the situation of effective dissuasion between China and India, it is hinted at from the angle of American plans aimed at manipulating the strategic balance between the two countries. However, on all the other subjects listed above, there is nothing which might leave a trace of Beijing's position.

The insoluble problem of a world nuclear order is set aside in favour of criticism of India's position of rejection of the NPT. This is to overlook the fact that India cannot sign up to the NPT either as a nuclear power or as a non-nuclear power (its denuclearisation does not seem to be a possibility to Tian or Zhao) and that there is no other category. If the agreement threatens the world nuclear order, the blame should be laid on the United States, which, though a party to the NPT, is offering to contravene it.