On August 17, two days after India welcomed its 60th year of independence, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh stood up in the upper house of parliament to defend what could become the most controversial foreign policy initiative that his Congress Party-led government has taken. Hemmed in by critics from the left, the left-wing parties within his coalition, and the right, the main Bharatiya Janata opposition party, Singh quoted the Italian Renaissance statesman Niccolo Machiavelli in an emotively charged speech: “There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
At the centre of the debate is a new agreement on civilian nuclear energy cooperation between the United States and India that would for the first time allow the US to ship nuclear fuel and technology to a country that has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Just weeks earlier, on July 26, the US House of Representatives voted 359 to 68 to approve the deal with India, which, as the New York Times put it, is a “major victory for the Bush administration, which argued that nurturing India as an ally outweighed concerns that the agreement would free more nuclear material for India to use for the manufacture of nuclear weapons”.
In New Delhi, however, Prime Minister Singh faced his critics, who denounced the deal as the surrender of Indian sovereignty to determine its foreign policy and strategic nuclear programme. Their concern related as much to the “break from the past”, of shifting from India’s non-aligned country status to one that closely aligns itself to American strategic interests, as to the particular strictures the agreement would place on India’s strategic defence programme. The deal hinges on separating the Indian civilian and military nuclear programme to the satisfaction of the US Congress and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, placing some of its nuclear power reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and on India’s commitment to a unilateral moratorium on future nuclear tests.
Eloquence
Apart from his political detractors, Singh has had to meet and persuade top Indian scientists from the nuclear establishment who publicly voiced their concerns. In his impassioned speech in parliament, he said his government would walk away from the Indo-US nuclear deal if its final form deviated from the parameters set by the July 18, 2005 joint statement (between President Bush and Prime Minister Singh) and the agreed separation plan. After Singh’s speech, the left-wing parties said their concerns had been addressed, and the political cloud over Singh’s government appeared to have passed.
However, several other challenges to the agreement remain. The House and Senate have both passed different bills incorporating new conditions that were not part of the original agreement. It now awaits a full vote by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee. India must also negotiate a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency before the US Congress finally clears the nuclear agreement. India has said that the agreement will not come into effect unless the US and the Nuclear Suppliers Group lift restrictions (on the supply of nuclear fuel and technology) they have placed on India.
Sensitive to the political fallout of the deal, the Indian government at first packaged it as an agreement on energy, one that would provide India’s energy-starved economy with fuel to grow. Only in recent months, as the intense debates in the US Congress progressed, did the full strategic implications of the deal drive home.
Strategic interests
“The deal has always been about nuclear energy, but it is also about (although not publicly admitted by governments on both sides) non-proliferation,” says Stephen Cohen, senior fellow at Washington-based Brookings Institution and an expert in south Asian affairs. In his remarks to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April, Cohen said, “The deal enhances America’s strategic interests, and if properly implemented, it will advance, not retard, American non-proliferation objectives.” Having initially described the agreement as “a deal too far”, Cohen told Emerging Markets in August that he now gives it a 50-50 chance of going through. “I would not be surprised to see these debates go on for a few more months, and they may lead to further changes in the agreement, but one that will have broad political consensus in both countries,” he said.
In a detailed analysis of the nuclear energy deal, Arun Shourie, a former minister in the previous Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, a government under which India conducted nuclear tests in 1998, points out provisions in both the House and Senate bills which bind the US president to report to Congress about India’s compliance with nuclear weapons non-proliferation. Another provision requires that the US administration ensures that India will stop production of fissile material for nuclear weapons unilaterally or as a signatory to a multilateral treaty.
Confidence
Asked at a press conference in Kolkatta in early August about how the US intended to address the concerns raised in India about the deal, Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs, said no judgment can be made unless the final legislation emerges. “The Senate still has to deal with the issue, there [are] a few things in the Senate bill that we don’t like … we’ll try to change. And then it goes to conference between the two bodies so that they can work out the final piece of legislation that they can pass. I am pretty confident, I am very confident that the legislation that is finally passed by our Congress will allow us to implement the deal the way
it was signed and the way it was agreed between Prime Minister Singh and President Bush,” he said.
The legislative process in the US binds the president to commitments made to Congress, while in India the power to enter into international agreements and treaties rests solely with the executive. However, no Indian prime minister could risk reneging on the sort of commitments Singh has made to parliament without inviting, at the very least, a vote of no confidence from the house. Singh clearly has no intention of going that way. In his reply to the debate in the lower house of parliament on August 24, Singh ruled out a bilateral comprehensive test ban treaty and said, “If we require [nuclear] tests, we have the sovereign right to decide on this.”
So far Singh has not conceded to the opposition’s demand for passing a resolution on the deal in parliament. Singh’s defence of the deal is about defending his government’s constitutional right to conduct India’s foreign policy, according to C Raja Mohan, editor of strategic affairs on Indian Express, an Indian daily. “All those familiar with the history of Indian foreign policy are aware that parliamentary interventions on sensitive diplomatic issues have had terrible consequences,” he wrote in a recent article, citing the instance of a parliament resolution that demanded India recover every bit of territory occupied by China in the war between the two countries in the early sixties, allowing the government no room for negotiation.
Singh may have survived the political risks to his government for now, but Shourie warns that “to make the [India-US] deal the test and symbol of improved Indo-US relations is to inject the vinegar that will sour relations again.”