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Treaty with India only recognizes reality

Rocky Mountain News

Published October 3, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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The Senate has handed President Bush probably the last foreign policy victory of his presidency, easily approving, 86-13, a measure to end a 34-year ban on nuclear trade with India. The House had earlier approved it, 298-117.

As easy a sell as it was here, the agreement almost brought down the government of India because its prickly nationalist and communist parties insisted that its requirement that India's civilian nuclear program be open to international monitoring impinged on national sovereignty.

India has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has been banned from international nuclear trade since 1974 when it tested its first nuclear bomb. This agreement is de facto recognition of India as a nuclear power.

None of the sanctions of the last 34 years changed India's resolve to pursue a nuclear program - how could they, given the arms ambitions of its neighbor, Pakistan? - and no future sanctions are likely to be effective, either.

India last tested a weapon in 1998, and U.S. lawmakers have made clear that if it tests another one, the deal is off.

There is some danger that, as critics charge, other nations seeking nuclear weapons might take the deal as some kind of go-ahead. In other words, is the non-proliferation treaty dead? We hope not. But India is a stable democracy, an increasingly important U.S. trading partner and one with whom we have steadily improving relations after years of Indian resentment. The end to the nuclear trade ban essentially acknowledges the status quo.

And there is a pecuniary motive as well. India's booming economy is short of power and the country plans to spend $14 billion on nuclear reactors and equipment next year and perhaps $175 billion over the next 25. This could help sustain the U.S. nuclear industry until such time as our energy planners get over their fantasies that wind and solar panels can supply all of this nation's future power demands and realize that nuclear power is essential to any sensible national energy policy.

Bush has been pushing this agreement since the start of his second term. It's a victory he should savor.

Comments

  • October 6, 2008

    5:40 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    VVVV writes:

    So no mention of the reaction Pakistan may have to this news considering their long established cold war with India. Seeing as how we really need Pakistan's help to combat terrorism, is it really a victory to start angering them by chumming up to their enemy?