D K Kotwal
It is well said that failure is a stepping stone towards a success. India got a defeat at the hands of its sworn and arch bête noire once more .It had been a stumbling bloc in thepast many a time for India and used its veto power against it. China blocked Indians attempts at the UN to ban Jaish e Mohammed chief Mohammad Azar, being Pathankot attack his brain child. Unambiguously it can be said that India miserably failed to read and assess the psyche and mood of the opposing countries especially that of China.
The score appears to have evened out for India in its multi-year project of gaining admission to four elite global non-proliferation clubs, with one success and one failure coming within a span of a single week. On Monday, India officially entered the 34-member MTCR after years spent in aligning its export controls with the Regime’s. In the coming years, this membership of a multilateral export control club is likely to yield a rich harvest of state-of-the art technologies for ballistic missiles and drone systems, including those that are in theory nuclear-capable. Beijing’s application to join the MTCR has been gathering dust for years; hints from the Ministry of External Affairs suggest that New Delhi may use this as a bargaining chip to win backing for its NSG position. But NSG fiasco would need a detailed analysis as I have done in the following paragraphs:
India did not pay heed towards the China’s media blowing the trumpet of criticism and of not pushing India’s entry into NSG, well in advance to Seoul plenary session. Commentary in a Chinese daily said that India’s admission into NSG would ‘jeopardise” China’s national interest, touch a raw nerve in Pakistan and nuclear balance between India and Pakistan could be broken . It further viewed that India’s admission into NSG could shake strategic balance in South Asia and stability in the entire Asia – Pacific region. However an article in the state run Global times said China could support India’s inclusion in the 48 member nuclear club if it “played for rules”. Written by Fu Xiaoquang research fellow with the state run think tank China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the article a second in as many days by the same daily highlighted China’s strident and vocal opposition to India’s entry into NSG and concerns that its ally Pakistan will be left behind because entry into the NSG will make India a legitimate power.
However many positives and takeaways have been churned out in the plenary session at Seoul, (a) India has scored a big win in garning support from its NSG membership from around forty countries because Washington has started to treat Delhi as part of the US alliance. (b) It was only a few years ago that Modi could not even get a US visa but now he has visited the US more often than any other country during his two years in the office. The US recognized New Delhi as ‘a major defense partner’ during Modi’s recent visit the White House has given India the treatment of a US military ally. (c) India as a country that has neither signed the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapon nor the comprehensive Nuclear- test-Ban treaty and is not yet technically qualified for accession into the NSG. It did not sign the non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons because of its principled stand against its discriminatory nature because it made 5 legitimate nuclear powers which are also the permanent members – of the security council with veto. The India’s forceful claim for entry into NSG is its clean track record of not proliferating Nuclear technology and faithfully following the guidelines of NSG even if it is not its member. Whereas Pakistan clandestinely supplied nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, North Korea etc . Beijing’s own nuclear power co-operation with Islamabad in supplying a number of reactors, including two 1100 mw reactors currently under construction in Karachi is also under the shadow of a doubt . (d) It also provides useful marker on why the foreign policy establishment fumbled so miserably? (e) The NSG saga exposed that individual personalized diplomacy has severe limits.
It is a tangible and undeniable fact that the nation was certainly let down at the plenary NSG session in Seoul. Thanks to Almighty for Brexit. It helped to take some attention of fiasco in Seoul when India’s desperate bid to get into the NSG suffered a jolt. What makes it even more embarrassing for the government is that there is a double failure. First, a rebuff at the diplomatic level, where the foreign secretary’s rushing off to Seoul to save mission at the political level, prime minister’s meeting of China Premier met a drastic failure. This failure was avoidable. Any old timer could have told the Modi establishment to do the smart diplomatic home work before shouting about it from roof tops. Politically one wonders who had advised Modi to invest its personal prestige to the extent of raising the issue with the Chinese president. In the case of the NSG failure, India messed up at both the fronts and pretty badly. China had not to change its policy upon which they had done a lot of home work at the eleventh hour. At this point India’s approach seems some what hollow and haphazard devoid of any merit.
The NSG failure is not a side show it calls attention to our flawed US centric foreign policy. Pakistan has cause to celebrate because it desperately blocked Indian accession to NSG through China. Foreign affairs advisor of Pakistan Mr. Sartaj Aziz made a few phone calls to remind select world capitals to voice their opinions at the Seoul plenary. Interestingly Kazakhstan which was once denuclearized and frog-marched in to the NPT was also on Aziz’s list. If the US is sincere in supporting India’s NSG membership, it should not cast its eyes on India’s nuclear market but should solve India’s nuclear status first so as to eradicate the contradictions existing between India and the existing international nuclear non-proliferation mechanism as it has done in 2008 waiver under the regime of President George Bush.
Noted scientist and atomic commission (AEC) member Mr. Srinivasan said that center’s push to join NSG was unnecessary, unwarranted and ill-advised.” The AEC, a body under the department of atomic energy(DAE) would have advised the government to desist from such a move had it been consulted,” said he. He further says that unnecessarily India made a hype about the admission in to the NSG because 2008 waiver was already enabling us to have nuclear trade with nuclear advanced countries and we have already agreements with Russia, France and the US for reactor projects and uranium —buying agreement with Kazakhstan, Canada mad Australia. The Padma Bhushan Awardee said failure to get in to NSG could not have an adverse impact on India’s nuclear programs as New Delhi has its own capability for designing and building reactors and fuel manufacturing, reprocessing and so on. He also found faults with the media’s description of the NSG as an ‘elite group’. How can a 48 member NSG be an elite group? It got members like New Zealand and Ireland—– all these people have got no nuclear program.
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