India, USA, Asia, nucleare,
Iran
Frederick Kempe
Bush to India
[N.d.R.]Bush pronto mettere da parte il Trattato di Non
Proliferazione Nucleare per stabilire alleanza nucleare con India per far diventare India "partner" strategico di
USA
(e controbilanciare Cina).
E’ anche rinuncia di Bush
all’unilateralismo dopo la "lezione irachena".
Tesi Frederick Kempe, redattore WSJ:
- Bush sta puntando le sue carte sull’India quale “partner
globale” di USA - nel mondo multipolare che sembra imporsi dopo il
periodo di incontrastato predominio USA post-1990 (USA, UE, Russia, Cina,
India), - e dopo la lezione irachena: il momento unipolare
americano se ne sta andando rapidamente. - Mentre Cina resta una variabile fuori controllo, l’India
spiccherebbe come “il più naturale partner potenziale degli USA” per la sua
“democrazia laica multietnica alimentata da un’economia di mercato in crescita
e minacciata dal terrorismo islamico”. - Bush è pronto a concedere all’India di entrare nel club
degli Stati nucleari, mettendo fine al suo status di fuorilegge e aprendole
il commercio nucleare, in cambio della disponibilità dell’India a separare
il nucleare civile da quello militare e a sottomettere il civile alle ispezioni
IAEA. - L’accordo di massima di luglio ha provocato contraccolpi in
USA, dove i leader del Congresso, tagliati fuori dall’accordo, dicono che si
opporranno ad accordi che mettano nel civile meno dei due terzi dei 22 impianti
nucleari indiani. - In India il complesso nucleare sarebbe disposto a
considerare civili solo due impianti, dato che la maggior parte ha uso duale.
Sostiene che la separazione avrebbe alti costi e richiederebbe tempi lunghi. - Indiani chiedono inoltre la possibilità di riclassificare
come militari impianti civili in caso di emergenze. - I partiti comunisti indiani, nella coalizione di governo, si
oppongono all’avvicinamento agli USA. - India avrebbe 80 bombe, e materiale fissile per altre 2mila.
- Singh (premier) avrebbe consegnato ad USA una bozza che
esclude dalle ispezioni 14 impianti, tra cui un reattore veloce che entrerà in
funzione nel 2007 con grande capacità di produzione di materiale fissile adatto
per bombe. - All’interno dell’accordo USA-India sarebbero anche forniture
di F-16 e F-18 e una missione spaziale comune. - Per non irritare India USA rinuncerebbero a condizionare gli
accordi al comportamento dell’India su altri fronti, come l’Iran (India ha
confermato l’accordo sul gas con l’Iran), puntando sulla convergenza di
interessi che spingerebbe l’India a fianco di USA.
February 28, 2006
Perhaps problems were inevitable ahead of
President Bush’s trip to India this week, based as it was on the president’s
bold wager on geopolitical re-engineering over existing international
agreements.
Mr. Bush is making a reasonable bet he has
more to gain through embracing the world’s most populous democracy as a global
partner in his fight against tyranny and terrorism than he has to lose from
abandoning three decades of nuclear nonproliferation doctrine that did little
to contain India’s nuclear ambitions.
The words "Bush to India" don’t
roll off the tongue with quite the alacrity as "Nixon to China," the
1972 presidential trip that reopened relations with the Middle Kingdom. Yet
U.S. officials say the trip crowns what is becoming the most important strategic
initiative of the president’s second term. With Mr. Bush’s place in history
under assault in Iraq, India has become a more promising place to take a stab
at legacy.
Mr. Bush is attempting nothing less than
the reconfiguring of the global chessboard from the period of uncontested U.S.
global leadership after 1990 to the messier, multipolar world that’s emerging
with China and India joining the European Union, Russia and the U.S. as major
powers. Iraq has had many lessons, not the least of which is that the unipolar
American moment is quickly passing.
The president correctly reckons that while
China remains a wild card and Europe may decline, India stands out as the most
natural potential U.S. partner with its multiethnic secular democracy fueled by
a growing market economy and threatened by Islamist terrorism.
Yet history isn’t coming easily.
Indian and U.S. negotiators in past days have
worked to clear away obstacles that had made it impossible for months to fill
in the details for the landmark nuclear agreement the president reached with
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last July in Washington. The fact some deal may
yet get done, against considerable opposition from both sides’ nuclear
establishments and India’s political left, is a measure of how much Mr. Bush is
investing in the relationship.
Devilish Details
What Mr. Bush promised in July was to give
India virtual membership in the club of recognized nuclear-weapons states
created by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ending its outlaw status and
opening access to nuclear commerce. India agreed in return to abide by rules
that require it to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and
"voluntarily" make the civilian plants subject to intrusive
International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.
Strategists celebrated the coming together of
the world’s two largest democracies, ending decades of mutual distrust during
which India was a Soviet friend and leader of the anti-American nonaligned
movement. But nuclear establishments on both sides dug in their heels. The
agreement has triggered a political crisis for Mr. Singh, whose government
depends on a bloc of communist parties that viciously opposes any strategic
alignment with Washington.
The Indian nuclear community, accustomed
to operating under secrecy, wanted to strictly limit how many of its 22
facilities, including those under construction, would be deemed civilian, at
first offering up only two, says a person familiar
with the matter. (India is believed to have some 80 nuclear weapons already
and sufficient fissile material for 2,000 more.) They charged that American
negotiators were trying to cap what they could produce, impairing their ability
to deter nuclear Pakistan or maintain a hedge against nuclear China.
A person familiar with the matter says U.S.
congressional leaders, who were angry they weren’t consulted by Mr. Bush on
the original deal, would oppose any agreement that didn’t have India
declaring at least two-thirds of its plants civilian. Indian press reports
say that Prime Minister Singh has given the U.S. his draft of a nuclear
separation plan that would put 14, or some 64%, of the 22 plants under
safeguards. U.S. proliferation experts will bristle particularly at India’s
apparent omission of a fast-breeder reactor due to go into operation in 2007
that will be a particularly rich source of weapons grade material. U.S.
opponents fear the deal could endanger the fragile U.S. relationship with
Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terror, and fuel a regional arms race
that also will involve China.
Bush administration officials argue the
dangers are greater in failing to seize the opportunity to embrace India.
To gain that prize, Mr. Bush — never afraid
to challenge established regimes — wasn’t about to let the India’s renegade
status under the U.S. 1978 Non-Proliferation Act stand in his way. In July, he also
reached agreement with Mr. Singh on other initiatives, ranging from trade to
military cooperation. The U.S. could soon be selling India F-16 and F-18
fighter jets and planning a joint space mission.
Yet the nuclear deal is the key that unlocks
the broader relationship.
India’s nuclear establishment argues that
separating civilian and military facilities is costly, complex and
time-consuming because many of India’s plants are dual use. Negotiating a deal has been complicated further because Indian
experts hadn’t debated sufficiently among themselves how many weapons were
enough for India’s defense purposes. Without having decided that, it was
difficult for them to determine what capacity to set aside for military use.
A person familiar with the matter says one
possible deal would give India more time, perhaps until 2010, to make the
military-civilian separation but in exchange would require India to keep
fewer plants for military purposes. The Indians also want the right to
reclassify facilities as military should security threats escalate.
India as Partner
Even if the deal gets done, it’s by no means
certain the U.S. will get the strategic partner it wants. While Mr. Bush is
looking for an ally to spread democracy and fight tyranny, India regards the
Bush trip more as blessing of its emergence as one of the world’s great powers.
India encouraged Washington’s hopes recently
by joining the vote to report Iran’s nuclear program to the United Nations
Security Council. Yet, at the same time, it demonstrated its independence
from Washington by reconfirming a multibillion-dollar natural-gas deal with
Iran that would deepen its dependence on a country, Indian officials remind
their American counterparts, with which it has a 4,000 year history.
The Bush administration thus far has been
careful not to push India faster than the market will bear, either on Iran or
the nuclear agreement, betting that common interests over time will bring the
two countries closer. Trade expanded some 25% in
each of the past two years, some 2.5 million people of Indian extraction live
in the U.S. (and make up its best-educated and most affluent minority), and
the Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed Indians, of all major countries, to
be the most positively inclined toward Americans, with 71% viewing them
favorably.
The president still has political minefields
to negotiate in India, but with some skill this geopolitical gamble can pay
off.