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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Canada

A World Shaped by the Anglo Race

20 Sat May 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on A World Shaped by the Anglo Race

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Anglosphere, ANZUS, Australia, Britain, Canada, identity, Iraq, New Zealand, race, Srdjan Vucetic, Suez Crisis, United States, Venezuela

AnglosphereVucetic, Srdjan. The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 272 pp.

It has become increasingly difficult since World War II to study race in international relations. After the excesses by Nazi Germany, most Western officials were shamed into at least keeping their thoughts on racial characteristics private. This is not to say that the problem of race in international relations was solved, but, like sex in Victorian England, became something that was not mentioned in polite company. However, there has been a fair amount of scholarship recently that has reintroduced race as a method of analysis in diplomacy with interesting results. In The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of Racialized Identity in International Relations, Srdjan Vucetic takes a look at the most enduring and perhaps only genuinely special relationship in international relations, primarily that between the United States and Britain but also with Australia, Canada, and New Zealand thrown into the mix as junior partners. Vucetic’s contention is that the bond between the Anglo nations of the world was forged not out of realpolitik but along racial lines in the late 19th century. Over the next century, these bonds would be tested by evolving values of state, nation, empire, and liberalism.

It was an English historian and diplomat Edward Carr who wrote in 1939 that the Anglos were consummate international hypocrites, bent on spreading their forms of politics under the guise of morality and neutrality. Vucetic explores this thought through several crises – Venezuela in 1895 and 1902, the Pacific Pact in 1951 binding the United States to the security of the far-flung former British possessions of Australia and New Zealand, the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Vietnam War, and the build up to the Second Gulf War in 2003. In each case, the author finds compelling reasons for the Anglo powers not to have sided with each other as they did and suggests that their behaviour was brought about by a feeling of kinship.

By any yardstick of historical precedence, the United States was almost destined to become Britain’s rival if not enemy in the late 19th century. Yet, a rapprochement took place. The United States sought to secure the Western hemisphere for itself by repelling and expelling all foreign presence in the region. It moved against French, Russian, Danish, and Spanish possessions by coin or by Colt – except for the British. Washington never threatened the territories of its Anglo cousin in Canada, Newfoundland, or the West Indies. In the Venezuelan Crisis of 1895, for example, Venezuela claimed Essequibo and Guayana Esequiba from British Guyana. The United States forced Britain to abjure from the use of force and accept an arbitration (which awarded London 90 percent of the territory anyway). In 1902, the United States did not move against a blockade of Venezuela by Britain and other European powers for the failure to compensate for damages caused during the Venezuelan Civil War (1859-1863).

The general explanation preferred by many Liberals for US behaviour is democratic peace theory which posits that the behaviour of two democracies is always tempered by their institutions such that they never go to war. Realists, however, argue that London’s imperial commitments elsewhere around the globe and distance from the New World meant that it did not pursue a more muscular policy in 1895. Both overlook, however, the human element of diplomacy – the racial statements made by prominent figures on both sides of the Anglo Atlantic. Joseph Chamberlain and Arthur Balfour, for example, who had long called for a “race alliance” between the two carriers of liberal modernity, declared war between America and Britain to be “unnatural,” “fratricidal,” a “horror,” and a “crime against the laws of God and man.” Archibald Primrose and Lewis Harcourt, members of the Opposition, agreed that war must be avoided at all costs. This sentiment was reciprocated on the other side of the Atlantic – Secretary of State Thomas Bayard, for example, asked why “two trustees of civilisation should fight over the mongrel state of Venezuela.”

During the Second Boer War in 1899, the United States stayed neutral and its secretary of state John Hays argued that the “fight of England is the fight of civilisation and progress and all our interests are bound up in her success.” Washington’s neutrality was seen as repayment or gratitude for British neutrality during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Even one of America’s most preeminent strategic thinkers, Alfred Mahan, targeted Germany and Japan but not Britain when he made a case for a strong navy to counterbalance the influence of the United States’ rivals in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. In discussions of foreign policy, it is often forgotten that the 19th century was an era in which race mattered immensely. The American Civil War had ended barely a generation ago and immigration was strictly controlled in favour of Anglo Saxons. It is not clear why international relations scholars would assume, then, that their domain remained unaffected by this prejudice.

There were, at the same time, perhaps linguistic and religious cleavages with other world powers. The French were an Other because of their Catholicism and the Germans were the impulsive and brutal Teutonic Other. The Anglosphere was thus imagined as a largely white, English-speaking Protestant federation. Such distinction is clear from how the American media, for example, differentiated the German bombardment of San Carlos and the British role in the flattening of Puerto Cabello during the Second Venezuelan Crisis. The former was uncivilised and disproportionate while the other was judicious and restrained. Similarly, the expansion of German imperial domains was seen as threatening to US security interests while Britain continued to add to her colonies without much comment from the United States. Thus, as political scientist Daniel Deudney provocatively states, “the most important and successful interstate alliance of the twentieth century is actually a type of non-state national unification,” one that did not officially achieve even a customs union let alone a dissolution of borders or single polity.

The New Zealand historian James Belich has an interesting observation about the histories of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand independent states: no one knows when they truly began. In 1950, the Australasian territories were more British than independent and the people saw themselves as “neo-Britains” or “better-Britains.” They made sure to always distinguish themselves as part of the Old Commonwealth, the real or original community that included Canada and South Africa while the New Commonwealth comprised of India, Ceylon, and Pakistan. In fact, the Anglosphere was not even stated in the English penal colonies but remained an implicit presence and was most visible during the early years of the Cold War.

In 1950, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald opined on the security arrangements against the Communist bloc by reminding Canberra that “our religious faith, our national philosophy, and our whole way of life are alien to Asia.” Rather than buttressing Asian democracies against communism, what the audience wanted was Canberra to join the Anglo-led West in containing all of Asia. Interestingly, the United States was not interested.

With the Soviet Union playing up the status of blacks and other non-white people in the United States, Washington could not afford to be publicly seen entering into white alliances around the globe. The racist undertones of Australian and New Zealand diplomats was sidestepped by John Foster Dulles by proposing a Pacific Ocean Pact in which ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) would prop up the isalnd states of Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia; the United States also refused British membership in this pact because it did not want to create a “closed club for Anglo Saxons,” Dulles explained to the British ambassador in March 1951. Australian and New Zealand officials were irate, pointing out that an alliance with the Philippines or Indonesia but not Britain was unthinkable and any move to turn Japan from an enemy to a firm ally overnight would have serious political ramifications domestically. As Vucetic shows, Manila’s request to be included was rebuffed by Canberra and Wellington on grounds of shortage of time and money. The final result was ANZUS – “about Asia, but not of Asia,” as historian David Lowe once described.

Vucetic argues that this showed that it was balance of race that was important to the Anglosphere, not balance of power. He writes, the fact that “Washington deliberated with its junior allies during the negotiations and lost, instead of simply overruling them, reveals the operation of collective identity in practice…it is a sense of shared identity that compels friends to accommodate each other, regardless of extant hierarchies and asymmetries.”

The influence of race on the foreign and security policies of the Anglosphere diminished over time but still remains dormant. Furthermore, the shared sense of brotherhood that was forged in the early 20th century is still with us to this day. The first sign of a shift came in Canada’s discomfiture at the British invasion of Egypt in 1956 to seize the Suez Canal. A liberal internationalism and the urge to distinguish itself from its southern cousin motivated Ottawa as was seen in its response to Vietnam as well. Australia, however, contributed boots on the ground in every major engagement the United States found itself in. Even in the Second Gulf War, while Britain and Australia saddled up to go to war in Iraq, New Zealand and Canada stayed on the sidelines though gave ambiguous blessings to their racial cousins by pontificating on the ethics of liberal interventions. Americans did not rename, however, as Vucetic points out, Canadian bacon as they did French fries.

The end of white-only immigration policies – in 1967 in Canada and in 1973 in Australia – catalysed the emergence of multiculturalism in the Anglosphere, especially as the number of non-white immigrants surpassed white immigration after the mid-1990s. Yet the reinvention of the Anglosphere as a community of (still English-speaking) liberal, democratic, capitalist states still carried undercurrents of a racial bond. The conflict in Afghanistan, wherein the Anglo powers bore the brunt of the warfare, fed the conservative and Hochromantik imagery of a small band of Anglo states preserving civilisation and standing against the tides of barbarians. Picking up from where Chamberlain and Churchill had left off, the British historian Robert Conquest proposed a political association of English-speaking states and American businessman James Bennett argued modern technology had finally allowed Anglophone societies to create a globe-spanning network commonwealth of liberal democracy, free trade, and labour movement. As Duncan Bell wrote in his 2007 The Idea of Greater Britain,

“Grandiose fantasies of Anglo-Saxon unity and superiority continue to exert their mesmeric power, shaping visions of a future world order, and drawing people back into the dangerous orbit of empire.”

There are several narratives of the rise of the English-speaking powers – rags-to-riches, revolution-to-rapprochement, autocracy-to-democracy, racism-to-multiculturalism, colony-to-nation, or imperial-war-to-international-law. The Anglosphere contains many of these frameworks, though undergirded by bonds between settler colonies – even penal ones – that have so far been overlooked. Vucetic notes that today, “all core Anglosphere states and societies define their liberal identities, not simply against present authoritarian Others but also against their own racial past. The mainstreaming of antiracism…has had a paradoxical effect of reifying racialized structures of meaning. Instead of reducing race talk, national census-style racial categories have contributed to it.”

Is it possible that Vucetic has been oversensitive to the race angle? After all, critics may point to the idea of a bill of rights, trial by jury, habeas corpus, the centrality of private property, a man’s word of honour and several other aspects of Anglo culture other than race and sect that bind together the people of the English-speaking first world countries. This, however, is a Churchillian view, premised on the belief that other cultures did not understand property rights or other social and political liberties. Furthermore, the notion that race and religion, two of the most powerful categories in the Age of Imperialism, did not play a role in foreign relations is rather farcical.

Talk of race these days is meant to get our hackles up. However, it is difficult to deny that there exists a sense of kinship that can be forged from racial, linguistic, ethnic, or religious identities. What makes the racial identity of the Anglosphere any more pernicious than the religious bonds of the ummah? Such natural commonality does not banish acrimony in relations but it does create a greater willingness to compromise and maintain ties. Wise or not, the inherent appeal of such bonds should be clear to most of us who meet a fellow countryman when travelling abroad.

Regardless of one’s views on the role of race and religion in foreign affairs, The Anglosphere is an intriguing book whose central thesis asks us to open our minds enough to consider yet another framework to international relations and alliance politics. Vucetic’s argument is not necessarily novel but charts new territory in the direction earlier scholars such as Michael Hunt and WIlliam Inboden had already suggested. In that, it stands firmly on the shoulders of excellent historical research and explores further the implications of what has only recently fallen out of fashion.

The Anglosphere is a valuable addition to foreign relations scholarship that is a must-read for anyone looking to equip their intellectual toolkit to the fullest.

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Nuclear in the Year of Modi

14 Thu May 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Nuclear in the Year of Modi

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Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, AHWR, Areva, Australia, Canada, Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, CLNDA, energy, Fast Breeder Reactor, FBR, Homi Bhabha, IFR, India, Integral Fast Reactor, L&T, Larsen & Toubro, Molten Salt Reactor, MSR, nuclear, nuclear liability, thorium, transparency, uranium

It has been a year now since Narendra Modi took office as prime minister of India and by all accounts, it has been a good year. In many ways, Modi’s victory is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency of the United States in 2008 – after eight years of what many saw as a misguided war in the Middle East and Central Asia, a significant number of Americans wanted change. Similarly, after ten years of anaemic Congress rule, Modi represented the hopes – perhaps unrealistically high – of millions of Indians.

For a candidate who had spoken at length about solar power during the election campaign, it was surprising to see Modi talk up nuclear energy once in office. In July 2014, Modi visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and was full of praise for India’s nuclear community. Declaring that nuclear power would be an essential part of India’s energy security, he assured the Department of Atomic Energy of his full support in the implementation of their expansion plans. To be sure, it will take a brave prime minister to belittle the nuclear programme – India takes much pride in its high-tech endeavours such as spacefaring and nuclear technology, especially given the prejudicial international environment in which it was developed. Yet such pride has not necessarily translated into support in the past – some projects are decades overdue and there was never a concerted push towards nuclear power in India.

A few important developments in the nuclear arena have taken place during Modi’s first year in office, some of them entirely of his making and others not so much. For example, India signed agreements with Australia and Canada for the supply of uranium for its safeguarded reactors. These negotiations had been ongoing since the previous regime and would have been concluded no matter who resided at Race Course Road. Similarly, work on Kudankulam, Kalpakkam, and general nuclear research would have likely continued under bureaucratic inertia.

Modi’s leadership has expedited other nuclear developments, principally the civil liability for nuclear suppliers. However clumsy the solution to the train wreck that is India’s nuclear civil liability law may be, a suppliers’ insurance pool removed a major obstacle before nuclear vendors – foreign and domestic – investing in the Indian nuclear market. Another project that saw some movement in the past year due to Modi’s involvement was Jaitapur. The Indian prime minister raised the issue of Jaitapur with Areva during his visit to Paris in April 2015 and saw the French nuclear concern sign a pre-engineering agreement (PEA) with Larsen & Toubro. The agreement is significant, perhaps more so than one realises, because it involves the transfer of forging technology to L&T to enable it to manufacture reactor vessels for the French EPR reactor in India. Not only will this obviate the need for European and American nuclear vendors to depend upon Japanese companies to provide crucial reactor components, but it will also allow India to support its indigenous nuclear industry and eventually enter the export market.

As remarkable as these two achievements are, the shortcomings of Modi Sarkar are equally baffling. Despite a close relationship with Shinzo Abe since his days as the chief minister of Gujarat, Modi was not able to nudge an Indo-Japanese civil nuclear cooperation agreement closer to the finish line. This was a disappointing setback as both Tokyo and Delhi try to surreptitiously bolster defence and strategic cooperation. Similarly, India failed to capitalise on the Russian offer made during Vladimir Putin’s visit in December 2014 to build 20 reactors in the country. Part of the problem was perhaps that the Indian nuclear establishment was not ready to absorb such an investment and had no sites or plans ready to deploy so many reactors. Furthermore, domestic opposition to nuclear power would make quick movement on new sites difficult.

As always, there have been rumblings about Hitachi and Toshiba setting up nuclear power complexes at Srikakulam and Mithi Virdi but there has been little movement on the ground despite the persistence of such rumours for almost a decade. Similarly, Rosatom’s project at Haripur has been stalled for years without any conclusion in sight. The foundation stone to Gorakhpur, an indigenous nuclear project, was laid by then prime minister Manmohan Singh in January 2014 but the project had been planned since 1984 and there is little news of it since the foundation ceremony either. Such chronic delays need to be addressed if India is to ever pursue nuclear power seriously – in an era where financing is the largest component of the cost of a nuclear power plant, delays can mean the death knell for nuclear energy.

Despite some good progress on the nuclear front during Modi’s first year as prime minister, some fundamental reforms of huge import remain to be accomplished. One is in the arena of transparency. Pace the claims by the nuclear conclave, reliable and consistent information about the nuclear programme is elusive. The introduction of the Right To Information Act has shifted the onus of uncovering data onto activists rather than keep it on the department in question. Furthermore, national security or the public interest is used as an excuse to cloak even the quotidian operations of the Department of Atomic Energy. For example, in November 2014, the Minister of State for Department of Atomic Energy, Jitendra Singh, informed the Lok Sabha that “it is not in the public interest to disclose the quantity of production of uranium” in response to a question on the average annual production from uranium mines and the quality of the ore!

Another reform that should be considered over the next four years is to transfer the control over nuclear energy to the Ministry of Power. This would allow the minister responsible to take a comprehensive view of the power requirements of the country and the options available before deciding on India’s energy mix. Though secrecy may have been important to India’s nuclear programme in its dual-use incarnation, the separation of civilian and military nuclear facilities as stipulated by the Indo-US nuclear deal has obviated the need for such levels of confidentiality. Defence reactors would obviously be retained by the PMO or perhaps transferred to the Ministry of Defence, but those facilities involved in non-military activities can be put under the purview of the minister of power.

What Modi and the Indian nuclear programme sorely needs is a visionary. When Homi Bhabha envisioned a three-stage nuclear programme for India in November 1954, there was not a single commercially operating nuclear reactor in the world; India did not yet have an operational reactor of any type. The world’s first commercial power reactor went critical in December 1957 in Shippingport, United States, and India’s first reactor, Apsara, came online in August 1956 for research purposes; India’s first commercial reactor, Tarapur Unit I, went critical only in October 1969. Bhabha’s ability to think decades ahead was a boon for India’s nuclear programme but it came at a point when the commercial uranium reactors were still a theory and thorium reactors were a distant dream. Bhabha himself was a competent scientist but by no means technically brilliant. However, his audacious dream transformed India .

It is difficult to predict what a visionary might advocate but a few things that might receive consideration are new technologies such as Molten Salt Reactors, Integral Fast Reactors, and thorium reactors such as the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor. A second consideration would be a ramp up in the number of reactors by an order of magnitude – if we want clean air, plentiful energy, and growth simultaneously, perhaps it is time someone talked about a thousand reactors over the next half century rather than twenty, fifty, or even a hundred. Modi has shown himself to be an able administrator so far but now he needs a domain expert with chutzpah. As the good Book teaches us, where there is no vision, the people perish (Míshlê 29:18).


This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on May 18, 2015.

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Tracking Fissile Material In India

31 Tue Mar 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Tracking Fissile Material In India

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Australia, Canada, IAEA, India, International Atomic Energy Agency, Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, nuclear, United States

There has been some concern lately about disagreements with India on nuclear tracking. International nuclear suppliers, particularly Australia, Canada, and the United States, have had their demands to monitor the passage of the nuclear fuel they sell India through the latter’s fuel cycle rebuffed. The issue came up during President Barack Obama’s visit to India for the South Asian country’s Republic Day celebrations and has been debated in the Australian parliament in recent months. India’s hesitation to share the data is being read as its attempt to wriggle out of its non-proliferation commitments – without such monitoring, experts say, it is possible for uranium meant for civilian purposes to end up in India’s nuclear weapons programme. India’s position is that all imported nuclear material is subject to safeguards under the guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency and further bilateral intrusions are unnecessary. After Canada and the United States gave up their tracking demands, the last battlefield this debate has shifted to is Australia.

There has been a lot of opposition – to what some consider diluted standards of nuclear safeguards, to nuclear cooperation between Australia and India, and to nuclear energy in general – voiced in the Australian parliament over the past few months. The key is, however, to understand the implications of additional nuclear safeguards demanded by critics in the form of nuclear tracking; there is little point in countering (again) the tired arguments of the anti-nuclear crowd, and some of the criticism of India’s nuclear programme is plain calumny. For instance, it is alleged that India’s nuclear behaviour has been problematic in the past: India tested nuclear weapons in 1974 under the pretext of peaceful nuclear explosions, this was done by diverting nuclear material intended for civilian use, and India obtained centrifuge designs from Pakistan’s infamous AQ Khan network. For these reasons, it is argued, it must be demanded of India to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty before any serious nuclear deal is considered. The only thing missing from this list is world peace and Markandeya’s eternal youth.

To cleave to the matter at hand, objections have been raised because Canberra’s administrative agreement with Delhi differs in a few small but important ways from the 23 other treaties Canberra has entered with 41 countries, including the United States. One concern is the status of Australia Obligated Nuclear Material, which is legalese for nuclear material supplied by Australia. According to Australian law, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office is obligated under its Safeguards Act, Section 51(2), to prepare annual reports accounting for all nuclear material supplied by Australia to its various partners in terms of location, quantities, and intended use. This means that Australian uranium would have to be tagged and its passage through a nuclear fuel cycle recorded at every stage. If India refuses to share such information, the ASNO would not be able to fulfill its obligations to Canberra’s lawmakers.

From an Indian perspective, any information shared must serve a purpose. Canberra wishes to maintain close tabs on its nuclear material to ensure that its non-proliferation responsibilities are met. If this can be guaranteed without the submission of extra information, there should be no need to submit such minute details about how India uses its imported nuclear material. To this end, India has entered into an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency that puts 14 of its 20 reactors under international safeguards. The details of the analysis and reports produced by the IAEA remain classified but may be shared with other countries upon permission from Delhi. Even if these reports are not shared by Delhi with Australia or its other partners in nuclear commerce, the IAEA will nevertheless flag any violation of safeguards. This meets confidentiality requirements as well as verification needs. As long as the IAEA gives its assurances that India is not making unauthorised use of any imported nuclear material, it should not matter to ASNO whether AONM in particular has been used exclusively for civilian purposes. It should also be noted that Australia’s treaties with Russia and China do contain specific language that obligates the recipient state to share information but only the overall conclusions which the IAEA has drawn from administering safeguards. The agreement with India does not diverge significantly from this.

The problem with these broad IAEA assurances, critics argue, is that bilateral treaty agreements may supercede international obligations. Australia’s nuclear commerce treaties are usually stricter than the international safeguards norms. However, Canberra’s understanding with Delhi is more flexible than its agreements with other states. Some in Australia argue that if India wishes to be treated on par with other members of the nuclear club, they should accede to the same standards of scrutiny as the others; furthermore, Australian safeguards standards should not be lowered in a moment of commercial weakness to woo the Indian market. Given India’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and governmental opacity, it is not clear when any benefits of Australian understanding would be reciprocated in a timely manner.

The fears over the discrepancies between treaties is mostly exaggerated. For example, one fear is that IAEA safeguards allow India to substitute safeguarded weapons grade fissile material for unsafeguarded reactor grade material (Art. 30(d)). A closer reading of the clause will show, however, that any substitution must be done with the permission of the IAEA and that the weight of the substituted material must match that of the material to be substituted in weight of fissionable isotopes as well as ratio of fissionable isotopes to total mass. As per IAEA definitions (Art. 20 of the IAEA Statute), this means plutonium 239, uranium 233, and uranium 235. Thus fear that uranium 235 can be substituted for uranium 238 is unfounded.

A second concern is that the IAEA allows India to use safeguarded material in unsafeguarded facilities. While this is true, it poses little risk of proliferation for any facility that accepts safeguarded material comes under safeguards itself. Furthermore, depending upon the amount of material involved, India will have to submit the facility to inspections. One assumes that Delhi will take unkindly to any inspection of its military facilities and so will not transfer safeguarded material to such facilities. It is also alleged that India can use safeguarded fuel in a blend with unsafeguarded material. Again, this conveniently ignores context – India is allowed to do so only as long as a.) the safeguarded material is 30 per cent or less than the total fuel, and b.) the ratio of the fissionable isotope to the total mass does not increase. If it does, then the whole blend comes under safeguards. Similarly, any nuclear material exempt from safeguards under Art. 25 has strict conditions on proportion if they are to go unsafeguarded. India will not, therefore, be able to spirit away any imported nuclear fuel for its weapons programme.

Concern has been expressed over the increased flexibility Canberra has shown India that it does not extend to other states, even close allies. One issue is that India has been given a preemptive right to reprocess fuel whereas other states may do so only with permission from Australia. Again, this is broadly true but one aspect overlooked is that any such reprocessing is subject to IAEA safeguards as well as the modalities of India’s agreement with the United States. What makes India stand out in terms of reprocessing is that it is one of the few countries still interested in a closed nuclear fuel cycle. Reprocessing would be as routine in an Indian programme as enrichment is in the American one. For such a regular activity, it makes sense to give a one-time, preemptive permission under safeguards than at regular and frequent intervals.

Opponents of India-Australia nuclear commerce also worry that there are no fallback safeguards in the agreement between the two countries. If, for some reason, the IAEA cannot maintain safeguards over India’s imported nuclear material, Australian nuclear material would be in India without any non-proliferation cover. This is not quite correct: the India-Australia Agreement on Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy is not dependent upon the IAEA safeguards being operational. While the agreement refers to some of the stipulations of India’s treaties with the IAEA and the United States as applicable to India-Australia nuclear trade, there is no suggestion that these rules apply only as long as those treaties are in force. In fact, Art. XIV ensures that even if the India-Australia agreement were to terminate, the safeguards provisions of the treaty would still hold.

Complaints that the India-Australia agreement does not contain an explicit right of return in case of termination of its termination have also been made. This, however, is merely a technicality and not a non-proliferation weak link. If India is in violation of safeguards norms, there will be international attention on Delhi. The terms of the agreement between the two Indian Ocean Rim countries prohibits India from using Australian nuclear fuel in an unsafeguarded manner under any circumstances and repeatedly violating the terms of the non-proliferation agreement could lead to the matter being raised in international fora that are important for India’s development. A right of return is a fairly standard clause in nuclear contracts but India has made its opposition to the idea known in all its negotiations. In the India-US agreement as well, Washington’s right to demand the return of its nuclear material is not absolute but tempered by four considerations Delhi has placed…including a year before the right could be exercised. India’s fear is that its partners may unilaterally terminate their agreements with India and leave the country in a fuel crunch. Any demand for return must allow for the Indian nuclear fuel stockpile to be compensated with material from other sources before the fuel from the offended country is returned.

Finally, the lack of any mechanism for dispute resolution is flagged as worrisome, particularly in conjunction with all the other objections raised. Australia usually includes arbitration mechanisms within its treaties with other states but that in itself is of little value except, perhaps, some clarity. It would be a safe guess that were any dispute to arise between Delhi and Canberra, the representatives of each country would sit down to discuss the situation. The representation would include nuclear lawyers, engineers, and bureaucrats. The omission of this commonsensical procedure hardly raises the risk of nuclear proliferation. Additionally, to state the obvious, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties allows either party to suspend its treaty obligations at any time if it is felt that the other side is in material breach of the terms and conditions.

India is a special country, of that there is no doubt: it is a nuclear weapons state that stands outside the NPT and has yet made inroads into international nuclear commerce. Making demands of Delhi that ignores this Trishanku-esque reality is futile. The attempt to hold India to standards it has not accepted by trying to interpret non-proliferation norms as common law, especially when the N5 violate the spirit of the NPT with abandon, will only be met with disappointment. The Canadians and the Americans eventually dropped their demands for nuclear tracking because they realised this (and probably also because the use of nuclear fuel can be modeled by intimate knowledge of the reactor). Canberra cannot allow non-proliferation lobbyists to hold hostage the environment and the development of over a billion people over a fabricated issue.


This post appeared on FirstPost on March 31, 2015.

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  • US authorises sanctions in case of Chinese interference in selection of next Dalai Lama: bit.ly/37T5lTR |… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 weeks ago
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