Tag Archives: CTBT

Romancing the Crane

26 Sun Jan 2014

Posted by in India, South Asia

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Today, India commemorates its 65th Republic Day today with pomp, fanfare, and a display of its paradomania worthy of any military dictatorship. This year, Delhi’s chief guest to its premier annual function is Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Analysts have read much significance into this invitation due to stormy climes in the neighbourhood and several high-level visits between India and Japan over the past couple of years.

Just last week, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera made a four-day trip to Delhi and invited his Indian counterpart to visit Japan. Last month, His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Akihito and his wife, Empress Michiko, visited India for a week, and six months earlier, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had led a delegation to Japan. Several lower level exchanges have also taken place between the two governments.

The benefits of a symbiotic relationship between India and Japan have been stated often and there is little benefit in repetition. In fact, the more pertinent question is why such a fruitful partnership has not yet materialised. In a 2013 poll in India, 80% said that they saw their country’s relations with Japan as very friendly or friendly; 95% thought Japan would be a reliable friend and desired greater Japanese business presence in India. In a similar poll in Japan, 42% had a positive view of India and only 4% – the lowest percentage anywhere – had a negative image. While the makings of a beautiful friendship exist, Abe and Singh – or whoever is prime minister in three months – have more work to do at home in creating the ambiance for partnership than with each other, both strategically and economically.

While large-scale Japanese investment in Indian industry and infrastructure interests both sides, India’s ability to absorb investments, aid, and technology are in doubt. Delhi’s laws on labour, manufacturing, land acquisition, and foreign investments are a veritable chamber of horrors, not to mention crippling inadequacies in water, electricity, road and rail networks, and legal protections. The eight-year delay POSCO suffered is not an exception but the rule in Indian industry. Vedanta is another cautionary tale to foreign businesses as is the retroactive tax the Indian government slammed Vodafone with recently.

The decades of neglect India has shown its manufacturing sector means that it is ill-equipped to handle any truly transformative economic agenda that may result from an Indo-Japanese romance. Even with technology transfers, India will still have to import machinery and equipment in the near future until it can develop its own capacity. This expansion needs to be sustained by skilled and semi-skilled manpower which India is already struggling with. Japanese companies will be reluctant to invest wholeheartedly in India until these bottlenecks are resolved.

To Japan, India represents not only an enormous market but also another source of raw materials. Japan is particularly desperate to find a reliable source for rare earth metals, vital to its electronics industry, as it currently depends on China for 90% of its supply. Keeping this in mind, optimists point to increasing trade between India and Japan (approximately $18 billion in 2013) as signs of a blossoming relationship but the paltry amount is a better indicator of how badly trade has floundered between the two states. For a country of India’s size and the complementarity of its economy to that of Japan’s, trade ought to have been at least the order of a magnitude higher. The increase in trade more likely represents streamlining and greater efficiency by industry rather than improved relations just yet. Close relations are built on content of trade more than volume; China is a larger trading partner for the United States than Britain is but one would hardly hazard a suggestion that Beijing is close, let alone closer, to Washington. Similarly, India’s $65 billion annual trade with China is also an indicator of economic efficiency without good relations.

Nuclear commerce straddles the strategic and industrial divide, and India stands to benefit greatly with closer ties to Japan’s nuclear industry. Though not a large vendor of complete reactors, Japanese industry has cornered the market on certain key components for Western reactor designs. Japanese cooperation with India would not only simplify nuclear trade with France and the United States (who depend on Japan in their supply chain), but it would also improve India’s ability to design and build safer and better reactors. Collaboration on Generation III and IV reactor designs is another arena for cooperation.

Japan has historically refused to engage in nuclear commerce with states who have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 has carved out a special place for India in the nuclear hierarchy. However, Tokyo wishes for Delhi to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty before it concludes a bilateral nuclear deal. This is beyond what the United States demanded of India, and India has used its agreement with the United States as a template for all its other nuclear deals (France, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan).

Japan would need to accept India’s non-negotiable position on the CTBT and NPT if any deal is to be struck between the two, something unlikely in the near future. There is, however, some hope as the New Komeito Party, perceived to be against nuclear exports to India, recently backed a civil nuclear pact between the two countries and called for a more flexible approach. For its part, Delhi must reconsider its recalcitrance over its nuclear liability law before nuclear trade can flourish between the two states – another difficult needle to thread.

Many analysts point to a strategic imperative for India to develop close ties with Japan. China’s recent belligerence, it is suggested, will push India and Japan closer. Sadly, this is more an expression of desire than any concrete observation. Unlike trade, however, Japan has reservations about strategic relations beyond the US nuclear umbrella and is yet to make up its mind on the role it wants to play in an era of receding US power.

Despite Article 9 of Japan’s constitution which prohibits the maintenance of a military, India’s defence budget of $37.4 billion (2013) is less than Japan’s budget of $45.9 billion (2013). However, Japan’s constitution permits a self-defence force and Tokyo followed an unofficial guideline to restrict defence spending to below 1% of the Gross Domestic Product until 1986.

Due to India’s failures in defence manufacturing, the country has emerged as the world’s largest arms importer. Indigenous production has been the buzzword in Delhi for a while with little to show for it yet. It is hoped that cooperation with Japan in defence research and manufacturing will help India reduce its imports bill while lowering the cost of Japanese equipment due to economies of scale. Contrary to popular perception, the land of the rising sun is hardly the epicentre of high-tech weaponry – corporations and universities have usually shied away from military research. Nonetheless, there is ample scope in application of dual use technologies such as carbon fibre, radar, engines, avionics, and microchips.

However, Japan’s reluctance to engage in substantial military commerce is a hindrance. Yet recent developments in North Korea and China have caused Tokyo to rethink its minimalist stance on security and ruling Liberal Democratic Party is considering major reforms in the country’s defence posture as well as its strict arms export policy. The difficulty in carrying out these reforms should not be underestimated – there is strong opposition to the LDP’s proposal in the Diet (Japanese parliament) as well as among the Japanese citizenry who fear that Tokyo’s arms sales would weaken Japan’s neutrality and make it a seeming participant in conflicts that are not its own. Until Japan pacifies the ghosts from its past, there is little possibility for defence ties to grow much beyond joint military exercises and cooperation on piracy and terrorism.

A thriving relationship with Japan is a commonsensical quest for reasons of trade and security. There exists among some, perhaps, also a sense of civilisational affinity. Though this is superficial and deceptive, it cannot hurt foster better ties. Yet given the difficulties on both sides, strong ties will take time well beyond the tenure of either Abe or the next Indian prime minister to develop. Besides, any lasting relationship must be institutional and not based on personality alone – while Abe appears keen to prioritise India on his agenda, his successor may not have the same patience.

Despite such strong impetus from both sides currently, there are fundamental difficulties that need to be addressed. Japan needs to decide whether the strategies of the past are still relevant to it in a new world order and if it is ready to jettison them if not; India needs to realise that announcing a yojana is not the same as implementing it – for far too long, India has been long on promises but short on delivery. As Thucydides reminds us, one is “convinced by experience that very few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.”

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on January 26, 2014.

The Peacock and the Crane

28 Fri Dec 2012

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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The victory of Shinzo Abe in Japan’s recent general elections has evinced approving murmurs in many corners. Obviously, one corner is the Japanese nuclear industry. Another nook is India, where Abe’s victory has raised hopes of closer relations between two of Asia’s largest economies. Of course, the hopes don’t just stop there – the two states are both equally concerned about the rise of a large, mutual neighbour intent of flexing its economic and military muscle in the region, and strategic thinking would suggest ties beyond tea and spices.

Neither New Delhi nor Tokyo have overtly demonstrated a desire for close strategic relations, but relations have been steadily becoming stronger between the two Asian powers. Though the two states have always enjoyed cordial relations and Japan has been the single largest provider of aid to India since 1986, relations warmed after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Japan in 2000 and established the “Japan-India Global Partnership in the 21st Century.” More recently, Japan supported the US-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement in 2008, and agreed with the consensus view, albeit reluctantly, in the Nuclear Suppliers Group later that year that India’s nuclear record warranted a special case for India to be brought in to the nuclear commerce fraternity. India and Japan signed a security cooperation agreement in 2008, and a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in 2010, and have also been conducting regular joint naval exercises.

Japan’s importance to India cannot be overstated. Undoubtedly, Indo-Japanese relations make a lesser splash in the media than a multi-billion dollar Indo-Russian or Indo-American treaty, but this should not blind us to the extraordinary potential of the former. The immediate benefits are obvious – Japan imports large quantities of natural resources and exports high-end finished goods, while India is a source of natural resources and desires the high-end goods Japan produces. The island nation is also a source of technical expertise in infrastructure and technology, both of which India sorely needs. While Japan serves as a market for cheaper Indian goods, India is a closer base of operations for Japanese factories to markets in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Presently, Japan is the third largest investor in India, and trade between the two states is expected to double from its present level to $25 billion by 2014.

Beyond the obvious economic benefits for both countries, there are strategic reasons for closer relations between the two. India sits strategically close to Japan’s lifeline, the sea lanes between the Middle East and East Asia. The recent increase in piracy has put Japanese shipping in danger, as has increasing Chinese muscle in the waters around Japan. Abe sees a loose fraternity of littoral nations – India, Australia, and Indonesia – supported by the United States and Japan as a force for stability on the seas. Another strategic windfall could be nuclear commerce – Japan is an important manufacturer of reactor components and has technology that could help India with its nuclear fuel reprocessing. Furthermore, as Japan holds controlling interest in the originally US firms GE-Hitachi and Toshiba-Westinghouse, and is a supplier of components for France’s Areva as well, Japan is an important node in international nuclear commerce.

While there is reason for optimism, there are also hurdles. The nuclear issue has been a major bone of contention between New Delhi and Tokyo. Although India has signed a special protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NSG has issued it a waiver, Japan’s strict nuclear and high-tech export controls prohibit the sale of equipment and technology to states that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Japan has also insisted so far that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. However, signing the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state is a non-starter for India; regardless of the merits and demerits of the treaty, it would be political suicide for the government that did so, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is not much easier. Publicly, signing a treaty that India has railed against for decades as unequal would be almost as toxic as ceding Kashmir to Pakistan. In addition, Indian strategists see Japan’s views on nuclear disarmament as deeply hypocritical, delivered from the safety of an extended nuclear deterrence umbrella of the United States.

So far, Tokyo has tried to work around this insurmountable logjam by expanding cooperation in other areas and reducing tariffs on trade. This suits Japan’s agenda quite well since a nuclear deal would mean a lot more to India than it does to them. As James Acton has pointed out, Japan provides at least one component to three out of four nuclear reactors made by either France or the United States that cannot presently be produced anywhere else. Secondly, since Japan is unlikely to become a major nuclear partner for India, it will in essence remain a components supplier during the life of the reactors; there is little profit in this and the additional Indian orders it will not result in any significant expansion in Japanese manufacturing. Furthermore, India’s inane nuclear civil liability laws have deterred investors from entering the Indian nuclear market, and a deal in this climate is improbable to have any benefits for Japan. On the other hand, if Japan plays spoil sport, it creates an incentive for other vendors to set up production lines for components supplied by the Japanese, essentially hastening the end of Japan’s nuclear monopoly. To top this consideration is the immense pressure Foggy Bottom and the Élysée Palace are putting on Japanese leaders to conclude a nuclear deal with New Delhi.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that Sori Daijin Kantei is isolated in its reluctance to change Japan’s nuclear commerce laws, there is nonetheless much support for such an amendment from the Japan Atomic Energy Commission and from industry, both of whom are interested in promoting large infrastructural projects to India and other countries and are fully aware that their loss of the Indian market is to Russia’s and South Korea’s gain. However, ordinary Japanese are resistant to the idea of their country trading with states they see as nuclear outlaws. Leading Japanese periodicals have voiced their concern at the dilution of Japanese non-proliferation standards, even though they have welcomed closer ties with India. How malleable this opinion is remains to be seen, but Abe’s victory indicates that the rising prices of energy, a muscular North Korea, and an increasingly shrill China might finally tip the balance in India’s favour.

Abe’s return to Japan’s most powerful position is a golden opportunity for South Block. Generational shifts in thinking, increased militarisation of its neighbourhood, and a more dubious US nuclear umbrella have made some Japanese question their decision to eschew nuclear weapons. Shintaro Ishihara, the former mayor of Tokyo who has recently been elected to the lower house of Japan’s Diet, and Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka, have been calling for nuclearisation repeatedly. Ichiro Ozawa, another parliamentarian, has publicly argued that Japan needs nuclear weapons as insurance against China. Abe is not unsympathetic to this view, and has himself argued in the past that the Japanese constitution does not prohibit nuclear weapons as long as they are for defensive purposes only (India, 1974?). This is wildly divergent from the traditional understanding of Japan’s nuclear and defence polices. These are not isolated voices – in a 2011 poll by the Sankei Shimbun, a newspaper widely presumed to be Right pulse, 86.7% of respondents favoured an open debate about nuclear weapons in the Diet. What was considered the discourse of the fringe Right has today become mainstream in Japan. Abe’s appointment of advocates of nuclear energy, if not weapons, to key cabinet positions – Fumio Kishida as Foreign Minister, Itsunori Onodera as Defence Minister, Akira Amari for Economic Revitalisation, and Toshimitsu Motegi as Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister – reveals that little has changed in his thinking since the last time he was prime minister.

It is not clear whether the Japanese are ready to have a mature discussion about their security, and some politicians are not willing to wait for their countrymen. India serves as a useful counterbalance to China not only for Japan but the whole Southeast Asia region as well. This is very similar to the situation in the 1950s – in 1958, a Thai diplomat had approached India to create a self-defence pact in Asia. Though not overtly so, the grouping was aimed containing Communist China. India was in no position to be part of such an alliance then, nor was it Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideological inclination to do so. In 2012, India is materially much more capable in playing a constructive role in the Indian Ocean region, and Abe is counting on an India unashamed to defend its interests.

A large part of this is due to the myth created around Japan’s high-tech prowess and its large stockpile of fissile material. It is commonly assumed that Japan is a threshold nuclear state which can go nuclear within a six month – one year time frame. However, as Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes argue in Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age, this may not be the case: Japan can in all likelihood make a crude device in that time, but any sort of battlefield usable weapon will take longer. A credible deterrent requires miniaturisation of warheads and the islands’ lack of strategic depth necessitates sea-launched missiles. As the authors argue, a full nuclear-propelled submarine fleet with ballistic missiles is certainly not out of Japan’s reach, but it would take some time to assemble. Even if Japan leans on nuclear-tipped US Tomahawks in the interim, it would still be a few years before a deterrent took shape.

None of this is to say that there will be a war in Asia tomorrow. However, sound sleep bears an inverse correlation to a neighbour’s war-making capabilities, and Asians, like others, have long memories too. As Abe said on a visit to India in 2011, China represents an opportunity, but also a risk. In the novus ordo seclorum, Japan and India make ideal partners – they share common interests and common concerns with no discernible conflicts. Troubles over the treaties of the nuclear non-proliferation regime may well be a matter of public and not government concern – Japan needs a muscular India to balance China, but it is unable to countenance such a position overtly. The Japanese public is uncomfortable with India’s nuclear status, and many Indians are concerned about the sort of big projects closer relations with Japan will bring. Yet given Abe’s known inclinations, New Delhi now has an excellent chance to push for a series of major treaties on technical and military cooperation. To miss one such opportunity – 1958 – may be considered misfortune, but to miss two looks like carelessness.

This post was published at Niti Central on December 28, 2012.

Lessons in Hegemony

12 Thu Nov 2009

Posted by in Nuclear, Pakistan, Security, South Asia

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Giovanni Arrighi defines hegemony in his essay, “The Three Hegemonies of Historical Capitalism” (Stephen Gill eds., Gramsci, Historical Materialism, and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), as the power of a state to exercise governmental functions over a system of sovereign states. This power is something more and different from dominance pure and simple. It is the power associated with dominance expanded by the exercise of intellectual and moral leadership. Of course, when the use of force is too risky and the exercise of moral leadership problematic, corruption and fraud may temporarily step in as surrogates of power. In any case, hegemony is the additional power that accrues to a dominant group in virtue of its capacity to pose on a universal plane all the issues around which conflict rages.

In the post-Cold War era, the only state that has had the means to exercise hegemony (or attempted to do so) has been the United States. Without going into a critique of American foreign policy and its underlying motives and assumptions, suffice it to say that American presidents since have had at best a lacklustre track record when it comes to knitting together coalitions for international goals. The primary reason for this is that they have not been able to convince their potential partners that their interests are, as Arrighi says, universal. Largely, for other countries to do so would require an element of trust, something the US is in very short supply of anywhere in the world. The removal of all restrictions placed on the mercenary (at best, jihadist at worst) nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is a case in point: it does not serve the interests of the United States at any level, especially when the Obama government is in the process of strengthening the non-proliferation regime and putting pressure on India to accede to the Comprehensive test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In the New World Order under George W Bush, the United States was trying to steer closer to India. By offering to supply the Indians with F-18s and the required blueprints for indigenous manufacture, the United States signalled that a significant change in policy was in the works. The Americans also offered India a nuclear deal by which the exchange of civilian technology and material could take place, provided of course, that India clearly demarcate its military and civilian reactors and ensure no flow of resources to the military side from the civilian side. Admittedly, there is much to gain for American firms in this as well as for India, but that never resulted in nuclear cooperation of the magnitude planned ($100 billion in 10 years) before now. Further, the strengthening of India would create a thorn in China’s back, drawing Chinese resources away from the international arena to protect its South Asian flank. Bush also indicated a dehyphenation of Indo-American relations from US-Pakistani relations, something India has tried to do since independence. Pushing for transparency and accountability on Pakistan’s border with India, Bush sent a signal to India that he meant business.

It is not clear what role the Obama Presidency wishes India to play in South Asia or world affairs, but the re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan has not been a positive first step. To compound that, the lax handling of proliferation concerns when it comes to Pakistan and China is sure to be of concern in India. AQ Khan sold weapons to states high on America’s threat radar – Libya, N. Korea, and Iran. By their own admission, former CIA director George Tenet described Khan as being “at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden.” (New York Times, November 24, 2004). After the story of the Khan network broke in February 2004, the nuclear watchdogs did nothing. The inconsistency in their attitudes deserves some further analysis: for suspicion of possessing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the United States and Britain passed sanctions against Iraq for twelve years. The Nuclear Suppliers Group ostracised India for decades in retaliation to the 1974 test at Pokhran despite conceding that India had one of the best non-proliferation records. Even in the Pakistani case, AQ Khan did not materialise out of nowhere; there had been ample evidence against him and complicity in his activities by the United States and other nations. Dutch intelligence, for example had been monitoring Khan since 1972 when he first joined Physical Dynamic Research Laboratory (FDO), a subcontractor of Ultra Centrifuge Nederland (UCN) – UCN is the Dutch partner in the Urenco uranium enrichment consortium. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, American intelligence officials convinced Dutch authorities, according to former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, on two occasions not to arrest Khan for the purposes of monitoring his activities further. However, the Dutch government tried and sentenced AQ Khan in absentia in 1983 for espionage (four years imprisonment). Finally, in 1979, Pakistan was cut off from economic and military assistance by the United States after U.S. intelligence learned of the newly commissioned enrichment facility at Kahuta. However, the strategic importance of Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ensured that no meaningful sanctions would be imposed. This policy was consolidated following the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In 1981, the CIA learned of preparations for a Cold Test (detonation of a nuclear mock-up without the fissionable core). This was after Indian and Israeli intelligence noticed tunnels being dug in the Ras Koh mountains in a manner suited only for nuclear tests. However, given Pakistan’s new importance in the US assistance to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Secretary of State Alexander Haig declared that as long as Pakistan did not test a nuclear device, the United States was perfectly willing to look the other way. Over the next few months, Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance James Buckley and other US officials travelled back and forth between Washington and Islamabad, refining the back-channel deal on the Pakistan nuclear program.

Unwilling to leave matters entirely in the hands of the Reagan Government, the Mossad bombed a German company that supplied parts for A. Q. Khan’s nuclear weapons program in Pakistan. The company had been doing business with Khan through one of his representatives in Paris since 1976 and had sold Pakistan lead shielding and remote-controlled equipment to maneuver radioactive substances. The Israelis even considered a strike on Kahuta but cancelled at the last-minute due to intense American pressure. As Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal in their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, Pakistani Foreign Minister Agha Shahi met US Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance James Buckley in Islamabad in 1981 following a large grant of US aid. The aid was conditional on Pakistan stopping its nuclear weapons program, but, according to Agha Shahi: “I mentioned the nuclear caveats and emphasized that if we had a bomb and wanted to test it there was nothing the US could do. Buckley shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I understand. Yes, we know.’” Thus, the Reagan White House circumvented Congressional legislation that demanded that the White House certify that Pakistan was not making nuclear weapons before any aid could be given to them (1985-1990). Furthermore, from 1983 to 1987, Pakistan also purchased some 40 nuclear-capable F-16s, ostensibly for use against the Soviet threat to make good on their desire for a warm water port. In 1989, they purchased 60 more.

In late 1990, shortly after Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait and the UN Security Council imposed an embargo on Iraq, Khan offered to help Baghdad produce gas centrifuges and design nuclear weapons (Iraqi nuclear officials, ironically suspecting that the offer was a sting operation because Pakistan was a U.S. ally, proceeded cautiously and requested a sample of what Khan could provide). In 1997, the Clinton administration gave the Chinese government a clean bill of health over the sale of nuclear technology and material to Pakistan despite concerns and warning signs since 1977. In fact, Khan had received the bomb blueprints from China’s fourth nuclear test in 1966 in the early 1980s. The year after, after the tit-for tat nuclear tests in South Asia, former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the event and emphasised that the real dangers to American security were Iran, Iraq, and N. Korea. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, brought Pakistan back into America’s good books and all sanctions were removed to help recruit Pakistan for the War on terror.

It was only in 2003 that the world came to know of the Khan network when reports emerged from Iran and Libya of Pakistan’s assistance to their nuclear programmes. Also in 2003, in April, German authorities intercepted a ship in the Suez Canal with a large cargo of strong aluminum tubing en route to North Korea, intended for use as outer casings for P-2 centrifuges. In October, the German cargo ship BBC China was intercepted en route to Libya with components for 1,000 centrifuges. Even more damaging was the discovery that although the US had known about this as early as the early 1990s, not much was done to stop it (David Albright, “An Iranian Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist 51, no. 4 (July/August 1995): 20–26). When news broke out, the Pakistani government nonetheless initially resisted arresting Khan, whom most Pakistanis considered a national hero. It was only after Colin Powell personally met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that Khan was finally arrested. Although many Pakistanis have been detained since the scandal broke, none have been prosecuted. The Government of Pakistan (GoP) has also not allowed anyone outside the Pakistani government to interview Khan or the others that were detained. And on August 29, 2009, AQ Khan is yet again a free man.

So what message does that give America’s present and potential future allies? Two lessons are clear from all this: 1. the United States will do anything within its means to pursue a short-term goal, however costly it may turn out to be in the future, and 2. it will do so clandestinely with no regard to the security of its allies. As a result of Reagan’s monumental obtuseness, there is at least one other nuclear power in the world (N. Korea) endangering a US ally (Japan), and another potential nuclear power (Iran) threatening yet another one of America’s allies (Israel). A nuclear Pakistan, to which the United States played midwife, is, needless to say, a threat for a potential US ally (India).

With the release of AQ Khan and not as much as a murmur from Foggy Bottom, it must be clear to New Delhi and Tel Aviv that the United States is not in touch with the realities on the ground in their respective regions. If this is the case, it makes it very hard for either country to forge a close and functional relationship with the US – trade in civilian and military goods not withstanding (the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 demonstrates this clearly). It is going to be more difficult for the United States to convince regional actors that the interests of the United States and of its allies are congruent if the United States continues to undermine its allies for ill-conceived goals and thoughtless action. If the United States wishes to forward a hegemonic discourse successfully, it is about time they took a good look at their assets and liabilities in different regions of the world and did a quick rethink. Otherwise, the Pax Americana will be over sooner than they think.