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Pakistan and the NSG

09 Thu Jun 2016

Posted by in India, Nuclear, Pakistan, South Asia

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On May 19, Pakistan formally applied to the Nuclear Suppliers Group for membership via a letter to the chairman of the NSG through Islamabad’s ambassador in Vienna. The letter stated the Islamic republic’s belief that it stood on solid ground in terms of technical experience, manufacturing capability, and a firm commitment to nuclear safety and non-proliferation. Pakistan has been agitated ever since the United States offered to bring India into the international civilian nuclear trading community in 2005 and has been hankering after a similar arrangement to regain parity with its existential South Asian rival.

Islamabad’s application for NSG membership is difficult to take seriously and can at best be surmised to be a way to clutter the field by bringing South Asia’s perilous and intractable nuclear rivalry to the forefront of international discussion. Averse to even tangentially affecting the fragile balance of terror in the region, the NSG will, Pakistan hopes, deny both South Asian states admission into the cartel. Thus, Islamabad can play spoiler for India while appearing to push its interests in earnest.

The reason Pakistan’s sincerity regarding its NSG membership application raises doubt is its complete failure to be a viable candidate even by its own criteria. First, its technical experience: it is true that Pakistan has been operating a nuclear reactor since 1971. That first reactor, built at Paradise Point in Karachi, was provided by Canada. Since then, Pakistan has acquired only two more nuclear power reactors, both from China, though eight more are in various stages of construction or planning. Pakistan is yet to design and build a reactor on its own without any assistance from its patron, China. This includes not just the civilian reactors but also its military infrastructure at Kahuta and Khushab. While any experience with nuclear reactors is valuable, Islamabad has simply not yet seen a nuclear project through from the drawing board to the electricity board. This is because Pakistan’s nuclear programme has always had an overwhelming military component whereas the Indian programme was a civilian project that retained some ambiguity and ambivalence about weaponisation.

By contrast, India has the largest fleet of indigenously built CANDU-based reactors in the world; it presently has 22 nuclear power reactors, only two of which are of Russian origin. India has also made great strides in fast and thorium reactors and is on the verge of connecting one of the former to the grid and breaking ground on the latter.

NSG controlled goodsSecond, Pakistan’s manufacturing capabilities: according to an interesting study of export controls and dual-use goods by Ian Stewart, senior research fellow at King’s College, London, Pakistan has the ability to manufacture or produce heavy water, nuclear manipulators, marraging steel, and zirconium. In each case, there seems to be only one agent, probably the state, and capacity is insufficient for export. It is unlikely that Pakistan wishes to join the NSG because of its niche manufacturing strengths or surplus capacity.

It is possible that Pakistan wishes to join the NSG to gain access to controlled goods that it cannot manufacture. However, it is possible to accommodate those needs without allowing the Islamic republic entry into the nuclear cartel. Pakistan has already stated that it is willing to accept IAEA safeguards over all its civilian facilities just as India agreed in 2008 – when the international community is assured of Islamabad’s bonafide intentions, it may consider extending civil nuclear cooperation without necessarily opening the doors to the NSG.

India is no nuclear exporter of note either, but, the country has managed to develop a small industry of almost a dozen and half items on the NSG’s controlled goods list including flow forming machines, vacuum pumps, high strength aluminium, and isostatic presses. India’s accession to the NSG will ease the import of some controlled goods though enrichment and reprocessing technology and equipment is still reserved for signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Finally, Pakistan’s commitment to nuclear safety and non-proliferation: politics must teach its practitioners how to utter the baldest lies with a straight face. Pakistan’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, or lack thereof, is exactly why it universally gets a hostile reception to its nuclear mainstreaming. The AQ Khan network proliferated nuclear technology to some of the most unsavoury regimes in the world – North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Pakistan and its publicly revered nuclear scientist have escaped punition only by virtue of Islamabad’s geopolitical usefulness to the United States.

If the world community were to look past such a grievous transgression so soon, especially so soon after the Western powers moved heaven and earth to bring Iran’s nuclear ambitions under the IAEA’s purview, it would send a wrong message to future proliferators. Were the roles reversed, had India proliferated to Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan – states far more palatable than Pakistan’s partners – would the international community be willing to look the other way after a little over a decade and without any punitive measures?

Pakistan and its patron, China, are using the rhetoric of non-discriminatory criteria for NSG membership to sweep a rich slice of Pakistan’s capabilities and non-proliferation track record under the rug. Pace all the well-intentioned desires from officials and scholars, the NSG will remain a discriminatory body because it was conceived in that original sin and can only perpetuate what it knows best. Between the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s consecration of nuclear apartheid and the NSG’s willful disregard of many of its members’ blatant violations in the past, the nuclear exports control regime will remain discriminatory. Short of overhauling the entire structure, we can only hope that the members of the cartel discriminate in favour of positive values rather than a cynical manipulation of the international order.

This post appeared on FirstPost on June 10, 2016.

India and the NSG

07 Tue Jun 2016

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

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The attention given to the upcoming plenary session of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is surprising, given that there is little chance of anything being accomplished. The biggest item on the agenda is, of course, the admission of India into the trading cartel, which is vehemently being opposed by China and perhaps also by Austria, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

Anyone who thought that the matter would be closed with the ratification of the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 was only deluding themselves: though China sulked over the exception made for India to enter into the international civilian nuclear market, it is now extracting its pound of flesh by insisting on a uniform set of principles for membership to the NSG and advocating the admission of its client, Pakistan, to the group as well.

Beijing’s position, ostensibly, is that there should be clear criteria to join the 48-nation group of nuclear vendors. Exceptions should not be made for anyone, including India, because they inevitably weaken the entire nuclear non-proliferation regime. China also insists that all members of the NSG should be signatories of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the surface of it, China’s stance may appear reasonable. In fact, Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment has raised some of the same issues in his thorough analysis of the prospect of expanded NSG membership. Hibbs suggests that the cartel carefully consider its membership policies for four reasons; of relevance to our discussion is the ambiguity created in the NSG’s non-proliferation mission by making an exception to allow nuclear trade with India in 2008.

Since 1992, the NSG has required that any non-nuclear weapons state wishing to purchase items on the group’s trigger list be a party to a full-scope safeguards agreement with the IAEA. The United States, in its support for India’s membership to the NSG, has advocated that India be made an exception to this rule. However, given India’s non-signatory status to the NPT, not to mention its nuclear weaponisation since 1998, several members of the NSG have felt that doing so would undermine the relationship between the NPT and the NSG. This relationship, though not enshrined in the guidelines, is implicit in the several factors considered for membership mentioned in INFCIRC/539 as well as the institution’s history.

States averse to Indian membership have argued that if a non-NPT state were to be given admission, there would have to be substantial benefits. Although rules-based membership seems fair, the NSG should nonetheless retain its flexibility in exceptional cases. A non-NPT state seeking NSG membership would have to demonstrate a good track record of non-proliferation, support international efforts towards the reduction and elimination of fissile material inventories, and not be an obstruction in the proceedings of the consensus-based group.

These principles must be taken with a generous pinch of salt: the international nuclear regime, in the half-century of its existence, has been marked by hypocrisy. The NPT reserved for five countries the right to nuclear weapons in perpetuity while extracting a promise from all others to abjure from them. Nuclear arsenals grew to the beat of exhortations to others to disarm; testing begat simulations and warheads were modernised even as perorations urged the international community to stop producing fissile material. The United States helped Israel acquire nuclear weapons and pointedly looked away as China helped Pakistan do the same in the 1980s. At the same time, European nations rushed to protect their firms who had been caught in conducting illicit nuclear trade from prosecution. There was not even a squeak from the nuclear controls regime when China announced in 2010 that it would grandfather the sale of two more reactors to Pakistan under a 2003 bilateral agreement – China had promised upon joining the NSG in 2004 that there would be no more sales. In 2013, Pakistan announced that two more reactors from China were under consideration.

Yet how well does India satisfy the NSG’s criteria for membership? Regarding the non-proliferation treaty, India reminded the NSG that accession to the NPT is not a criterion for membership – France was not a member of the NPT until 1992 though it was a founder member of the NSG in 1975.

On the second condition – a good non-proliferation record – India has a better history than even some of the NSG members. For that matter, equating the Indian and Pakistani applications for membership, as China has done, is, even by the NSG’s own standards, quite disingenuous. India has not sold nuclear technology to third parties and opened over half of its nuclear infrastructure to international inspections while Pakistan is infamous for its AQ Khan network that spread nuclear know-how from Pyongyang to Tripoli. Islamabad’s institutionalised use of terrorism as state policy adds to its instability and with the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world, it is a testament to the nuclear regime’s Janus-like trait that it is not under severe sanctions.

The NSG is also concerned that a new member might disrupt the proceedings of the group. Depending upon what one views as disruption, there might be some validity to this fear. It is unlikely that India will stand in the way of a Pakistani membership if it meets all the criteria for nuclear safety and security that have been laid out by the nuclear regime. It is, after all, in India’s interest that Pakistan’s nuclear establishment be as transparent and accessible to the international community as possible.

However, it is quite likely that Delhi object to clauses that excludes non-NPT countries as this will limit its own ability to engage in nuclear commerce and technical collaboration. If India is allowed into the NSG, the group will either have to amend the INFCIRC/254 (Part II here) that distinguishes nuclear weapons states from others for purposes of trade to create a hybrid category for India or insert India-specific language in every document the NSG produces. Ironically, this will help Pakistan as well by keeping the door open for non-NPT countries. While this may militate against the NSG’s values, it also underscores the cartel’s double standards.

The hostility to Indian membership is surprising for one more reason: in 2011, after the NSG plenary meeting in Noordwijk in the Netherlands, the group decided to tighten norms for enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technology exports. Among the several new criteria, one states that the country receiving such technology or equipment must be a member of the NPT. Given this partial reneging on the Indo-US nuclear deal, it leaves India only to purchase nuclear reactors and fuel. This, it already does without being a member of the NSG. Without any technical grounds remaining, is the opposition to India merely a matter of form, of style rather than substance?

Some analysts have argued that membership to the NSG is about status for Delhi, as its nuclear arsenal is about prestige. What they fail to explain is how the status of being a member of the NSG has helped some of its present members such as Belarus, Croatia, Cyprus, or Serbia.

India’s entry into the NSG is unlikely in the foreseeable future, not because Delhi has failed to live up to non-proliferation standards but because it throws a spanner into Beijing’s geopolitical calculations. If China were somehow persuaded to remove its veto on Indian accession, their price would be too high to be worth the trouble. India has tried to join the NSG by bringing its export controls and nuclear policies in line with the international norms; it has also tried directly lobbying the various member states and tried to use Washington’s influence where necessary. The only option available to it now is to create a parallel nuclear market by developing its own nuclear industry and stepping up exports.

India has had decades of experience building and operating pressurised heavy water reactors. Given their smaller size, they are also cheaper than other commercial designs available in the international market. Indian PHWRs would be an excellent option for economically less developed states or states just beginning to consider nuclear energy. In the future, India can also expand the menu to include its light water, fast breeder, or thorium reactors. If India can emerge as a major exporter to such markets, it would be in the NSG’s interests to bring India within the fold. Just as the potential of India’s nuclear energy market was a factor in persuading Washington of the benefits of bringing India into the world nuclear market, India as a nuclear vendor would have its own persuasive power.

Two obstacles prevent this course of action: the Indian nuclear industry is not yet capable of manufacturing to such scale, and India lacks the financial strength to offer the generous lines of credit nuclear vendors usually extend. The first of these can be resolved: the reason Indian industry has lagged behind is that there has been no interest in nuclear power in India. In seven decades of its nuclear programme, India has hardly built 21 reactors; as a comparison, France built nearly 60 reactors in 20 years and the United States 100 reactors in about the same time. Without a concerted effort to expand nuclear energy within the country, the economies of scale will not be created to persuade Indian industry to expand its capabilities in research, design, and manufacturing. If the private sector were allowed greater collaboration with India’s nuclear conclave, progress would be faster.

India cannot rely on its friends or the international community to ease this logjam. As the NSG operates by consensus, it would need the good will of each and every member of the group, including its rival, China. Even with US assistance, that looks unlikely. Instead, India must look to itself to create a situation that will bring the NSG knocking on its door. That vision and ambition is so far nowhere to be seen in Delhi.

This post appeared on FirstPost on June 09, 2016.

Nuclear Security and Nuclear Convenience

24 Thu Mar 2016

Posted by in Nuclear, Security, United States

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With an important nuclear conference – the last Nuclear Security Summit – about to start in a week, this is usually the time when articles criticising aspects of non-Western nuclear programmes coincidentally begin to appear. India has been a favoured subject recently, inspiring thoughtful prose before the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, biennial meetings of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation, and annual Nuclear Suppliers Group plenaries. It is a lot of ink that only serves to reiterate what VC Trivedi, India’s ambassador to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee in the mid-1960s, called nuclear apartheid.

The NSS has addressed issues that have not received sufficient attention in existing fora. Juicier topics such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive related technology have their own fora in the NPT and NSG communities as well as the United Nations and other regional and bilateral frameworks. By contrast, the safety of nuclear materials seems like plain police work and has largely been left to individual states and industry to handle. Agreements such as the Convention for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material are rare and safety regime so far inadequate. Nonetheless, participants at the NSS have taken a creative approach to nuclear safety and security, raising the possibility of even stepping away entirely from the use of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. It is in this expanded and comprehensive view of safety and security that we should also consider policy and not just the technicalities of nuclear weapons, energy, and commerce.

First, it is clear that the United States needs reminding that it presently possesses a stockpile of around 7,000 nuclear weapons. This, if you can believe it, is actually the result of years of disarmament from an all-time high level of almost 30,000 nuclear weapons. Since the nuclear ayatollahs have always told us that more weapons mean more danger, it seems obvious that significantly reducing that stockpile is the place to start.

Russia and the United States each have about the same number of nuclear weapons, estimated to be some 25 times (!) that of the next nuclear power, France. By contrast, India is estimated to have 120 nuclear weapons. Even granting Russia and the United States a temporary 10:1 advantage, they would still need to reduce their nuclear weapons stockpile by half before they enter the realm of reason.

Second, the nuclear modernisation drive that all the treaty nuclear powers are on does not augur well for the reputation of the non-proliferation regime. Were a cynical attitude to develop among member states, international cooperation would be made even more difficult; the difficulty in having a common sensical amendment to the Convention for the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material is clear indication that faith in the global nuclear framework is eroding. During the long negotiations with Iran that recently culminated in a favourable agreement, a fear that repeatedly arose was the lack of faith in international institutions as neutral arbiters of law. India’s objection to intrusive inspections that allow fuel tracking through its nuclear complex is also along similar lines of security and questionable impartiality.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed upon with Iran was a truly commendable diplomatic effort. The Islamic republic had taken creative license with its Article IV right under the NPT to enrich uranium and the international community persuaded Tehran of its obligations to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities for verification. It would be even more commendable were a similar effort put behind reminding the N5 – the five nuclear powers recognised by the NPT – of their long-pending Article VI obligation towards nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international control. Until now, there seems to be no sign that the N5 have even recognised this promise. Such double standards weaken the nuclear regime that will find a challenger in every Iran and North Korea when their geopolitical situation demands it.

Such hypocrisy is not new – even before NPT opened for signing, the United States kept it quiet that its interpretation of Articles I and II of the treaty allowed for nuclear sharing between NATO countries; US nuclear weapons could thus be deployed to non-nuclear states such as Italy, Turkey, and West Germany. The US role in the Israeli and Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons, of omission or commission, certainly marks it as one of the most irresponsible nuclear powers in the world. China’s overt assistance to the Pakistani nuclear programme puts it in the same company. If the world community is to accept that nuclear weapons present an unbearable risk and their proliferation must be prevented,  Washington’s reckless behaviour from the 1960s to the 1980s does little to convince the sceptics.

A different kind of recklessness is revealed in Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control, a terrifying book about the several close calls the United States had in handling nuclear weapons. To be sure, it is praiseworthy that the United States is an open society where such research was possible – other nuclear weapons states are far more hesitant to allow such information to be made public. Nonetheless, when Washington finds research in Trombay or Kalpakkam risky, it has little ground to stand on. The recent scandals involving the United States’ missile men shows that this plague of poor maintenance and readiness is not yet over.

Even if the attendees at the NSS were willing to let history remain in the past, there remain some serious questions regarding present US nuclear policy. Washington believes, for example, that reprocessing, even under safeguards, is an unacceptable proliferation risk and the nuclear fuel cycle must remain open. In effect, the United States believes that it is safer to bury radioactive nuclear waste for some 29,000 years than to recycle it until the most dangerous radioactive elements are burned up and store a fraction of the waste for 300 years or less. Such faith in our engineering capabilities will require some proselytism, especially when the other option promises energy security and expands fuel availability by several thousand years.

Perhaps a genuine drive for nuclear safety would include the mainstreaming of thorium reactors for energy. There is plenty of intelligent speculation among nuclear energy enthusiasts that the Molten Salt Reactor programme was abandoned in the 1960s because it was not fissile material-friendly. MSRs do not remove all risk – nothing does – but they substantially reduce the security and safety implications present in light water reactors. Admittedly, nuclear research in the United States is more and more in private hands but a CCC-like (Conference on Climate Change) effort to mobilise international will and resources would address multiple concerns simultaneously. The NSS would not be the appropriate forum for such a venture but issues as grave as nuclear safety and security can know no boundaries.

There is plenty to be said about the United States and N5 behaviour regarding nuclear weapons and energy, a lot of it not laudatory. This would be nice to remember the next time a column raises alarm about some allegedly new development in India. It would put the alarm in context, and chances are, the world will still be here tomorrow.

This post appeared on FirstPost on March 26, 2016.