Indian Nuclear Program –A global migraine

Muhammad Umar.

American experts have been incessantly warning their government of the dire consequences of exempting India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) requirements. On December 8, while testifying in front of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Henry D. Sokolski said, “The US persuaded the NSG to allow India to import uranium for its civilian nuclear program but, as predicted, this has only allowed India to dedicate more of its meager domestic uranium production to military purposes. India, in short, with the deal now can make more bombs.”

A week after the testimony, Adrian Levy, a world renowned investigative journalist wrote an alarming piece, warning that India is secretly constructing an entire city dedicated to building an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Levy’s in-depth look at how India has been surreptitiously uprooting farmers since 2012 in the South of the country to erect a clandestine nuclear city is a testament of the very real global threat a nuclear armed India poses, and it also proves that the American actions have in fact helped India proliferate on a very massive scale.

Americans must realize that India is no one’s friend and that history proves that. India cannot be bound by any bilateral or multilateral agreements. In the early 1990s Pakistan and India had a bilateral agreement that prohibited both nations from possessing chemical weapons, a few years later after ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1996, India declared it had a stockpile, a clear violation of the bilateral commitment to Pakistan.

In 1974 India conducted its first nuclear test. They were only able to develop their first bomb by violating the terms of a multilateral peaceful uses agreement that they had with Canada and the United States.

Since last December, Putin, Obama, and Xi Jinping have all visited India, and with each one Modi has made promises that contradict the commitments he has made to the others. Modi thinks he can pull the wool over everyone’s eyes – yes, he does, but cannot fool them any longer. He used President Xi Jinping’s visit to leverage Russia and the visit by Vladimir Putin to force Barack Obama into his arms. This is the real face of the so-called incredible India.

The construction of this new top-secret nuclear city, as detailed in Levy’s report is clear evidence that America’s attempt to offer India a civil nuclear incentive has failed to reign in their nuclear weapons program, instead it has helped the weapons program grow to unthinkable new heights. The city when completed in 2017 would be “the subcontinent’s largest military-run complex of nuclear centrifuges, atomic-research laboratories, and weapons- and aircraft-testing facilities”, the report said.

Regional stability is essential to avoid war, the NSG exemption secured by the America for India has freed up un-safeguarded Indian uranium for weapons use, and as revealed by Levy for an entire city dedicated to building nuclear bombs. After all this, America still choses to continue with backing India’s bid for full membership to the NSG, ironically the very organization created to prevent future proliferation after India exploded their first bomb.

The Americans must know that if India is allowed to build such a huge facility for the sole purpose of enriching uranium, it will create instability in the region. It will further aggravate Pakistan’s security dilemma, and at the same time enrage the Chinese.

According to the report, the construction began three years ago, and it is hard to imagine that strategic thinkers in the United States did not raise any red flags. The hypocrisy of the American standards is just so astonishing that it leaves me speechless.

Pakistan has meager resources and a declared purpose for their nuclear weapons program, which is actually a stabilizing factor in the region, and it is bombarded with American pressure to restrain its program. Not to mention, Pakistan did not violate any civil nuclear agreements to build its nuclear capability. On the other hand, India, the first country to proliferate in the region by violating a civil agreement, has massive resources, and no credible purpose for their nuclear weapons program, and it is given exemptions to import more resources to buildup their nuclear arsenal, further destabilizing the region. This sort of hypocrisy makes no sense and can result in a global nuclear crisis.

To make matters even worse, another report published earlier this week states that India’s nuclear explosive materials are vulnerable to theft, but as the report states, “the Americans choose not to press for tougher security because of its booming trade relations with India” and cannot afford to offend the Indian workforce in America that has crept into their system.

I beg the Americans to pay attention to their experts in Washington DC, and pay heed to their warnings of a global nuclear crisis if India is allowed to continue to grow its nuclear arsenals unchecked. I urge them to stop playing geo-politics for the sake of all our futures.

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