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U.S.-India Nuclear Ties: More Exceptions & Inconsistencies?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to India last week undoubtedly carried a message pointed straight at China. By underlining the importance of and building strategic partnerships with Beijing’s regional rivals, the apparent objective is to bring down China’s role and growing influence amid a bilateral dispute over the yuan’s exchange rate. Where does India fit in? It’s seen as a counterweight to China and the two countries have been long-time competitors. All this, on top of the obvious U.S. objective to deepen relations with the world’s largest democracy, a big security partner on counter-terrorism, and enormous market on which American businesses can thrive. So, it’s apparent that Washington is treating India as a responsible power and ally to American interests after having never been regarded as a possible ally in the second half of the 20th century.  National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon told reporters on Air Force One, “President Obama intends this trip to be — and intends our policy to be — a full embrace of India’s rise.”

Yes, the world and international relationships are constantly evolving, so policies should be crafted (sometimes revised) to fit new realities of the time and the future. However, on the nuclear front, we must remember some facts from history, near and distant, as well as the implications. Click “read more.”

Key facts:
1. Recall that the Bush administration signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with India in 2008, which undermined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since New Delhi is not an NPT-signatory. It also made it harder for the U.S. to be strict with other countries in future civilian nuclear agreements.

2. Recall that the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) that same year awarded India with an exemption by lifting an embargo on nuclear trade with New Delhi. This embargo was put in place immediately following India’s nuclear test of 1974, the same year the NSG was formed. The waiver was granted based on India’s promise to abide by strict non-proliferation policy (still without signing the NPT) and in recognition of its energy needs. The waiver allows India to buy uranium for its existing reactors along with technologies to reprocess spent fuel and reduce radioactive waste (a process that also can help build nuclear bombs). However, this also opens the door for India to use the uranium for nuclear devices. It’s important to remember that India is the only non-NPT country to enjoy such a perk. Basically, the waiver recognizes India, which is outside the NPT, as a “nuclear weapons state” – a term and status that is strictly given to NPT members.

President Obama in November 2009 re-affirmed U.S. commitment for “the early and full implementation of our civil nuclear cooperation agreement [with India]… The lifting of U.S. export controls on high technology exports to India will open vast opportunities for giant research and development efforts.  It will enable U.S. industry to benefit from the rapid economic and technological transformation that is now underway in our country.”

His recent trip ignited a wave of news articles from the Indian press about Washington’s plans to support New Delhi’s full membership in the nuclear club and other multilateral export control regimes (NSG, Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australian Group, Wassenaar Arrangement). Again, India is relying on the U.S. for successful entry, and reiterated its strong commitment to non-proliferation ahead of Obama’s trip.

Concerns in a nutshell:
1. India is not a signatory of the NPT, which means, it is not held accountable by the international non-proliferation regime.

2. India has signed the Additional Protocol (a good thing) and put its existing and future civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards (another good thing), but international inspectors cannot touch New Delhi’s military nuclear facilities. India also retains the right to designate a reactor as “civilian” or “military” (not good things).

3. India has agreed to continue its moratorium on nuclear weapons testing and to strengthen the security of its existing nuclear arsenals. However, nothing exists to prevent it from carrying out nuclear weapons tests.  The 2008 NSG decision has made it more difficult to persuade India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and stop producing weapons-usable fissile materials.

4. Exceptions and inconsistencies: The plan for India’s entry into the NSG and export control regimes appears to be in phases. Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman reportedly said “As the membership criteria of these four regimes evolve, we intend to support India’s full membership in them. And at the same time, India will take steps to fully adopt the regime’s export control requirements to reflect its prospective membership.” NSG membership rules (as well as the MTCR and Wassenaar Arrangement) are currently linked to the NPT. But the U.S. and India appear to be working towards transcending the existing non-proliferation regime. Froman said the U.S. would “encourage the evolution of a membership criteria of these regimes consistent with maintaining their core principles” while a senior Indian official said, “We are constructing a paradigm beyond the NPT.”

New LWR In North Korea?

North Korea is constructing an experimental light-water reactor (LWR) capable of generating 25 to 30 megawatts of electricity, according to Stanford University’s Siegfried Hecker on Saturday. After a North Korea trip, Hecker told reporters in Beijing that Pyongyang informed him in March of its plans to build a LWR power plant that uses its own nuclear fuel. In September, David Albright with the Institute for Science and International Security disclosed satellite images of construction work underway in the Yongbyon complex where the North’s cooling tower was demolished in 2008 as a symbolic gesture to denuclearize. David Albright has not yet disclosed conclusions to his findings, but one Washington nuclear expert initially suspected that North Korea could be building a cooling facility to provide the same function of a cooling tower needed to produce nuclear weapons.

It is too early to sound alarm bells or to be overly concerned. Still, if the North is in fact building a LWR, then some initial thoughts that come to mind are that Pyongyang again has a domestic and international agenda. It appears to be a sign that the North will continue to pursue uranium enrichment even though it will take years to complete the reactor and will have difficulty receiving outside help for its construction due to a series of UN Security Council sanctions resolutions and export bans.  The only way to receive outside help is to smuggle in reactor parts, centrifuges and other technology under the radar of export controls. In realistic terms, the envisioned reactor can only be small in size. Even China is unable to safely build large reactors on its own.

The move also seems to be a part of the “mighty and powerful nation by 2012” equation and to prepare for a leadership succession. The LWR construction could also have an element of eliciting negotiations from the U.S. despite an apparent decision to rely on big brother China for life support. And then of course, it could be a show to grab international attention.

The Deficit Commission’s Budget Proposal

One thing is clear, if the US wants to address the rising deficit, the entire budget must be on the table. What, you say? But that means I’ll have to make some really tough choices and deal with some really tough realities. Well, you can’t always get what you want.

That is the message delivered by the two chairmen of the President’s Deficit Commission on Wednesday. The pragmatic approach, penned by former GOP Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, attempts to put partisan politics aside and address that fact that, “America cannot be great if we go broke.”

The proposal totals nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction by 2020 and would:

1) Enact tough discretionary spending caps and cut discretionary spending in fiscal year 2015 to $200 billion below the requested (fiscal 2015) levels in the President’s budget request. Cuts are evenly spread across domestic and defense spending.

Further, the proposal would set up a “firewall” between defense and non-defense (or, they say, security and non-security – which is very different) spending, so money cannot move between the two. This way, as Newsweek points out, “a failure to cut defense could not be made up for with cuts to, say, food stamps.”

Defense Cuts ($bn)
Apply Gates’ promised overhead savings to deficit reduction $28
Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at the Dept. of Defense for three years $5.3
Freeze noncombat military pay at 2011 levels for 3 years $9.2
Double Gates’ cuts to defense contracting $5.4
Reduce procurement by 15 percent $20

This 15 percent reduction would end procurement of the V-22 Osprey; cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle; Substitute F-16 and F/A-18Es for half of the Air Force and Navy’s planned buys of F-35 fighter aircraft; cancel the Marine Corps version of the F-35; Cancel the Navy’s Future Maritime Prepositioning Force; Cancel the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), the Ground Combat Vehicle and the Joint Tactical Radio; and reduce planned levels for “other procurement,” a category that includes communications and electronic equipment, tactical vehicles, and other support equipment and spares.

Reduce overseas bases in Europe and Asia by one-third $8.5
Modernize Tricare, Defense health $6
Replace military personnel performing commercial activities with civilians $5.4
Reduce spending on RDT&E by 10 percent $7
Reduce spending on base support $2
Reduce spending on facilities maintenance $1.4
Consolidate the Department of Defense’s retail activities $0.8
Integrate children of military personnel into local schools in the US $1.1

TOTAL $100.1

Domestic Cuts ($bn)
Reduce Congressional & White House budgets by 15 percent $0.8
Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at non-Defense agencies for three years $15.1
Cut the federal workforce by 10% (2-for-3 replacement rate) $13.2
Eliminate 250,000 non-defense service and staff augmentee contractors $18.4
Reduce unnecessary printing costs $0.4
Create a Cut-and-Invest Committee charged with trimming waste and targeting investment $11
Terminate low-priority Corps construction projects $1
Slow the growth of foreign aid $4.6
Eliminate a number of programs administered by the Rural Utility Service (formerly REA)$0.5
Eliminate all earmarks $16
Eliminate funding for commercial spaceflight $1.2
Sell excess federal property $1
26 other options of $2 billion or less $17

These 26 other options include a cut in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS; a reduction in funds for the Smithsonian and National Park Service, to be offset by visitor fees; and the elimination of the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools.

TOTAL $100.2

2) Pass tax reform that dramatically reduces rates, simplifies the code, broadens the base, and reduces the deficit.

3) Address the “Doc Fix” not through deficit spending but through savings from payment reforms, cost-sharing, and malpractice reform, and long-term measures to control health care cost growth.

4) Achieve mandatory savings from farm subsidies, military and civil service retirement.

5) Ensure Social Security solvency for the next 75 years while reducing poverty among seniors.

You can see more of the specifics for options 2-5 in the CoChairs’ Proposal, and read over the finer details of the discretionary savings outlined above in the document titled, $200 Billion in Illustrative Savings. Both are posted here.

Of course, none of this is final – not even close. It will take the support of 14 out of 18 commission members for Congress to even consider the proposal.  Congressional leaders have promised they will do so regardless, but limited support from the commission will likely serve to justify limited support from Congress.

Bolton and Yoo unbolted and unglued on New START

By now you all know that arms control bulldozer John Bolton and torture apologist John Yoo penned a mendacious op-ed attacking the New START treaty in Wednesday’s New York Times.  Though Bolton and Yoo have less credibility on national security issues than a three dollar bill, it’s still important to set the record straight.  

Enter Slate’s Fred Kaplan.  As he did with Mitt Romney’s disingenuous diatribe against New START, Kaplan patiently and cogently takes apart Bolton and Yoo’s claims.  Here’s how he begins:

Last July, when Mitt Romney attacked the New START treaty in a Washington Post op-ed, I wrote that in 35 years of following debates on nuclear arms control I’d never seen anything quite as “thoroughly ignorant” about the subject.

On the op-ed page of today’s New York Times, John Bolton and John Yoo take after the treaty with a slightly different set of arguments, and I’ve never seen anything quite as slippery and dishonest.

When Bolton was George W. Bush’s undersecretary of state for arms control, his main job was to serve as Dick Cheney’s spy inside Foggy Bottom and to derail any movement toward arms control. Yoo was Bush’s deputy assistant attorney general whose claim to fame was devising a legal rationale for torture.

I will say this: Their Times piece shows them true to form.

You can read Kaplan’s full response here.  Ben Loehrke and Page van der Linden put together nice replies as well.

Though I don’t have much to add to Kaplan’s magnificent rebuttal, I want to quickly highlight the opening paragraph in the Bolton/Yoo op-ed.  They write:

The sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress. Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution, and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty, which was signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last spring but awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn’t weaken our national defense.

As John has noted, New START (or any foreign policy issue for that matter) did not play a role in the recently concluded election.  In any event, the will of the voters appears to point in exactly the opposite direction of what Bolton and Yoo suggest.  According to an AP-GfK poll conducted just after last weeks elections:

Two-thirds want the Senate to ratify Obama’s nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, including most Democrats, about 6 in 10 Republicans and independents — and even about half of conservative tea party supporters.

It’s nice to know that a large majority of Americans are listening to our military, which has been telling them that New START is a good thing for the country.  It’s too bad that Bolton and Yoo would prefer to reject that advice.

The Republican Policy Committee Memo on New START

Last Friday, the Senate Republican Policy Committee (RPC) sent a memo to Republican foreign and defense policy staff with the message that “it cannot be the case that the time is now for the Senate to vote on New START.”  The RPC’s latest stale offering is a response to the Obama administration’s drive to secure Senate approval of the treaty before the end of the year.

Kelsey Hartigan over at NSN has a nice takedown of the memo, as does Max Bergmann at the Wonk Room.  As Kelsey notes, the RPC conveniently ignores the enormous support for the treaty from our military and retired Republican officials.  Indeed, one has to wonder why the Republicans are acting so anti-military.

What’s also revealing is that the RPC concedes that the substantive case against New START is largely baseless.  For example, note the following statements from the memo:

“Although the treaty may very well preserve the ability of the United States to modernize its nuclear forces…”

“The [State Department’s] fact sheet then asserts that the treaty provides no constraints on deploying conventional prompt global strike capabilities. This does not answer the question of whether the Administration is committed to developing those capabilities.”

“[T]he [State Department’s] fact sheet asserts that the treaty provides no constraints on deploying the most effective missile defenses possible. Like other statements made in this section of the fact sheet, it may be a true statement…”

The only actual substantive concern the RPC can come up with is on the issue of verification.  The memo refers to classified objections raised by Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), some of which the Senator articulated in a recent appearance on Frank Gaffney’s “Secure Freedom Radio.”  The concerns are nothing new: New START drops START I’s requirement that both the U.S. and Russia exchange telemetry data from long-range missile tests; New START drops onsite monitoring of Russian missiles “coming out of the gate” at the Votkinsk missile production plant; Russia has a history of cheating on past arms control agreements; etc.

Of course what the RPC memo doesn’t tell you is that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified that “a key contribution of this treaty [New START] is its provision for a strong verification regime.”  Gates also noted that “we don’t need telemetry to monitor compliance with this treaty.”  The same goes for Votkinsk.  The memo also fails to mention that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen declared that he is “very comfortable with the verification regime that exists in the treaty right now.” Mullen has also pointed out that under New START “there are almost twice as many inspections per facility, per year than under the previous treaty.”  Re: allegations of Russian cheating, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) noted last year: “Our experiences over many years have proven the effectiveness of the [START I] Treaty’s verification provisions and served to build a basis for confidence between the two countries when doubts arose.”

The reality is that New START contains an updated set of data exchange and monitoring provisions that are more than adequate to verify Russia’s compliance with the treaty.  And let’s not forget:  We’ve had no on-site monitoring presence in Russia since START I expired last December.  If New START is not ratified we will continue to lack an essential window into the size and makeup of Russia’s arsenal.  Critics would do well not to confuse a different verification regime for a weak verification regime.  

In sum, the RPC admits that the treaty does not limit our ability to modernize our forces, does not prohibit the U.S. from deploying conventional prompt global strike capabilities, and does not contain meaningful constraints on missile defense.  And it raises concerns about verification that have been debunked over and over again.  

All the more reason, then, for the RPC to dispense with its senseless and politically motivated calls for indefinite delay and further concessions on issues peripheral to the treaty. It’s long past time for Republican Senators to support New START.  Not only would doing so demonstrate responsible leadership, but further delay or defeat of the treaty could blow back up in the GOP’s face (see here, for example).  As Robert Kagan put it in an op-ed aimed at his fellow Republicans in yesterday’s Washington Post, the GOP has very little to lose if it supports the treaty, but very much to lose if it rejects the treaty.