INDIA Can Get Into NSG, No Problem,BUT By Endorsing PAKISTAN's Bid!

INDIA Can Get Into NSG, No Problem, BUT By Endorsing PAKISTAN’s  Bid!

Diplomatic orthodoxies are made to be broken when circumstances change. Today, India is being let in, through one portal after another, into the restricted world of sensitive and high technology trades.

Excluded before, forced to reinvent the wheel, badly, as a security and proliferation risk, a Soviet satellite, never mind our pretensions of being non-aligned.

Our military machine, to date, is Soviet era, obsolete, kept going by honourable and skilled soldiers, with some new buy-ins from successor Russia. But since it’s all at negotiated market rates now, we have been looking elsewhere too.

India now buys armaments and systems from Israel, the US, France, Britain, Italy, and new sources, like Sweden, Germany and Japan.

It’s not that Russia does not make state-of-the-art; its new defensive shield surface-to-air rapid deployable mobile missile system, the S-500 Prometey ( Prometheus), is considered to be the best in the world, and many, including India, have placed orders.

But there is a big change in our policy stance today. We keep our right to sovereign choice. We judge things from an India first position. We collaborate with, or buy, from whomsoever we like. Nobody minds that. Today, we take a far more pragmatic view of things; and others, in a position to help us, find that refreshing.

India’s recent admittance to the 34 member Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a year after we applied, is a proud and enabling thing.

It will help us improve the quality of future missiles produced, and allow us to import Predator drones from the US, good for cross- border forays.

Prior to being let into the MTCR, India has been adhering to the MTCR guide lines anyway. It has also signed ‘The Hague Code of Conduct’, against ballistic missile proliferation.

The acceptance of India into the MTCR, is a precursor to being let in to a number of other important and exclusive high-technology and security sensitive groupings.

We are presently knocking on the door of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). America, which is selling us six Westinghouse nuclear power plants, for a start, now that the accident liability issues have been resolved, is our champion once again. The plenary session in Seoul, is on the 24^th of June 2016.

It might just decide to admit India. America wants access to our huge defence and high technology market, and seeks to build us up as a responsible counter-weight to China.

To get China’s agreement to our entry, America may make a covert promise to let Pakistan in as well.

America has various internal legal obstructions in how it can ramp up military cooperation and sensitive equipment transfers with/to India, indeed to any country which is not part of the NSG.

There has already been a preliminary meeting of the 48 member group,  on June 9^th  in Vienna, when India’s entry was discussed, with most of the group in favour of letting us in.

However, NSG membership can only be obtained with unanimity. And China has objected, on points of order, involving the test ban treaty and the nuclear proliferation treaty, neither of which have been signed, either by India or Pakistan.

Neither can afford to do so, at this stage, as their military nuclear weapons programmes would be impacted.

China is also concerned that if India gets into the NSG first, it may well block Pakistan’s entry. China would ideally like the entry of one, to be contingent on the other.

For nuclear weaponised states, however small or big their stockpile- and however sophisticated; it is definitely a zero-sum game.

Non-nuclear weapons’ states too, tend to be allied to one big brother or the other; as in Assad’s Syria and Putin’s Russia, for example.

If India gets in, and not Pakistan,  the balance of power in South Asia will be disturbed. In any case, there is no keeping Pakistan out of attaining parity with India. Consider, that Pakistan has obtained just as many nuclear power plants from China, as India is buying from NSG sources, following its nuclear power deal in 2008, after getting a waiver from this self-same NSG.

This is in contravention of NSG rules, but China has flouted them with impunity.

India, meanwhile, has come all the way from Soviet favouring non-alignment,  even as Pakistan sat  in America’s  lap, to declaring that our relationship with America is  indispensable , just days ago. America too, now sees India as a significant ally.

But to quell Chinese concerns, why shouldn’t India call for Pakistan’s application and entry into the NSG as well?  After all, it’s a foregone conclusion.

Today, if India welcomes the idea of Pakistan joining the NSG,  irrespective of whether the 48 member NSG can bring itself to ignore Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism, and its proliferation record; then we will effectively, remove objections to our own bid.

And if the 48 member NSG rejects Pakistan’s bid, it won’t be India’s fault, or China’s, for that matter.

Meanwhile, Modi has just asked Russia for support, and will meet both Putin, and Xi Jinping, separately, on the margins of other conferences, before the NSG meets at Seoul on the 24^th of June.

For:  The Quint

(853 words)

June 14^th, 2016

Gautam Mukherjee