A US-India Nuclear Alliance (USINPAC)

M.D. Nalapat

Although President George W Bush understood the need to ensure parity for India with France and the UK in a 21st century alliance calculus, the Europeanists within his administration slowed down his effort at ensuring an equal treatment for India. Much the same as Winston Churchill in the previous century, they regard it as a "country of a lesser god" that is simply undeserving of any except a subservient status. Sadly, the Obama administration has become even more a Europeanists' delight than its predecessor, and it has very rapidly sought to dilute the few concessions that President Bush succeeded in extracting from his skeptical team.

This has been especially pronounced in the nuclear field. It is not rocket science that India's ascent into middle income status will depend on a huge increase in its generation of energy, and that such an increase, given existing green technologies, will need to be powered mostly by energy from nuclear sources. The nuclear industries of India and the US have excellent synergy between them, provided the US acknowledges the implicit premise of the 2005 Singh-Bush statement and the 2008 unanimous vote of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow commerce and cooperation with India.

The non-proliferation lobby within the US (a group heavily represented in the Obama administration) made India its primary target since 1974, neglecting to take account of the leaching of nuclear and missile technology from China and other locations to Pakistan and North Korea. Small wonder that it has demonized the India-US deal as a "danger to non-proliferation efforts", despite the fact that a democracy of a billion-plus people is as much entitled to critical technologies as France or the UK. The reality, however, is that the Manmohan Singh government made several concessions to the US side that have had the effect of substantially degrading India's offensive capability. An example was the closing down of the CIRUS reactor, which was producing weapons-grade plutonium for decades. In exchange, India was to be given access to re-processing technology. Not merely has such technology continued to be denied to India, but the Obama administration is seeking to cap, roll back and eliminate India's homegrown reprocessing capabilities.

Apart from strong-arm (and secret) tactics designed to force India to agree to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), the Obama administration is now seeking to force India to give up its Fast Breeder Reactor program. As if on cue, those commentators in the world's second-largest English-speaking country - including those not known for any previous interest in matters nuclear- who hew to the line of any incumbent US administration have used the Fukushima disaster to call for the FBR program to be abandoned.

Outsourcing policy to foreign NGOs (P.O.)

M.D. Nalapat

After a gap of more than six years, your columnist is once again in the country that a century ago ran half the world. For years, indeed decades, he has been fascinated with the way in which a small island nation expanded across the globe to secure territory and resources to fuel its prosperity. Some say that much of the cause can be attributed to the spirit of democracy that pervaded the United Kingdom. However, this may be a simplistic view, for the reality is that the UK of the Empire period was a class-ridden nation, where the nobility (both economic and ancestral) had privileges denied to the many. Unlike in France or Russia, where there was a revolution against the aristocracy, the English never revolted against their nobility, except for the brief spasm of republicanism led by Oliver Cromwell four centuries ago. Of course, the difference between Britain and Russia was that in the former, it was much more easy for a low-born person to become wealthy than during the reign of the Tsars. When the nobility monopolised top positions the way the upper castes did in ancient India.

Inequality of income is a fact of life, but if this is accompanied by as severe an inequality in opportunity, then the society concerned becomes brittle and easy to break. In any country where a “caste” system develops, in which power and money get monopolised by a small segment on the basis of birth, there will come a period when such a society can no longer meet the needs and begins to fall apart. Such a danger exists even in the country that is today well on the way to becoming the next superpower, China. Should the Communist Party of China (CCP) get dominated by “princelings” (the children of top party leaders), then the hold of the party over the people will slacken, as will morale and motivation inside the party, which would change into an instrument for the retention of privilege created by birth. Already, a disproportionate share of the top echelons of the CCP comprise of cadres who were lucky to be born of influential parents. If this segment grows at the expense of those (such as current CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao) who were born from humble stock, the rapidly-evolving population of China would begin to lose respect and loyalty towards a party that has made China once again a Great Power.

Only India can Challenge China's Primacy in Asia (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — More than radical Islam, the threat to the primacy of the West will come from Sinic civilization, centered in the People’s Republic of China. Should China continue to grow at the pace of the last 20 years for the next two decades, by 2015 the backwash created by such progress will pull Japan and South Korea into its gravity field. This will later extend to Siberia and large swathes of Southeast and Central Asia.

As armed conflict would be a lose-lose proposition for all major players, the odds are that such an expansion of geopolitical space will take place peacefully. China’s strategy will be to make cooperation with it attractive while increasing the costs of conflict to Asian countries that may seek to present a challenge, principally India.

Obsessed as Germany is with ensuring the ethnic purity of Europe by blocking immigration even from established, English-speaking democracies outside the West, and France with the preservation of Franco-German primacy in Europe, the European Union is unlikely to adopt the only course that would enable it to retain its edge in the face of rising Sinic power. This is an alliance with India.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, with his obsessive focus on Europe and neglect of Asian Russia, has been all but begging France and Germany to admit Moscow into the European Union as an equal of these two states. This course is likely to go the way of Turkey’s application to join the club; in other words, it will end up in the refuse bin. This is likely to push Russia further toward being a partner in the Sinic alliance that will be stitched together by Beijing in a decade.

Obama's Afghan War Needs Credible Change (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — This columnist was among the first outside the United States to cheer on, in February 2008, the ascent of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency. Even if he achieves little else during his term, the election of an African-American by a majority Euro-ethnic electorate will mellow the tension between races in the United States.

It also gives poorer peoples around the globe a confidence that there is nothing intrinsic in themselves that prevents them from reaching the collective levels of achievement of the Euro-ethnics. For this alone Obama has merited the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him.

However, many in the future are likely to judge the soundness of the Nobel Committee's decision by Obama's success or failure in Afghanistan. This is now Obama's war.

In this theater, as yet, change has been absent. An important reason has been the high cost of operations due to the policy of sourcing materiel almost exclusively from the United States and other NATO partners. Such procurement resembles the policies of former U.S. President George W. Bush, who declined to get needed materiel from the most cost-effective sources.

With even the aftershave coming from home, NATO armies have become the most expensive to field in combat. Should NATO ever do battle against an enemy more endowed than the goons that fill the Taliban's ranks, or the debilitated militaries such as those of the late former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the enemy may only need to focus on their supply lines from home to demotivate the NATO troops.

Racism Trumps Reason at Vienna (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Contrary to the expectations of Congress Party boss Sonia Gandhi and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, last week's special meeting in Vienna of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group ended in deadlock. The meeting had been requested by the United States to approve George W. Bush's quest for a "clean waiver" for the resumption of nuclear trade with India – commerce that had been frozen since India's 1974 nuclear test.

Tellingly, all but one of the countries opposing India were either European, or of largely European stock. The one exception was Japan, a country that prides itself on its people being the "Westerners of the East."

Expectedly, Austria led the Euro-attack against the proposed exemption, reiterating the bloc’s 34-year demand that India be forced to accept full-scope safeguards on all its nuclear facilities, as well as sign on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland, Switzerland and Ireland joined hands with Japan in backing the Austrian stand, even though each had been individually made aware by Indian negotiators that any such conditions would result in India walking away from the deal.

Unfortunately for backers of the deal, reports reaching New Delhi suggest that the Bush point person for the talks, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation John Rood, proved to be less than enthusiastic about securing a clean waiver for India. In this, Rood is following in the path of his predecessor Robert Joseph, who had also been unenthusiastic about the deal. Both are members of the U.S. nonproliferation mainstream that for decades has focused on India – a state that has never proliferated its technology beyond its own borders – while doing little about U.S. policies that have winked at proliferation by Pakistan, China and North Korea.

Mugabe Loses His People (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe represents the other side of apartheid – the forced segregation of races in a country where a single ethnic group dominates the rest. His macho actions against the few remaining European-origin citizens living in Zimbabwe may be psychologically satisfying to those who share his viewpoint. But the fact remains that Zimbabwean whites have been as marginalized and dispossessed as blacks were in South Africa till Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison in 1990.

Mugabe's theatrics against the whites carry little resonance among the populace – they have realized that reverse apartheid has made their economic situation worse, not better. While most of the blame for this rests on the commissar-style administration of the octogenarian head of state, it has also been fuelled by the comprehensive economic boycott of Zimbabwe by countries with European-origin majorities.

Having voluntarily handed over power to the majority black population in 1980, Zimbabwe's whites had sufficient moral justification to expect an honorable accommodation with the rest of the population. Instead, they were soon rendered politically irrelevant, and their properties sequestered by armed thugs loyal to the new master of the country.

It is fortunate for South Africa that despite the example set by Mugabe, whites in that country went ahead with democratization a decade later, with somewhat better consequences for themselves than in Zimbabwe.

India's 'Caste' in the Global Nuclear Network (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — A millennium ago, when Muslim armies began succeeding in defeating their Hindu rivals, such victories came despite the latter's greater opulence. A contributory factor was caste. Only certain "high-born" groups were permitted to bear arms in defense of the state. Their number did not exceed 9 percent of the total population. Had a more equitable social structure been in place, India's history may have been different.

It was only in the 1960s that democratic elections became the instrument through which the "backward castes" were able to claim equal rights with the rest. Ironically, since that time a new caste system has arisen, again one that denies upward mobility to those condemned to second-class, or worse, status. This is the international nuclear order implemented through the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which permanently restricts the right to possess nuclear weapons to only five countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

Since then, Israel, India, Pakistan and now North Korea have emerged as de facto nuclear weapons states. Of these, Israel has not thus far tested a nuclear weapon, although it has clearly had access to the technology needed to build a stockpile of them. Of the other three, Pakistan and North Korea are both authoritarian states known to have proliferated both nuclear as well as missile technology, and to have secured the know-how for developing both from third countries.

Emasculating Nuclear India (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

NEW DELHI, March 13 (UPI) -- There is zero doubt that India and the U.S. are natural partners. Steady migration to the U.S., the ever-denser interlinking of the hi-tech industry in both countries, and common threats from religious fundamentalism and political authoritarianism mandate that Washington and New Delhi forge an alliance that is as close as that between the U.S. and the UK.

However, the caveat to this is that such a partnership can only be on terms that are the same as what the U.S. accords to the U.K. In brief, the U.S. has first to accept India as a nuclear weapons state that deserves permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council. Unfortunately, almost all the formulae trotted out by the "South Asia" brigade in U.S. think tanks and other centers of influence such as the State Department implicitly or otherwise seek to "engage" India on terms that would, if accepted, result in an emasculation of the world's most populous democracy.

The proposed Nuclear Deal falls squarely in this category, and will, if sought to be implemented, push official U.S.-India relations back to the frost of the Cold War period.

Indians love flattery, and often surrender substance in exchange for a verbal pat on the head. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by education as well as by his experience in international institutions, is predisposed to uncritical acceptance of the standard Western worldview, which implicitly sees India as a juvenile power needing mother-henning, and definitely not mature enough to be trusted with grown-up implements such as nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems. This mistrust of the country's maturity -- despite New Delhi's impeccable non-proliferation record to date -- infuses the terms of the deal that has been agreed to by the Sonia Gandhi-led coalition government, hungry as always for formal acknowledgment of its improving status. Were the agreement to be implemented, India would almost immediately lose its chance to switch to the thorium cycle, and within 12 years would find its tiny arsenal of nuclear weapons depleted to irrelevance.

Musharraf Calls the Bluff (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- While most U.S. secretaries of state -- save perhaps Dean Rusk -- have gobbled up credit for outcomes that they had little to do with, few have been as brazen as Colin Powell.

Two years ago, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was surprised when the leader of the main Islamist alliance -- Maulana Fazlur Rahman -- visited India and issued a series of highly conciliatory statements. As Pakistan's president had been telling the United States he was "forced" into taking a hawkish line on India precisely by the likes of Rahman, this was an embarrassment.

The reality is that India is no longer the enemy of choice for the people of Pakistan. That distinction has now gone to the United States.

Realists, and this even includes members of the U.S. Democratic foreign policy establishment such as Strobe Talbott, who have long sought to divest India of its defensive capability against another nuclear power in Asia, understand the only feasible solution for Kashmir is the acceptance of the status quo. India keeps what it has while Pakistan and China (which was gifted a slice of the territory three decades ago) do likewise.

Simultaneously, New Delhi would ensure a degree of autonomy for the state that would help cut popular support off from jihadis attempting to convert Kashmir into a second Afghanistan.

Bill Clinton understood this at the end of his term in office yet, under Colin Powell (who appears to have an affinity for generals active in politics), the pendulum of U.S. policy has once again swung toward a quixotic effort to prize at least the Valley of Kashmir loose from India.

This, Pakistan's lobbyist in Washington Christina Rocca has been told, is the "minimum" that the Pakistan army will accept. It is also far more than what any administration in New Delhi can deliver.