Doing Well by Doing Good:
Score one for this 'Anglosphere' thing.
By Moe Lane Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
That wacky President Bush. He just won't stick to that unilateralist narrative:
Congress Approves Nuclear Cooperation Agreement With India
By Judy MathewsonDec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Congress passed legislation to allow the U.S. to share civilian nuclear technology with India, rejecting arguments by arms control advocates that it undermines global efforts to curb the spread of atomic weapons.
The House and Senate voted separately to allow U.S. companies to sell equipment for India's civil atomic power program. In exchange, the South Asian country is to open some of its plants to international inspections to prove that the fuel won't be diverted for weapons.
The role of juicy opposition quotee - it's a popular one; but whatever will the media do when the Democrats are the ones that have to come up with ideas? - this week is being played by David Wu (D-OR), and he's chosen Fear-Mongering (a popular choice) for his gambit:
"If or when a mushroom cloud ever erupts over an American city, it will be traced to this unwise vote,"
Guess there aren't that many Hindus in Oregon's First District. Or Rep. Wu simply doesn't care about offending them.
Read on.
Rep Wu aside, the House passed this one with a wide margin - 330 to 59, with 44 not present - and the Senate rubberstamped. The President will sign the law some time next week. This deal will allow the US to foster Indian civilian nuclear development in exchange for access to their civilian plants for inspection (their military plants aren't covered by this).
This deal still has a few hurdles left:
Additional steps remain. The two countries must now obtain an exception for India in the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an assembly of nations that export nuclear material. Indian officials must also negotiate a safeguard agreement with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Bowing to pressure from the administration and the Indian government, congressional negotiators watered down provisions in the bill that would have required Bush to certify that India has been cooperating fully on confronting Iran's nuclear program before allowing civil nuclear cooperation. The bill instead requires that the president provide Congress with an annual report detailing India's efforts on Iran.
All in all, this is a positive development. India is a nuclear power, a functioning democracy and a rapidly-developing nation; the first means that we need to treat her with respect, the second means that we can treat with her in honor and the third means that we can do rather well out for ourselves by doing the first and second. The steady improvement in relations between India and the United States has been one of this administration's largely unheralded success stories*: we're already engaged in military and technology transfers, not to mention steadily-increasing economic ties. This should hopefully allow for an even stronger alignment... which may become very important, down the line.
Moe
PS: BTW, while I rarely offer kudos for a group's decision to simply not interfere, I recognize that the Democratic Party's temptation to logroll American-Indian relations must have been a strong one. They (mostly) didn't, which was the proper decision; I thank them for that, and doubly thank those Democrats who actively assisted in improving our position with India.
*Although I suspect that historians thirty or forty years down the road will remedy this lack, all the while cursing our era's amazing preoccupation with Iraq.
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Doing Well by Doing Good: 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I know this not a particularly productive observation, but in my watching of Rep. Wu, the word "chowderhead" comes to mind. And folks don't even eat that much chowder in the Oregon First.
President Bush's statement, which shares the credit, partisanly:
Congress has agreed upon bipartisan legislation that will strengthen the strategic relationship between America and India and deliver valuable benefits to both nations. I am pleased that our two countries will soon have increased opportunities to work together to meet our energy needs in a manner that does not increase air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, promotes clean development, supports nonproliferation, and advances our trade interests.I appreciate Congress' support for the U.S.-India civil nuclear cooperation initiative and would like to thank Chairman Hyde, Ranking Member Lantos, Chairman Lugar and Ranking Member Biden for their leadership on this extraordinary legislation. I look forward to signing this bill into law soon.
Why is our sharing NukeTech with India a problem? They already have their Bomb. If anything, we'd just be streamlining what they already have, with the benefit(If you call UN oversight a benefit) of haveing a bit more knowledge of what they do have.
Compare this with the Ruskies helping Iran. The Ayatollahs don't have the Bomb yet, but any civilian help is guaranteed to be twisted to Bomb use, i.e. North Korea.
I don't know that they are quite Apple and Oranges, but at least Oranges and Lemons. We can't do much about India to begin with except mitigate and "damage" already done. We can still conceivably stop Iran.
"Any love letter is incomplete without a Ronald Reagan quote"
--my sophomore year roommate
of the British Empire was India. And the free world should be grateful for the legacy of democracy there. (Yes, I know British rule was often brutal and racist, but it was pretty mild relative to some empires.) China would have been better off to have had suffered a similar fate.
I am a fan of big science and high tech. I am glad that India will expand its nuclear program(me), and I note that they are building a great wind-energy system, too. They have profited by leapfrogging technologies in the past, so I am confident they will continue to do so in the future. They are already full partners in ITER (http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/27/stories/2005072705201000.htm), so they may have fusion in fifty or a hundred years.
Islam is disturbingly (to me, at least) prominent in India. The CIA factbook puts it at 13.8%, and Wikipedia at 20%, and the history of religious strife there before and after partition still make me worry that David Wu could turn out to be right. I'd put my money elsewhere, though.
This is my guess as to how it will come down.
The Chicomms are very busy building aircraft carriers and various other assorted landing craft. Where do they intend to project force? Where do they intend to make an amphibious assault? If you don't think they are intently watching the political process here and drawing their own conclusions in a manner similar to the Japanese did in 1938, your doctor has your Prozac or your Zoloft dose too high, or you're smoking too much pot. Look for something to happen by Easter Week of 2009, especially if there is a new Democratic President in office, name or gender isn't going to matter too much. Remember Easter week 2001? The downing of the EP-3 electronic eavesdropping aircraft was no accident. The Chicomms were simply taking the new guy in office's measure.
Achmadinejad will do nothing too drastic in the next two years. He will not want to alarm the electorate here. If anything, he wants a sense of complacency here so the American voters vote based on their vegetative needs, food, sex, warmth, shelter, entertainment, and a comfortable spot to comfortably eliminate their wastes and have them removed from sight.
Achmadinejad will take advantage of the chaos ensuing the Chicomms seizure of that mettlesome breakaway province of Taiwan, and satisfy his mullahs fatwa and use his nukes on Israel. His response afterwards to the outrage will be "It is done!" What are you going to do about it? Fully expecting America and the Western Democracies to want nothing more than a return to their previous vegetative state. Any thoughts?
Jimmah Carter is apoplectic about this. After all, any good lefty knows you are only supposed to share nuclear tech with communists and Islamo-fascists.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle