Left Flank

Before allowing my hatred towards the US Senate dissipate into optimism, I have to report another blundering decision to end a 30-year old ban on nuclear fuel and technology to India, by an 86-13 vote.

Eric Hundman tries to be cheery and point out that the mere existence of such a geopolitically-retarded law doesn't necessitate execution. Right!

This and several other provisions seem to be designed to allow the United States opportunities to prevent or halt technology transfer if circumstances call for it. Such potential loopholes also highlight one particularly important fact: The deal's approval does not necessarily mean the United States will actually sell much civilian nuclear technology to India. It is now legal to do so in most cases, but political, bureaucratic, economic, or diplomatic barriers may nonetheless end up being too problematic to overcome. Indeed, the Bush administration secretly told Congress it would not sell «sensitive» nuclear technologies to India in a letter earlier this month. For those unhappy with this deal, the details of the bill leave America with plenty of wiggle room.

Only, that is, if American lawmakers continue to disregard err...you know, laws. Opponents' angry remarks are just not reassuring enough.
Pakistan lost no time proving why the law drives a stake into the heart of the non-proliferation regime.

Yesterday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters, «You don't have to be worried about [the deal]. Pakistan will now be justified to also make a demand for a similar deal as we don't want discrimination.»

Now, about those opponents who argued that an exemption for India would undermine nuclear non-proliferation efforts and encourage an arms race in the region…

Future American administrations' ability to affect South Asian and East Asian relations has already begun to falter.

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TNR's J. Peter Scoblic attacks the cynical conservative argument against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While pressuring the nuclear states to disarm, the NPT's most significant accomplishment has been to reassure non-nuclear states that they don't need the bomb, and in the past four decades more countries have given up nuclear weapons programs than have started them. In hindsight, the NPT seems like a diplomatic no-brainer.

But in 1968, it wasn't. Conservatives like Senator Barry Goldwater and right-wing organs like National Review railed against the NPT because it didn't fit into their binary, us-versus-them view of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives distrusted international entanglements, and they feared that participating in a global security compact would simply embroil the United States in the problems of others. More specifically, they saw the Cold War as a battle between good and evil, and not only did negotiating the NPT require talking directly with the Soviet Union, they feared the treaty would undercut the fight against communism by forbidding us from giving nuclear weapons to our allies.

The Johnson administration had considered these arguments but ultimately decided that the proliferation of nuclear weapons had changed the way the world operated, undermining a zero-sum worldview in which a gain for us was automatically a loss for our enemies and vice-versa. Whatever the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons had made security interdependent--not only between the superpowers, but among all nations. As a presidentially appointed commission reported, «the Soviet Union, because of its growing vulnerability to proliferation among its neighbors, probably shares with us a strong interest in preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons.»

The treaty, then, was more than just a good deal for the nuclear-weapons powers; it was a manifestation of a growing emphasis on collective security--like the United Nations, but more effective, because the United States and the Soviet Union were working with, and not against, each other despite their rivalry. It marked a different way of conducting international diplomacy.

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