Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India

[Guest guest]

Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With

India

By Mian, Zia; Ramana, M V

 

President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

issued a joint statement on July 18, 2005, laying the grounds for the

resumption of full U.S. and international nuclear aid to India. Such

international support was key to India developing its nuclear

infrastructure and capabilities and was essentially stopped after India's

1974 nuclear weapons test. India's subsequent refusal to give up its

nuclear weapons and sign the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has

kept it largely outside the system of regulated transfer, trade, and

monitoring of nuclear technology that has been developed over the last

three decades.

 

The July agreement requires the United States to amend its own laws

and policies on nuclear technology transfer and to work for changes in

international controls on the supply of nuclear fuel and technology so as

to allow "full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India." In

exchange, India's government would identify and separate civilian

nuclear facilities and programs from its nuclear weapons complex and

volunteer these civilian facilities for International Atomic Energy Agency

(IAEA) inspection and safeguarding. Yet, as they consider the deal and

ways to transform its broad framework into legal realities, political elites

in each country have ignored some crucial issues.

 

Policy analysts in the United States have debated the wisdom of the

deal.1 This debate has been rather narrow, confined to proliferation

policy experts and a few interested members of Congress, and largely

focused on the lack of specific details with regard to the deal, the order

of the various steps to be taken by the respective governments, and the

potential consequences for U.S. nonproliferation policy.2 The larger

policy context of a long- standing effort to co-opt India as a U.S. client

and so sustain and strengthen U.S. power, especially with regard to

China, has gone unchallenged. There is also little recognition of how the

agreement could allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal.

 

The deal has incited a wider and more intense debate in India on

questions of national security, sovereignty, development, and

democracy. Some would like to see as few constraints as possible on

increasing the future capacity of India's nuclear weapons complex, and

others question the extent to which nuclear energy can help meet

India's energy needs. Despite the many claims that the social,

economic, and political well-being of the people of India will be

enhanced by this deal, there has been little attention paid to the issue

of whether India needs nuclear weapons at all, the costly failures of the

Indian nuclear energy enterprise, and the possible harm for the people of

India from a continued expansion of the nuclear complex.

 

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W.

Bush's threeday meeting in July produced a joint declaration between

the United States and India establishing a global strategic partnership,

which includes increased nuclear energy cooperation.

 

Misplaced U.S. Goals

 

The nuclear deal has to be seen in the context of efforts over the last 50

years to incorporate India into U.S. strategy in Asia. After the Chinese

revolution, the United States came quickly to believe that newly

independent India was the only potential regional power that could

compete with China for dominance in Southeast Asia. Despite repeated

U.S. efforts to use economic and military aid to promote this policy,

India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, refused to have his country

play this role. He said that a free India would not be a pawn for great

powers, and warned that this kind of alliance building by great powers

was bad for international relations and could lead to war.3

 

Still, U.S. hostility toward Communist China led to some extraordinary

ideas about nuclear cooperation. In the wake of China's first nuclear

weapons test in 1964, senior officials in the Department of State and the

Pentagon considered the possibilities of "providing nuclear weapons

under U.S. custody" to India and preparing Indian forces to use them. At

the same time, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was considering

helping India with "peaceful nuclear explosions," which would involve the

use of U.S. nuclear devices under U.S. control being exploded in India.4

These plans were dropped amid growing fears of the consequences of

proliferation for U.S. military and diplomatic power, and the United

States turned instead to preventing the further spread of nuclear

weapons.

 

The end of the Cold War prompted a rethinking of strategic possibilities

and a now infamous 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance prepared for

then-secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, which declared that "[o]ur first

objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a

dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy." It

noted, "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential

competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."5 In

other words, the geopolitical order was to be frozen as it then was, with

the United States assured of maintaining its relative superiority in the

different regions of the world. A key concern was China.

 

The first dramatic change in Indo-U.S. relations came during a March

2000 visit by President Bill Clinton to India, less than two years after

India's 1998 nuclear tests. The governing coalition then was dominated

by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose views are

strongly anti-Communist, aggressively pro-nuclear weapons, and

opposed to the more traditional strategy of nonalignment. The joint

statement issued by the two leaders declared that "India and the United

States will be partners in peace, with a common interest in and

complementary responsibility for ensuring regional and international

security. We will engage in regular consultations on and work together

for strategic stability in Asia and beyond."

 

Further developing the idea of the United States and India as strategic

partners in managing regional and international security, the "Next

Steps in Strategic Partnership," signed in January 2004, announced

that the United States would help India with its civilian space programs,

high-technology trade, missile defense efforts, and civilian nuclear

activities. The subsequent nuclear deal is but one of the building blocks

promised in this larger arrangement. The purpose of the 2004 accord

was made clear by a U.S. official who said the "goal is to help India

become a major world power in the 21st century.... We understand fully

the implications, including military implications, of that statement."6

 

These implications became clearer with the U.S.-India Defense

Relationship Agreement of June 28, 2005. The thinking behind this

agreement was explained by Robert Blackwill, who served in the first

George W. Bush administration as U.S. ambassador to India and then

as deputy national security adviser for strategic planning. In a rhetorical

question, Blackwill asked, "Why should the U.S. want to check India's

missile capability in ways that could lead to China's permanent nuclear

dominance over democratic India?"7 Less than a month later, the

nuclear deal was announced.

 

Recruiting India may help reduce the immediate costs to the United

States of exercising its military, political, and economic power to limit

the growth of China as a possible rival. More generally, the United

States sees Asia as central to global politics after the demise of the

Soviet Union, and it needs strong regional clients there. The search for

allies and friends is all the more important at a time when the United

States was criticized because of its invasion and occupation of Iraq. On

all these counts, India is seen as a major prize, and support for its

military buildup and its nuclear complex seems to be the price the Bush

administration is willing to pay.

 

This goal is, it seems, to be pursued regardless of how it will spur the

spiral of distrust, political tension, and dangerous, costly, and wasteful

military preparedness between the United States and China, between

China and India, and between India and Pakistan. This last dynamic is

already coming into view, as Pakistan has demanded from the United

States (and been refused) the same deal as is being offered to India,

and China wants any exemptions for international nuclear cooperation

and trade to be offered not only to India but to be open to others, i.e., its

ally, Pakistan.8 In all these countries, containing about one in three

people on the planet, many of whom are very poor, this will amount to a

tragic distortion of values and priorities.

 

An Errant Debate in India

 

Although the nuclear deal has incited a limited policy debate in the

United States, it has become a key concern in Indian domestic politics

and has elicited three broad positions. First, there are the nuclear

hawks who oppose the deal. They see the nuclear energy and nuclear

weapons programs as one more or less integrated complex. They see

the deal, particularly the proposed separation of civilian and nuclear

facilities, as imposing constraints that would make more difficult the

creation \of a large nuclear arsenal, which they believe is essential for

India to be a "great power." The clearest expression of this view has

come from former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and others in the

BJP.

 

Vajpayee has argued that "[separating the civilian from the military

would be very difficult, if not impossible.... It will also deny us any

flexibility in determining the size of our nuclear deterrent."

The "flexibility" he desires is the ability to use what may be classified

as civilian facilities to increase the pace at which the nuclear weapons

program could grow, as well as its eventual size. Similar sentiments

have also been voiced by some retired officials from the nuclear

complex.

 

The second position is that of Singh and many other leaders of the

Congress Party, which heads the coalition currently governing India.

They see the deal as offering recognition of India as a nuclearweapon

state, pointing out that the joint statement says India will have "the

same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced

nuclear technology, such as the United States." More practically, they

see it as a way to sustain and expand the nuclear energy program while

not restricting the building of what they describe as a "minimum"

nuclear weapons arsenal. Even though Indian nuclear strategists and

policymakers have never defined the term "minimum," it is used to

suggest that India is being restrained in its nuclear ambitions. At the

same time, it is made clear that the minimum could increase,

depending on circumstances.

 

Singh explained to the Indian parliament on July 29, 2005, that the deal

offers a way whereby "our indigenous nuclear power program based on

domestic resources and national technological capabilities would

continue to grow," with the expected international supply of nuclear fuel,

technology, and reactors serving to "enhance nuclear power production

rapidly." At the same time, he made it clear that "there is nothing in the

joint statement that amounts to limiting or inhibiting our strategic

nuclear weapons program." As an assurance that India would have the

final say in implementing the deal, the prime minister announced

that, "before voluntarily placing our civilian facilities under IAEA

safeguards, we will ensure that all restrictions on India have been lifted."

 

A different source of opposition to the deal comes from India's left-wing

parties, which otherwise support the Congress-led government. These

parties have traditionally supported the nuclear energy program, but

they opposed the 1998 nuclear weapons test and have pressed for India

to play a larger role in global disarmament efforts and to do more to

reduce nuclear dangers in the region. Their greatest concern is that the

deal ties India too closely to U.S. policies. India's Communist Party

leader, Prabodh Panda, said in parliament that the recently concluded

agreements with Washington served to reduce India to a "junior partner

of the U.S. in fulfilling its global ambitions." As the first sign of India

surrendering its traditional nonalignment and role in representing the

Third World, they cite the Indian government's surprising vote for a U.S.-

led resolution against Iran at the September 2005 IAEA Board of

Governors meeting, something key U.S. lawmakers and officials had

made clear was tied to the nuclear deal.9

 

An Indian boy participates in an Aug. 6 anti-nuclear protest held in

Calcutta, India, marking the 60th anniversary of the U.S. atomic

bombing of Hiroshima. Activists used the occasion to protest the

resumption of full civil nuclear cooperation between the United States

and India.

 

These positions, which have by and large dominated the debate so far,

have many flaws. The first is their shared belief in the success of India's

nuclear energy program and the need to continue with and expand this

effort. This fails to recognize that the deal, in fact, marks U.S.

acceptance of a long-standing Indian demand for lifting international

restrictions on nuclear cooperation and that this demand is itself

testament to the failures of the Department of Atomic Energy.

 

The second problem is the belief shared by the hawks and the

government that nuclear weapons are a source of security. They ignore

the essential moral, legal, and criminal questions of what it means to

have and be prepared to use nuclear weapons. The only difference

between these two camps is on the character and number of the

nuclear weapons to which they aspire and how many people in how

many cities they are prepared to threaten to kill. The left-wing parties

are more ambiguous; they support disarmament but have not called for

India unilaterally to give up its nuclear weapons arsenal and ambitions.

Some of them even feel Indian nuclear weapons may be needed to

hedge against a more belligerent U.S. exercise of power and influence.

 

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released a three-part

chronological history of India's nuclear power program at the Bhabha

Atomic Research Centre in November. Contrary to Department of

Atomic Energy predictions that nuclear energy would generate as much

as 43,500 megawatts of electricity by 2000, it only produces 3,300

megawatts today, barely 3 percent of India's installed electrical

capacity.

 

Standing outside the political parties is a broad network of social

movements in India that have become an increasingly important element

in its political life. The most prominent of these, the National Alliance of

Peoples Movements, an umbrella group of several hundred

organizations and campaigns that support the rights of the poor,

women, minorities, farmers, and workers, has come out against the

deal because they see it as having been concluded without any public

debate; as strengthening an unaccountable, dangerous, and costly

Indian nuclear energy and nuclear weapons program; and as

undermining important nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament

goals.10

 

Nuclear Energy Failures

 

On the Indian side, a primary motivation for the deal has been the

history of failure of its Department of Atomic Energy to produce large

quantities of nuclear electricity. In 1962, Homi Bhabha, the founder of

India's nuclear program, predicted that by 1987 nuclear energy would

constitute 20,000-25,000 megawatts of installed electricity-generation

capacity.11 His successor as head of the Department of Atomic

Energy, Vikram Sarabhai, predicted that by 2000 there would be 43,500

megawatts of nuclear power.12 Neither of these predictions came true.

 

Despite more than 50 years of generous funding, nuclear power

currently amounts to only 3,300 megawatts, barely 3 percent of India's

installed electricity capacity. Indian nuclear capacity is expected to rise

by more than 50 percent over the next few years, largely because of two

1,000-megawatt reactors purchased from the Soviet Union in a 1988

deal and now being built by Russia. Even if more such deals were to be

made in the future, it is by no means clear that India's nuclear

establishment will be able to keep its promises, let alone contribute a

significant fraction of projected electricity demand.

 

Another of the Department of Atomic Energy's failures has been in

ensuring sufficient supplies of uranium to fuel its nuclear reactors. As an

Indian official stated in an interview with the BBC, "The truth is we were

desperate. We have nuclear fuel to last only till the end of 2006. If this

agreement had not come through, we might have as well closed down

our nuclear reactors and by extension our nuclear program."13 This is

not a new crisis; the former head of the atomic energy regulatory board

has reported that "uranium shortage" has been "a major problem...for

some time."14

 

India has been unable to import uranium for its unsafeguarded nuclear

reactors because of the rules of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers

Group (NSG), the countries that manage international nuclear trade with

a view to preventing proliferation. Apart from two very old imported U.S.

reactors, India relies on natural uraniumfueled nuclear reactors, which

are based on the two Canadian- designed and -built pressurized heavy-

water reactors it acquired in the 1960s. The total electric capacity of

these reactors is 2,990 megawatts. At 75 percent capacity, these

require nearly 400 tons of uranium every year. The plutonium production

reactors, CIRUS and Dhruva, which are earmarked for nuclear weapons

purposes, consume perhaps another 30-35 tons annually. We estimate

that current uranium production within India is less than 300 tons of

uranium a year, well short of the fuel requirements.

 

The Department of Atomic Energy has been able to continue to operate

its reactors by using uranium stockpiled from when its nuclear capacity

and thus its fuel needs were much smaller. Our estimates are that,

without the nuclear deal, this stockpile would be exhausted by 2007.

The department's desperate efforts to open new uranium mines in the

country have met with stiff resistance, primarily because of the health

impacts of uranium mining and milling on the communities around

existing mines.15

 

For decades, the department has offered the potential shortage of

domestic uranium as justification for a plutoniumfueled fast- breeder

reactor program, which has involved costly and hazardous reprocessing

facilities to recover plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Its efforts to build

a breeder, however, have not made much progress: the Fast Breeder

Test Reactor started functioning in 1985 and has been plagued with

problems while the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor is not expected to

be completed until 2010 if all goes accordingly to plan. Poor economics

and safety and engineering problems have effectively killed such breeder

reactor programs in the United States, France, and Germany, but India

may choose to try to follow the example of Japan and proceed with its

program, ignoring both the costs and risks of reprocessing and the

many problems with breeder reactors.

 

Th\e dismal state of India's nuclear energy complex, despite 50 years of

determined government support and funding, may offer the clearest proof

yet of one of the basic assumptions underlying the NPT. The treaty

recognized that developing countries would need a great deal of help if

they were to establish nuclear energy for peaceful purposes

successfully. That is why Article IV of the treaty calls for a trade-off:

providing non-nuclear-weapon states with access to international

cooperation with nuclear energy in return for a demonstrated

commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. In refusing to sign the

NPT and in developing nuclear weapons, India had until now sacrificed

the benefits of this international support. Now, through the nuclear deal,

the United States has promised India all the help it needs for its civilian

nuclear program, all without signing the treaty or even accepting any

limits on its nuclear arsenal.

 

Indian workers examine iron rods at the construction site of the

prototype fast breeder reactor at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic

Research in August 2004. The reactor is scheduled for completion in

2010.

 

How Many Bombs Are Too Many?

 

In particular, the deal promises to allow India access to the international

uranium market. If the deal goes through, New Delhi will be able to

purchase the uranium it needs to fuel those reactors it chooses to put

under IAEA safeguards. This will free up its domestic uranium for its

nuclear weapons program and other military uses and would allow a

significant and rapid expansion in India's nuclear arsenal. India is

believed to have a stockpile of perhaps 40- 50 nuclear weapons, with

fissile materials stocks for as many more, and plans that reportedly

involve an arsenal of 300400 weapons within a decade.16 Realizing

these plans will require the production of much larger quantities of fissile

material and at much higher rates than India has achieved so far. Such

production of fissile materials specifically for nuclear weapons is not

constrained by the deal.

 

India could use its newly unallocated domestic uranium to meet its

fissile material needs in several ways. It could choose to build a large

plutonium-production reactor to add to CIRUS and Dhruva, its two

weapons-grade plutonium-production reactors at the Bhabha Atomic

Research Centre in Bombay. CIRUS and Dhruva could continue to

produce about 25-35 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium a year.

Another Dhruva-sized production reactor could yield an additional

several bombs worth of such plutonium each year.

 

Another way in which India could increase its fissile material stockpile

is to expand its small-scale centrifuge enrichment program and make

highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons. So far, it is only

believed to have enriched its domestic uranium to make fuel for the

nuclear submarine that has been under development since the 1970s

and has recently completed testing of its nuclear reactor.17 India could

make HEU both for weapons and enriched fuel for its submarine if it no

longer needs to rely on domestic uranium to fuel its power reactors.

 

There is also the possibility, as hinted at by some hawkish critics, that

India's nuclear power reactors may become part of the weapons

complex. For instance, if kept out of safeguards and with sufficient

uranium supplies on hand, power reactors could be used to make

weapons-grade plutonium by limiting the time the fuel is irradiated. Run

this way, a typical 220-megawatt pressurized heavy- water reactor could

produce 150-200 kilograms per year of weapons- grade plutonium when

operated at 60-80 percent capacity. This could mean as much as an

eightfold increase in the existing rate of plutonium production. The

penalty to be paid in terms of the increased and less efficient use of

uranium would be covered by access to imported uranium to be used in

other power reactors. There would no longer be a trade-off between

uranium for electricity generation and weapons plutonium production.

 

Neither does the deal constrain how India uses the weapons- useable

materials produced so far. A major source of such weapons- useable

material is the plutonium in the spent fuel of the unsafeguarded Indian

power reactors. Over the years, some 9,000 kilograms of reactor-grade

plutonium may have been produced in these reactors, though a large

fraction of this plutonium is probably still not separated from the spent

fuel. Even though it has a slightly different mix of the plutonium isotopes

from the weapons- grade plutonium normally used for weapons, reactor-

grade plutonium can be used to make a nuclear explosive.18 The United

States conducted a nuclear test in 1962 using plutonium that was not of

weapons grade, and one of India's May 1998 nuclear tests is reported to

have involved such material.19 An estimated 8 kilograms of such

plutonium is needed to make a simple nuclear weapon. If this spent fuel

is not put under safeguards as part of the deal, India would have enough

plutonium from this source alone for an arsenal of approximately 1,100

weapons, larger than that of all the nuclear- weapon states except the

United States and Russia.

 

Finally, the fast-breeder reactor under construction also will be a source

of plutonium. The Department of Atomic Energy has always resisted

placing the breeder program under international safeguards and is doing

so again when asked to do so as part of the deal. Anil Kakodkar,

chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of the

Department of Atomic Energy, has said that the Prototype Fast Breeder

Reactor will not be under safeguards because it is a research and

development program and "any research and development programme,

we are not going to put under safeguards." He has also pointed out

that "only that which is clearly of no national security significance, only

that part will be civilian."20 The department's resistance to safeguards

on the breeder program begs the question as to whether this is or ever

was intended only for civilian purposes.

 

Why Nuclear Electricity?

 

Both Indian and U.S. supporters of the deal claim that the growth of

nuclear energy generation capacity in India is a practical and even a

necessary way to maintain India's current rate of economic growth. The

evidence suggests otherwise.

 

According to our estimates, the cost of producing nuclear electricity in

India is higher than the non-nuclear alternatives.21 Construction costs

are high, and construction times are long, making the capital cost of a

nuclear reactor very high when compared, for example, to coal-based

thermal stations. In a country where there are multiple demands on

capital for infrastructure projects, including for electricity generation, this

makes nuclear power a poor economic choice.

 

Other considerations that go against nuclear power are the possibility of

catastrophic accidents and the problem of nuclear waste. In studying

the safety of nuclear reactors and other hazardous technologies,

sociologists and organization theorists have come to the pessimistic

conclusion that serious accidents are inevitable with such complex high-

technology systems. The character of these systems makes accidents

a "normal" part of their operation, regardless of the intent of their

operators and other authorities. In India, as elsewhere, there have been

many small accidents at nuclear facilities. Given its high population

density, a nuclear reactor accident in India involving the release of large

quantities of radioactive materials could cause tremendous damage.

Finally, there remains the problem that no country has resolved: the

disposal of large amounts of waste that will remain radioactive for many

tens of thousands of years.

 

The issue that really needs to be discussed but has hardly figured in the

debate is whether India needs any nuclear power plants at all. There are

many who believe India would be better off giving up this costly and

dangerous technology and finding ways to meet the needs of its people

that do not threaten their future or their environment.

 

A 2003 study by the Confederation of Indian Industry found that there is

great scope for improving Indian energy intensity (energy consumption

per unit of gross domestic product), which is high compared to other

countries, and called for increased cooperation with the United States in

this area. It has been estimated that Indian industry could save as much

as 20-30 percent of its total energy consumption and that nearly 30,000

megawatts, i.e., more than the total planned nuclear capacity by 2020,

could be saved through energy conservation programs.22 This would

also be cheaper than building new generating capacity, especially

additional nuclear capacity. This study also noted that, in the 1999 Indo-

U.S. Joint Statement on Cooperation in Energy and Related

Environmental Aspects, India had declared a goal of a 10 percent share

for renewable energy by 2012 and a 15 percent improvement in energy

efficiency by 2008 and was seeking U.S. help to meet these targets.

 

The real challenge facing India is the growing divide between the

energyintensive pattern of development of its cities, with increasing

demands for electricity and petroleum, and the continuing dependence

on fuel-wood and animal-dung energy by the majority who live in its

many villages. Nuclear energy as a large, centralized, and costly source

of electricity will do little for meeting the basic energy needs of rural

India because connecting these areas to a central power grid is

expensive, involves high transmission losses, and is financially

unsustainable. The UN Development Program's World Energy

Assessment in 2000 observed that "past efforts to deliver modern

energy to rural areas have often been ineffective and inefficient" and

that, "above all, planning for rural energy development should have a

decentralized component and should involve rural people-the customers-

in planning and decisionmaking."23 By working with the rural poor\, it

may be possible at last to develop and provide the small-scale, local,

sustainable, and affordable energy systems that they need.

 

Conclusion

 

If approved by Congress and India's parliament as well as the NSG, the

U.S.-Indian nuclear deal will prove costly and dangerous. It will feed a

cascade of mistrust, insecurity, and instability, diverting resources to a

fateful military competition that will envelop China, India, Pakistan, and

the United States. More broadly, it is difficult to see the deal as

anything other than a fundamental rejection of the nonproliferation

regime, as it abandons the assumption that access to nuclear fuel and

technology must be within the terms of the regime. It undermines the

aspirations of the vast majority of nations seeking global and regional

nuclear disarmament.

 

The deal also will create the potential for the rapid buildup of a much

larger Indian nuclear arsenal. It will bail out a failing Indian nuclear

energy program that has had little regard either for the economics or the

environmental and health consequences of its activities. It is also likely

to offer little real benefit to India's poor. It is not often that so much harm

may be done to so many by so few.

 

Despite the many claims that the social, economic, and political well-

being of the people of India will be enhanced by this deal, there has

been little attention paid to the issue of whether India needs nuclear

weapons at all, the costly failures of the Indian nuclear energy

enterprise, and the possible harm for the people of India from a

continued expansion of the nuclear complex.

 

ENDNOTES

 

1. see George Perkovich, "Faulty Promises: The U.S.-India Nuclear

Deal," Policy Outlook, September 2005; Fred McGoldrick et al., "The

U.S.-India Nuclear Deal: Taking Stock," Arms Control Today, October

2005; and Wade Boese, "U.S. Puts Onus on India for Nuclear Ties,"

Arms Control Today, December 2005.

 

2. see "Issues and Questions on July 18 Proposal for Nuclear

Cooperation With India" at www.armscontrol.org (Nov. 18, 2005, letter to

members of Congress).

 

3. see Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1994).

 

4. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global

Proliferation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999).

 

5. "Excerpts From Pentagon's Plan: Prevent the Re-Emergence of a

New Rival," The New York Times, March 8, 1992.

 

6. "U.S. Unveils Plans to Make India 'Major World Power,'" Agence

France Presse, March 26, 2005.

 

7. Robert Blackwill, "A New Deal for New Delhi," WaH Street Journal,

March 21, 2005.

 

8. Mark Hibbs, "China Favors NSG Solution on India That Facilitates

Trade With Pakistan," Nuclear Fuels, November 7, 2005.

 

9. Wade Boese, "U.S.-Indian Nuclear Prospects Murky," Arms Control

Today, October 2005.

 

10. Sandeep Pandey, "Condemnation of India-U.S. Nuclear Deal,"

Statement by the National Alliance of People's Movements, October 26,

2005.

 

11. David Hart, Nuclear Power in India: A Comparative Analysis

(London: George Alien & Unwin, 1983).

 

12. Vikram Sarabhai, Science Policy and National Development (Delhi:

Macmillan, 1974).

 

13. Sanjeev Srivastava, "Indian PM Feels Political Heat," British

Broadcasting Corp., July 26, 2005.

 

14. A.Gopalakrishnan, "Indo-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation: A Nonstarter?"

Economic and Political Weekly, July 2, 2005.

 

15. Xavier Dias, "DAE's Gambit," Economic and Political Weekly,

August 6, 2005, pp. 3567-3569.

 

16. see "India's Nuclear Forces, 2005," Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientists, September/ October 2005, pp. 73-75; David Albright, "India's

Military Plutonium Inventory, End 2004," Institute for Science and

International security, May 2005.

 

17. "ATV Project: India Crosses Major Milestone," The Hindu, November

25, 2005.

 

18. J. Carson Mark, "Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium,"

Science and Global security, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1993, pp. 111-124.

 

19. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global

Proliferation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999).

 

20. T. S. Subramaniam, "Identifying a Civilian Nuclear Facility Is India's

Decision," The Hindu, August 12, 2005.

 

21. M. V. Ramana et al., "Economics of Nuclear power From Heavy

Water Reactors," Economic and Political Weekly, April 23, 2005, pp.

1763-1773.

 

22. V. Raghuraman and Sajal Ghosh, "Indo-U.S. Cooperation in Energy-

Indian Perspective," Confederation of Indian Industry, 2003.

 

23. "Rural Energy in Developing Countries," in World Energy

Assessment: Energy and the Challenge of Sustainability (UN

Department of Economic and Social Affairs and World Energy Council,

2000.)

 

Zia Mian is a research scientist in the program on science and global

security at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and M. V.

Ramana is a faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies

in Environment and Development in Bangalore, India.

 

Copyright Arms Control Association Jan/Feb 2006

 

 

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/382158/wrong_ends_means_and_

needs_behind_the_us_nuclear_deal/index.html?source=r_science

Source: Arms Control Today