Commentary: US-India Nuclear Treaty

July 29, 2006

Namaste friends,

The US-India nuclear treaty has been passed by US congress and senate is expected to pass it soon. Many in Indian media are hailing it as two democracies coming together and generally showing in excellent light.

My astrological analysis of the charts involved is different. My reading of this whole thing is that India is being short-changed. I think India is being hasty and making a big strategical blunder, which future generations may regret. I will give my views in this mail. If you think my thinking is wrong, please ignore me! :-)

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Let me share my astrological analysis.

India's independence chart data is: 1947 August 15, midnight, Delhi.

Treaty signing data from "Jyotish Digest" is: 2006 March 2, noon, New Delhi.

(1) In the muhurta chart, Mars is in lagna. This suggests that it is a hastily agreed treaty. In the navamsa chart, Mars is in Aries, confirming the haste. He is with Ketu in navamsa, suggesting either a mistake or a hidden agenda.

(2) The AL has Ketu in it, suggesting a mistake or a hidden agenda.

(3) Navamsa is important in any treaty, as its shows various motivations etc. In the navamsa chart, lagna lord Sun is in 8th. Mars and Ketu are in badhaka sthana, showing a hasty mistake troubling later.

(4) Lagna in navamsa is aspected by Saturn, Rahu, Mars and Ketu and not by any benefics. There are a lot of negative and taamasik motivations in this deal. There is a lot of intrigue. Things are not what they appear.

(5) Retrograde Saturn transits in Cancer, close to natal lagna lord Venus. In fact, transit Saturn is extremely close to the natal Mercury. This transit is not good for calculating well and analyzing well. India made poor analysis and poor calculations.

(6) Natal rasi lagna is in the 8th deg of Ta. Transit of Mars in the 13th deg of Ta, close to natal lagna, is conducive to hastiness.

(7) Lagna in natal navamsa is in the 10th deg of Pi. Rahu is transiting close to it, in the 12th deg of Pi. In fact, debilitated Mercury, Moon and Rahu transit over natal navamsa lagna. This shows inner self coming under the influence of clouded vision, confusion, an emotional approach and poor judgment.

(8) Let us see navamsa transits. Mars transiting in the 22nd deg in Aries in navamsa and retrograde Saturn transiting in the 14th deg in Li in navamsa aspect natal lagna lord Venus in the 23rd deg of Cn in rasi, by graha drishti. The intellect (lagna lord) is under malefic navamsa transit influences (as well as malefic rasi transit influence of Saturn and Rahu).

(9) India's natal AL is in Vi. Ketu was transiting in Vi and AL lord Mercury was debilitated in 7th from it, afflicted by Rahu and Moon. This is not good for India's image. India can make a mistake and make some bad calls.

(10) In the annual TP chart of 2005-06, annual TA dasa of Mercury was running on March 2, 2006. In rasi chart, Mercury is the lagna lord in 2nd, afflicted by Sun and Saturn. In navamsa, he is the 6th lord in 10th with badhaka lord Rahu. Again, this is not showing some big breakthrough, but showing intrigue, confusion and bad calls. In D-30, Mercury is in 8th with Rahu and Ketu and shows some evil developments for the nation.

(11) If you use Narayana dasa of navamsa with India's natal chart, you will see that Leo's dasa runs from 2002 to 2007. The last one third gives the results of occupants and aspectors. If you divide further, you will see that the results of Ketu occupying Leo are given during Dec 2005-May 2006. Moon and Ketu in the 6th house in Leo in navamsa show an emotional mistake in foreign policy rather than a big positive breakthrough.

I can mention many other points, but I will stop here. But, my overall analysis of this is not positive. I am afraid India is making a monumental mistake. Its money and energy spent elsewhere may solve its energy needs much better, without tying its foreign policy, self-esteem and future policy options in knots.

I am afraid commentators from strategy think tanks - such as Brahma Chellaney - and Indian nuclear research stalwarts - such as Dr Homi Sethna - were right in blasting this particular treaty...

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If you are not an Indian and/or if you are put off by Indian patriotism, please skip this section. BTW, this section is non-astrological.

India never signed NPT because it was forced to sign it as a "non-nuclear" power. Nations such as US and China signed it as "nuclear" powers and that gives them different obligations and rights. It was not acceptable to India. India refused to sign CTBT also, as India was again required to sign it as a "non-nuclear" power. India totally rejected signing NPT and CTBT as long as it was required to come on board with the rights and obligations of a non-nuclear power, while nuclear powers enjoyed a different set of rights and obligations.

Now, under this nuclear treaty with US, India is de facto agreeing to NPT-plus and CTBT-plus kind of obligations as a *non-nuclear* power. The notion expressed by some that India is getting some nuclear legitimacy thru this treaty is quite questionable. Even the international inspections to which India agreed to open its nuclear facilities will be conducted under the obligations of a "non-nuclear" power. India is giving up its ambition for recognition as a nuclear power forever and agreeing to the most stringent conditions forced on non-nuclear powers. If all nuclear nations suddenly start developing new technology and start conducting new tests, India will have to sit and watch along with all other non-nuclear nations or risk sanctions from US which will waste huge investment it would have already made. After the huge investments required, India will be at the mercy of US and will have to always keep pleasing US or risk losing all its investment. US and India entered a similar agreement in 1963 on nuclear fuel for Tarapore reactor. After India went ahead with the first Pokhran nuclear tests, US walked out of the commitment. This time, US is ensuring that it will be too expensive for India to do something like that. In other words, US will call the shots!

In its quest for energy, India is putting all its eggs in one basket and making a huge gambit and totally ditching the ideological position it adopted for decades, for questionable gains.

And, except some strategy think tanks, nobody from media is raising a flag! It is a sorry situation.

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There is some nice analysis by Brahma Chellaney of "Centre for Policy Research, India" on this. He is a respected author on geo-strategical matters. He is not pro-BJP or something and he criticized the previous BJP government too. Links to some of his writings on this matter are given in the site below:

http://www.cprindia.org/faculty_pub_list.php?id=74 & author=Brahma%20Chellaney & currentpage=5

I reproduced some really interesting articles from this site below. Those who are interested in non-astrological material in this matter may read those.

Sarvam SreeKrishnaarpanamastu,

Narasimha

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Free Jyotish lessons (MP3): http://vedicastro.home.comcast.net

Free Jyotish software (Windows): http://www.VedicAstrologer.org

Sri Jagannath Centre (SJC) website: http://www.SriJagannath.org

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Asian Age, 2006 March 28

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Bush traps India into CTBT- By Brahma Chellaney

The Bush administration has attached a legally binding rider to the nuclear deal with India even before the US Congress has had an opportunity to put conditions of its own. Under the administration’s action plan, India would become a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) through a congressional piece of legislation. This is the first time in world history that one power has sought to bind another state to an international treaty rejected by its own legislature. The US Senate threw out the CTBT in 1999.

Under subsection ‘d’ of the "waiver authority" sought by the administration from Congress, India would be precluded forever from conducting any nuclear-explosive test. If India were to violate that blanket prohibition, all civilian nuclear cooperation with it will cease, leaving high and dry any power reactors it imports, bereft of fuel.

That is exactly what happened to the US-built Tarapur power reactors when, in response to India’s 1974 test, America walked out midway through a 30-year civil nuclear cooperation pact it signed in 1963. Although the 1963 pact had the force of an international treaty, the US halted all fuel and spare-parts supplies. Today, with the Indian foreign secretary in Washington to negotiate a new civil nuclear cooperation accord, India is reliving history.

For Washington, the nuclear deal has come handy to impose qualitative and quantitative ceilings on India’s nuclear-deterrent capability in order to ensure that it never emerges as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state. A permanent test ban is part of its effort to qualitatively cap the Indian deterrent, while the quantitative ceiling comes from America’s success in making India agree to reduce to less than one-third the existing number of facilities producing weapons-usable fissile material.

Lucky to escape Mr Bush’s nuclear embrace, Pakistan can now seek to overtake India on nukes, as it has done on missiles. It can watch the fun as the Bush administration and the US Congress entangle India in a web of capability restraints, in return for offering New Delhi dubious benefits — the right to import uneconomical power reactors dependent on imported fuel.

The White House has ingeniously used the reference to India’s "unilateral moratorium" in the July 18, 2005, nuclear deal to make it legally obligatory for New Delhi to abjure testing perpetually. In other words, India is being compelled to forswear a right America will not give up, even as the US merrily builds nuclear bunker-busting warheads and conducts sub-critical tests.

The reference to the Indian moratorium in the July 18 accord is specifically linked to the commitment therein that India "would be ready to assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology, such as the US." The US imposition of both a perpetual test ban and perpetual international inspections, however, shows vividly that India is being denied the "same benefits and advantages" as the United States.

While parties to the CTBT can withdraw from the treaty invoking its "supreme national interest" clause, India will have no such option. It will take on US-imposed, CTBT-plus obligations.

Instead of repealing or amending provisions of its domestic law, the Bush administration has simply sought a waiver authority under which, if the President were to make seven specific determinations on India’s good conduct, "the President may ... exempt" nuclear cooperation with New Delhi from the requirements of Sections 123(a)(2), 128 and 129 of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act.

The seven good-conduct determinations listed in subsection ‘b’ of the Waiver Authority Bill include the following — that "India is working with the US for the conclusion of a multilateral Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty" (FMCT); and that India is making "satisfactory progress" with the International Atomic Energy Agency to implement an "additional protocol", which will bring India’s entire civil nuclear fuel cycle and its workforce under international monitoring.

There is also an eighth determination to be made. Marked, "Subsequent Determination", subsection ‘d’ reads: "A determination under subsection (b) shall not be effective if the President determines India has detonated a nuclear explosive device after the date of the enactment of this Act."

India’s second-class status is being endowed with legal content, so that it stays put at that level permanently.

It began with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s announcement earlier this month that, contrary to his solemn pledge in Parliament "never to accept discrimination", he gave his word to Mr Bush that India will accept international inspections of a type applicable only to non-nuclear states — perpetual and immutable. Mr Bush’s waiver-authority request makes clear that he would seek to grant India any exemption only after it has brought into force a legally irreversible international inspections regime.

After being the only nuclear power to accept perpetual, enveloping inspections, India now stands out as the only nuclear-weapons state whose test "moratorium" will cease to be voluntary or revocable. Although still to build a single Beijing-reachable weapon in its nuclear arsenal, India will have no right to test even if China, Pakistan or the US resumed testing.

Having set out to drag India into the CTBT through the backdoor, the US is positioning itself to also haul New Delhi into a fissile-material production ban even before an FMCT has been negotiated, let alone brought into force. This objective could be facilitated either through a congressionally-imposed condition requiring New Delhi to halt all fissile-material production or through what undersecretary of state Robert Joseph has called "additional non-proliferation results" in "separate discussions".

The new bilateral civil nuclear cooperation accord under negotiation offers yet another avenue to Washington to enforce an FMCT-equivalent prohibition on India. In any case, once India places orders to import power reactors and locks itself into an external fuel-supply dependency, Washington will have all the leverage to cut off further Indian fissile-material production.

The Bush administration, in its written replies earlier this year to scores of questions posed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, did not seek to dissuade Congress from considering the imposition of additional conditions on India, despite a specific query on new riders. In other words, the administration may not be averse to Congress attaching any additional rider as long as it is not a deal-buster. But given the way India has relinquished the central elements of the July 18 deal, the US might believe that it can make New Delhi bend more.

What US-inspired technology controls against India could not achieve over three decades, the Prime Minister has been willing to do, in order to import power reactors that make no economic or strategic sense — retard the country’s nuclear-deterrent capability. He has offered no explanation, for example, for agreeing to shut down the Cirus plutonium-production reactor without ordering a replacement.

The irony is that a nominated PM, who has never won a single popular election in his career, has agreed to a deal with an outside power under which India’s nuclear-weapons potential is to be cut by more than two-thirds without he being required to get Parliament’s approval either for the accord or his civil-military separation plan. But the same deal needs to be vetted thoroughly by US Congress!

For a country that prides itself as the world’s biggest representative democracy, India needs to ask itself what sort of democracy it is when its Parliament passes its national budget without any deliberation, and limitations imposed on its most important security programme escape legislative scrutiny.

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Asian Age, April 8, 2006

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Five myths about the nuclear deal- By Brahma Chellaney

The lack of transparency that surrounded the July 18, 2005 nuclear agreement-in-principle and the subsequent deal-making has come to haunt both sides domestically. But while the US Congress, in open and closed-door hearings, is compelling the administration to provide evidence of tangible gains for America, the Manmohan Singh government faces no public scrutiny of its actions that put irrevocable fetters on India’s most important national asset — the nuclear deterrent.

The texts of various arrangements have come from the US side, with the Indians left to negotiate within the defined framework. The Prime Minister admitted in the Lok Sabha on August 3, 2005 that the July 18 accord’s "final draft came to me from the US side" after he had reached Washington. This, he went on to say, "held up our negotiations for about 12 to 15 hours" because he wanted the "support" of the Atomic Energy Commission chief, who was not in his delegation. Yet, after being summoned to Washington by the first available flight, the AEC chief was presented with a political fait accompli and asked to look merely at the language of the accord.

In similar fashion last week, the Americans handed the visiting Indian foreign secretary the text of what they want as the new bilateral civil nuclear cooperation pact. All the foreign secretary could do was to say that the US text needed "further examination." It is always harder to negotiate when one side dictates the text and confines the other side to a defensive negotiating position centred on a bureaucratic haggle on words.

It is an open secret that the US dictated India’s civil-military separation plan, both by putting forward specific proposals and by orchestrating public pressure. The PM began haughtily, claiming, "It will be an autonomous Indian decision as to what is ‘civilian’ and what is ‘military.’ Nobody outside will tell us what is ‘civilian’ and what is ‘military’." But he ended on a whimper, admitting that the US forced his hand on specific facilities. He told the Lok Sabha on March 10 that rather than place them under international inspections, he "decided to permanently shut down the Cirus reactor in 2010" and dismember Apsara — Asia’s first research reactor — in order to "shift" its fuel core.

For the US, the deal holds multiple benefits — from getting a handle on India’s nuclear-weapons programme and leverage on Indian foreign policy to opening the way to lucrative reactor and arms sales. But for US revelations, the Indian public would not have known some of the commitments made by the PM — from promising to buy "as much as $5 billion" worth of US arms once the deal is implemented (according to a July 18, 2005 Pentagon briefing) to agreeing "to import eight nuclear reactors by 2012," at least two of them from America, as disclosed by Condoleezza Rice in a recent op-ed. Each 1,000-megawatt reactor would cost India at least $1.8 billion — or 2.3 times the annual budget of the entire Indian nuclear power industry.

In addition to giving the US for the first time "a transparent insight into India’s nuclear programme," as Nick Burns puts it, the deal will help Washington oversee "nuclear balance" on the subcontinent. In the words of Burns’ boss, Dr Rice, "the nuclear balance in the region is a function of the political and military situation in the region. We are far more likely to be able to influence those regional dynamics from a position of strong relations with India and indeed with Pakistan."

In fact, Joseph R. Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is "probably going to support" the deal because it has "succeeded in limiting the size and sophistication of India’s nuclear weapons programme and nuclear power programme." This is as candid and objective an assessment as any American can offer.

The deal’s foreign-policy implications can be gauged just from the waiver-authority bill’s Section 1(b)(5), which binds India forever to support "international efforts to prevent the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology." By keeping the Damocles’ sword of waiver termination hanging perpetually over India’s head, the bill attempts to hold New Delhi to strict compliance with US policy towards "countries of proliferation concern" — a category of states for many years at the centre-stage of US foreign policy, with one such nation at present under US occupation and two others on the US hit-list. Section 1(b)(5) will eliminate India’s manoeuvring room with Iran, for example.

After adding eight separate conditions in its waiver bill to hold India to good conduct, the White House is encouraging Congress to attach riders of its own, as long as they do not entail a renegotiation of the deal. The already-inserted clauses — one of which drags India through the backdoor into a treaty rejected by the Senate, the CTBT — farcically attempt to make New Delhi accountable to the US government and legislature. The bill’s test-ban clause actually imposes CTBT-plus obligations on India, tying its hands forever, with no exit option, and using the very phraseology the US opposed in the 1996 CTBT negotiations so as to have the loophole to conduct sub-kiloton and sub-critical tests.

The deal also holds major economic benefits for the US, with Dr Rice voicing hope that it will create "3,000 to 5,000 new direct jobs in the US and about 10,000 to 15,000 indirect jobs in the US" just through nuclear commerce with India. In addition, US arms makers expect major Indian contracts, as underlined on March 2 by the Pentagon’s unusually explicit statement hailing the nuclear deal for opening "promising prospects" for big weapon sales, "whether in the realm of combat aircraft, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft or naval vessels." Lockheed Martin and Boeing are competing to sell 126 of their F-16s or F/A-18s in a potential $9-billion deal that would be India’s largest arms contract ever.

In sharp contrast, the deal puts India squarely on the debit side of the ledger. There is no credit, only debit, for India on decision-making autonomy, indigenous capability, foreign policy and finance. Deal-related sweeteners will cost it many billions of dollars, as it impoverishes itself by importing uneconomical power reactors and buying arms it can do without. For a nation that budgeted a paltry $160 million for missile work and $425 million for nuclear research and development last year, such costly imports will be good news only for corrupt politicians and those who thrive on commissions and consultancies, including some strategic analysts, former military officers and ex-bureaucrats.

In the absence of concrete benefits they can showcase, the few in India hawking the deal have taken to selling dreams to the country. The main force behind the deal — the PM — has offered the nation only clichés and stock assurances straight from the boilerplate of bureaucratic homily. Each articulated hope sounds more like a wish tied to myth.

l Myth 1: The deal will end India’s "isolation," end discrimination and allow it to take its rightful place on the world stage. Such wishful thinking cannot make dreams come true. If anything, it shows that the PM’s foreign policy is guided not by reality but by the dream world he inhabits. The deal will not end discrimination against India or what the PM calls its "nuclear isolation." There will be no blanket lifting of the nuclear embargo against India. What the US has proposed is limited nuclear commerce with India, tightly regulated by its export-licensing requirements and subject to Indian "good behaviour." India won’t get open access even to natural uranium supply. It will only be able to import externally determined quantities of natural uranium for indigenous reactors under international monitoring.

With or without the deal, India will stay in a third aberrant category — neither a formal nuclear power nor a non-nuclear nation, but a non-NPT state possessing nuclear weapons. The deal will only institutionalise India’s status in the anomalous third category, even as New Delhi accepts NPT norms and extends full support from outside to a troubled regime that won’t accept it as an equal or legitimate nuclear power.

l Myth 2: The way for India to meet its burgeoning energy demands is to import nuclear power reactors. The deal’s very rationale is fundamentally flawed because generating electricity from imported reactors dependent on imported fuel makes little economic or strategic sense. Such imports will be a path to energy insecurity and exorbitant costs. The PM is seeking to replicate in the energy sector the very mistake India has pursued on armaments. Now the world’s largest arms importer, India spends nearly $6 billion dollars every year on weapons imports, many of dubious value, while it neglects to build its own armament-production base. Should a poor India now compound that blunder by spending billions more to import overly expensive reactors when it can more profitably invest that money to commercially develop its own energy sources?

Even if India were to invest a whopping $27 billion dollars to increase its installed generating capacity by 15,000 megawatt through imported reactors, nuclear power will still make up a tiny share of its total electricity production, given that nuclear plants take exceptionally long to complete and the share of other energy sources is likely to rise faster. India could radically transform its energy situation if it were to invest such resources to tap its vast hydropower reserves — a source that comes with no fuel cost — and employ clean-coal and coal-to-liquids technologies to exploit its coal reserves, one of the largest in the world. Instead the PM wants India to subsidise the revival of the decrepit US nuclear power industry, which has not received a single reactor order in more than 30 years. The promise of nuclear power in the US has dimmed because of the unappealing economics of new nuclear plants — a fact the PM turns a blind eye to.

Such is the capital-intensity of a nuclear plant that two-thirds or more of its costs are incurred upfront, before it is even commissioned. And while the international price of coal has dropped over the last two decades, the price of uranium has tripled just in the past 18 months. Yet the itch to import reactors has been so irresistible that the PM signed a deal that actually compromises the defence of India and asks Indian taxpayers to fork out billions of dollars to put the nation firmly on the path to energy insecurity.

Myth 3: Nuclear energy is clean. Official rhetoric has sought to portray nuclear energy as "clean" to help seduce public opinion. The proliferation-resistant light-water reactors (LWRs) that the deal allows India to import generate highly radioactive wastes. Although nuclear-generated power is free of carbon and greenhouse gases, the back-end of nuclear-fuel cycle is anything but clean, posing technological challenges and inestimable environmental costs.

Not only has America refused to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol’s mandatory greenhouse-gas reductions, it persists with its egregiously high discharge of fossil-fuel effluents. With just 4.5 per cent of the world’s population, it emits 23 per cent of the global greenhouse gases. And although India has no obligation under the current Kyoto Protocol to reduce its relatively moderate emissions (it ranks 139 in the world in per capita emissions), the PM wants his developing nation to make up for a wealthy America’s disregard of the global environment. He told Lok Sabha on February 27, 2006: "While we have substantial reserves of coal, excessive dependence on coal-based energy has its own implications for our environment." Put simply, he wants India to import US reactors while the US burns more coal.

Before touting nuclear energy to be clean or seeking to import new US reactors, the least the government can do is to resolve the safety and environmental concerns arising from the accumulating spent-fuel at the US-built Tarapur nuclear plant. The US broke the 1963 civil nuclear cooperation pact with India by amending its domestic law to halt all fuel and spare-parts supplies. In spite of such a bald-faced material breach and the expiry long ago of the 1963 pact, India has continued to exacerbate its spent-fuel problem at Tarapur by granting the US a right it didn’t have even if it had honoured the pact — a veto on any Indian reprocessing of the fuel waste.

l Myth 4: Nuclear energy will reduce India’s oil dependence. The truth is it won’t cut India’s oil imports. India does not use oil to generate electricity. In fact, petroleum is no longer used to propel electric generators in most countries. Even the US now employs only a small percentage of its oil supply to fuel its electricity-generating plants. Only standby generators for homes and offices in India use diesel fuel. Yet the PM has speciously linked the deal to "concomitant advantages for all in terms of reduced pressure on oil prices…"

In any case, India cannot correct its current oil reliance on the Persian Gulf region by fashioning a new dependency on a tiny nuclear-supply cartel made up of a few state-guided firms. While oil is freely purchasable on world markets, the global nuclear reactor and fuel business is the most politically regulated commerce in the world, with no sanctity of contract. Without having loosened its bondage to oil exporters, India is being yoked to the nuclear cartel.

Myth 5: The deal paves the way for removal of all US technology controls against India. The most onerous technology sanctions India has endured for long are not in the nuclear realm but centre on advanced and dual-use technologies. Where export controls against India can be relaxed through executive action, such as on high technology or in the civilian space sector, the US has dragged its feet. But where Congressional action is needed, it has concluded a nuclear deal, wringing a heavy price out of India. This shows that the US will use every export control it has in force as a bargaining chip against India.

Against this background, the PM has been unable to build a political consensus in favour of the deal, although he had publicly declared on July 20, 2005, that "we can move forward only on the basis of a broad national consensus." Spinning reality thus has become the favourite official pursuit, even as millions of dollars are being squandered to lobby US lawmakers to approve a deal that puts qualitative and quantitative ceilings on India’s deterrent. By making India answerable to the US through unique, one-sided obligations, the deal makes a true strategic partnership with the US less likely.

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Hindustan Times, 2006 July 18

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Trick and treat

- By Brahma Chellaney

On its first anniversary, the Indo-US nuclear deal appears more of a curse than a boon, threatening to undermine India’s strategic autonomy and exacting mounting costs. The US, while continuing to peddle superstardom dreams to India, is unrelentingly building up Pakistan’s offensive capabilities against this country. Goodies to terrorist-haven Pakistan and ego massaging the long-suffering India have become the quintessence of the present US policy.

To be sure, a US-India partnership can help shape a new, more stable global order. But such a partnership cannot be built if the US continues to ride roughshod over India’s legitimate security concerns. It ill behoves a supposed strategic partner to push actions adverse to Indian interests by taking advantage of India’s troubled political situation, epitomised by a weak Prime Minister unable to have his say or stand up for the country.

All pretensions about a mutually beneficial nuclear deal have faded away, with US lawmakers, working in tandem with the administration, rewriting the terms of the July 18, 2005, accord. With the US legislative process far from complete and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) yet to consider the deal, the conditions on India are going to become even more onerous and degrading. The deal now stands exposed for what it always was -- the use of the energy bait to gain a handle on India’s main strategic asset, its nuclear weapons programme.

Gone also is the pretence that the deal will herald India’s accommodation in the US-led non-proliferation regime. Washington is interested in binding India to the regime, not in accommodating within that order a country that in 1974 defiantly upset US non-proliferation policy and strategy. The Bills passed by the Senate and House committees make clear that India is not to be brought inside the regime but tethered to it and kept out, with its conduct and actions to be reviewed annually by the US Congress, as if it were on parole.

That explains why India is not being made a member, yet being bound by the rules of various US-led cartels, such as the NSG and Missile Technology Control Regime. The proposed US legislation indeed mandates India’s one-sided adherence to additional cartels not identified in the original deal, including the Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group. It also demands India’s formal commitment to the Proliferation Security Initiative, whose activities, like the high-seas interdiction of ships, conflict with international law. The Indian navy is being asked to play a subaltern role in the Indian Ocean region, with the US having no intent to include India in the PSI’s core intelligence-sharing and decision-making mechanisms.

The non-proliferation regime has been central to US strategic interests. Washington is in no mood to forgive and forget Indian actions that broke a US-established order centred on a five-nation nuclear monopoly. It may have presented the deal as an effort to bury the hatchet, yet it was quick to rake up the past by compelling India to agree to shut down Cirus, the research reactor that provided the plutonium for the 1974 test and now produces a third of India’s weapons-grade plutonium.

The whole effort at this point is to discipline India so that it can never repeat a 1974 or 1998, or emerge as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons State. That is why the Senate and House committee Bills are all about non-proliferation and Indian compliance. Ironically, by playing to India’s craving for status and utilising a political vacuum in New Delhi, the US is now close to enforcing the very constraints it failed to impose in the past. Is it thus any surprise that except for a Gang of Four in the government spearheading the sell-out and a handful of lobbyists writing in the press, the deal has spurred misgivings across the political and intellectual gamut in India?

The deal’s rising costs are best exemplified by the announcement of the largest US arms sale to Pakistan -- up to $ 5 billion worth of aircraft, weapons and electronics that can only be used against India. No sooner had the Senate and House committees voted on their parallel but equally stringent Bills than the arms package was unveiled behind the cover of a falsely contrived elation in India. Far from actually approving the July 18, 2005, accord, the two committees passed the buck back to India by attaching major preconditions for New Delhi to meet before the US legislative process can be complete and the deal takes effect.

Ever since signing the deal, the US has repeatedly moved the goalpost. In the ongoing legislative exercise, the goalpost has actually been shifted outside the stadium. Before the US will deign to permit partial (not ‘full’, as the deal called for) civil nuclear commerce with India, the latter has to bind itself hand and foot in the following way: accept perpetual, legally irrevocable international inspections on 35 identified, mostly-indigenous facilities; make 44 other countries in the NSG agree “by consensus” to carry out what the US will not do first; and enter into a separate but binding civil nuclear cooperation with Washington that has to pass muster with the American but not Indian legislature.

If India still manages to crawl out of the sports ground to the goalpost outside, the White House may submit a legislative determination to let the amended deal take effect, with the proviso that every January the Indian government will return before the US Congress for extension of its parole on the basis of ‘good behaviour’.

To balance this major ‘concession’ permitting India to place itself under eternal yoke, the US has decided to sell several major weapon systems, including as many as 36 new F-16C/D warplanes, to “vital ally” Pakistan -- as if propping up a Janus-faced dictatorship in Islamabad was not enough. Unmindful that its blind support to the previous Pakistani military ruler helped rear what later became al-Qaeda, the US keeps Pervez Musharraf in power with generous support, but has done little to stop its pet dictator from continuing to export terror to India.

The latest arms package for Pakistan also includes advanced targeting systems, satellite-guided bombs and the upgrading of 26 F-16s already in the Pakistani arsenal. Since the deal with India, the US has also announced the sale to Pakistan of 130 Harpoon anti-ship missiles with command launch systems and 10 P3C Orion dual-purpose aircraft to monitor India’s entire western flank and hunt down Indian submarines.

Clearly, the US is committed as ever to building and maintaining Pakistan as a military counterweight to India, sponsoring the sponsor of terror results in acts such as the Mumbai train bombings. Also, while playing the China card in India, the US has designed the deal to block India from developing a credible minimal deterrent against Beijing. Compare its actions with the exalted dreams it markets, such as wishing to “help India become a major power in the 21st century”. As recent scandals bring out, it actually is engaged in acts unbecoming of a claimed strategic partner and damaging to the building of mutual trust -- the stealing of inner secrets through moles in the Indian National Security Council secretariat, intelligence agencies and military.

A historic opportunity to build a durable Indo-US strategic partnership is slipping away because Washington refuses to be swayed by larger, long-term geopolitical considerations. In line with its traditional penchant for politically expedient policies with near-term goals, it is content with meretriciously repackaging old policies emphasising constraints on India’s deterrent and Indo-Pakistan ‘balance’.

In the guise of a deal, it is seeking to rope New Delhi into ‘NPT plus’ obligations (with no right of exit) and make it answerable to the US legislature on all matters nuclear. Little surprise that the father figure of the nuclear establishment, Homi Sethna, in a cry of desperation, said it would be better for India to renounce its nuclear weapons by signing the NPT than to subject itself to the deal’s humiliating conditions. Such are the depths to which the US is taking India.

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July 29, 2006

Namaste friends,

One more important angle I did not get to mention yesterday:

(12) Take Manmohan Singh's swearing-in muhurta (as PM of India). Data is: 2004 May 22, 17:32:30 IST, New Delhi.

As per Vimsottari dasa compressed to 5 years, Saturn's 8-month dasa was running at the time of first announcement (2005 July 18) and signing the treaty (2006 March 2). In navamsa, Saturn is in marana karaka sthana in lagna along with Sun. This is not suggestive of a brilliant foreign policy master stroke and instead shows weird politics, lacking self-confidence and a foreign policy mess up.

(13) As per Narayana dasa compressed to 5 years, Sg dasa was running. Dasas started from 7th and hence Sg dasa gives the results of Ge. Taking Ge as lagna, we see that Moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn are in lagna. This, to me, shows emotional (Moon) diplomacy (Venus) afflicted by haste (Mars) and lack of self-confidence (Saturn). Lord of Ge is closely afflicted by Rahu, showing a clouded intellect. The 3rd lord from Ge is in marana karaka sthana and the 3rd contains another planet (7th and 10th lord) in marana karaka sthana. It is a terrible time for new bold initiatives.

(14) In the annual TP chart of the swearing-in chart (for 2005-06), Mars is in the 9th house afflicted by 8th lord Rahu. He shows foreign policy characterized by haste (8th house) that is mired in intrigue and shadowyness (Rahu). In navamsa also, Mars is in 12th house with Ketu, showing shady/secretive/underhand deals on foreign policy and he is aspected by Rahu and 9th lord in marana karaka sthana. At the time of the treaty, annual TA dasa of Mars was running.

* * *

None of the astrological factors I see makes me think that India is making a great positive breakthrough. They only suggest to me that India is making a big blunder in hastiness. I hope I am wrong.

What is in the collective karma of a nation has to be experienced by the nation. As thinking individuals, we can comment and make a contribution to the policy debate when possible. When things are out of our hands, we should just relax and just observe the goings on unemotionally. Neither I nor you nor Manmohan Singh is the doer. It is He who does everything through us. There must be a higher reason and a "plan".

Like I said earlier, just ignore me if you feel that I am writing nonsense.

I will be going off the lists again and will not be reading any replies to this thread. If there is something important, send a private mail to me.

Sarvam SreeKrishnaarpanamastu,

Narasimha

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Narasimha P.V.R. Rao

vedic astrology ; sohamsa ;

Cc: sjcBoston

Saturday, July 29, 2006 2:41 AM