Indo-US ties stuck in a groove

India and the United States have played that very trick by announcing the end of the "first phase" of the grandiosely termed "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership" (NSSP), launched less than a year ago. Last week, under-secretary of commerce Kenneth Juster visited India to discuss the "second phase."

The "first phase" was to open up India's access to US nuclear and space exports, and to "dual-use" goods (with military and civilian applications). But what did NSSP actually achieve?

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Washington lifted post-Pokharan-II sanctions upon Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) headquarters, relaxed licensing requirements for low-technology dual-use items for its subsidiaries, and liberalised exports of some non-nuclear equipment intended for Indian nuclear power stations under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. (This includes, turbines, generators, etc.)

This amounts to very little. ISRO headquarters performs an administrative role. Its seven subsidiaries, which manufacture propulsion systems, rockets, satellites, etc are far more important. They remain sanctioned.

The low-end items liberalised for imports range from pins to products using US-made chips or software. Most of these are easily available from alternative (including domestic) sources. They don't contribute to high-technology trade -- NSSP's purpose.

There's some relaxation of export controls in regard to nuclear power covering 115 items. But 103 are already covered by controls under the Nuclear Suppliers' Group. Only 4 of India's 14 nuclear reactors can import the remaining 12 items governed by US domestic laws (Tarapur I-II and Rajasthan I-II)

Of the 12, only two are significant: generators and special-alloy valves. But several Indian companies make these!

The new licensing regime is hardly more "liberal." Besides, Washington has imposed fresh sanctions on 14 "entities" on suspicion that these might have helped Iran develop mass-destruction weapons. They include two former chairmen of Nuclear Power Corporation, one of whom visited Iran on IAEA work!

NSSP's "second phase" might at best see some loosening of export controls on space satellites and components, which Washington treats as "munitions"! But dramatic changes are unlikely. The US is bound by its domestic laws like the Non-Proliferation Act and its commitments to multilateral agreements like the NSG and Missile Technology Control Regime.

As former US deputy secretary Strobe Talbott says: "Right now, the US and India may feel that they are moving in the same direction but their destination could be different"

There's this great fixation in India with NSSP, but it's going to [be] a great disappointment... India and the US are .... merely turning over a new leaf in the same chapter."

This carries four lessons. First, the current NSSP discussion is a hangover from the Vajpayee government. That government showed irrational exuberance about "strategic partnership" and minimised the asymmetrical, skewed nature of India-US relations.

Talbott in his Engaging India reveals that Vajpayee assigned a special role to Jaswant Singh just before the 1998 nuclear tests. Mr Singh called on Clinton's special envoy Bill Richardson at the US ambassador's residence -- something senior ministers rarely do. He conveyed the message that "he was under instructions from Vajpayee to serve as a discreet -- and, if necessary, secret -- channel to Washington, to be used for anything sensitive that the US leadership wished to convey to the Prime Minister."

This kowtowing didn't transform the unequal character of India-US relations. Washington won't share high-technology goods with India, nor build an exclusive relationship.

Second, Mr Jaswant Singh was misguided in gushingly welcoming President Bush's 2001 announcement of a Ballistic Missile Defence programme, aimed detect distant missile launches with satellites and intercept them. BMD will dangerously change the rules of the global nuclear-deterrence game.

Singh made a morally and militarily untenable departure from India's established opposition to BMD. His calculation was that the US would share this advanced, cutting-edge technology with India.

Washington is most unlikely to share with India -- and even with its European allies -- this sophisticated technology. It isn't sharing even the much simpler Theatre Missile Defence technology with a close ally (Japan) for whom it's developing it.

Third, it's wrong to think that friendship/partnership with America will help India enter the Nuclear Club. The US cannot dispense with the global non-proliferation regime. The US sees the NPT as a bulwark against the spread of nuclear weapons. The NPT cannot be opened up for signature to more nuclear weapons-states (barring the 5 which conducted nuclear explosions before 1967).

India must pause and think about what high-technology or dual-use goods it really needs. We have long attached iconic, totem-like value to technology. For years, India begged the US to sell it a Cray supercomputer. But once it was procured, it sat for years in the Meteorological Department, and has added nothing to our monsoon forecasts! Meanwhile, India itself produced the even faster PARAM!

Do we really want America's nuclear power technology, which has proved a market failure? In the US, no new reactor has been ordered for 26 years. Is nuclear the path to energy security, rather than renewable sources?

Finally, there are fundamental differences between Indian and US world-views. The US aspires to Empire and domination. India's interest lies in a multi-polar world where might is not right.

For the US, nuclear disarmament isn't a long-term goal; its' a legal obligation to be ducked. For India, disarmament was an ideal for 50 years -- until the NDA violated it. It still remains a long-term objective. The US imposes unequal trade policies on the world through the WTO. India declares victory when it can resist these, as at Cancun!

There's a limit beyond which India and the US cannot be partners. They can reduce mutual friction and improve political relations. But "strategic partnership" remains an illusion.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.