The mounting political and strategic relationships among the countries have given birth to a new pattern of rising interactions with global forces. While analyzing India’s growing quest for multilateral export control regimes, it can be said that India has a unique history of its relationship withexport control cartels. The country that provided an idea for the formation of one of the cartels is now passing through a new phase, expecting a legal membership in it. It is certain that the membership of such regimes will give India a distinct advantage in participating in the management of global commerce in advanced technology.
The four multilateral exports control regimes namely, the NSG, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group, and the Wassenaar Arrangement have emerged as the oldest multilateral bodies for exports control and are considered some of the few leading forums of the global exports control systems especially in contemporary geo-politics. Despite the fact that these are informal groups with a small number of member countries, they derive their importance from the nature of their membership. Members of these regimes are mostly major suppliers of high or sensitive technology that is mostly of dual use in nature.
Focusing on recent years, India is undoubtedly trying to integrate itself fast within these regimes by playing politics around. However, it is quite obvious that it would face roadblocks in its integration in the existing system. A somewhat deeper analysis indicates that the old non-proliferation order and actors are slowly reconciling to India’s integration with the global exports control system. India’s membership of the four multilateral exports control regimes may further question the credibility and efficacy of the global system including the non-proliferation regime.
India has claimed that it has a spotless non-proliferation record and that it should be included in nuclear mainstream countries by also making it part of the NSG. However, it seems India’s non-proliferation record is not as clean as it would have us believe. It has been said a lot in post-nuclear suppliers groups’ debates that India’s first nuclear test was actually a device derived from Canadian and US exports, designated purely for peaceful purposes. That test spurred the United States and several other countries to create the Nuclear Suppliers Group and to more severely restrict global nuclear trade.
Since India’s nuclear program is largely plutonium based, its uranium reserves are apparentlyshown to be low for civil nuclear usage, and are actually low for military usage. The trend of nuclear deals with India, set-in largely by the US, though for its own interest, has and will further overwhelm India with uranium reserves.
India’s civil nuclear programme will not only benefit out of it but will also keep extensive amounts of uranium for its growing nuclear weapons program. This assistance to India has made it a big aspirant to become a South Asian nuclear giant. It also expects to be recognized as a world’s de jure nuclear power.
India, right after getting the MTCR membership, immediately decided to work on enhancing its Brahmos missile ranges. Analytically, it could be assessed that if India is doing this within days of getting the MTCR membership, what willit do if its dream comes true of getting NSG membership. It would, for sure, lead the way for enhancing its uranium reserves for military usage. Analytically, China stonewalled India’s entry into NSG as it hasinfluencebeingan active member of the group but it could not stall India’s membership to the MTCR since China is not a member itself.
India is undoubtedly spending more and more on developing its tremendous firepower and strike capabilities. This is alarming for the world in general and the region in particular. It can have a destabilising impact on South Asia, owing to the fact that India is neither party to the NPT nor has it accepted the full scope of safeguards needed for nuclear trade
Nevertheless, India is undoubtedly spending more and more on developing its tremendous firepower and strike capabilities. This is alarming for the world in general and the region in particular. It could have a destabilizing impact on South Asia, owing to the fact that India is neither party to the NPT nor has it accepted full scope safeguards ever on its nuclear trade. So there should not be any chance of including India into the hub of civil nuclear trade, more specifically the multilateral export control regimes. If done so, the purpose of all the regimes to aid non-proliferation efforts would be wiped out.
The writer is associated with the Strategic Vision Institute and can be contacted at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, September 12th 2017.