The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) will meet in Seoul later this week to discuss India’s NSG membership application. India already enjoys an exemption from the NSG guidelines, which resulted in the 2008 US-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement, and a dozen or so other civil nuclear cooperation agreements for India with other countries. The NSG is a nuclear export control group, established as a response to India’s violation of a peaceful uses agreement for civil nuclear technology with Canada and the United States in 1974. The goal of the group was to stop further Indian nuclear proliferation. It is ironic that four decades later the group is now considering granting India membership status.
India has no legitimate need for NSG membership because it already enjoys the freedom to engage in global nuclear trade. If granted membership to this elite group, it will only improve India’s status as a country, nothing more. It is be noted that if it approves India’s application for membership, the NSG — a group designed to strengthen the global nonproliferation regime — will end up weakening it. Looking at India’s actions after securing the 2008 exemption from the group is evidence of this fact.
Last December, Adrian Levy, an investigative journalist for The Guardian newspaper published an eye-opening piece about India’s construction of an entire city in southern state of Karnataka devoted to enriching uranium and building thermonuclear bombs. The exemption granted to India in 2008 made it possible for the country to import uranium from a dozen or so other countries, including from Australia, which is home to the largest uranium reserves in the world. These agreements for uranium import has freed up India’s entire indigenous stockpile for weapons. There is a direct correlation between the NSG exemption and the construction of India’s “top-secret nuclear city.”
The country that introduced nuclear weapons to the subcontinent has now also nuclearised the Indian Ocean by not only developing a nuclear submarine, but also developing nuclear weapons that can be launched from that submarine and other sea-based platforms. India also plans to build a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. All of these dangerous developments could not have been possible if the NSG had not granted India
an exemption.
It is clear that India will continue to proliferate even if it is granted full membership to the NSG. As a member it will become even easier for India to acquire new nuclear technologies. There are demands that the NSG member states can make before granting India membership, which will ensure that India does not use its membership status to continue to proliferate in an
out-of-control way.
First, the NSG states can demand that India make a clear distinction between its civil nuclear facilities and military nuclear facilities. Second, they can demand that India place its entire civil site under IAEA safeguards. Third, India should provide estimates of its indigenous uranium supply. Fourth, India put a stop to all production of weapons grade fissile material.
India should seriously prove that it is committed to strengthening, not weakening the global nonproliferation regime before its NSG membership application should be considered. The NSG should also formulate a criterion for membership to make eligible all non-NPT nuclear weapons states an opportunity to apply for membership in a nondiscriminatory manner. By doing this the NSG will not only help make the global nonproliferation regime stronger, but will also take an important step towards universalisation of the global nonproliferation regime. Just like in 2008, if India is granted membership on an ad hoc basis without a clear criterion for membership, it will destroy the credibility of the NSG, and make the organisation redundant.
It is time to put an end to India’s reckless behaviour as a nuclear weapons state, and demand that it be held accountable for continuing to massively proliferate vertically, before granting it any further privileges like the NSG membership. If India is granted membership after scrutiny of its nonproliferation credentials it will devastate the entire nonproliferation regime, as well as contradicting the very reason for which the NSG was created in the first place: to stop India from proliferating unchecked.
The NSG member states must carefully study the implications of granting India membership. They should also develop a clear, nondiscriminatory criterion for all applicants on which they can assess the merits of an applicant’s request for membership. History serves as evidence that India does not take its nonproliferation obligations seriously; now let’s hope that the NSG can learn from it, and not let history repeat itself.
The writer is an assistant professor at NUST, and he be reached on Twitter @umarwrites