India’s bid for membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group will be at the top of the agenda for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, writes Sanjay Kapoor.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits South Africa this week, the issue that will be of the greatest strategic importance in bilateral discussions from his perspective will be India’s candidature to become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The Indian Prime Minister will use his visit as an opportunity to lobby the South African Government to support India’s bid, which has been a top foreign policy priority for the Indian Government in recent months.
At the recent NSG meeting in Seoul, India’s attempts to get into the 48 member Group were rebuffed. The NSG, which seeks to prevent nuclear proliferation by keeping a check on the export of material, equipment and technology that can lead to the making of a nuclear bomb, made it clear that they did not want to have a country that was not a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) or Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India had got an exclusive waiver in 2008, but was keen to get into the Group to ensure its interests were protected.
The refusal of the NSG to accommodate India has come as a rude shock to the personalized foreign policy of India’s itinerant Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He had been on a whistle stop tour of five countries in seven days ranging from Qatar to Switzerland and Mexico, with Washington thrown in between, but failed to garner support from many other countries that had reservations on the issue of the NPT. Switzerland, which promised to back India during Modi’s visit to Berne, was found doing a volte face during the Seoul meet.
Most of the BRICS countries which include China, South Africa and Brazil, did not support India’s candidature. For this rejection, India has directed its ire at China. Immediately after the news of India’s failure emerged, India’s foreign office blamed “one country” for its discomfiture. Indian journalists who traveled to the South Korean capital were told that the country was backed by “consensus minus one,” which means that 47 out of 48 countries were for its inclusion and only China was holding out. A closer reading of the happenings suggests that at least 10 countries, including South Africa, had misgivings about India’s entry as they all felt it would create a wrong precedent.
Much before the Seoul plenary meet, diplomats from the dissenting countries in Delhi were quite candid about their opposition. They knew, too, that Switzerland was unlikely to play ball with India. The moot question then is why did the Indian government decide to push for NSG membership when clearly there was no consensus around their candidature? Why were they so hopeful? Commentators hint at miscalculation and misreading of global politics. Some blame the PM for being a victim of his own hubris. The truth is that India was banking too much on the US to change the nature of support in the 48 member group, remembering that the group was created at its behest to stop India from enlarging its nuclear weapons programme after it tested its nuclear bomb in 1974.
After that India managed to get a complete waiver at the NSG when it signed the civilian nuclear deal with the US. Quite evidently 2016 was different, as President Barack Obama refused to replicate his predecessor George W Bush’s aggressive diplomacy to get India in the NSG. Save for expressing pious words that New Delhi should get into the nuclear Group, it did not work the phones to get India in. Otherwise there would not have been a situation where, according to Chinese sources, ten countries opposed India’s entry. What has taken Indian diplomats by surprise is why the US did not really stick its neck out even when India had committed to purchasing six Westinghouse Nuclear reactors from the US. A US State Department official had hinted that the process to induct India had been initiated and it could be part of the Group before the end of 2016. To buttress this point, the NSG has announced that it would appoint a special envoy and the outgoing head of the Group, Rafael Grossi, to negotiate with all those countries that have inhibitions about inducting non-signatories of the NPT.
It is not that India was not expecting China to stonewall its membership. They had hoped that at the last moment they would back off to preserve bilateral gains that have accrued to both sides over the last few years. India’s trade with China exceeds US$70 billion. The Indian PM flew to Tashkent to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (Asia’s NATO), which was largely meant to beseech Chinese President Xi Jinping to make a “fair and objective assessment” of India’s NSG membership request. Seemingly the Chinese President was not impressed with Modi’s charm.
China has occupied the high moral ground by stating that those who haven’t signed the NPT should not become part of the group. And if indeed a process was being initiated then it should allow Pakistan too, which has also not signed the NPT and is a nuclear weapon state to join NSG.
It was China that provided, in a clandestine manner, technology and material to help Pakistan become a nuclear power in the 1990’s. Expectedly, Pakistan has taken credit for tripping up India’s chances. What did the Pakistanis do? They did not try to collect frequent flier miles like the Indians did. On the contrary, their foreign policy advisor, Sartaj Aziz, made 11 phone calls to members of the NSG, and their National Security Advisor cautioned the world about the dark US-India conspiracy to belittle China and Russia. The rest of the heavy lifting in the Seoul meeting was done by the Chinese who effectively closed the door on India - until it becomes a signatory of the NPT.
After this debacle, temperatures are rising in Delhi. There has been a campaign to boycott Chinese goods and suggestions are also coming from policy hawks to toughen the narrative towards Beijing, including confronting it in all possible theatres, including the South China Sea.
Even though Modi may be facing an uphill battle on NSG membership given China’s firm position on the matter, he will likely use the opportunity to lay out India’s case for NSG membership when he meets President Jacob Zuma this week.
Foreign Bureau