> Hello Silk-listers, > > Does this make sense to anybody ? Can this op-ed be relied upon ? > http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jul/18guest.htm
*paging Shiv* *paging Shiv" I'm no expert on the nuke deal, but the article seems a bit extreme. There's a lot of detail in there about the terms of the agreements and such like which I'm a bit reluctant to accept at face value - you never know what spin has been placed on it by the author. At any rate, I don't see how she: 1) Comes to the conclusion that India can't test nuclear weapons again; and 2) Is effectively giving up the nuclear deterrent. Firstly, we don't (necessarily) even need to test any more weapons in these days of computer simulations. Even if we did need to test weapons to develop new ones, it is questionable whether we need to develop new weapons at all, given that a credible nuclear deterrent already exists and nobody is proposing giving that up. In any case, as the author notes, the 123 agreement doesn't ban India from testing - it only means that the 123 agreement will (probably - you never know in international politics) be terminated, in which case India is *no worse off than beforethe agreement*. It is also very contradictory to moan that terminating the 123 agreement will hurt the civilian nuclear industry, and then two paragraphs later, dismiss the importance of the civil nuclear industry by saying it is only projected to provide 3-4% of India's energy. Either it is important, or it is not. >From what I can see the nuke deal will provide India with fuel to develop the civilian nuclear industry and keep military reactors and development out of the scope of foreign inspections. The military reactors will get MORE fuel, not less, because indigenous sources of uranium can now all be used for military purposes instead of splitting with civilian reactors (which can rely on imported fuel). And whatever their impact (even if it is relatively small), civilian nuclear energy can only help the desperate power generation situation in India. Plus there is the defacto acceptance of India as a nuclear power by the rest of the world. The NPT can only be amended to include India as a nuclear weapons state by consent of a two-thirds majority of signatories, and *all* the 5 nuclear weapons states. That is pretty much a political impossibility so this is the next best thing - a defacto acceptance. Oh, and I believe it is factually incorrect to say that Pakistan and China are delighted with the deal. Pakistan demanded the same deal for itself before being slapped down by the US, and I don't see how China can be thrilled that the US is propping up India as a counterweight to China (that's the main benefit the US gets out of the deal, incidentally). If I'm not mistaken, China's official position on Indian nukes to this day is that the nuclear weapons program should be rolled back and India should revert to being a non-nuclear state. That seems to be a pretty clear improvement on the current situtation for India. Badri
