Nuke Kids on the Block (The Hidden Herbert + More)

The NYTimes editorial folks are not pleased with President Bush's nuk-u-lar deal with India last week. Bob Herbert takes the first shot from his Monday column, Nuclear Madness (full column accessible to Times Select subscribers):

President Bush, who used specious claims about a nuclear threat to launch his disastrous war in Iraq, agreed to a deal — in blatant violation of international accords and several decades of bipartisan U.S. policy — that would enable India to double or triple its annual production of nuclear weapons.

The president turned his back on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (dismissed, like reality-based thinking, as passé) and moved the world a step closer to an accelerated nuclear arms race in Asia and elsewhere. In the president's empire-based, otherworldly way of thinking, this was a good thing.

For decades, U.S. law and the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty have precluded the sale of nuclear fuel and reactor components to India, which has acquired an atomic arsenal and has refused to sign the treaty. President Bush turned that policy upside down last week, agreeing to share nuclear energy technology with India, even as it continues to develop nuclear weapons in a program that is shielded from international inspectors.

The attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five original members of the so-called nuclear club — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China — has not been perfect by any means. But it hasn't been bad. Back in the 1960's there was a fear that before long there might be dozens of additional states with nuclear weapons. But so far the spread has been held to four — Israel, India, Pakistan and most likely North Korea.

A cornerstone of the nonproliferation strategy has been the refusal to share nuclear energy technology with nations unwilling to abide by the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty. Last week George W. Bush decided he would change all that by carving out an exception for India.

Presidents from both parties — from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton — had refused to make this deal, which India has wanted for more than three decades.

"It's a terrible deal, a disaster," said Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. "The Indians are free to make as much nuclear material as they want. Meanwhile, we're going to sell them fuel for their civilian reactors. That frees up their resources for the military side, and that stinks."

With President Bush undermining the nonproliferation treaty, critics are worried that it's only a matter of time before other bilateral deals are made — say, China with Pakistan, which has already asked Mr. Bush for a deal similar to India's and been turned down.

The editorial board gets into the action on Tuesday, bringing in another consequence of the deal--freezing out Pakistan:

The spectacularly misconceived trip may have inflicted serious damage to American goals in two vital areas, namely, mobilizing international diplomacy against the spread of nuclear weapons and encouraging Pakistan to take more effective action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters operating from its territory.

[...]

Washington is trying to persuade Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, to defy nationalist and Islamic objections and move more aggressively against Pakistani-based terrorists. This is no small issue because both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, are now believed to operate from Pakistani soil.

But sticking Mr. Musharraf with the unwelcome task of explaining to Pakistanis why his friend and ally, Mr. Bush, had granted favorable nuclear terms to Pakistan's archrival, India, while withholding them from Pakistan left him less likely to do Washington any special, and politically unpopular, favors on the terrorism front.

It's just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him.

And according to Newsweek, Pakistan is on the lookout for new friends:

The day before Bush flew to Islamabad in the dead of night, with his wing lights off and the window shades down, Musharraf delivered an address in his native Urdu to Pakistan's National Defense College. He had just returned from a trip to China, Pakistan's old cold-war arms supplier. "America has signed a civil nuclear agreement with India on the basis of what it sees to be its interests," Musharraf said. "My recent trip to China was part of my effort to keep Pakistan's strategic options open."

What Musharraf gets from China could help determine whether Bush's new diplomatic accord with India is a triumph—or the trigger for a new era of proliferation. Both India and Pakistan have been subject to U.S. sanctions since the archrivals tested nuclear weapons in the late ' 90s. But under the terms of the U.S. deal, which was eight months in the making, India alone would be brought back from official outcast status. New Delhi agreed to subject 14 of its reactors to international inspection by 2014. But it reserves the right to produce unlimited fissile material, to keep its eight military reactors from any scrutiny and to build as many more as it wants. In return India will receive U.S. investment and equipment directed toward expanding its civilian nuclear program.

Pakistan, Bush told Musharraf in no uncertain terms, will get no such deal. That is largely because it has been a notorious nuclear proliferator; Pakistan's former chief government scientist, AQ Khan, ran the world's biggest black market in nuclear equipment until a few years ago. Now critics like nuclear expert Robert Einhorn worry that Musharraf may go looking for friends in Beijing. And China may be happy to oblige, since the new U.S.-India strategic relationship is thought to be directed at Beijing's growing power.

[...]

The timing of the deal was also unlucky. It was inked only four days before a critical meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, where Washington will renew pressure on Iran to give up a right that Bush has now conceded to Delhi: uranium enrichment. "The message this is sending is that membership in the NPT [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] is a hindrance"—and that if you hold out long enough the Americans will weaken, said an Iranian official who spoke anonymously because he is not permitted to talk on the record to Western media.