Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Lowering the barriers?

By C. Raja Mohan

The Sibal-Juster talks are part of a determined political effort in the last two years to deal head on with the Indo-U.S. divergence over non-proliferation and advanced technology transfers.

WHEN THEY sit down today to review the progress in stimulating high technology commerce between India and the United States, the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, and the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, Ken Juster, will pore over a complex set of issues that are unintelligible even to the more informed diplomatic observers. In trying to make sense of the many legal and technical dimensions of the negotiations at the Indo-U.S. High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG), it is easy to miss their political significance. Mr. Sibal and Mr. Juster are trying to grasp a set of strategic goals that has appeared all too elusive for so long.

For nearly three decades, New Delhi had struggled to come up with a framework that would allow it to acquire civilian nuclear, space, and other advanced technologies from the U.S. American leaders at the highest level often proclaimed a willingness to make things easier for India. But they found it difficult to implement those declarations amidst the tough barriers in Washington relating to American concerns about the spread of weapons of mass destruction and associated technologies. The gap between India's desire for high technology and the American non-proliferation law turned out to be large and enduring.

Since India's first nuclear test in May 1974, New Delhi and Washington have argued, with varying levels of passion, about their deep differences over the global non-proliferation regime. For the U.S., non-proliferation became the main political lens through which it saw India. For New Delhi, the denial of technologies became the metaphor of a stagnant relationship with Washington. Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi tried hard during the 1980s to circumvent the political barriers in Washington against the flow of technologies to India. There were some notable successes under the 1984 Memorandum of Understanding on technology transfers negotiated at the end of Indira Gandhi's tenure, and implemented in the Rajiv Gandhi years.

But the basic Indo-U.S. divergence over non-proliferation could not be papered over. India's nuclear tests in May 1998 and the consequent nuclear dialogue between the two nations provided the opportunity to revisit the issues relating to non-proliferation and high technology commerce in a very different context. India's nuclear dialogue with the Clinton administration during 1998-1999, however, remained inconclusive. While there was a significant change in the mood and atmospherics, there was no final resolution of their nuclear differences in the Clinton years.

The advent of the Bush administration and its empathy with India's great power aspirations changed the context of the bilateral nuclear dialogue. The Sibal-Juster talks today are part of a determined political effort in the last two years to deal head on with the Indo-U.S. divergence over non-proliferation and advanced technology transfers. More progress on the subject has taken place in the last couple of years than in the previous three decades. This has been the consequence of a three-tiered engagement between New Delhi and Washington.

At the highest level, the U.S. President, George W. Bush, has made a political choice in favour of a new strategic partnership with India. And central to that partnership was an enhanced flow of advanced technologies from the U.S. to India. Mr. Bush made this commitment first in November 2001 when he met Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Washington and reiterated it when the two leaders met again in New York in September 2002.

The second tier engagement has been between the two National Security Advisers, Brajesh Mishra and Condoleezza Rice. Their task was to convert the political commitment of the top political leadership into a set of tangible outcomes on non-proliferation and high technology transfers. The result of the sustained conversation between the two officials — the so-called "Rice-Mishra Paper" — was a set of clearly defined objectives to be negotiated by the two bureaucracies in a reasonable time frame.

The Rice-Mishra Paper requires the two establishments to come up with ways to reconcile American security imperatives on non-proliferation with the Indian demands for faster and better access to American technologies. This demanded both the bureaucracies undertake substantive actions to address each other's concerns. That is precisely where the Sibal-Juster talks have acquired so much significance. The HTCG, under which officials from both sides have met frequently over the last year, has become the forum with which the two sides have identified and begun to address barriers to high technology commerce.

As a result of this intensive Indo-U.S. dialogue at three levels, the prospects for an expansive technological cooperation spanning a very broad spectrum have never looked better since the 1960s. There has been a special focus in the Indo-U.S. talks on the so-called quartet of issues — peaceful uses of nuclear energy, civilian space programme, liberalisation of the transfer of dual use technologies, and missile defence. An action plan that delineated Indo-U.S. cooperation in these areas was believed to have been ready when Mr. Vajpayee met Mr. Bush in New York in September 2003. The publication of the plan, called more evocatively the "Glide Path" by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was held back for a variety of minor technical reasons and it could take a few more weeks before it is released to the public.

The prospects for Indo-U.S. cooperation, however, are not limited to the quartet issues alone. Indo-U.S. defence engagement has acquired unprecedented levels in the last few years. India is looking, not merely at the acquisition of advanced weapons systems from the U.S., but also at a broad range of defence technologies. The two sides are also looking at three other strategic areas — information technology, life sciences and nano-technologies. New Delhi and Washington are also actively trying to involve the public sector in promoting bilateral high technology cooperation across the board.

While the range and intensity of the engagement between India and the U.S. on technological cooperation has never been so impressive, it should be obvious that New Delhi will not be able to get its entire wish list on technology acquisition cleared by Washington. Specifically, India has been long interested in buying nuclear reactors to augment its civilian nuclear programme. But Washington does not seem prepared at this stage to make India exempt from the internationally agreed rules on nuclear reactor sales. It is not prepared to go beyond cooperation on research on nuclear safety and the supply of non-nuclear equipment to nuclear stations. While there will be disappointment in New Delhi and Mumbai on this score, there are indications of considerable progress in cooperation in the civilian space sector.Even as it gains better access to a wide array of technologies from the U.S., New Delhi will have to fulfil its own side of the basic bargain in the high technology deal with Washington. The nature of the trade-off is clearly identified in the set of 16 principles identified by Mr. Sibal and Mr. Juster at the first meeting of the HTCG in Washington in February 2003.

On its part, "the Government of the United States appreciates the importance that the Government of India attaches to the widest possible access to U.S. `dual-use' goods and technologies and to efficiency, continuity, stability, and transparency in the export license application process. The Government of the United States intends to do its utmost in this regard, consistent with its laws and national security and foreign policy objectives, including compliance with international commitments" (Principle 9). In turn, "the Government of India will consider a mutually satisfactory system of assurances regarding end use, diversion, transfers and retransfers within and outside India, re-export, and, where necessary, physical protection and access to the controlled items by third parties" (Principle 12).

Translating these commitments into reality will require strong political and bureaucratic leadership. In implementing the high technology deal with the U.S., India would require more than new laws and regulations. Tough fights among the various agencies to control and manage the process of tighter export controls would have to be put down with a firm hand by the Prime Minister. And above all, New Delhi would need an organisational culture that places great value on high levels of transparency and accountability to lend credibility to its long-standing claim that it is deeply committed to the prevention of the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

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