Monday, 20 August, 2007

Sydney Morning Herald

After weeks of me-tooism, Kevin Rudd seems to have put himself out on an awkward limb by promising to tear up any agreement John Howard makes to sell uranium to India. No doubt influenced by the visiting former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, the Opposition Leader is positioning his party firmly in the 1980s. But the world has moved on.

Insisting that India sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is futile. It would require India to disarm and put all its nuclear facilities under international inspection. With two historically hostile powers on its unsettled land borders, India is unlikely to do so. Moreover, it sees, with some justification, the non-proliferation treaty as inherently inequitable, sanctioning the five pre-1969 weapons states. Mr Rudd and Mr Evans would do better asking Australians how they would feel about opting out of the ANZUS Treaty and the US nuclear umbrella, to show the Indians an example.

There certainly is a new arms race in Asia. The missile defence program of the US President, George Bush, has prompted China to expand its hitherto minimal arsenal to ensure it can land at least some warheads on American cities. Mr Rudd is not objecting to the Australian uranium sales that will allow Beijing to conserve its non-safeguarded fuel for weapons production, because China has signed the non-proliferation treaty. India's weapons program matched a similar covert effort in Pakistan, and finally came out into the open in 1998, partly for reasons of national aggrandisement but partly because the then-new Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was seen as cramping its options for future tests. But is the subcontinent a more dangerous place now? Or will mutually assured destruction create a stability previously lacking?

Nuclear trade with India still has many obstacles. India's ruling coalition is racked with disagreement about the deal announced with Washington on August 3, with its left parties objecting - not on disarmament grounds, but because they see it as limiting India's options for testing. This could even force an early general election. Then the US-India deal has to pass the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. Australia's safeguards agreement will tag along after all that. Tearing it up will not get India into the non-proliferation treaty, and other supplies will be substituted for our uranium. Bringing India under limited safeguards - and perhaps later Pakistan and Israel, the other two major non-signatories with nuclear weapons - is a gain for non-proliferation and transparency, as far as they go.