A failed campaign

What would India gain from NSG membership?

Last week, India’s quest to become a full member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, or NSG, received a setback at the grouping’s meeting in Seoul. In spite of efforts led by the United States to move forward on India’s membership, countries could not even agree on a mechanism to discuss it. The opposition was led, reportedly, by the People’s Republic of China, which argued that countries that had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, like India, should be subject to a specific process and there should be no “India exception”. In effect, China wanted Pakistan and India to be considered together for NSG membership. It was on this unsatisfactory note – in which India was once again “hyphenated” with Pakistan – that the meeting closed with no consensus.

In this context, it is perhaps necessary to ask why membership of the NSG became the focus of Indian foreign policy in the first place. Was it necessary to go so far out on a limb at the Seoul meeting of the NSG? Or for the prime minister to personally visit countries like Switzerland and Mexico, which were wavering on this issue? What was expected to be gained? After all, the crucial right to import dual-use nuclear materials from NSG countries was already won in 2008, following the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement. India was given a country-specific waiver after a sustained diplomatic effort by it and the US; the waiver says that “trigger list items and/or related technology” and “nuclear-related dual-use equipment, materials, software, and related technology” can be transferred to India, subject to international safeguards. This is what India needed in order to move forward on its domestic nuclear power programme. It is not clear what additional utility would be realised by full membership of the NSG for India. Particularly given how its efforts turned out, the government should be clearer on why it committed so much diplomatic and political capital to this futile quest.

The costs of the failed attempt to become a full member of the NSG are high. After the grant of an NSG waiver in 2008, India essentially enjoyed a unique status. Although not a signatory to a non-proliferation regime it regards as discriminatory, India was nevertheless given special dispensation, as a significant power and a responsible nation, to import nuclear materials and technology. Pakistan, in particular, was not granted such a status. That was in 2008 and probably a different era when the US could influence the then Chinese leadership to accord India the waiver. But the failed effort in Seoul has underlined a new situation where the US support to the Indian case for a membership of the NSG cut no ice with the Chinese and in the process dented India’s unique status. Indeed, it is now once again being hyphenated with Pakistan as a non-proliferation rebel - however unfair that status may be, given that India has gone by the spirit of the NPT even if it has not signed it. All that the Modi government has achieved by its high-profile and personal diplomacy in this matter is to allow China to re-establish an India-Pakistan parity that was broken in 2008. This is worrisome - it suggests that this exercise was not properly thought through, nor were its possible adverse consequences thoroughly mapped out. India’s diplomats now have some work to do to recover India’s position.