Lost amidst President Obama’s announcement that the US would support permanent membership on the UN Security Council for India, was this little nugget in the India-US Joint Statement calling for a nuclear dialogue among nuclear weapons states:
They affirmed the need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and security doctrines.
Now I am all for such a dialogue, but it caused a flurry in the Indian press, including an article by our friend Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu, that seemed to suggest the Indian side interpreted this as a move to create “a framework which has the potential to transcend the NPT, while remaining faithful to the twin goals of non-proliferation and the elimination of nuclear weapons.” Or, as an Indian official told Siddarth “We are constructing a paradigm beyond the NPT.”
Transcend the NPT?
Obviously, this caused no little consternation among others — like those non-nuclear weapons states that signed the NPT. To understand the problem with this approach, imagine how you would react to Iran explaining its desire, too, in transcending the conceptual limits of the NPT framework.
So, our fearless leader, Bill Potter actually asked Gary Samore what exactly the US intended to convey with that sentence. (Samore, the arms control and nonproliferation coordinator at the National Security Council was appearing at the POSSE meeting last week organized by the Monterey Institute and Georgia Tech.)
Samore told Bill that that the U.S. did not intend to convey the impression that it had adopted a new policy encouraging nuclear discussions between the NPT-recognized P-5 and the other nuclear weapons possessors, despite the interpretation the Indian media has seized upon.
Indeed, it appears from the Indian reporting that this is a long-standing bit of Indian boilerplate that the Administration acceded to.
Of course, with US support for India’s membership in the NSG and no pressure on India to sign the CTBT or support an FMCT, you can hardly fault the Indians for assuming that whatever Manmohan wants, Manmohan gets. If Manmohan Singh asked the President to use DARHT, it isn’t clear to me the President could resist.
Sigh.
Since this is a music-themed post, I figured I would just end with a little John Lennon — that great rival of Brian Wilson who left his experience with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with a bitterness I find more apt for the situation at hand: