Bush’s nuclear deal with India, signed earlier this week,
is hypocritical and dangerous, says alexander cockburn |
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The US-India Nuclear Cooperation Act, signed by President Bush in the White House last Monday, was so greased with hypocrisy that it's a miracle his pen didn't skid off the edge of the parchment.
The deal, finally struck after months of haggling with India and then in the US Congress, ends the coolness that followed India's tests in the 1970s and 1998, and allows US firms to start shipping nuclear fuel and equipment to India's 14 civil nuclear plants. This could allow India to divert fuel to its 12 military nuclear sectors and, presumptively, to produce at least 50 extra nuclear warheads a year.
What India would actually do with all those warheads is a different matter. The US has about 10,000, and is never entirely sure what to do with them or where they all are.
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| The act makes a nonsense of Bush’s declared objective of curbing the spread of nuclear weapons |
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The act, signed on December 18, makes a nonsense of Bush's declared objective of curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. Specifically, it allows rich scope for satirical comment from Iran and North Korea, countries that have, these past six years, been on the receiving end of torrents of abuse from the US government for their nuclear ambitions.
The US has been fostering relations with India for well over the past decade-and-a-half, a period in which, as any traveller in America can attest, Indians from Gujerat have acquired control of about 72 per cent of all American motels. Twenty years ago Indian restaurants were rare in US cities; now connoisseurs whine about the quality of their masala dhosas.
There are plenty of enormously rich Indians and emigre organisations, whose money has political clout. Visas are swiftly forthcoming for Indian engineers and start-up entrepreneurs. The hi-tech sector teems with Indians. Neo-liberal columnists such as the ineffable Tom Friedman sound weekly carillons in the New 
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