Abstract
In China and India, support for non-proliferation efforts ultimately hinges on national interests.
Every government opposes the spread of unconventional weapons, but governments have interests aside from nonproliferation–economic prosperity and geopolitical advantage, for example. Such immediate, tangible interests can override efforts to counter seemingly remote, abstract perils. Hence many governments' tepid response to what Americans see as commonsense efforts to quash weapons proliferation and mass-casualty terrorism. Prospective partners won't necessarily back U.S.-led ventures, even if they back the principles and purposes guiding these ventures.
Exhibit A: the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Founded in 2003 as a “coalition of the willing” to interdict weapons-related cargoes at sea, ashore, or aloft, the initiative now commands support from 80 governments. It might form the basis for what scholars call a “global prohibition regime” against nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, but certain pivotal nations–China and India, to name two–have withheld support. They have demurred because, on balance, their other interests prevail over counterproliferation. The PSI's effectiveness remains in doubt as a result. If Washington hopes to marshal wider support, it must show reluctant governments that the initiative will advance their national interests.
Take China. Chinese leaders consider the PSI a U.S.-led nautical enterprise targeting their client, North Korea. They balk at ratifying U.S. naval dominance in waters that convey oil and natural gas–the stuff of a thriving industrial economy–into Chinese seaports. In 2004, consequently, China had language that endorsed the PSI eliminated from U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, which mandated tighter controls on weapons transfers. Last fall, Beijing demanded that language authorizing nonconsensual boarding of ships bound to or from North Korea be struck from any measure responding to Pyongyang's nuclear test.
And India? Like China, India would make a valuable partner for the PSI. The nation possesses a real and growing capacity to police the Indian Ocean basin, and Indian leaders since Jawaharlal Nehru have vowed to do so. Precedent prods New Delhi toward maritime counterproliferation, whereas past controversies–notably the botched 1993 U.S. interception of the Chinese freighter Yinhe–have biased Beijing against seafaring initiatives organized by the “self-styled world cop” in Washington. Unlike China, India should be an easy sell for the PSI.
In 1999, Indian Customs detained the North Korean merchantman Kuwolsan after it put in at the northwestern Indian port of Kan-dla. After scuffling with the crew, customs agents discovered a complete assembly line for Scud ballistic missiles–perhaps destined for India's nemesis, Pakistan. In late 2006, the Indian Coast Guard apprehended the Omrani II, a North Korean vessel bound for Iran that strayed into Indian waters after a propulsion failure. Its holds contained no cargo, and its crew–laughably–declared that they were steaming to the Islamic Republic on sea trials. The crew's true intentions remain a mystery. The two incidents nonetheless reminded New Delhi that seagoing commerce holds perils as well as economic benefits.
Still, Indian leaders look askance at the PSI. Why? First, the initiative has gotten entangled in India's mercurial domestic politics in a way it has not been in China, with its state-run press, or the United States, where it enjoys bipartisan backing. The former nationalist government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee voiced guarded support for the PSI at the initiative's inception, and this was enough to alienate potential supporters in the Congress Party and other left-leaning parties that comprise the present government's political base. U.S. strong-arm tactics only stiffened popular skepticism. News reports declared that Washington had attached a clause to the recent U.S.-Indian nuclear accord mandating Indian participation in the PSI. (Any such clause was deleted from the text of the agreement, presumably at Indian negotiators' behest.) To appease public wrath, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has carefully avoided aligning New Delhi with the PSI.
There's no doubt about it. They're escalating
The PSI also reminds Indians of past maltreatment–as they see it–at the hands of the nonproliferation regime. India has long been denied dual-use technology because it steadfastly refuses to embrace the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and insists on maintaining its stand-alone export control system. Bad feelings linger despite the Bush administration's decisions to lift economic sanctions imposed after India's and Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests, and to negotiate a deal permitting technology transfers to India's commercial nuclear complex. Acquiescence in the PSI, the de facto enforcement arm of a system that unjustly targeted India in the past, may be a bridge too far for India's leadership.
Like China, India now looks seaward for energy security, economic development, and the stature due a world power. For Indians, the question is not whether weapons-related traffic should be interdicted–they agree it should–but who should do the interdicting. Elite consensus in New Delhi holds that India should police the Indian Ocean region, denying external powers any pretext for meddling in India's geographic environs. Indeed, prime ministers from Nehru onward have pursued a policy they liken to the Monroe Doctrine. By their logic, if circumstances warrant forceful action, then India should act–relegating the United States and other outsiders to a supporting role (at most) in regional security affairs.
Indian pundits construe India's maritime domain expansively, urging New Delhi to make itself preeminent from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait–or even the Suez–to the Strait of Malacca. New Delhi appraises these surroundings in austere terms. Its 2004 Indian Maritime Doctrine depicts India's maritime strategy as a function of economic development, but it adds, “Control of the choke points could be useful as a bargaining chip in the international power game, where the currency of military power remains a stark reality.” India, accordingly, has shunned the PSI for fear that participation would signify a formal alliance with the United States–with the Indian Navy reduced to an appendage of the U.S. Navy.
Can the Bush administration assuage Indian leaders' concerns? Perhaps. Congress' approval of the U.S.-Indian nuclear pact should mollify Indian public opinion, rendering the Singh government more receptive to U.S. proposals aimed at halting proliferation. To seize this perhaps fleeting moment, Washington needs to portray the PSI as a vehicle for closer bilateral defense cooperation, something New Delhi covets despite its pretensions to regional primacy. Joint naval operations in the Indian Ocean help India improve its navy and coast guard–a substantial payoff for PSI participation despite the initiative's political hazards.
The administration must also show that the PSI poses no threat to New Delhi's claim to supremacy in the Indian Ocean. U.S. officials can cite Operation Active Endeavour–NATO's maritime police operation in the Mediterranean–to convince their Indian counterparts they welcome Indian leadership as a means of burden-sharing. And Washington should incorporate weapons interdiction into the military-to-military relationship. Once the requisite tactics and capabilities are in place, New Delhi can collaborate quietly with the PSI as its interests warrant, even absent a formal commitment to the initiative. India can reap much of the benefit of overt PSI participation while avoiding the semblance of second-class status in the region. The global prohibition regime against weapons trafficking would remain incomplete–but Washington shouldn't let the best become the enemy of the good.
Supplementary Material
Proliferation Security Initiative Pamphlet