10 Apr Consulting Congress in Foreign Affairs, Even When You Don’t Have To – The India Nuclear Deal
10.04.06
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One common charge leveled at the Bush Administration is that it refuses to consult with Congress on important matters involving foreign affairs. There is some truth to this charge, although I think a lot of it is overblown. Congress is regularly consulted on lots of stuff through their numerous oversight and appropriations powers. They often know what is going on. They just don’t like to admit it.
While the President can do a fair amount of foreign policy on his own, the law sometimes requires congressional involvement on most important questions. Even if it doesn’t, the President has incentives to bring Congress on board to share the responsibility for the policy. Case in point: the President’s proposed new stategic alliance with India.
The centerpiece of this strategy is a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India. Secretary Rice (in
between her chamber music sessions) went to Congress last week to seek congressional approval for this deal.
As I noted before, the general framework for civil nuclear cooperation is set up by Section 123 of the
Atomic Energy Act. This act requires the President to submit agreements for civil nuclear cooperation to both houses of Congress for approval, although the President may waive the Congressional approval requirement on an annual basis. The administration is also asking for amendments to the Act as a whole to give India the status to purchase many otherwise restricted goods.
I’m no expert on this this statute, but as I read it, the Administration could have done much (though not all) of this on its own without having to go to Congress, since it could essentially make annual agreements with India to share some (but not all) civilian nuclear technology. Moreover, the agreement with India does not, as far as I understand, violate any U.S. obligations under the
Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as is sometimes hinted by critics of the India deal (see this NYT
editorial). Article IV states that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination. . .”
But the goal here is to establish a long-term stable strategic alliance, which ultimately must outlast this administration. So congressional approval is not just a legal requirement, but it is necessary political condition for the success of this overall strategy. On big questions (e.g. going to war, making new alliances), Congress should be required to take a stand, even if they don’t want to.
Topics
General
While the US-India deal does not violate any written portion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it certainly undercuts the treaty. The compromise at the heart of the NTP is that countries which renounce any right to build nuclear weapons are allowed civilian nuclear technology that they would not otherwise have access to. For this reason, the international community attempts to prevent the sale of nuclear material to non-NTP states.
The export of nuclear material is constrained by the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and by US law. What Bush is asking congress to do is radically amend the laws (such as the 1978 Nonproliferation Act) which prevent the planned transaction. Bush had no choice but to consult congress.
Bush is not the first US president to attempt to create a “strategic alliance” with India. Nearly every president since Nixon has attempted to strike such an agreement. Until now our leaders wisely concluded that the importance of the global non-proliferation regime vastly outweighs the value of any hypothetical strategic alliance. Bush, however, is ready to sellout non-proliferation to secure his place in the history books as the man who brought India in from the cold.
I think it may be true that the US-India deal violates, as stated above, at least the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But what concerns me even more is the following information from an interview by Amy Goodman of DEMOCRACY NOW! with Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group:
U.S. Enters New Nuclear Age as Bush Seeks Funds for New Generation of Nukes
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/02/148233
A new nuclear age appears to be on the horizon. President Bush recently asked Congress for $27 million to help jumpstart the country’s first new nuclear weapons program in two decades. As we broadcast from New Mexico – the center of the country’s nuclear weapons program – we speak with Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group
“We are on the verge of an exciting time.”
Those were the recent words of the nation’s top nuclear weapons executive, Linton Brooks. Here in New Mexico – the center of the country’s nuclear weapons program – a new nuclear age appears to be on the horizon. Bush recently asked Congress for $27 million to help jumpstart the country’s first new nuclear weapons program in two decades. The money will be used to fund a competition between the Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore laboratories to find and design a new generation of nuclear bombs to replace the country’s entire nuclear arsenal.
Meanwhile in another major development in the country’s quest for new nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Britain conducted a joint underground nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site last week. Anti-nuclear activists including the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan denounced the test, the first in nearly two years. In Hiroshima, the peace watchtower at the Peace Memorial Museum — which displays the number of days since the last nuclear test –was reset to zero.
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Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group.
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined here in our Albuquerque studio at KNME by Greg Mello. He is Director of the Los Alamos Study Group. We welcome you to Democracy Now!
GREG MELLO: Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, a number of developments to ask you about. First, I want to start with President Bush in India right now and the latest news on this international nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan.
GREG MELLO: Right. President Bush would like to use nuclear technology as part of a geopolitical strategy and views India as a country we can do business with in nuclear technology, specifically, and more broadly, of course. This is part of a discriminatory approach to nuclear weapons that is undermining our attempts to roll back potential proliferation in Iran and North Korea. It’s hard for us to win friends while we are pumping up India’s nuclear program, allowing it to go forward, turning a blind eye, meanwhile out here in new Mexico, preparing to manufacture a new generation of nuclear weapons, and then coming down so hard on Iran, and which, you know, Iran can enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I don’t think there is any ambiguity about that. But the United States cannot make a new generation of nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, it is?
GREG MELLO: Yeah. We are planning on it. Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this new generation and what it means here for New Mexico?
GREG MELLO: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, some have said that if New Mexico were to secede from the United States, it would be the world’s third greatest nuclear power.
GREG MELLO: Right. There is about 2,500 nuclear weapons just five miles from here, just a little south of the main runway.
AMY GOODMAN: Where?
GREG MELLO: At Kirtland Air Force Base at the Albuquerque Sun Port, the main airport there. And the $27 million that the administration is requesting for a new warhead program, which it calls the “Reliable Replacement Warhead,” is really just the tip of the iceberg. The acronym R.R.W. appears 60 times in the nuclear weapons budget, sprinkled around in different line items, and those line items can be redirected toward or to support the so-called R.R.W. or Reliable Replacement Warhead program. So, the actual budget is quite a bit more.
The intent is to redirect the Stockpile Stewardship program, or to say it another way, to use the fruits of the Stockpile Stewardship program to get ahead and upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal, not just directly in terms of the explosives, the nuclear explosives or warheads, but to initiate a broad pattern of innovation so that the warheads can keep pace with innovation in the delivery systems and with targeting and with, well, arming, firing, fusing, you know, so that — basically so that nuclear weapons can continue to evolve and remain a central part of the goal of so-called full spectrum dominance.
AMY GOODMAN: You are saying that the new generation of nuclear weapons that the Bush administration is pushing forward violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
GREG MELLO: Absolutely. And in that treaty, we are required to successfully negotiate complete nuclear disarmament. This has been a U.S. law since 1970. As recently as 2000, the United States — well, in a consensus statement at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, we agreed to proceed with nuclear disarmament in a series of 13 steps that would actually implement that disarmament requirement. The Bush administration has repudiated those 13 steps, and the subject of nuclear disarmament and our Article 6 requirement to do so under the N.P.T. is not something the Bush administration wants to talk about, especially in the context of Iran. And the — what we would like, we would like to hold Iran to a very high standard under the N.P.T. Ourselves, we would not want to talk about what we’re doing there.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Mello, who runs Los Alamos? Who runs the national lab?
GREG MELLO: Right now, it’s the University of California, but a consortium of four companies — well, three companies and the University of California just won the contract, and so we are in a transition phase. I think it’s June 1, the transition is to be complete. So, soon, Bechtel, Washington Group International —
AMY GOODMAN: These are corporations?
GREG MELLO: These are corporations, yeah. BWXT and the University of California will run Los Alamos National Laboratory. They have what could be a 20-year no-bid contract. It’s about — right now, it’s about $2.2 billion per year, so it’s a $40 billion no-bid contract if they do what they are told.
AMY GOODMAN: And what’s the significance of this?
GREG MELLO: Well, we’ve never seen this kind of profit motive in the nuclear weapons business up to now. They can make more than — well more than $1 billion, more than $1.5 billion, in fees in management awards. Plus they get an entrée or leg up in the nuclear power business, which they expect to be growing. Los Alamos has for years, along with Sandia National Laboratory here, had a program to promote nuclear power worldwide. And it sounds quite similar to what was incorporated in the President’s State of the Union address.
AMY GOODMAN: U.S. and Britain, this nuclear test that they conducted at the Nevada test site, can you explain what they did? Was this a surprise?
GREG MELLO: No, it wasn’t a surprise. I can’t explain exactly what they did, because I’m not sure, but the basic idea is that Britain is poised to make a decision about upgrading its Trident warhead system, its submarine-launched missiles, which are the only kind it has. The United States is also involved in upgrading its Trident warheads. The two warheads are very close together. The two programs are intermeshed. Lockheed, which runs Sandia here, is a partner in running the British nuclear weapons program, as well, so they are institutionally enmeshed, and, of course, they’re politically enmeshed, as we know. So, what’s going on here is that the Brits’ and the United States’ nuclear weapons program don’t want to get out of synch. If we upgrade, they’ll upgrade. I think they don’t want to be left with — left behind technologically. So we have kind of an arms race going on.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds. But the significance of this, and, for example, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki speaking out?
GREG MELLO: Yeah, the significance of this are basically that we are eroding the norms against nuclear weapons worldwide. The rest of the world knows all about this. And we can’t achieve a diplomatic consensus against nuclear weapons if we undermine international strong, the existing strong international norms against nuclear weapons, but if we insist on their legitimacy, we insist on being able to threaten them — threaten with them, then from the Bush administration’s perspective, all that’s left for them are military options to deal with proliferation, so our options are decreased.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Mello, I want to thank you very much for joining us, of the Los Alamos Study Group based in New Mexico right here, where we are broadcasting.
http://www.democracynow.org
The following from Richard Falk and David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation highlights some of the problems with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:
The Non-Proliferation Treaty is Failing: What Now?
by Richard Falk and David Krieger, March 2006
For several decades now the world has been living with the illusion that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) established a functioning treaty regime that has spared the world from nuclear danger. It is an illusion partly because three nuclear weapons aspirants (Israel, India, Pakistan) have kept clear of the treaty, and suffered no adverse consequences when they developed nuclear arsenals. On the contrary, President Bush’s proposed nuclear deal with India must be understood as a major diplomatic reward in spite of India’s crossing the nuclear weapons threshold. And Israel has been allowed to develop a formidable nuclear weapons arsenal while the West kept completely silent.
But this is not the only concern. The NPT has generated a new set of pretexts for launching aggressive war. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was mainly justified, in public at least, because of Baghdad’s purported stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and covert nuclear weapons program. The reality that such a stockpile did not exist, nor the program, conveys the perverse message that a country hostile to the United States might be better off with the weapons than without. Iran and North Korea certainly heard this message! And now, shifting course, the United States is leading a second charge toward aggressive war, this time against Iran, and in so doing approaching the nuclear precipice. Rumors abound that the only sure way to disable Iran’s nuclear capabilities is by attacking and destroying protected underground facilities.
And there is more to worry about. The NPT promises in Article IV as a matter of “inalienable right” full access to peaceful forms of nuclear technology for non-weapons states. Several countries, including Germany and Japan, parties to the NPT, have the technology and a complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment phases, which make it possible for them to develop nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks or months. While the world is turning a blind eye to Brazil’s new uranium enrichment facility, Iran is being threatened with military attack and UN sanctions if it moves in a similar direction. This appears to be such a blatantly discriminatory application of a vital provision of the NPT as to give Iran grounds for regarding itself as free from any duty to comply. It is elementary treaty law that if an important provision is violated this constitutes a material breach that allows other parties to declare their unwillingness to remain bound by the treaty. In any event, the treaty allows for parties to withdraw, and North Korea has already exercised this option.
If this were not trouble enough, there is another cluster of difficulties with the NPT. The nuclear weapons states, starting with the United States, have failed to uphold their obligations in Article VI to pursue in good faith negotiations on nuclear disarmament and, beyond even this, to seek general and complete disarmament. In 1996, the World Court in The Hague unanimously called upon nuclear weapons states to fulfill their Article VI obligations for nuclear disarmament. Most non-nuclear weapons states have been upset for years about the failure of the nuclear weapons states to do so. It is time for a group of governments, as many as possible, to step up and say that we have waited long enough. It is time to say that the NPT was based on mutual commitments, and is failing as a result of the inaction of the nuclear powers. The nuclear weapons states appear to need shock therapy.
This is not a plea for proliferation. It is an urgent plea for phased nuclear disarmament based on a negotiated agreement, reliable monitoring and verification, and a commitment to the total prohibition of the threat or use of these weapons. Only the United States has the stature and capacity to take such a momentous step toward safeguarding its own security and contributing to the realization of a nuclear weapons free world. It also bears the responsibility for doing so.
It is absurd to believe that we can have an arrangement whereby some states acquire and continue to develop nuclear weapons while others are punished with war for doing the same thing on a miniscule scale. This logic of the NPT in practice is to endorse double standards of the worst possible sort. It would have been treated as absurd if such an approach had been taken with respect to the treaties renouncing the right to develop or possess chemical and biological weapons. Even though some states had huge stockpiles of these weapons, the treaties were based on the equality of obligations binding on all states. Why should nuclear weapons be treated differently?
The approach of the NPT to nuclear power is also flawed. There is no way to allow this access to countries without giving them the status of being latent nuclear weapons states. The only solution at this stage is to impose a worldwide moratorium on the production of weapons-grade fissionable materials, and those materials already produced should be placed under strict international controls in all countries including our own. Additionally, an International Sustainable Energy Agency should be immediately established and generously funded to extend aid to poorer countries to develop various types of sustainable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal). Such a step would both ease the prospects of a global energy crunch, and would contribute to environmental protection.
In effect, we are calling for two new treaties: a Treaty to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and a Treaty Establishing an International Sustainable Energy Agency. These are the only initiatives that have a reasonable chance of moving us back from the terrifying edge of the nuclear precipice. Richard Falk is Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University, and Chair of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
David Krieger is the President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).
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