Uncertain alliance: Bush goes to India with his nuclear agenda incomplete
Against a backdrop of saris, elephant-shaped flower ar???-rangements and bowls of lotus-blossom ice cream, President George W. Bush raised his water glass to Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister. "India and the United States are separated by half the globe. Yet today our two nations are closer than ever before."
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His toast, made last July in the State Dining Room at the White House, marked a moment of recognition by the US of India's status as one of the world's emerging great powers. For some diplomats involved, that day has already taken on the sepia hues of history, evoking comparisons with the strategic embrace of China by President Richard Nixon in 1972.
Behind the ritual of salutations and chilled asparagus soup were hours of tense negotiations overseen by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state and the leading US architect of the transformation, in a suite of the Indian delegation at Washington's Willard Hotel. The final text was agreed just 90 minutes before Mr Bush got to his feet at the banquet.
The July 18 statement sought to cement economic and other relationships. Yet it is the accord on civil nuclear co-operation that was both the most contentious and the most symbolic aspect of the rapprochement. Since then, however, talks on how to implement the agreement have stalled. Last week senior US officials travelled to New Delhi in an attempt to secure a breakthrough before Mr Bush departs tomorrow for his first trip to India and only the second visit by a US president in more than two decades.
The fate of the nuclear talks threatens to overshadow his trip and future relations. Although American trade with India remains small at $25bn (￡14bn, �21bn) a year, ranking it 22nd as a US trading partner, it is growing fast. The success of the visit will help determine the ability of US companies such as Wal-Mart Stores to open up one of the last great emerging markets.
"We made substantial progress in military-to-military and business-to-business [issues] but the big boulder in the room was India's civil nuclear facilities. This is the only remaining impediment to a deep long-term strategic relationship," says Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador to India and advocate of closer ties. "The boulder was removed in principle on July 18. Now the issue is whether it can be removed in practice."
The agreement hinged on India separating its military and civil nuclear facilities, so that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency could gain access to the civil ones that would be eligible for international co-operation. With a credible separation plan from India, the Bush administration would take legislation to Congress and convince the 44 other countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which seeks to control the worldwide provision of sensitive materials and technology, of the need to make an exception for India - allowing it access to such supplies even though the country is not a signatory to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By the time of the reciprocal US presidential visit, the expectation was that these steps would comfortably have been completed. Signing the agreement would be the capstone of a strategic partnership that consigned to history residual tensions between two of the world's largest democracies.
On both sides, the decision was based on calculated self-interest. Senior US officials point, in private, to the Nat-ional Intelligence Council's "Mapping the Global Future" project ashaving spurred discussion. The emergence of China and India as global players, it argued, would transform the geopolitical landscape with an impact comparable to the rise of Germany in the 19th century and that of the US in the early 20th century.
Between the two Asian powers, there is little doubt where US affinities lie. An India that can emerge as a "geopolitical counterweight" to China and buttress of the Pax Americana is a persistent private theme of administration officials. Mr Bush, in a speech on India and Pakistan last week, noted that New Delhi's "commitment to secular government and religious pluralism makes India a natural partner for the United States".
"India is a rising global power with a rapidly growing economy," says Nicholas Burns, US under-secretary of state for political affairs, who led last week's talks in India. "Within the first quarter of this century, it is likely to be included among the world's five largest economies. It will soon be the world's most populous nation and it has a demographic distribution that be-queaths it a huge, skilled and youthful workforce. India's military forces will continue to be large, capable and increasingly sophisticated."
That consciousness of India's significance is echoed in the American private sector. Ron Somers, president of the US India Business Council, notes that a year ago there were 90 companies in his lobbying organisation. Now there are 170.
For India, the compulsions are in some ways different. The principal urge is the need for international recognition of its status as a great power and of its claims to permanent membership of an expanded United Nations Security Council. Being seen as a legitimate nuclear power and casting off the quasi-pariah status it has endured since its first test of nuclear weapons in 1974 - followed by further weapons tests in 1998 - is central to that goal.
The psychological boost will help India at last end what it calls its "hyphenation" with Pakistan. "The momentum in our relationship with the US has been important for how we are perceived by the rest of the world and has had a positive ripple effect on other relationships," says a senior official in India's ministry of external affairs. "The hyphenation is now more with China. In a few years' time India won't be able to see Pakistan in the rear-view mirror."
Like the US, however, India is also looking to take out insurance against China, with which it has an unresolved border dispute and fought a war in 1962. Just as India needed a substantive security relationship with the Soviet Union during the cold war to provide a counterbalance to Pakistan's alliances with the US and China, so it now looks to the US, argues C. Raja Mohan, an Indian political analyst, as a "hedge against the Chinese juggernaut as it rolls across Asia".
Indeed, in reaching the July 18 agreement, both governments had run well ahead of their public and urgently needed to secure a domestic political consensus behind the policy departure. And by neglecting to take on the most vocal opponents of the deal, each allowed powerful lobbies bent on scuppering it to unite and frame the terms of debate. Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the US, says the debate has been "hijacked over here by non-proliferation theologians and in India by those rallying to the banner of self-reliance".
In the US, the fiercest reaction has come from those concerned about the dangers of creating an exception for India and the impact that would have on the NPT regime. Mr Blackwill identifies two competing approaches. Under the first, India would be treated as a standard nuclear weapons state, changing its "reputation as a renegade and pariah, which the US had done much to create". The second is that of the non-proliferation lobby, which wants to cap, reduce and then end India's nuclear weapons programme - using the July 18 agreement to put so many facilities under IAEA safeguards that the country could not meet its weaponry wishes.
The first approach was at the core of the outline pact to transform the US-India relationship but, once the deal was announced, some analysts say non-proliferation advocates inside the administration and outside have tried to shift the agreement from paradigm one to paradigm two.
That shift was possible becausesenior US officials involved in the agreement - such as Ms Rice - failed to follow through with keynote speeches supporting India and became sidetracked by events in Iraq and elsewhere. Mr Bush in his State of the Union address last month referred to India just once, and even then disobligingly, alluding to "new competitors like China and India".
In India, the deal has triggered the biggest foreign policy crisis since Indira Gandhi produced the fait accompli of the 1971 treaty of peace and friendship with the Soviet Union. The furore reflects deep hostility to the idea that India might sacrifice its standing as an independent nuclear power and its role as spiritual guardian of the non-aligned tradition on the altar of a strategic partnership with the US.
The bloc of communist parties that provides the government with its majority in parliament has proved the largest obstacle to Mr Singh's ambitions. Facing elections in the left's core bastions of Kerala and West Bengal, both of which have large Shia Muslim populations, the left reacted furiously to Washington's clumsy linkage of congressional support for the nuclear deal with the way India chooses to vote on the issue of Iran in the IAEA.
With Prakash Karat, leader of the CPI (M), one such party, promising the US president a "welcome so warm he will feel the heat", plans for Mr Bush to address a joint session of parliament have been dropped. The left hopes to muster a demonstration outside parliament on the first day of the visit, in the first mass action against the government on a non-economic issue since the formation of the United Progressive Alliance coalition in May 2004.
Officials pushing the US deal console themselves by saying that Indian governments do not fall on questions of foreign policy. Few believe the left is prepared to withdraw its support from the government and bring the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party back to power. But leftwing hostility to the deal, denounced as an abandonment of India's "traditional anti-imperialism", has certainly narrowed Mr Singh's margin for manoeuvre.
A second source of opposition to the nuclear deal has come from the country's atomic establishment. One after another, its secretive scientists have emerged to warn against the loss of independence. Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary of India's Department of Atomic Energy, accused the US of "moving the goalposts" set down in the July agreement.
Mr Kakodkar, who played a key role in the 1974 "peaceful nuclear explosion", warned that India's credible minimum deterrent would be in jeopardy if it accepted the inclusion of the country's next-generation fast-breeder reactors - which will be decades in development but will eventually produce plutonium that can be used both in bombs and for producing energy - on the list of civilian facilities that would become subject to international safeguards.
This is a potential deal-breaker. As India has a formal no-first-strike policy, its deterrent consists of a capability to respond overwhelmingly after sustaining a nuclear attack. Non-proliferation enthusiasts on Capitol Hill, who believe that India already maintains weapons-grade plutonium sufficient for 60-80 warheads, argue that fissile material produced by the fast-breeder reactors could be needed for military uses only if India significantly increased the size of its nuclear arsenal. They say it should be listed as civilian and made subject to inspection.
Decades-old doubts about American reliability explain the stand-off. After India's 1974 nuclear experiment, both the US and Canada abrogated bilateral agreements to supply fuel to two reactors, despite New Delhi's protestations that, as a non-NPT signatory, it had not violated international obligations. India's scientists are proud of the way they rose to the challenge of developing a nuclear programme in isolation.
"While India has never been averse to international co-operation, its experience [of that] has shown it to be highly undependable and subject to humiliating restrictions, embargoes and denials . . . on the flimsiest of pretexts," says A.N. Prasad, former director of the country's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Indian scientists did not enjoy struggling against heavy odds to develop complex technologies and should never again depend on imports.
Whether a viable compromise can emerge will depend on both sides reviving the spirit of the agreement seven months ago and its longer-term strategic intent. Last July Mr Singh, in his own toast, said: "We have all grown up learning the story of the unfinished voyage of Christopher Columbus. Setting sail to reach India, he discovered America. I now invite the people of America to complete the voyage of that great explorer."
Given the cold shoulder he will get from India's atomic scientists and some of its politicians, Mr Bush may regret having accepted that invitation.
美印结盟 意在中国
印
度纱丽、大象造型的鲜花摆设、莲花盛开状的冰淇淋。在这一背景中，美国总统布什 (George W. Bush)向印度总理曼莫汉?辛格 (Manmohan Singh)举杯致意。“印度和美国远隔地球两端，但今天，我们两国的关系前所未有地密切。”
他去年7月于白宫国宴厅所做的祝辞，标志着美国承认印度的新兴世界大国地位。对部分参与的外交人士而言，这一天极富历史意义，可与1972年理查德?尼克松 (Richard Nixon)总统具有战略意义的访华相媲美。
布什致辞前90分钟定稿
在招待仪式和冰冻芦笋汤背后，是这一转变的美方总设计师、国务卿康多丽萨?赖斯 (Condoleezza Rice)，与印度代表团一行在华盛顿威拉德酒店(Willard Hotel)套房内长达数小时的紧张会谈。在布什总统宴会致辞前仅 90分钟双方才定稿。
7月18日的声明旨在巩固双方的经济以及其它关系。在双方亲善关系中，最具争议、也最具象征性的，是有关民用核能合作的协议。但自那以来，有关如何实施这项协议的谈判停滞不前。美国高级官员上周到访新德里，试图在布什首次印度之行启程前取得突破。这是20多年来，美国总统第二次访问印度。
核谈判的命运，有可能给此行乃至两国未来关系投下阴影。虽然美国与印度的贸易额仍较小，每年只有250亿美元，使印度在美国贸易伙伴中列第22位，但双边贸易增长很快。访问成功将有助于沃尔玛 (Wal-Mart)等美国公司打开最后一个大型新兴市场。
“我们在军事对军事、商务对商务问题上取得了实质进展，但一大绊脚石是印度的民用核设施。这是双方长期深入战略关系仅存的障碍，”美国驻印度前大使、倡导更紧密两国关系的罗伯特?布莱克威尔(Robert Blackwill)表示。“这个绊脚石原则上在7月18日已经消除了，现在的问题是它能否在实践中被消除。”
分别对待军用和民用核设施
该协议取决于印度将其军用和民用核设施分开，使国际原子能机构(IAEA)的检查员能够进入民用核设施，也使这些核设施有资格得到国际合作。假如印度拿出可信的分开计划，布什政府将推动国会立法，并说服核供应国集团(NSG)的44个其它国家对印度网开一面，允许印度获得核供应，即便它尚未签署国际《核不扩散条约》 (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)。核供应国集团试图控制敏感物质和技术的全球供应。
在美国总统回访之前，人们预期这些步骤能顺利完成。协议的签署，将标志着两国的战略伙伴关系达到顶点，彻底消除世界最大的两个民主国家间遗留的紧张因素。
中印崛起将改变地缘政治格局
双方的决定，都建立在对自身利益的精心计算之上。美国的高级官员私下指出，国家情报委员会(National Intelligence Council)的《世界未来格局展望》(Mapping the Global Future)项目激发了讨论。该项目认为，中国和印度作为全球大国的崛起将改变地缘政治格局，其影响可媲美 19世纪德国的崛起，以及20世纪初美国的崛起。
在这两个亚洲大国之间，美国倾向哪一方几乎毫无疑问。布什政府官员私下的主题一直都是：印度可成为抗衡中国的 “地缘政治力量”，以及“美国统治下的和平”(Pax Americana)的支柱。上周，布什在关于印度和巴基斯坦的演讲中指出，印度政府 “对世俗政府和多元化宗教的承诺，使印度成为美国的天然伙伴”。
主管政治事务的美国副国务卿尼古拉斯?伯恩斯 (Nicholas Burns)主持上周印度会谈。他说， “印度是崛起中的全球大国，经济增长迅速。本世纪头25年，它很有可能进入全球5大经济体之列。它不久将成为全球人口最多的国家，其人口结构带来大量熟练而年轻的劳动力。印度的军事力量将保持庞大规模和良好的战斗能力，而且会越来越先进。”
这种对印度重要性的认识，在美国私人部门引起了共鸣。美国印度企业委员会(US India Business Council)主席罗恩?萨莫斯(Ron Somers)指出，一年前，他的这个游说组织有 90家企业，现在有170家。
印度的动机在某些方面有所不同，首要动机是需要国际社会认同其大国地位，以及担任扩大后的联合国安理会常任理事国的要求。这一目标的核心，是要被国际社会视为合法的核大国，摆脱其准贱民地位。印度于1974年进行首次核试验后就被贴上这一标签，此后于1998年又进行了数次核试验。
巴基斯坦将从印度后视镜中消失？
心理上的鼓舞，将有助于印度告别其所谓的与巴基斯坦的“相提并论”。 “我们与美国关系的发展势头，对于世界其它国家如何看待我们非常重要，对印度与其它国家的关系也有积极的连锁反应，”印度外交部的一名高级官员说，“现在印度更多地是与中国相提并论。几年后，印度在后视镜里将会看不到巴基斯坦。”
不过，印度和美国一样，也希望采取针对中国的保险措施。印度与中国还有未解决的边界争议，并曾在1962年打了一场战争。印度政治分析师C?拉贾?莫汉(C. Raja Mohan)指出，正如冷战期间印度需要与苏联建立实质安全关系，来抗衡巴基斯坦与中美的联盟，它现在寄望美国成为“保护伞，制衡中国席卷亚洲的强大力量”。
确实，在达成7月18日的协议过程中，两国政府都超前公众，迫切需要确保国内政界达成共识支持新政策。由于双方都忽视了该协议最起劲的反对者，结果都让一心想破坏协议的强大的游说团体联合起来，主导着辩论框架。印度驻美大使罗南?森(Ronen Sen)表示，这场辩论已经被“核不扩散空头理论家所劫持，在印度则被打着自力更生旗帜的人所劫持”。
美国的两种思路
在美国，有人担心为印度破例的危险，以及对《核不扩散条约》体系会造成的冲击。这些人对印美协议的反应最为激烈。布莱克威尔先生指出了两种对立的做法。按第一种做法，印度被当作标准的核武国家对待，改变其“叛逆国与贱民国的名声，美国对印度的这种名声起了很大作用”。第二种做法是核不扩散游说团体的做法，它希望限制、削减、最终结束印度的核武项目――利用7月18日的协议，将诸多核设施置于国际原子能机构的监督下，使印度无法实现其核武愿望。
第一种做法是改变美印关系的框架协定的核心，但部分分析人士表示，协议宣布后，布什政府内外的核不扩散提倡者，就试图将协议从思路一改成思路二。
这种改变是可能的，因为介入该协议的美国高级官员(如赖斯女士)，未能发表更多支持印度的主题演讲作为跟进，而是被伊拉克与其它地方的事件分心。布什上月发表国情咨文时，只提到了一次印度，而即便是那一次，也只是冷冷地提到“中国和印度等新的竞争对手”。
印度人怒气何来
在印度，该协议引发了1971年以来最大的外交政策危机，当时英迪拉?甘地(Indira Gandhi)与苏联达成了既成事实的和平友好条约。印度人的愤怒，反映了对这种想法的深切敌意：在与美国战略伙伴关系的“祭坛”上，印度可能既要牺牲独立核大国的地位，又要牺牲不结盟传统之精神捍卫者的角色。
为政府带来多数席位的共产党集团，已被证实是辛格先生抱负的最大障碍。印度喀拉拉邦和西孟加拉邦是左翼的核心阵地，都有着为数众多的什叶派穆斯林。在这两邦面临大选之际，华盛顿拙劣地将美国国会对该核协议的支持，与印度在国际原子能机构就伊朗问题的投票挂钩，对此，印度左翼的反应十分强烈。
印度共产党(马)就是这样一个党派。虽然该党领导人普拉卡什?卡拉特(Prakash Karat)向美国总统保证，他会受到“热情洋溢的欢迎，会让他感到很热”，但让布什在印度国会联席会议上演讲的计划已被取消。左翼希望在布什访问的第一天，召集群众在国会外举行示威。这将是自 2004年5月联合进步联盟(UPA)成立以来，首次在非经济事务上反对政府的大规模行动。
推动印美协议的官员自我安慰说，印度政府不会因为外交政策垮台。几乎没人认为，左翼准备收回对政府的支持，并让印度民族主义政党印度人民党(Bharatiya Janata)重新上台。但左翼对该协议的敌意确实已缩小了辛格先生斡旋的空间。左翼斥责该协议抛弃了印度“传统的反帝国主义立场”。
印度核科学家的态度
反对这份核协议的意见还来自印度的原子能机构。印度隐秘的科学家一个接一个地冒出来，警告不要丧失独立性。印度原子能委员会(AEC)主席兼原子能部 (DAE)部长阿尼尔?卡科德卡(Anil Kakodkar) 指责美国“改变了”7月份协议中定下的“条件”。
卡科德卡先生在1974年的“和平核爆”中起了关键作用。他警告说，如果印度接受把下一代链式裂变反应堆纳入民用设施范畴，从而服从国际监管，那印度可信的最小核威慑将岌岌可危。这种反应堆的开发将耗时数十年，但终将生产出钚，可以用于原子弹和生产能源。
这是协议破裂的潜在因素。由于印度有正式的不首先使用核武器政策，其核威慑要求在经受住第一次核打击后，有能力进行压倒性反击。美国国会的核不扩散激进人士认为，印度已拥有足够制造60到80枚核弹头的武器级钚。他们主张，只有印度大幅扩充其核武库时，才可能需要链式裂变反应堆产生的军用可裂变物质。他们说，这种反应堆应被列为民用，接受检查。
印度对美国是否可靠的疑虑已有数十年之久，这解释了目前的僵持局面。印度1974年进行核试验后，美国和加拿大都废除了向印度两座反应堆提供燃料的双边协议，尽管印度政府声明，它没有签署《核不扩散条约》，所以没有违反国际义务。印度科学家对自己在孤立中迎接开发核计划的挑战感到自豪。
“国际合作是非常不可靠的”
“虽然印度从不反对国际合作，但印度在这方面的经历表明，国际合作是非常不可靠的，还会受到令人蒙羞的限制、禁运和拒绝……而且用的是最不足信的借口，”印度巴巴原子研究中心(Bhabha Atomic Research Centre)前主任A?N?普拉萨德(A.N.Prasad)表示。印度科学家过去并不乐意孤军奋战去开发复杂技术，也绝对不应再依赖进口。
能否达成可行的妥协，将有待双方恢复7个月前签定协议的精神及各自的长期战略意图。去年7月，辛格先生在他的祝酒辞中说：“我们都是听着克里斯托弗?哥伦布(Christopher Columbus)未完成航行的故事长大的。他启航前往印度，却发现了美洲。现在，我邀请美洲的人们来完成这位伟大探险家的航程。”
鉴于印度原子能科学家和一些政客将冷淡对待布什，他也许会后悔接受了访印邀请。
