RPI Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest: China’s Nuclear Energy Technology Sales to Pakistan, by Timothy Westmyer

On March 22, The Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz reported that China would sell a new round of nuclear reactor technology to Pakistan at the existing site in the Chashma Nuclear Power Complex in the Punjab region. Several countries have argued that this transfer could violate Beijing’s pledges as a member of the Nuclear Supplier Control (NSG) to not sale nuclear materials, technologies, and related equipment to states outside the nonproliferation regime. Pakistan lacks a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, one of the NSG guideline requirements for nuclear exports.

The exact details of this reported deal are still unknown as official comments on the still developing story remain vague and parsed. China essentially confirmed that a deal was reached between the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, but specific details were not discussed and Beijing pushed back against accusations of NSG violations.

In this Policy Alert, we examine a number of important questions raised by the news:

  • What are the specific terms of the deal? Does it represent a fundamentally new nuclear sale that violates NSG guidelines or is the transfer merely a continuation of previously arranged China-Pakistan nuclear cooperation?
  • How has China and Pakistan responded to these reports and accusations?
  • What is the response of the United State and other NSG members to these new reports?
  • How could this reported deal influence regional nuclear energy and nonproliferation networks?

CHINA

Background:

China joined the NSG in 2004 after building two reactors at the Chashma site. Several years later, CNNC agreed to build two new reactors – Chashma-3 and Chashma-4 – that will possibly be commissioned in the coming years. Beijing claimed that these reactors should be “grandfathered” into a long-term China-Pakistan nuclear cooperation agreement signed before 2004.

A number of NSG members raised these concerns at last year’s NSG meeting in The Netherlands, but were met with similar Chinese resistance to canceling the deal. These NSG members complain that as of last year’s NSG Plenary Meeting, China has not provided proper documentation to adequately clarify that Chashma-3, Chashma-4, and this possible new Chashma-5 reactor or reactor upgrades were pre-2004 commitments.

This latest deal should be understood in the context of China long-standing nuclear cooperation with Pakistan that goes back decades. Feroz Hassan Khan, a 30-year professional in the Pakistani Army who had a senior role in the creation of Pakistan’s security policy, wrote about the origins of this collaboration in his recent book Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistan Bomb. Khan argues that though “one of the most closely guarded secrets in Pakistan is the specific nature of its nuclear agreements with China,” the two countries signed a strategic agreement in May 1976 that “included military, nuclear, and other civil agreements.” (p.171)

Since both China and Pakistan were ultimately denied “certain Western technologies” through sanctions and nuclear suppliers groups, “their relationship was mutually beneficial – every piece of technology that Pakistan managed to acquire would be available to the Chinese for reverse engineering, providing Pakistan an opportunity to develop its engineering expertise.” (p.171) For example, when in response to India’s 1974 nuclear explosive test Canada abandoned the KANUPP (Canada Deuterium-Uranium type heavy water reactor that uses natural uranium as fuel) it built for Pakistan, the “reactor faced a possible shutdown unless Pakistan could produce its own nuclear fuel and heavy water. Under these circumstances Bhutto struck a deal with Beijing: in return for technically supporting KANUPP, China would have access to KANUPP’s Western technology.” Khan concluded that: “Such cooperation created a framework of trust and reciprocity between Pakistan and China that eventually led to a broad-based nuclear cooperation. (p.193) Pakistan appealed to China’s sympathies as the Soviet Union withdrew its support of Beijing in the mid-1950s, leaving China to “face technical and resource challenges on its own.”(p.128) On September 15, 1986, China and Pakistan signed a new nuclear cooperation agreement that resulted in the first reactors at the Chashma site. Beijing later used this 1986 agreement to justify future reactor sales as “grandfathered” contracts signed before China joined the NSG in 2004.

Latest deal:

Media sources in China have been generally silent on the most recent kerfuffle. The Free Beacon story reported that an official internal notice to officials within China’s nuclear establishment and regional political leaders stressed the need to avoid any leaks of information about the possible controversial nuclear deal. Top foreign policy officials have since defended the contracts. 

  • China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters that “China has noted the [Free Beacon] report” and that China’s nuclear energy cooperation with Pakistan would continue. He added: “I want to point out that relevant cooperation between China and Pakistan does not violate relevant norms of the NSG. In recent years, China and Pakistan have carried out some cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear cooperation. All this cooperation is for peaceful use and this cooperation is in compliance with our respective international obligations and subject to the safeguards of the IAEA.”
  • The Free Beacon article suggested that China sought to keep a tight lid on the nuclear deal to avoid “negative publicity” that could “upset [China’s] leadership transition” and irk the United States, which is serving as this year’s rotating head of the NSG.

PAKISTAN

The editorial pages in many Pakistani newspapers were similarly silent on the possible nuclear deal.The Free Beacon story reported that the most recent China-Pakistan deal was likely signed in Beijing during a February 15-18, 2013 visit by a delegation from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Immediately after that visit on February 20, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement that highlighted its engagement with nonproliferation regimes, including a trilateral meeting at the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s January meeting in Turkey. 

  • The MOFA statement concluded: “These interactions are part of Pakistan’s concerted effort to engage with the international export control regimes, in pursuance of the direction received from the National Command Authority (NCA) chaired by the Prime Minister.” It continued that Pakistan was “keen” to join the international export control groups and that “Pakistan’s export control regime is compatible with the guidelines of [Missile Technology Control Regime], NSG, and [Australia Group].”
  • Finally, the statement declared: “Pakistan is being viewed by the international community as a responsible nuclear weapon state that is firmly committed to the non-proliferation of WMDs and their delivery systems on a non-discriminatory basis.”
    • This press release ran in China’s Xinhua News with the headline: “Anti-Proliferation Body Praises Pakistan’s Export Control Steps.”

INDIA

Several newspapers in India, such as The Hindu and The Times of India, ran stories based on The Free Beacon’s reporting as well as China’s retort that the deal “did not violate the norms” of the NSG. The nuclear deal was unearthed at a time when India and China publically discussed the need for increased relations between the two rising powers. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese President Xi Jinping met last Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. At this meeting, the Indian Express reported that Singh raised China’s dealings with Pakistan as a possible “impediment to advancing India-China relations.” Other sources indicated that Xi “made a pitch for India and China to boost military contact and deepen trust.” Xinhua and China Daily wrote that Prime Minister Singh hoped “that India and China would respect each other’s core interests and major concerns, deepen mutual strategic trust, strengthen coordination and cooperation on international affairs, and safeguard peace and stability in the region and the world at large.”

  • Commentary in the Deccan Chronicle, a newspaper based in Hyderabad, India, argued that China’s nuclear sales to Pakistan could complicate this push for closer India-China ties. The papers writes: “Nevertheless, China should understand that mollycoddling of Pakistan acts as a limiting factor.” It continued that China’s “approach in supplying nuclear reactors to Pakistan, do not help matters, although Beijing has surprised everyone by maintaining that the latter is in conformity with its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation.”
  • Uday Bhaskar, a distinguished fellow at the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi, wrote a column for Reuters that echoed this concern: “One of India’s major concerns is the nature of the deep and opaque China-Pakistan nuclear and missile cooperation. This strategic cooperation that has no precedent in recent history will remain a major constraint in India-China bilateral ties and its resolution or lack thereof can either make or stall the Asian century, harmonious development and related rise of  both China and India.”

UNITED STATES

News reports quoted anonymous U.S. government officials objecting to the planned China nuclear sale. However, public criticism remains limited. After China announced the deal to supply Chashma-3 and Chashma-4 in 2010, nuclear trade expert Mark Hibbs reported that some NSG states doubted that the United States would “openly criticize the Chinese export” due to competing Obama administration foreign policy goals, including bilateral security dialogue with Pakistan, China support for sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, and sensitivity to claims of discrimination in how it treats Pakistan after granting India a favorable nuclear cooperation agreement in 2008.

  • An unnamed State Department official quoted in the original Free Beacon story indicated that the sale was not permitted under the U.S. understanding of China’s application to the NSG, which specifically prohibited additional reactor transfers to the Chashma site. The official added: “We remain concerned that a transfer of new reactors at Chashma appears to extend beyond the cooperation that was ‘grandfathered’ in when China was approved for membership in the NSG.”
  • The bilateral U.S.-China nuclear cooperation agreement is up for renewal in 2015. Hibbs, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, believes that the issue could come up in forthcoming negotiations on renewing the expiring deal.
  • Hibbs also suggested that it was possible China could be using the latest nuclear sale to Pakistan as a bargaining chip to trade for increased flexibility in exporting a 1,000 megawatt pressurized water reactor (PWR) to the global market. China, France, and the United States dispute whether the current 1,000 MW PWR design is entirely indigenous or if the intellectual property rights are shared by French, U.S., or other companies, which would limit Chinese exports of the design.

MOVING FORWARD

In the months ahead, the Rising Power Initiative’s Nuclear Debates in Asia project will continue to study these developments as a number of questions remain outstanding:

  • Exact deals of the deal: New reactor? Existing reactor upgrades? Site location?
  • How long will the exact details of this reported new deal be kept under wraps?
  • What impact will these developments have on the credibility of the Nuclear Suppliers Group as the rising demand nuclear energy in Asia may place additional pressures on nonproliferation goals?
  • How will the most recent China-Pakistan nuclear deal influence U.S.-China nuclear cooperation agreement negotiations?

Be sure to follow the Nuclear Debates in Asia project, the RPI blog, and the project’s Twitter feed @westmyer as events develop for more news and analysis.

By Timothy Westmyer, Research and Program Assistant at the Rising Powers Initiative

Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest: What to Do with Nuclear Waste? Domestic Debates in Japan and South Korea, by Timothy Westmyer

Countries with nuclear power in their energy portfolio eventually face a common and difficult challenge: what to do with the radioactive waste once its life as reactor fuel is over? As policymakers develop management solutions to the great quantity of dangerous byproducts, those decisions must coexist with domestic politics, tightening budgets, and national security and global nonproliferation goals.

Japan and South Korea are in the midst of a domestic debate on how to address this spent fuel challenge. Their governments currently envision giving spent fuel a new life through a process called reprocessing whereby radioactive waste is removed from a reactor and later chemically treated to separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Advocates of this approach argue that reprocessing could produce new fuel for advanced nuclear reactors and reduce the relative amount of high-level radioactive waste in a country’s stockpile. Many nonproliferation groups, however, argue that this process is too similar to what it takes to make ingredients for a nuclear weapon, is too costly compared to alternative options, and that the spread of these technologies increases the risk of proliferation.

This Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest looks at the following issues:

  • Domestic debate on reprocessing in Japan and South Korea
  • Highlights the major issues facing U.S. negotiators as they seek to renew a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea
  • How reprocessing decisions interact with nonproliferation and national security

Domestic Debate on Reprocessing in Japan and South Korea

In order to be sufficient for the long haul, permanent repository sites require a particular set of preconditions: suitable geological composition, agreeable local population, appropriate space, etc. The tight population densities and limited landmass available for storage sites in South Korea and Japan complicate planner’s efforts to locate and secure a proper site for either their domestic nuclear energy industry or repatriated fuel burned in reactors of Japanese and South Korean nuclear plant export clients. Domestic politics remains an important consideration for Japanese and South Korean policymakers as they seek solutions to spent fuel challenges.

Japan

During an event on Thursday, April 4 organized by the Nuclear Policy Education Center (NPEC), Dr. Frank von Hippel, a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology, recalled that when Japan first approached then-President Jimmy Carter on Tokyo’s desire to reprocessing spent fuel, they characterized it as a “life or death” necessity for the island nation. Japan argued that it could not rely upon the import of limited global supplies of uranium for its nuclear reactors and that an emerging nuclear technology – fast breeder reactors – would soon come online that could use reprocessed plutonium and produce a stable supply of electricity for decades.

Von Hippel pointed out that despite this dire warning, Japan still depends on cheap imported uranium and fast breeder reactors remain commercially unviable science experiments. Japan’s Monju prototype breeder reactor has been in operation for only four months in 1995 before it experienced a fire that shut it down the facility. It has yet to restart.

Japan is a non-nuclear weapon state that has vowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to never seek a nuclear weapon. The country is unique among that group because it has the capability to reprocess spent fuel from its nuclear reactors. Japanese officials have advocated reprocessing as the only viable solution for the growing amount of spent nuclear fuel currently filling up the cooling pools at its reactors.

According to an article published in the Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus:

Japan’s first “Long-Term Program for Research, Development and Utilization of Nuclear Energy” was published in 1956 and set out a national policy on the nuclear fuel cycle. The principles put forth in this plan, and reiterated in Japanese policy reviews over the last 50 years, have been that Japan should develop both spent fuel reprocessing and fast breeder reactor technology. Japanese nuclear energy policy does not consider spent nuclear fuel as waste but as a recyclable energy source.

Since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan placed a hold on preparations for its reprocessing facility at Rokkasho in the Aomori prefecture. The Rokkasho plant, owned by Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL), was originally scheduled in 2014 to start converting plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel until construction was delayed.

Japanese domestic politics will likely continue to play a major role in the future of the country’s nuclear fuel cycle. In an interview with the Arms Control Association in 2011, Dr. Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists, and a senior Japanese official believed that “one of the inducements to the residents of Aomori to agree to host the Rokkasho plant was that it would not become a long-term repository for spent fuel and radioactive waste.” However, the Japanese official also said that nuclear operators in Japan have committed to local communities hosting nuclear plants that spent fuel would not be stored on-site indefinitely once a reprocessing plant such as the Rokkasho facility was fully operational. These public commitments, the Japanese official said, “do not give policymakers much latitude on fuel cycle policy, regardless of what decisions they make with regard to nuclear power.”

South Korea

At the NPEC event, William Tobey, former deputy administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that the internal debate in South Korea on reprocessing was still on-going. While the official government position favors additional enrichment and reprocessing rights in the next U.S.-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement, other actors within the country advocate for alternative solutions.

recent report by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies suggests that South Korean government’s reprocessing strategy is to ship “spent fuel to a future pyroprocessing site in hopes that local residents will be willing to accept the spent fuel in return for the jobs provided by a pyroprocessing plant and associated facilities.” These officials also contend that local communities would not allow on-site storage of nuclear waste – forcing the reactors to shut down when their cooling pools fill up – without the promise of a reprocessing facility.

At the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference this week, Dr. Soon-Heung Chang from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology stressed the environmental benefits of reprocessing. Dr. Chung characterized “waste minimization” as essential for “future generations” and that it was Korea’s duty for environmental protection.

Tobey suggested that if he was a tax or rate payer in Seoul, the choice between having in your backyard a “first of its kind” reprocessing plant that uses molten salt at 500 degrees Celsius or a proven storage system that uses concrete and inert dry casks that survived even the 3/11 tsunami, the choice for dry cask storage is clear. Tobey and von Hippel argued that dry cask storage facilities – similar to a reprocessing plant – would also create high quality jobs in local communities and could provide a 100-year solution for the environment.

Major Issues in U.S.-South Korea Nuclear Cooperation Agreement Negotiations

Last week South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se traveled to Washington, DC for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The Yonhap News Agency reported that this meeting would reopen negotiations over the renewal of a U.S-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement. The report also indicated that Yun was accompanied by his country’s chief nuclear negotiator, Lim Sung-nam, who will meet separately with Glyn Davies, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy.

As part of these negotiations, the United States and South Korea have agreed to place South Korea’s spent fuel challenges on the table. South Korean negotiators would like to secure explicit rights to enrichment and reprocessing not included in the expiring agreement, which sets rules for the export of U.S. nuclear technology and material. South Korea argues that these rights are allowed under the NPT, would reduce cost and space requirements for its nuclear fuel cycle, and allow Seoul to compete in the burgeoning nuclear energy export market.

Since these dual-use technologies can manufacture fuel for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, some critics have argued a revised nuclear cooperation agreement with enrichment and reprocessing rights could offer Seoul latent nuclear weapons capability. At a minimum, critics contend that this new arrangement would set a poor precedent for future nuclear energy trade and the nonproliferation regime.

Starting in 2011, the United States and South Korea have been engaged in a Joint Fuel Cycle Study, which according to a State Department official quoted by Yonhap, is “considering a variety of options for spent fuel management, including technologies related to nuclear waste disposal” such as pyroprocessing. South Korean officials and Dr. Chang contend that the pyroprocessing method poses significantly less proliferation risk than traditional methods. In a 2009 study, however, the U.S. national laboratories “concluded that for state-level threats, the differences” in this approach was “not very significant and that a state bent on developing a nuclear weapon could “convert the facility to separate pure plutonium” within a few days to a few weeks.

In terms of the economics of pyroprocessing and fast breeder reactors, the CNS report also concluded that:

“even under the most optimistic scenario, pyroprocessing and the associate fast reactors will not be available options for dealing with South Korea’s spent fuel on a large scale for several decades. Seoul will need to find other options, most urgently for managing spent fuel in the short to mid-term, but ultimately permanently, to cope with the proper management of its spent fuel or the high-level waste that will remain after pyroprocessing.”

As negotiators hammer out the final details of the possible deal, outside experts have weighed in on the deal. Tobey and von Hippel advocated for dry cask storage as a short to medium term solution to handling the rising amount of spent fuel in South Korea and Japan. They argued a reprocessing facility in South Korea would take around 30 years to function, while the need for a solution to manage spent fuel will come up in 10 years. Von Hippel suggested that Seoul expand its existing dry cask capacity, such as at Korea’s heavy water reactor plant. Tobey estimated that only around 50 acres of land would be necessary for dry cask storage, which would give The Blue House more time to figure out a long term solution without investing in reprocessing capability.

Reprocessing’s Impact on Nonproliferation and National Security

At the NPEC event, Tobey and von Hippel argued against U.S. policy that encouraged further plutonium production or uranium enrichment by Japan, South Korea, or any other aspiring nuclear state. Von Hippel argued that a nonnuclear weapon state would become a “virtual nuclear weapon state” once it has the capability to reprocessing plutonium.

In response to a question on how recent provocations by North Korea have influenced U.S.-South Korean nuclear cooperation agreement negotiations, the panel’s moderator Henry Sokolski, former deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Department of Defense, discussed how local press in both South Korea and Japan were giving voice to commentators and former government officials who argue that the DPRK’s latest threats necessitate great flexibility on plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment rights. “It is in the air” of the debate, Sokolski said.

Von Hippel remarked that after Pyongyang’s 2009 nuclear test, South Korean officials began to publically discuss reprocessing within the context of national security. Mark Hibbs, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Policy Program, wrote that “continued DPRK testing” would likely “make it more difficult for the [Republic of Korea] and the U.S. to reach an agreement, since pressure from conservative [South Korean] politicians to leave the NPT or develop a nuclear weapons capability will only increase.”

Last week was the 4th anniversary of President Barack Obama’s speech in Prague where he laid out his vision for a world without nuclear weapons and his goal to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. Tobey concluded his remarks at the NPEC event by suggesting that if the current domestic debate in Japan over the future of its nuclear program resulted in a pause of plutonium reprocessing, this decision “might make it easier” for Seoul to reach a similar verdict. Japan and South Korea, Tobey argued, will be significant players in the export of nuclear technologies and vows to end reprocessing could have a strong influence on how the regional and global nuclear energy economy develops.

Conclusion

As Dr. Frank Von Hippel said at the event, Japan is the only non-nuclear weapon state with reprocessing capabilities. How the United States and South Korea move forward with reprocessing in Seoul, he concluded, is a significant decision that could set a real precedent for future nuclear cooperation agreements. Be sure to follow the Rising Power Initiative’s Nuclear Debates in Asia project on Twitter @westmyer and the RPI blog as events develop for more news and analysis.

RPI Policy Report- India as a Global Power: Contending Worldviews from India, by Henry Nau and Richard Fontaine

Abstract

Over the past decade and a half, relations between the United States and India have undergone a rapid and significant transformation. Washington and New Delhi have turned aside decades of mutual distrust and forged a strategic partnership that currently enjoys widespread support in both countries. Could this bilateral partnership become one of the defining relationships of the coming era? What caused this unprecedented change, and what might cause it to change again?

External events played a key role. The end of the Cold War cut India loose from its perceived alignment with the Soviet Union and left the United States by default as the only global superpower. A rising China, persistent regional rivalries, a globalizing world economy and terrorist attacks eventually led both countries to reassess their relationships. They drew closer to one another in a strategic minuet to combat terrorism, boost economic ties and help maintain the future balance of power in Asia.

In a short decade, the United States and India concluded a major civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, initiated regular and significant military (especially naval) exercises, began talks on a bilateral investment treaty and launched a series of bilateral dialogues that at last count numbered 31.

Read the full report.

Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest: India Eyes Membership Debate at Nuclear Suppliers Group, by Timothy Westmyer

Members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) met in Vienna last week to debate the possible inclusion of India into the group. China and several European nations resisted efforts by the United States, France, Britain, and Russia to integrate Asia’s third-largest economy into the NSG, a decision that could reshape the nuclear energy and nonproliferation landscape. The debate is being closely followed within India, who has yet to formally apply but could gain considerable prestige as part of the exclusive nuclear group.

The NSG, established in 1975, is a group of 46 nations who voluntarily agree to coordinate their export controls for transfers of peaceful nuclear material and related equipment and technology to non-nuclear-weapon states. NSG members promise to not transfer these sensitive items to governments outside of the international nuclear safeguards regime.

Asia is at the center of the current rise in demand for nuclear energy around the globe. India is looking to establish itself as a major player in future nuclear energy trade. Due to U.S. and international sanctions against India stemming from its nuclear weapons program and status outside the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), India developed a largely indigenous nuclear power program. According to the World Nuclear Association, India’s nuclear energy program will have a 14.6 MWe power capacity by 2010 and plans to supply a quarter of its electrical needs from nuclear reactors by the middle of this century.

This Nuclear Debates in Asia digest outlines why membership in the NSG is so important to India and how New Delhi can benefit from a place at the NSG table.

NSG membership also fits into India’s plans to engage a number of energy and export control regimes as it moves forward on its own energy and security plans. India’s indigenous nuclear energy program was designed from the early stages to take advantage of unique reactor designs and fuel sources, including fast breeder reactors and India’s vast domestic supplies of thorium (around 13 percent of total world supply). India’s Foreign Secretary, Ranjan Mathaigave an address in 2012 where he said, “In November 2010, India expressed interest in taking forward this engagement with the international community to the next phase of seeking membership of the four export control regimes — NSG, MTCR, Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement — we are aware that there are regime specificities.”

Any country that exports nuclear items covered by NSG guidelines may apply for membership. Their application is evaluated on past observance to the guidelines, its overall proliferation record, adherence and compliance to international nonproliferation treaties and agreements, and national export controls. As NSG decisions are made by consensus, all existing members would need to approve of India’s admission to the group.

The United States has promoted India’s NSG membership as part of a longer plan to further integrate India into the global nuclear energy and nuclear nonproliferation system. Beginning in the mid-1990s, proponents of this strategy argued that assisting India with its civilian nuclear energy needs would strengthen relations between the two democracies, align India closer with U.S. nonproliferation goals without India having to formally join the NPT, and most importantly, increase India’s capacity and willingness to serve as a strategic counterbalance against a rising China.

India’s 1998 nuclear tests momentarily paused U.S. assistance on these issues, but Washington and New Delhi signed a groundbreaking nuclear cooperation agreement in 2006. In that deal, India agreed to separate its civilian and military purpose nuclear facilities and place all of its peaceful facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The United States would then agree to move toward full civilian nuclear cooperation with India. After contentious domestic debates within the U.S. Congress and the Indian parliament, both parties formally agreed to the deal. The IAEA Board of Governors approved a safeguards agreement with India in August 2008.

The United States then sought and secured a waiver within the NSG for U.S. nuclear trade with India, the first such waiver for a nuclear weapon power outside the NPT and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Many of the same states objecting to India membership to the NSG today also resisted this waiver request, including China, Pakistan, and Ireland. Since that waiver, India has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Namibia.

The United States announced its support of India’s NSG membership in 2010, but has met resistance from China and other current members. China, who has moved closer to India’s longtime rival Pakistan, voiced concern that allowing India into the NSG would set an unequal and unfair precedent. India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and remain outside the NPT, but the United States and other NSG members – excluding China – have so far refused to negotiate similarly favorable nuclear cooperation agreements and NSG waivers with Pakistan.

The debate over India’s NSG membership is particularly interesting given the group’s origin story. After India’s 1974 “peaceful nuclear explosion,” a number of nuclear exporters realized that a civilian nuclear energy program could be used as a cover for more illicit nuclear activities, including a weaponization program. Several nations participating in another informal export controls group called the Zangger Committee established the NSG, recruited new members such as France, and adopted guidelines on the transfer of peaceful nuclear materials, equipment, and technology. The irony of the NSG possibly coming full circle on India has not be lost on Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who said some “worried that India will use its voice to reverse the NSG’s gears and loosen export controls, since India has not demonstrated a firm historical commitment” to its mission.”

A number of experts in the in nonproliferation community have spoken out against the waiver and the U.S.-India nuclear deal. Pierre Goldschmidt, another scholar affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment, believes that the “India exemption” undermined the “credibility of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.” Goldschmidt recommends that NSG members use India’s possible application to the group as an opportunity to “repair” some of this damage to the NPT regime by establishing a stricter standard set of 14 membership criteria for non-NPT States looking to join the cartel. This would include, among other things:

  • willingness to comply with several articles of the NPT
  • allow any new nuclear facilities to be placed under IAEA safeguards
  • commit to several specific nonproliferation agreements, such as an Additional Protocol, the CTBT, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and future negotiations on a fissile material cutoff treaty

Not every scholar shares a pessimistic outlook on possible NSG membership for India. RPI Nuclear Debates in Asia project co-director Deepa Ollapally believes that the “argument that inducting India into the NSG as a member would seriously damage the NPT regime is rather disingenuous.” She argues that India’s “exceptionally good record on nuclear trade,” especially relative to Pakistan, indicates that China’s resistance to New Delhi’s NSG membership is more likely “motivated by political competition with India.” Furthermore, she writes that:

“Given that India is now in a “half-way house” in a clearly imperfect NPT regime, the question that should be debated is whether it does more damage to the goals of nonproliferation to have India inside or outside the NSG. The answer to that question is not difficult.”

The next NSG meeting will be held this June in Prague, Czech Republic. Be sure to follow the Rising Power Initiative’s Nuclear Debates in Asia project and the RPI blog as events develop for more news and analysis.

Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest: South Korea – New Government, Old Nuclear Debates, by Timothy Westmyer

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once declared that “All politics is local.” While he may not have been thinking of nuclear weapons at the time he coined the phrase, debates over nuclear issues take on local characteristics within Asia.

The Rising Power Initiative’s “Nuclear Debates in Asia” project examines how several countries in Asia grapple with these topics at the domestic political and societal level. Positions on nuclear energy, national security, and nuclear nonproliferation are often linked as a wide range of viewpoints compete for prominence.

In this Nuclear Debates in Asia Digest, there is a prime example of this debate in South Korea and its newly sworn in government led by President Park Geun-hye. In her inaugural address on Monday, President Park proclaimed that “North Korea’s recent nuclear test is a challenge to the survival and future of the Korean people.” She had campaigned on a pledge to ease tensions with Pyongyang and encouraged the hermit kingdom to denuclearize the peninsula if it wished to escape “self-imposed isolation.”

Despite North Korea’s recent provocations, the Park Administration remains interested in denuclearization talks and continuing Seoul’s status as a non-nuclear weapon state. A few days before this ceremony, however, one of South Korea’s largest newspapers – The Korea JoongAng Daily – reported that members of President Park’s own party suggested the need for an indigenous nuclear weapons capability to counter threats from its northern neighbor. Representative Shim Jae-cheol of the Saenuri Party argued last week that the “only way to defend our survival would be to maintain a balance of terror that confronts nuclear with nuclear.” In June 2012, former party chairman and presidential candidate Chung Mong-joon called for a “comprehensive re-examination of our security policy” that should empower Seoul with “the capability to possess” a nuclear arsenal.

These issues were prominently on display in the days leading up to South Korea’s presidential election with the December 2012 multi-stage Unha-3 rocket test, which many analysts claimed was really a long-range ballistic missile experiment. As RPI author Scott Snyder wrote last year, “South Korea has faced a long tradition of North Korean provocative actions designed to influence South Korean election outcomes.”

 

The United States used to field several hundred tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, but those were removed in the early 1990s. During the recent presidential campaign, however, Chung Mong-joon advocated a return of these weapons to his country. The topic was briefly discussed early last year in the U.S. Congress when the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the FY13 national defense authorization bill that “encourages further steps, including such steps to deploy additional conventional forces of the United States and redeploy tactical nuclear weapons to the Western Pacific region.”

The Obama and Park governments officially remain opposed to this move:

  • “It is not a matter to be reviewed,” said Chun Young-woo, South Korean presidential secretary for security and foreign affairs
  • “Our policy remains in support of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula,” said Robert Jensen, deputy spokesman for the National Security Staff. “Tactical nuclear weapons are unnecessary for the defense of South Korea and we have no plan or intention to return them.”

For many observers, the domestic debate over South Korea’s future status as a non-nuclear weapon state is closely intertwined with its interest in revising a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. South Korean negotiators would like to secure new rights to enrichment and reprocessing of U.S.-origin material not granted in the expiring agreement, which sets rules for the export of U.S. nuclear technology and material. Sharon Squassoni, director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes that South Korea:

…has stated its desire to acquire enrichment to support its ambitious plans to export additional nuclear power plants around the world. And South Korean scientists seek to develop a reprocessing technology (called pyroprocessing) to support an advanced research program in fast reactors that would require recycled fuel.

Since these dual-use technologies can manufacture fuel for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, some critics have argued a revised nuclear cooperation agreement with enrichment and reprocessing rights could offer Seoul the latent atomic weapons capability advocated by Chung Mong-joon. At a minimum, critics contend that this new arrangement would set a poor precedent for future nuclear energy trade and the nonproliferation regime.

As the Park Administration moves into the Blue House and settles on its nuclear energy and security policies, these debates are likely to continue. Be sure to follow the Rising Power Initiative’s Nuclear Debates in Asia project and the RPI blog as events develop for more news and analysis.

RPI Policy Report- China as a Global Power: Understanding Beijing’s Competing Identities, by David Shambaugh

The ascent of China on the global stage is considered by most observers to be the most significant change in international affairs since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By any number of measures, China has emerged as a major international actor in the short span of three decades. Every day and everywhere, China figures prominently in global attention—soaking up resources, investing abroad, asserting itself in its Asian neighborhood, being the sought-after suitor in global governance diplomacy, sailing its navy into the Indian Ocean and waters off of Africa, broadening its global media exposure and trying to build its cultural presence and “soft power,” while managing a mega-economy that is an major engine of global growth. China’s global impact is increasingly felt on every continent, in most international institutions, and on many global issues. Thus, by many indices, China is now clearly one of the world’s two leading powers along with the United States.

While China’s rise is important for these reasons, it must also be viewed in the context of several other rising and aspiring “middle powers” (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey). These nations now share space on the regional and global stage with the more “traditional” middle powers Britain and France.

Taken together, this conglomeration of states is reshaping the landscape of international relations by collectively contributing (in the words of the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s recent report Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds) to an inexorable “diffusion” of global power over the next two decades. Understanding and predicting how these national actors may evolve internally and behave externally— individually and interactively—is a central concern of governments and private sector analysts worldwide.

Read the full report.

RPI Conference Report: National Identities of Asian Powers and Prospects for Regional Cooperation, by Amy Hsieh

Abstract

The Power and Identity project of the Rising Powers Intiative has examined how the national identities of major powers in Asia have shaped their foreign policies in the past and could affect the region’s prospects for cooperation or conflict in the future. This report characterizes the identities of India, Japan, South Korea, and China and shows how the foreign policy behaviors of these four countries can be attributed to their unique identities. Some of these identities could foster trust between states and promote cooperation. The experience of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also illustrates the development of regional identities and multilateralism in Asia. This report concludes with suggestions of possible identity changes in the future.

Read the full report.

A China Policy Primer for Xi Jinping’s Visit, by Daniel Twining in Foreign Policy

The pageantry surrounding the visit of Vice President Xi Jinping, China’s next leader, reflects the best tradition of U.S.-China summitry since 1972. There is no symbolism in international politics like that presented by meetings between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations, with their utterly different histories and traditions. Washington is preoccupied by the new Kremlinology: is Xi a reformer or a hard-liner? Who will become his deputy responsible for managing the Chinese economy? Are former rising star’s Bo Xilai’s allies being purged from the leadership group? More broadly, American officials are grappling with the overriding question of how to stabilize U.S.-China relations amidst political contests in both countries — and growing strategic mistrust following China’s heavy-handed military assertiveness in 2009-10 and President Obama’s China-focused “pivot” to Asia in 2011.

In Washington’s internal debates over China policy, several schools of thought are vying for primacy. One — call it the “China-first” school — believes the People’s Republic is an ascendant superpower, whose newfound confidence is well-justified, and which America must do more to accommodate as the United States itself declines. In this view, America’s existing position in Asia is unsustainable. Military surveillance in international waters near China is too provocative to continue indefinitely. America cannot reasonably continue to control the maritime approaches to China, in the Western Pacific and East and South China Seas, without a justified Chinese counter-reaction.  Washington must recognize that new power realities in Asia require it to cede China much more strategic space, in ways that will reassure its leaders rather than reinforcing indefensible red lines.  Better to negotiate a new arrangement with China on our respective “core interests” now than to find ourselves forced into a confrontation — over Taiwan, access to sea lanes near China, or particular alliance relationships — that we cannot win.

For this school, it really is unduly provocative for the United States to be strengthening its military relations with China’s neighbors. If China were deploying troops and securing military access agreements in Canada and Mexico, wouldn’t the United States object? Even the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to multilateralize a set of bilateral free-trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific appears, in this light, to be a form of economic containment of China, since the negotiations exclude it. The policy takeaway from this perspective is that Washington should back off its forward posture in Asia, drop the TPP in favor of trade and investment treaties with Beijing, do more to tangibly reassure China that we will not threaten its interests as a rising power, and otherwise reassure China that America sees the writing on the wall and will peaceably cede the primacy it has enjoyed. Such a policy, we are assured, would help encourage China to behave as a good international citizen.

A second school of thought – call it the “Asia-first” school — reverses the China-first logic of the perspective above. It focuses on influencing Beijing’s strategic choices by constructing a robust balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region that hedges against Chinese assertiveness — and reassures America’s many friends and allies that we will not subordinate their acute concerns about China’s growing strength out of deference to China’s grievances, real or imagined.  It acknowledges the pluralism of Asia, America’s historic role as a Pacific power, and the central truth that none of Asia’s great and regional powers is willing to allow Beijing to speak for the region.

American proponents of this approach do not favor containing China. Indeed, they understand that stable U.S.-China relations are intrinsically in the U.S. interest — as well as enabling stronger U.S. relations with America’s Asian partners. But they believe that Chinese assertiveness is best managed through coalitions of states that share a determination to sustain the rules and norms that have made possible the Asian economic miracle. They also believe that American leadership is a surer foundation for continued stability in Asia than a managed American retreat.

This school of thought also understands that China, like the Soviet Union of George Kennan’s day, suffers from “internal contradictions” — an unsustainable growth model distorted by the heavy hand of the state, an increasingly restive citizenry fed up with corruption and the absence of rule of law, and a demographic time bomb. A prudential U.S. policy of shaping an Asian balance of power that China cannot control ultimately should create the time and space for China to undergo an internal evolution that mellows the dangers posed by its authoritarian power. This would allow its government to enjoy peaceful and cooperative relations with its people, its neighbors, and the West.

Such a policy approach calls for the intensification of President Obama’s newly robust approach to sustaining American leadership in Asia — through intimate relations with our allies, new and diversified troop deployments, expanded military prepositioning and access agreements, closer ties with non-traditional partners like Indonesia and Vietnam, and stronger leadership on free trade. It would be boosted by enactment of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s calls to increase the U.S. defense budget (rather than cutting it, as Obama would); increase naval shipbuilding (rather than overseeing the shrinkage of the U.S. fleet to its smallest since 1917, as Obama has); put allies rather than competitors first in formulating foreign policy; and get America’s fiscal house back in order to give it the domestic capabilities to lead abroad (rather than proposing annual budgets that increase America’s national debt, as Obama has just done).

This second school understands that the audience for U.S. policy towards China is not just China’s leaders, but the Chinese public, as well as America’s many friends and allies in Asia. U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon points out that there is strong and growing demand for U.S. leadership in Asia, even as China’s economic and military power expand. Joseph Nye, Lee Kuan Yew, Robert Kagan, and other thought leaders correctly point out that China may well never surpass the United States in comprehensive national power, despite much-hyped predictions to the contrary. By extension, it would be strange indeed for America to peremptorily cede its leadership in Asia at a time when Asian states want more of it, and U.S. interests in the coming Pacific century so directly hinge on it.

The blind spot of the China-first school is its basic misunderstanding of the sources of regime anxiety in Beijing. Chinese leaders’ most deeply rooted insecurities do not derive from U.S. policies in Asia; China has prospered mightily from them, in fact. Rather, the most acute fears of Chinese leaders derive from the danger China’s own people pose to the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party. America’s Sinologists should have a little more confidence that the United States can compete with China, not only in the contest for power but in the contest of ideas — which ultimately will determine whether Beijing and Washington can build a fruitful condominium of cooperation in the 21st century, or whether strategic competition will define our shared future.

Read the article here

Engaging India In A Global Partnership, interview with Amb. Karl F. Inderfurth by the East-West Center

President Obama’s visit to India November 6-9 was aimed at boosting economic and commercial ties as well as deepening a bond with a democratic ally that is of growing strategic importance in Asia. On balance, most observers say the U.S. leader laid the groundwork toward accomplishing these broad objectives. However, the two nations will continue to face domestic and regional challenges as they endeavor to forge closer ties on a wide range of economic, diplomatic, security, and environmental issues. Amb. Karl F. Inderfurth of The George Washington University, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, explores the backdrop for U.S.-India relations at this important juncture in their development and considers how thornier matters might be tackled moving forward.

Read the full report.