Indian Gambling

George W. Bush is so concerned that weapons of mass destruction will fall into the wrong hands that he's going to roll back the entire global nonproliferation regime -- 50 years in the making -- so we can sleep safe at night.

Last month, amid great fanfare, he announced his latest move: a new agreement with India that would not only increase trade and investment between the United States and the world's largest democracy -- American markets will now be open to Indian mangos for the first time -- but will also provide India with U.S. nuclear technology and fuel for its civilian nuclear energy program.

In exchange, India, which has refused to sign the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has been a nuclear pariah since testing its first a-bomb in 1974, agreed to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs and allow the IAEA to inspect facilities on the civilian side (14 of the country's 22 existing reactors). According to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service, India will have ultimate discretion over which sites are considered military and which are civilian.

The administration argues that the deal represents a breakthrough achievement in President Bush's new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), an ambitious plan that would limit the most vulnerable stages of the nuclear fuel cycle -- uranium enrichment and the disposal of enriched uranium waste -- to a limited number of sites in the United States and Russia (and perhaps other members of the nuclear club like France). Never mind that we don't know what to do with our own nuclear fuel waste.

For the dwindling number of Bush supporters, the Indian deal is a brilliant geostrategic move. It takes India out of the competition for the world's remaining oil supplies, increases nuclear fuel security by putting international controls on more than half of India's reactors, throws some business at American nuclear energy firms -- especially GE (reactors) and the United States Enrichment Corp. (fuel) -- and discourages India from procuring nuclear materials from other sources in the future (like Iran).

But the deal doesn't adhere to either U.S. law or the patchwork of treaties and institutions that make up the international nonproliferation regime. Bush's policy of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of bad guys will set back nuclear nonproliferation by a generation.

The grand bargain that's supported the Non Proliferation Treaty since its inception in 1968 is simple: The hundred plus states that signed on agree to forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for nuclear security and the promise that the countries of the nuclear club will disarm. It was understood by the parties that nuclear weapons are a menace to humankind regardless of what governments own them. The more nukes there are kicking around, the stronger the likelihood that one will go off, whether in the heat of a conflict or by accident.

In 1995 and 2000, the 187 countries in the NPT met in a series of major international conferences in New York to reaffirm their commitment to the treaty. At the time, the United States joined the rest of the "nuclear club" in promising, again, the "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.

As soon as he was elected, George W. Bush renounced those commitments. We need the nukes because we're the good guys, went the rationale. The administration pulled out of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at the same time (although a moratorium is in effect).

With a series of moves capped off by the deal with India, Bush has now renounced the central idea that "the proliferation of nuclear weapons" itself, as the NPT reads, "would seriously enhance the danger of nuclear war." The administration wants a new order where Washington decides -- without objective criteria -- which countries are worthy of nuclear technology and which ones are not. India's nuclear program -- which U.S. policy makers have condemned since the mid 1970s -- is fine. Pakistan's is fine. Israel's, no problem. Iran? No way.