Nuclear Step-down Unit

In an interesting report by the Rising Nepal - analyses the issue of the new nuclear pact that the United States and India brewed up last month. Under the report, the Rising Nepal brings into view that the reasons for the nuclear technology transfer maybe related to China:

Moreover, analysts who note the fervent interest by the Pentagon and the US arms manufacturers, over the past several years in cultivating New Delhi, contend that the main motivation appears to be strategic � namely, the hope that India, along with Japan, will become a strategic counterweight to China in Asia.

Interesting... in whatever case, the deal has been rousing emotions on many sides. Roughly a month later, Jimmy Carter wrote for the the Washington Post in a story wary of the new deal set up between the two nuclear nations:

The proposed nuclear deal with India is just one more step in opening a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation.

Could it be? The signals that the United States sends is wholly mixed on the entire nuclear and nuclear weaponary issue. For a nation that takes on the role as a nuclear watch-dog of sorts - citing the development uranium enrichment in Iran and North Korea to produce nuclear weapons - the United States isn't exactly practicing what they preach themselves.

The Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) an international treaty under which nations that do sign and ratify the treaty agree to not test nuclear devices. The ratification process is as so:

Ratification

1. Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is a two-step process, which has to be secured first at the national level and then at the international level.

2. The CTBT stipulates that it should be ratified according to a State's constitutional processes.
The ratification process differs from State to State.

3. Approval is generally required by the legislature or the executive of a State, or both.

The United States has signed the CTBT on Sept. 24, 1996 and nearly 10 years later has not ratified the treaty since then (CTBTO.org->Signature Ratification->Search United States) clearly an act of our own legislative organs. Although there has been no nuclear tests (or so we assume) the mere act of not signing such a treaty gives all the more reason of sending signals of confusion throughout the international community.

Furthermore former President Carter brings up an excellent point:

The only substantive commitment among nuclear-weapon states and others is the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), accepted by the five original nuclear powers and 182 other nations. Its key objective is "to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology . . . and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament." At the five-year U.N. review conference in 2005, only Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan were not participating -- three with proven arsenals.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT is exactly stated as above. With India refusing to sign the NPT for security issues regarding its rival, Pakistan and Pakistan's close military ally, China. So how does this new deal come into focus? Again new confusing signals are made - the United States has long been against the rising nuclear tensions between the two rivals, but the incidence of a new deal involving nuclear technology just doesn't have help the situation at all. Consquently, the deal with India maybe a bit shaky and risky as USAToday reports:

In 2004, the State Department sanctioned an Indian scientist, Y.S.R. Prasad, for aiding Iran's nuclear program. Prasad is a former head of India's Nuclear Power Corporation and an expert on the extraction of tritium from heavy-water reactors. Tritium is used to make small, compact nuclear warheads.

Keyword: warheads

Prasad has denied giving Iran information about tritium, and the Indian government has asked that the State Department restrictions on U.S. dealings with the scientist be lifted, said Venu Rajamony, spokesman for the Indian Embassy.

Other keyword: Iran

With the United States' current bout with Iran, the proliferation of nuclear technology in an geographically close area to Iran maybe not be in the best interests of security which the US has been obsessed with lately.

And wise President Carter rolls on:

Another long-standing policy has been publicly reversed by our threatening first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. These decisions have aroused negative responses from NPT signatories, including China, Russia and even our nuclear allies, whose competitive alternative is to upgrade their own capabilities without regard to arms control agreements.

Just not good... to anger other nations. If the United States is to transfer nuclear technology to India there must a be a more comprehensive step to allowing that transfer. Rather than taking into account a "promise" of the use of the technology for civilian purposes, the United States should have required the stipulation that India sign NPT as a sign of "good faith" with the rest of the international community as eyewitnesses. Maybe then... will the region become stabilized and the possibility of Pakistan to follow suite.