News Analysis: Bush gambles with atomic rules

By David E. Sanger The New York Times
SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2006

WASHINGTON Has President George W. Bush just made the world a safer or a more dangerous place?

That question lingered after he reached a deal with India last week recognizing that India is never giving up its nuclear weapons, and declaring that a country which America once treated as a nuclear pariah could now be trusted.

In doing so, Bush took a step in his efforts to rewrite the world's longstanding rules that for more than 30 years have forbidden providing nuclear technology to countries that do not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

"I'm trying to think differently," Bush said in New Delhi, referring to his administration's argument that a new system is needed. But in treating India as a special case - a "strategic relationship" - he has so far declined to define general rules for everyone.

In essence, Bush is making a huge gamble that the United States can control proliferation by single-handedly rewarding nuclear nations it considers "responsible," and punishing those it declares irresponsible.

So will other countries with nuclear ambitions react by becoming more responsible, as the administration hopes, or more envious and more determined than ever to expand their own arsenals?

And will India use its new access to U.S.-branded nuclear fuel to free up its domestic supplies of uranium to make bomb fuel for new weapons?

And how will the deal affect the tense relationship between India and Pakistan, or for that matter China?

Perhaps the strongest and most discussed critique of the deal goes like this: Bush's timing could not be worse. In the eyes of his critics, he is creating a double standard by legitimizing an Indian weapons program that only eight years ago led Washington to impose huge sanctions, while demanding, in the same week, that Iran and North Korea give up any capacity to make their own nuclear fuel.

Bush, notes Ashton Carter, a nuclear expert at Harvard, declared nearly two years ago that there should be no new nuclear states, a concept that "was violated irrevocably" when Bush and the Indians reached agreement on the broad outline of this deal last summer. Now, he says, the deal at least puts the United States in the position of dealing directly with Indian plans to maintain or expand its arsenal.

But the new deal may have solved one problem at the expense of creating new ones. Bush's team says it designed the India deal as a way to build a "strategic partnership" with the world's largest democracy, after decades of estrangement. India has proved itself a responsible power, Bush said.

It also does not hurt that the country is one of the fastest-growing emerging markets, a favorite destination for technology companies, and a potential friend if trouble breaks out in tense relationships with China and Pakistan.

The part of the deal the administration likes to talk about allows India to buy U.S. fuel for its civilian reactors for the first time, in exchange for opening them to international inspection. But India only designated 14 of its sites as "civilian" plants that it permanently guarantees can be inspected, up from four a few months ago, meaning that the additional eight can be used to make bomb fuel.

That part of the deal drives its critics up the cooling tower.

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