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Bush’s Very Dangerous Deal

 

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It is hard to overstate what a mistake this was. India has now been granted all the privileges of a recognized nuclear-weapons state but with none of the responsibilities. The other two nuclear-armed nations outside the treaty, Pakistan and Israel, are sure to demand equal treatment; other nations, like Japan, may reconsider their nuclear options. Georgetown University School of Foreign Service dean Robert Gallucci says the deal will "open the door to the true proliferation of nuclear weapons in the years ahead." The dan-ger in South Asia seems especially high.

Why did Washington do it? The answer is money and politics. Mira Kamdar, a 2008 Bernard Schwartz Fellow of the Asia Society, has written that the deal "will generate billions of dollars in lucrative contracts for the corporate members of the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) and the Confederation of Indian Industry … This is what the nonproliferation regime, that has kept the world safe from nuclear Armageddon for decades, is being risked for: cash." Kamdar is right. The USIBC estimates that India will spend $175 billion over the next 25 years on nuclear trade, and other deals have already started flowing: India recently paid $1 billion to Boeing for six military airplanes, and U.S. companies will now bid on an estimated $40 billion in other arms sales.

If money greased the skids, politics pushed the deal over the finish line. Some just want to solidify the U.S.-India strategic partnership. Neoconservatives in Washington want India as an anti-China ally. In their view, the problem is not that India has nuclear weapons; it is that India doesn't have enough. When Republicans pushed, Democrats acquiesced. Barack Obama and Joe Biden joined John McCain in praising the deal. Other Democrats seemed most concerned about not alienating Indian-American constituents, now a major voting and campaign-funding bloc.

A few members of Congress took a stand. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Democrat of California) said, "It flew in the face of decades of American leadership" and set "a precedent that will be hard to erase," and Rep. Ed Markey (Democrat of Massachusetts) said, "There are many ways to deepen U.S.-India ties without damaging the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

But the damage was done, and the next president will now have to dig us out of a deep nuclear hole. The only way to repair damage this severe is to build a whole new security structure.

As candidates, both Obama and McCain pledged they would lead the world on a new campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. Let's hope the president-elect meant it. To succeed, he must make it a top priority, setting an example for the rest of the world by dramatically reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, getting Russia to do the same and then quickly ratifying the nuclear-test-ban treaty and getting China, India and the other holdouts to follow suit. He must then bring all the nuclear-armed nations together in a summit to pledge together to stop producing new weapons, to slash their current arsenals and to act decisively against any new nuclear programs.

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: ahmdm @ 03/21/2009 11:35:10 AM

    you find it discriminatory? you stupid slumdog. stop dreaming about pakistan being made a part of India, blah blah...

    Infact the solution to all the problems would be division of India. India has problems with all its neighbours, incl. pakistan china bangladesh and srilanka... So it would be better to divide this slumdog land among these countries...

  • Posted By: Daphne Kenward @ 03/19/2009 1:42:04 PM

    It's time for people to start the safe VOTE, with sfate policies, and accountability to the electorate. The farce we have today called DEMOCRACY is a nonsense. And these leaders we have today are the most dangerious in worlds history. Bush and Brown being the most dangerious since Adilph Hitler. Racking up huge debts, irrsponsible wars, lies to start wars, and stupid policies, new policies that does more harm than good. And turning the world into a DICTATORSHIP.

    Now Gordon Brown thinks he is a world leader, and he can't lead the country he was never elected to govern. What is necessary is International laws being applied, not for some but all, we are indanger of creating a Neo Fascist State in America and Britain. An open door policy for Muslims to come to Britain so they can be arrested and accused of being Terrorist, and create hatred and discrimination.

    Nuclear bombs should be dismantled because who ever invented these Missiles must have been mad, to dream of killing all life on earth is the desire of a mad man, and George Bush was close to being that idiot.

  • Posted By: jbz7879 @ 03/19/2009 7:32:43 AM

    this was a terrible mistake and truly its an unholy pact between two wolves pretending to be in sheeps garb -india has 60 percent people below poverty line and usa is a bankrupt state ,
    congratulations on two evil predators who prey on their small neighbours on shaking hands ,
    it virtually shows that the whole conspiracy of 9/11 was to just intervene in iraq for oil and to strip pak of its nukes -

    well sam and slumdogs can rest assured people are not so stupid that they do not comprehend their silly chess games as if others cannot play better ,
    remember the russians are best at it ,lolz

    have you noticed how quickly pakistans kiyani was in beijing signing a nuke treaty with china .

    now indo americans can lick each other all over from head to toe -for eternity ,
    they deserve each other .
    2 fascist states
    one with gujrat genocide and demolition of mosques behind it
    and the other with concentration camps like gitmo bay and abu garib on its pathetic human rights record with celebrated crimes like the bombing of dresden and hiroshima on record .
    and of course they had engineered the creation of bangladesh too -only it backfired in their faces -now they are in for another big surprise and north korea is not listening to them neither is iran and i would like to see what and how are they going to stop them .
    the time for neutered bull terriers with rabies has gone with the wind

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