Canadian Policy On Nuclear Cooperation With India Confronting New Dilemmas

In July 2005, the United States and India announced a bold agreement to restore nuclear co-operation. The deal, nearing finalization in late 2007, has been vigorously critiqued by arms control advocates anticipating dire consequences for the non-proliferation regime. For Canada, the implications of re-opening nuclear cooperation with India are particularly complex, rekindling historical animosities and challenging Canada's longstanding commitment to global nuclear disarmament. Canada, as a party to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, has a voice in the ultimate disposition of the agreement. What are Canada's choices? What should be its goals and policies? This volume presents the analyses and conclusions of a select group of scholars and governmental policy-makers who work extensively with these issues, gathered for a workshop in Ottawa on 19-20 March 2007 convened by the Simons Centre of the University of British Columbia. Available November 2007 through major booksellers in Canada & the US.

The United States–India nuclear cooperation agreement to resume civilian nuclear technology trade with India—a non-signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and a defacto nuclear weapon state—is regarded as an impetuous shift in the US nuclear nonproliferation policy. The 2008 nuclear agreement aroused sharp reactions and unleashed a storm of controversies regarding the reversal of the US nonproliferation policy and its implications for the NPT regime. This book attempts to overcome the significant empirical and theoretical deficits in understanding the rationale for the change in the US nuclear nonproliferation policy toward India. This nuclear deal has been largely related to the US foreign policy objectives, especially establishing India as a regional counter-balance to China. The author examines the US–India nuclear cooperation agreement in a bilateral context, with regard to the nuclear regime. In past discourse India has been mainly viewed as a challenger to the nuclear regime, but this reflects the paucity in understanding India’s approach to the issue of nuclear weapons. The author relates the nuclear estrangement to the disjuncture between the US and India’s respective approach to nuclear weapons, evident during the negotiations that led to the framing of the NPT. The change in the US approach towards India, the nuclear outlier, has been exclusively linked to the Bush administration, which faced considerable criticism for sidelining the nonproliferation policy. This book instead traces the shifting of nuclear goalposts to the Clinton administration following the Pokhran II nuclear tests conducted by India. Contrary to the widespread perception that the decision to offer the nuclear technology to India was an impromptu decision by the Bush administration, the author contends that it was the result of a diligent process of bilateral dialogue and interaction. This book provides a detailed overview of the rationale and the developments that led to the agreement. Employing the regime theory, the author argues that the US–India nuclear agreement was neither an overturn of the US nuclear nonproliferation policy nor an unravelling of the NPT-centric regime. Rather, it was a strategic move to accommodate India, the anomaly within the regime.

Nuclear technology is dual use in nature, meaning that it can be used to produce nuclear energy or to build nuclear weapons. Despite security concerns about proliferation, the United States and other nuclear nations have regularly shared with other countries nuclear technology, materials, and knowledge for peaceful purposes. In Atomic Assistance, Matthew Fuhrmann argues that governments use peaceful nuclear assistance as a tool of economic statecraft. Nuclear suppliers hope that they can reap the benefits of foreign aid-improving relationships with their allies, limiting the influence of their adversaries, enhancing their energy security by gaining favorable access to oil supplies-without undermining their security. By providing peaceful nuclear assistance, however, countries inadvertently help spread nuclear weapons. Fuhrmann draws on several cases of "Atoms for Peace," including U.S. civilian nuclear assistance to Iran from 1957 to 1979; Soviet aid to Libya from 1975 to 1986; French, Italian, and Brazilian nuclear exports to Iraq from 1975 to 1981; and U.S. nuclear cooperation with India from 2001 to 2008. He also explores decision making in countries such as Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, and Syria to determine why states began (or did not begin) nuclear weapons programs and why some programs succeeded while others failed. Fuhrmann concludes that, on average, countries receiving higher levels of peaceful nuclear assistance are more likely to pursue and acquire the bomb-especially if they experience an international crisis after receiving aid.

In the more than sixty years since the advent of nuclear weapons, there has been little meaningful progress toward nuclear disarmament. Some countries have nuclear weapons, while other states are forbidden to acquire them, a status quo that lacks rational basis and cannot be sustained. In this remarkable collection, scholars and policy analysts argue that humankind has a choice: either allow nuclear weapons to continue to proliferate throughout the world or move toward their complete elimination.The vast majority of people on the planet would surely opt to abolish nuclear weapons. But decisions about nuclear weapons are not made by the public, but by small groups of political elites. Consequently, in a world with nuclear weapons, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a small number of individuals, whose perceptions, communications, and judgment determine whether there is to be a future.The contributors to this volume provide historical perspective on nuclear weapons policy; explore the role of international law in furthering the prospects of nuclear weapons abolition; consider the obstacles to abolition; present a path to achieving a nuclear weapons-free world; and look beyond abolition to consider issues of post-abolition sovereignty and general and complete disarmament. The goal of a nuclear weapons-free world can be awakened by an engaged citizenry bringing pressure from below in demanding action from political leaders. This book contributes to this awakening and engagement.

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the various dimensions of India’s international positioning and foreign relations. Already a dominant player in South Asian politics, India has gained a strong footing in the international pecking order with the signing of the Indo-US nuclear agreement and significant support for its claim for a permanent seat in the Security Council. The chapters presented here look at myriad aspects — India’s relations with its neighbours and global powers farther afield including the US, the European Union, Russia and China; India’s policies, influences and strengths; developments in economy, knowledge and innovation amid evolving global realities as well as geostrategic equations and alliances; its present and future plans vis-à-vis its standing in the world; and how international politics is likely to emerge in the coming years. The volume will be useful to academics, researchers and students of politics and international relations as also to policy practitioners and those in media interested in Indian affairs, foreign policy and international relations.

Australia's Uranium Trade explores why the export of uranium remains a highly controversial issue in Australia and how this affects Australia's engagement with the strategic, regime and market realms of international nuclear affairs. The book focuses on the key challenges facing Australian policy makers in a twenty-first century context where civilian nuclear energy consumption is expanding significantly while at the same time the international nuclear nonproliferation regime is subject to increasing, and unprecedented, pressures. By focusing on Australia as a prominent case study, the book is concerned with how a traditionally strong supporter of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime is attempting to recalibrate its interest in maximizing the economic and diplomatic benefits of increased uranium exports during a period of flux in the strategic, regime and market realms of nuclear affairs. Australia's Uranium Trade provides broader lessons for how - indeed whether - nuclear suppliers worldwide are adapting to the changing nuclear environment internationally.

A comprehensive theory of the causes of nuclear proliferation, alongside an in-depth analysis of sixteen historical cases of nuclear development.

Throughout the nuclear age, states have taken many different paths toward or away from nuclear weapons. These paths have been difficult to predict and cannot be explained simply by a stable or changing security environment. We can make sense of these paths by examining leaders' nuclear decisions. The political decisions state leaders make to accelerate or reverse progress toward nuclear weapons define each state's course. Whether or not a state ultimately acquires nuclear weapons depends to a large extent on those nuclear decisions. This book offers a novel theory of nuclear decision-making that identifies two mechanisms that shape leaders' understandings of the costs and benefits of their nuclear pursuits. The internal mechanism is the intervention of domestic experts in key scientific and military organizations. If the conditions are right, those experts may be able to influence a leader's nuclear decision-making. The external mechanism emerges from the structure and politics of the international system. Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs identifies three different proliferation eras, in which changes to international political and structural conditions have constrained or freed states pursuing nuclear weapons development. Scholars and practitioners alike will gain new insights from the fascinating case studies of nine states across the three eras. Through this global approach to studying nuclear proliferation, this book pushes back against the conventional wisdom that determined states pursue a straight path to the bomb. Instead, nuclear decisions define a state's nuclear pursuits.