Dr Palit's article places too much reliance on the single issue of Rudd's reversal of Howard's 'landmark decision' to sell uranium to India. "There is no doubt that for engagements to grow deeper much more than intentions are necessary," he says.

Setting aside that issue, there's not much evidence in support of his thesis that Australia's relationship with India is developing too slowly. And lots of evidence to the contrary.

Dr Palit is aware that the Indian Diaspora in Australia is a quarter of a million. Foreign Minister Smith commented recently that this growing diaspora makes a significant contribution to bilateral links. Smith and India’s Pranab Mukherjee agreed a number of proposals for inter-country youth exchanges.

India is already Australia's third largest source of international immigrants and second largest source of skilled migrants and international students.

In 2004-05 only 10,000 Indian students studied in Australia compared with nearly 16,000 Chinese. The last figures (2006-07) showed India surpassing China as Australia's main source of overseas students - 28,949 Indians and 24,915 Chinese. That's an increase of nearly 30% for Indian students in just three years. http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/50students.htm

Dr Palit concedes that, during the year 2004-05, bilateral trade between our two countries reached "a record A$7.25 billion". Had he looked at more recent figures, he would have seen even more tremendous growth since that record was set.

In 2007, bilateral trade reached $A10.75 billion. Exports from Australia to India grew by 5.4% - Australia is now India's 6th biggest provider of exports. We fall behind on imports from India ranking only 24th among her customers - but growth topped 14% for the year. http://www.dfat.gov.au/GEO/fs/inia.pdf
http://business.mapsofindia.com/trade-relations/india-australia/

So, after all, Dr Palit's gripe is essentially about uranium. His argument that "...Australia... continues to be influenced by Cold War considerations" is a very thin camouflage.

Arguments that George Bush thinks well of India as a rising nuclear weapons power cut little ice with me and many other Australians.

News item just in on ABC OnLine:

"Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says Australia and India respect each other's position on the sale of uranium.

"Mr Smith is in India for talks with the country's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and says Australia's refusal to sell uranium to India has been discussed.

"He says Australia's stance on the issue is not an obstacle to a good relationship.

"The Prime Minister told me that he understood and respected Australia's decision about uranium, which is Australia does not export uranium that's not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty," Mr Smith said.

"I told the Prime Minister that we understood and respected India's decision not to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"These are both long-standing positions and policy positions of the Australian and Indian governments."

So we assume that if India signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Australia would sell it uranium. So why won't India sign?

>>So why won't India sign?

Because it would have to disarm. It would then face a nuclear armed China without any nuclear deterrent of its own.

John Frum

You say India won't sign the non-proliferation because it would have to disarm. "It would then face a nuclear armed China without any nuclear deterrent of its own."

How do you arrive at this conclusion any more than to conclude that India would face USA, or UK or Russia or France? What would the other four do if any one of them attacked India?

The five NWS parties undertaken not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-NWS party except in response to a nuclear attack, or a conventional attack in alliance with a Nuclear Weapons State.

Your supposition is totally without foundation.

Moreover, are you advocating the Australia act in breach of its own undertakings on nuclear weapons proliferation?

Spikey

You're too trusting of the NPT - but that is Rudd's policy in Australia right NOW.

Wait till the US Congress ratifies the US-India nuclear agreement (unfortunately probably next year) - we'll see how Rudd then permits Australia to supply uranium to India.

Those newer nuclear powers (mainly India, Pakistan and Israel) may care about their people too much to risk their people's lives to foreign agreements.

Pete

Spikey, are you aware that the Chinese army has made more than 80 incursions across the ceasefire line into Indian territory since January of this year?

Are you aware that China has recently reiterated its territorial claim to Aranuchal Pradesh, an entire Indian state? Or that is continues to occupy thousands of square kilometres of Indian territory captured in 1962?

Have you heard of the Nathu La and Sumdorong Chu Valley skirmishes?

Are you aware that the Chinese no first use pledge does not apply to Chinese territory? In other words, a war like the 1962 India-Chinese war might see China using tactical nuclear weapons on Indian soil (but what China considers its own territory).

Are you aware that India approached both the USA and the Soviet Union for nuclear security guarantees after 1962 but was turned down by both?

As for the NPT, nothing in that treaty prevents Australia from selling Uranium to India. The NPT simply requires that all sales be under IAEA safeguards. It does not require full scope safeguards for a non-state party to the treaty nor does it prohibit nuclear sales to a non-state party.

>>Spikey You're too trusting of the NPT

Pete, he is trusting of assurances that are not even in the NPT. These were the informal security assurances that were not included in the treaty. They have no legal force.

And the NPT itself has been violated by China.

Spikey, how did a Chinese HEU implosion warhead design end up wrapped in the plastic bag from AQ Khan's Rawalpindi Dry Cleaners and in Libya? How did a more advanced Chinese Pu warhead design end up in Swiss hands?

Article I of the NPT absolutely prohibits this.

How did Plutonium end up in the air above the Chagai test site when Pakistan's Chinese built Plutonium reactor was not yet in operation? Where did Pakistan get the Pu from? Or their missiles (Chinese M-11s)?

You expect India to trust the word of China? The same China that violates the NPT and proliferates at will?

How and why are Chinese warhead blueprints available for electronic download?

Is there another example of more reckless behavior than the Chinese proliferation of warhead design and fissile material to Pakistan? What drives China to act so maliciously? And India must trust Chinese goodwill? When China continues to claim Indian territory as its own?

How easy it is to sit in Australia, under an American nuclear unbrella and demand that India sign the NPT. Imagine having China as your immediate neighbor. Imagine that Chinese leaders issue periodic warnings of "teaching Australia a lesson" (as they do to India). Imagine losing a war to China and having them occupy 5000 sq km of your territory. Imagine having them claim NSW. Imagine them giving missiles and nuclear weapons to Indonesia or East Timor. Imagine them arming rebels (as they did the Nagas in India).

Sounds like special pleading to me.

Australia would make a greater contribution to containing global greenhouse gas emissions by being a reliable supplier of uranium to India than by any domestic measures. But nuclear purity trumps greenhouse godliness in the ALP.

Spikey

John's case is well put. It comes from a sophisticated knowledge base.

Mr Rudd's Made in China uranium position is becoming increasingly obvious.

Many in Labor's Left still remember their student days when Mao's China (being sought of mystical) did no wrong. Many of the Green Newby's know nothing of (untaught) Chinese history and how it repeats itself.

Naturally Australia under the rule of the Candidate will increasingly look to China as the great and powerful uranium/steel/coal/gas consumer.

Money, as ever, talks. Uncool if its American but A-OK if its from our new monopoly consumer.

Who needs to diversify markets when China has promised Rudd a lot?

Pete

The old cold war warriors are on the attack again.

plantagenet: <<Many in Labor's Left still remember their student days when Mao's China (being sought [sic] of mystical) did no wrong.>>

Hey, the world's changed a bit since those times.

<<Money, as ever, talks....Who needs to diversify markets when China has promised Rudd a lot?>>

So money talks: In fiscal 2004-05, trade between India and Australia reached "a record A$7.25 billion". Two years on, bilateral trade reached $A10.75 billion. Australian exports to India grew by 5.4% - Australia is now India's 6th biggest provider of exports. Import growth topped 14% for the year. http://www.dfat.gov.au/GEO/fs/inia.pdf
http://business.mapsofindia.com/trade-relations/india-australia/

When India signs up, I'm sure Australia will sell her uranium.

>>Many in Labor's Left still remember their student days when Mao's China (being sought of mystical) did no wrong.

Interesting that you should mention Mao Zedong.

India's absolute refusal to sign the NPT is actually due to the Great Helmsman's 'lesson'.

Mao was quite offended that Nehru presumed to 'introduce' China at the 1955 Bandung conference. Mao saw India as a subordinate state and decided to "teach India a lesson" so that the other third world leaders would see the true pecking order. He bided his time until an opportune moment - the 1962 Cuba missile crisis - and struck hard.

Now Nehru detested the military. When the Army chief Lt. General Sir Robert Lockhart approached him with a defense policy plan, Nehru threw the papers aside. "Rubbish! Total rubbish!" He said. "We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs'" He proceeded to cut the armed forces (280,000) by 130,000 men. Then a further 50,000 were sent home.

Many Indian ordinance factories (set up by the British) which had produced enormous amounts of vital war supplies in WW2 no longer produced weapons. Instead they made coffee percolators and other goods. Real swords into plowshares stuff. Gandhi would have been proud.

The Chinese PLA showed him the error of his ways. In the aftermath of the 1962 Sino-Indian war Nehru addressed the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament):

"I remember many a time when our senior generals came to us, and wrote to the defence ministry saying that they wanted certain things... If we had had foresight, known exactly what would happen, we would have done something else... what India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations... We have been living in an unreal world of our own creation."

So John

A. Did China help create an NPT system that suited and legally protected its nuclear weapons aspirations?

B. Was the NPT timetable (centred around 1968) geared by the Big Five to permit the Big Five (US, UK, Russia, France and China) to alone have nuclear weapons.

Put another way did the Big Five decide on its own terms to make it illegal for less mighty states to possess nuclear weapons for self defence?

C. But surely it was Ireland that proposed the NPT, uninfluenced by the power of the Big Five Permanent Members of the Security Council?

D. Isn't there an obvious and effective disarmament obligation on the Big Five under the NPT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty#Second_pillar:_disarmament

Pete :)

The question of Ireland wrt the NPT is interesting.

It is clear that the NWS had and have no intention to ever disarm. Indeed they all have programs of computer simulation, laser implosion experiments and subcritical testing so that they may continue to design even more advanced weapons. They may cut their arsenals but that is a refection of their operational needs, not any commitment to disarmament.

Was Ireland satisfied with the nuclear order? Did it hope that the P5 and no others would possess nuclear arms? Or did it allow itself to be deluded? To be used by the NWS?

Did it make the mistake of assuming that the NPT is a disarmament treaty rather than an arms control treaty?

Article 6 of the NPT simply promises negotiations towards disarmament. It does not give any time frame for this. So negotiations make take a thousand years or ten thousand. It is an open ended promise that the NWS can claim they are not violating since they are all working in good faith towards this aim. The Nunn, Perry, Kissinger and Shultz initiative also puts forwards the promise of working towards the aim of disarmament but does not actually require it. The aim is always in the distant future. The NNWS on the other hand must give up their NPT rights to enrichment and reprocessing technology.

Disarmament treaties simply outlaw classes of weapons. After WW1, certain classes of ammunition that produce great suffering were no longer to be used. Recently the chemical weapons convention and the land mine treaties have abolished possession of such weapons by their signatories.

By contrast the NPT did not outlaw nuclear arms. It simply created two classes of states - those that were allowed to have nuclear arms and those who were forbidden to have them. The NPT is thus about arms control. It seems that the NNWS are actually quite happy with this since they extended the NPT indefinately in 1995 without amending the treaty to impose a cutoff date for disarmament.

Thanks John

So it seems that there is no real hope or requirement that the thousands of warheads belonging to the Big Five (P5) will be disarmed under the NPT and perhaps under any other agreement.

As Permanent members of the UN Security Council they have potent political power. They have organised the NP treaty in such a way as to give them potent and exclusive military power through being the only "legal" owners of nuclear weapons.

I'm interested in the timing of the NPT. Was there a groundswell of international feeling in the 1960s that suggested all Permanent Members of the Security Council should have the Bomb?

Was this considered fair play or was it a recognition that China would not agree to an NPT structure until it to had the Bomb?

Was principle set aside in order to accommodate political reality - to accommodate China?

I suppose few outside intelligence agencies knew that on 26 May 1990 China conducted a nuclear test on behalf of Pakistan. This test occurred in a vertical underground shaft. The test was of a Pakistani CHIC-4 derivative. The yield was estimated at 10 kilotons.

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_9/47_1s.shtml

Here's a 1966 CHIC-4 test in China's atmosphere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbDqnUufnrQ

Further corroboration of Chinese breaches of the NPT http://www.nti.org/db/China/nsaspos.htm "The May 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia focused international attention on China's role in the development of nuclear weapons in South Asia. Although China has had some nuclear trade and cooperation with India, China's more significant nuclear relationship in South Asia is with Pakistan. Indeed, China's nuclear trade with Pakistan has caused as much or more concern than China's nuclear trade with any other country..."

I wonder if Mr Rudd considers this when agreeing that Australian uranium should be supplied to China but not India.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/