Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my knowledge of South Asian security, non-proliferation and arms control issues as you grapple with this important initiative. On balance, the initiative should be welcomed. I have argued in print for a non-proliferation half-way house since 1990—an admittedly imperfect response to an imperfect situation, but far better than the status quo. By minor modifications in the proposed legislation and changes in American policy the nuclear cooperation agreement could be still further improved.
I am a signatory of a March 10 letter backing the initiative. That letter argues that the agreement enhances American
strategic interests, and if properly implemented, it will advance, not retard, American
non-proliferation objectives. We also argue that the initiative will help India move to an
energy strategy that makes it less dependant on imported oil and that it will positively address our global
environmental concerns.
I was resident in India during many of the major Indian debates over its nuclear weapons policy. In 1964-65 it debated its response to the Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor; in 1967-68 it debated whether or not to sign the NPT, and in 1974, after its phony "peaceful nuclear explosion," India debated whether to weaponize. In the late 1980s there was a major debate over the proper response to evidence of a Chinese-assisted Pakistani nuclear weapons program. The Rajiv Gandhi "Action Plan" of 1988 was in part a last-minute attempt to forestall a response-in-kind to Pakistan's program; in the early 1990s Indians grappled with the highly publicized American effort to cap, roll back, and eliminate its nuclear weapons program and that of Pakistan. More recently, I spent a month in New Delhi observing the Indian debate over the Bush-Manmohan Singh initiative.
Answers to "Questions for the Record" request of Senator Joseph Biden (PDF—16kb)