Today with the USA, Tomorrow with China?

With its recent agreements for the supply of nuclear material and technology to India, the United States hopes it has made the first, but significant, steps towards building a strategic partnership. It sees in India an important potential regional ally to be used to encircle and contain the growing power of Chinese imperialism.

On the other hand, India, as is obvious, does not want and cannot allow itself to have merely a walk-on part in this affair. Instead, it is probable that it is simply ready to profit from its agreements with the USA so that it can, in the short term, satisfy its imperialist aspirations. In fact, the accords allow India, which has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to develop dozens more fission bombs each year.

Despite this, it is difficult to imagine that New Delhi wants to throw away the long years it has spent in gradually normalising its relations with China, during which it has launched a fruitful dialogue on the drawing up of borders, announced co-operation on energy supplies, including the announcement of a strategic partnership in April 2005, and declared 2006 to be the “Year of Sino-Indian Friendship”. Even leaving aside the explicit accords, it is necessary to note that the trade between the two states has increased by 521% between 2000 and 2005, while that between India and the USA went up by only 63% in the same period.

India has also begun to offer Pakistan more peaceful relations, after years of interposing an iron fist surrounded by nuclear experiments and explosions on the question of the disputed territories of Kashmir. Now, it is precisely these relations which risk deterioration, because of the suspicion with which Islamabad views the nuclear proliferation in India and the US refusal to grant Pakistan similar conditions. Because of this, Musharraf visited China, Pakistan’s traditional ally, requesting support against the reinforcing of India. And for this reason, Singh, on the occasion of the launch of a new bus service across the frontier on 24th March, wanted to reassure his neighbour on his intention to carry forward the difficult peace process for Kashmir, offering Pakistan a “peace, security and friendship treaty”.

The remarkable growth of India also raises other questions. According to the CIA’s data ( cia.gov ), Indian GNP grew by an average of 6.8% pa in the decade from 1994, and, in 2005, growth was close to 7%. Nevertheless, the fragility of the system is witnessed by the fact that a large part of the “production” was in reality represented by services, which accounted for half the national product, even though they employed only a quarter of the national labour force. Two thirds of Indians are employed in agriculture. The World Bank and other analysts also fear the explosion of the public debt (state and federal); which is running at 9% of the GNP, whereas accumulated debt amounts to 82% of the GNP. But the principle problem seems to be linked to the availability of energy. Today, India already imports two thirds of the oil it consumes and can rely on strategic reserves limited to 5bn barrels. China, for example, has a clear advantage on this front, importing a third of its oil and relying on strategic reserves of 18bn barrels.

All things considered, India certainly will not find it convenient to follow a destabilisation policy in the area, like that of the USA at the moment, as that would aggravate its problems linked to the structural scarcity of energy resources, which it must find abroad through already existing commercial channels and pipelines to be built in the future (the so-called Asian “energy grid”), to obtain, for example, oil and gas extracted in Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Myanmar, but also hydroelectric energy produced in Tajikistan.

Moreover, even the accords with the USA are in danger, as they have not been approved by the NSG (Nuclear Supplier Group). Because of this, other options have been kept open. On 17th March, to the irritation of Washington, India signed an agreement with Russia for the supply of 60 tonnes of uranium for the Indian nuclear plant at Tarapur and for the supply of materials and technology for the building of a new plant at Kundakulam, which should be completed before 2008. The agreement, according to the signatories, conforms to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whose safety exception was invoked. In reality, anonymous technicians from the Tarapur plant affirmed that such an exception was not justified, as the plant could be shut down in a completely safe manner even if there was no fissile material present. Unfortunately, it is necessary to acknowledge that the Non-Proliferation Treaty - which to some extent checked the course towards armament during the Cold War - is about to be lost under the wave of blows due to the economic crisis and the great pressure of the US and other imperialist giants.

In this contest of all against all to corner energy resources and financial revenue, conventional arms and nuclear devices, in readiness for catastrophic clashes, one thing is certain: the final price will be sky high, whether from the economic or environmental and human point of view, and it be the international proletariat who will pay as usual... unless the proletariat finally reacts, liberating itself once and for all from the putrefying system!