Washington is the problem 8212; US export controls more a setback

The latter may be available for deployment today. That sort of range gives the Indian strategic community plenty to worry about without making itself sick with thoughts of more lethalstuff. China, of course, has helped Pakistan8217;s programme by exporting parts and technology for M-11s. According to US intelligence estimates, Beijing may have assisted also with setting up a so-called secret missile factory outside Rawalpindi. None of this clandestine activity necessarily points to the development of longer range missiles even allowing for the ingenuity of Pakistani scientists. There are two reasons why it is reasonable to suppose Beijing would go so far and no further to aid Pakistan.

Firstly, its formal commitments on abiding by MTCR export restraints, as well as sanctions imposed by the US on Chinese companies in the past, would preclude anything to do with exporting know-how and components for missiles with a range outside 300 km. Second, Chinese leaders would have to be very short-sighted indeed to help any country, even a current ally, develop missiles which would bring large parts of China within their range. In this season of leaks and counter-leaks about missile-rattling in the sub-continent, it would be more useful to focus on what is known and likely to be a setback, if only in the short-term, for India. Once again, the source of trouble is not Islamabad or Beijing but Washington. In what can only be described as a sudden fit of activism, the US Commerce Department has proposed export controls for four Indian establishments, Bharat Electronics, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bharat Rare Earths and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research. It is the first time since Communist-era Cocom controls were dismantled and new dual-use export rules were adopted by the Western powers that so many Indian entities are targeted together. What has triggered action today?

India is not accused has never been accused of exporting sensitive nuclear and missile technology. For more than a decade, as is well known, a number of Indian research and industrial organisations have been engaged in work involving dual-use technologies. But every non-proliferation regime, including US domestic law on the subject, recognises that is not reason in itself to penalise civilian entities. India is left with two possible explanations. One is commercial competition. Or, under pressure to impose sanctions on China for its exports of sensitive material to Pakistan and Iran, Washington can only find the will to do so by using a shotgun which hits India and others as well.