This is a Very Bad Idea

I meant to get to this earlier in the week, but one thing or another kept coming up. What is the Canadian government thinking selling dual use nuclear technologies to India?!? You would think we had learned our lesson thirty years ago when India used our Candu reactor technology to refine the plutonium for their weapons program. This is especially frustrating given that India is not a member of the NNPT. This completely undercuts any credibility we have in nuclear prolifieration issues, and that to my mind is a very bad thing. Then there is the fact that post Cold War the most likely place for a nuclear conflict to break out is between India and Pakistan, so why are we willing to become involved on one side of this with this sale? This is quite possibly one of the most stupid ideas/plans I have seen come out of Ottawa in many a year, and when you consider the many idiotic things Ottawa has generated that is no mean feat. Lloyd Axworthy is absolutely right on this one.

I was born and raised in the Cold War in a known first strike target. Perhaps because of that I tend to take nuclear issues a bit more seriously than some, I don't know. What I do know is that the NNPT has managed to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons capability significantly since it was implimented, and that Canada has been one of the stronger voices advocating such restrictions. So for us to turn around and start selling a non signatory nation dual use nuclear technology runs counter to a major foreign policy direction this country has had for decades now. What really bothers me though is the lack of interest this decision appears to have generated either in the news media or the online community, and that really saddens/worries me. Nuclear weapons are still the only true weapon of mass destruction. They are the nightmare weapons we lived in the shadow of throughout the Cold War. That we survived that period with no nuclear exchange was remarkable. So why tempt fate by starting to spread such capability, especially to one of the two most likely countries to end up in a nuclear conflict?

How can we Canadians deplore the development of tactical nuclear weapons by the Bush Administration for deployment and turn around and sell dual use technology to a country like India? How can we be so offended by the Bush nuclear developments and so oblivious to the incredibly dangerous action our own government is taking on this matter with India without being complete hypocrites? Answer: We can't. This is my attempt to raise the profile of this issue, hopefully others will pick up on it and try to get this the attention it so rightly deserves. This is an issue which cannot be ignored without consequence, and those consequences are almost certainly negative ones. Nuclear proliferation increases the chances of fanatics getting their hands on such weapons also, and while a State can be kept in check by the threat of retaliation, non State actors cannot be so easily handled. Indeed, we know that there are non State actors eager to get their hands on nuclear weapons capability, and I rather doubt that is going to change anytime soon. This is a Really Bad Idea.