Anti-nuclear discipline

Not two months after the United States imposed economic sanctions on India and Pakistan in response to their nuclear tests, some of those sanctions are being rolled back.

The Clinton administration found a "humanitarian" loophole allowing continuance of certain kinds of economic aid, and Congress is lifting a farm credit ban to allow American farmers to sell in the South Asian wheat market. Some sanctions remain on international loans and on military and high-tech items. The more vulnerable Pakistan will be hard hit, but India also will pay a price. Nonetheless, the United States, having gone up the hill to demonstrate its aversion of proliferation, is starting down the hill without having induced India and Pakistan to curb their nuclear ambitions.

On one level this is understandable. India broke a set of U.S.-sponsored nonproliferation rules that it had long rejected as discriminatory, and provoked an otherwise quietly cheating Pakistan to make a similar public display in order to be considered "credible". But many Americans are uncomfortable to be beating up on a friendly and democratic country, India, and on another friendly country, Pakistan, that has been a valuable ally. Neither poses a direct threat to the United States. Neither is in the "rogue" category of countries whose nuclear capabilities would be regarded as ominous.

Nonetheless, the world is a more dangerous place for the going nuclear of two more countries (hostile to each other) and for any consequently whetting of others' nuclear appetites. Everyone looks to the United States to see how serious this leading member of the five in the "nuclear club" is about limiting new members.

The lesson of the sanctions is to impose those that are relevant to the offense and politically sustainable -- those in the nuclear, military and high-tech categories. But Congress is clumsy, and the job should be done mostly in the executive branch. Even now, the congressional grip inhibits the United States' effort to bring India and Pakistan into the discipline of the nonproliferation and test ban treaties.

-- The Washington Post