Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) and India Membership

Introduction

The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a group of nuclear-supplier countries that aims to contribute to nuclear nonproliferation by implementing two sets of nuclear export and nuclear-related export guidelines. The NSG initially met in London in November 1975, earning it the nickname “London Club” (“Club de Londres”).

The NSG requires IAEA safeguards as a condition of supply, with full-scope safeguards being the norm; national control laws and procedures; physical protection against theft for sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle; restraint of enrichment and reprocessing plant assistance to countries of proliferation concern; a common control list; export restraint to conflict and instability-prone regions; and information-sharing among members.

The Guidelines for Nuclear Transfers, first agreed upon by supply States in 1977 and transmitted to the Director-General of the IAEA in January 1978, propose further export control restrictions beyond those stipulated in the NPT. These restrictions ban the use of exports in any nuclear explosive device, as well as the transfer of reprocessing, uranium enrichment, and heavy water production facilities and technologies.

What is nuclear Suppliers Group and India?

India’s rationales and intentions for pursuing membership in the NSG have raised more doubts and even suspicions than any other country that has joined in the last four decades. This is due to two factors: India, unlike all other NSG members, is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); for much of the NSG’s history, India has viewed proliferation trade controls as a neocolonialist, even racist, tool of humiliation and discrimination used by other, mostly Western, states to stifle India’s technological development.

Indeed, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was founded four decades ago in response to India’s detonation of a nuclear explosive device. After a quarter-century of attempting to stifle India’s nuclear programme, beginning in the 1970s.The world’s most important multilateral nuclear export control agreement’s forty-eight participating governments must answer that question if they are to confidently judge, before admitting India, whether India is like-minded and shares consensus views on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons through nuclear trade control.

“Nuclear Suppliers Group Members and Functions”

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) dropped its nuclear trade embargo against India in 2008, under US pressure, and has been actively considering accepting India as a member since 2011.In recent years, India has become more favourable about nonproliferation and trade regulations. 

This occurred when India’s strategic horizons widened to include the threat of a nuclear-armed Pakistan allowing its strategic nuclear assets to proliferate, the threat of terrorists seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a more intense rivalry with China, and tighter connections with the West. 

However, because India has not explicitly defined a thorough narrative to explain why it seeks NSG membership, the extent of India’s change from long-held stances is unknown.

The perceived international prominence that this step would bestow upon a more ambitious India may be the most crucial argument for India’s quest for NSG membership. Membership in the NSG signifies that a country has advanced to a high level of strategic technical development, is capable of supplying controlled items, and has the governance capacity to manage complicated trade controls.

“Causes for NSG’s denial from accepting India as a member”

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his foreign secretary meeting with leaders around the world to push for India, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, the NSG was unable to find a consensus on granting India membership. 

India’s defeat has been characterised as a “embarrassment,” a “car disaster,” a “fiasco,” and an aborted bid in which India “found itself alone.” Despite the government’s refusal to label this a policy failure, a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs stated the outcome was unexpected.

As India progressed along this route, it encountered more fierce opposition than it had anticipated. Backing down proved more costly than losing as India’s leadership risked its prestige on this vote. In other words, India made a mistake early on by committing to full membership in the NSG, and the tyranny of sunk costs forced it to waste good diplomatic capital on bad.

Accusations of abandonment are more than likely the result of yet another blunder. Due to fewer US stakes in Indian reputation, diminished leverage due to increased power diffusion alongside Chinese assertiveness, and India’s constant equivocation on its US alliance mixed with a US president known to despise free-riders.

Conclusion

The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a group of nuclear-supplier countries that aims to contribute to nuclear nonproliferation by implementing two sets of nuclear export and nuclear-related export guidelines. The NSG requires IAEA safeguards as a condition of supply, with full-scope safeguards being the norm; national control laws and procedures; physical protection against theft for sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle; restraint of enrichment and reprocessing plant assistance to countries of proliferation concern; a common control list; export restraint to conflict and instability-prone regions; and information-sharing among members. This is due to two factors: India, unlike all other NSG members, is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; for much of the NSG’s history, India has viewed proliferation trade controls as a neocolonialist, even racist, tool of humiliation and discrimination used by other, mostly Western, states to stifle India’s technological development.