From The Nation
By John Nichols

For decades, the official policy of the United States has been to discourage nuclear proliferation, particularly in southern Asia.

But the U.S. Senate now says: No more.

At the prodding of the Bush administration, the Senate voted 85-12 to allow the U.S. to ship nuclear fuel and technology to India as part of an initiative to encourage the expansion of nuclear programs in that country. At a time when the Bush administration is suggesting the U.S. might need to go to war to block nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, the Senate has given its stamp of approval to proliferation in one of the most volatile regions of the world. Describing the vote as “a horrible mistake,” Senator Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, said the vote repudiated decades of U.S. policy of “telling the world it’s our responsibility and our major goal to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.”

The White House says that the scheme to have the U.S. supply the building blocks for a nuclear arsenal to India will not actually do so. The spin claims that the U.S. will only be supplying civilian nuclear fuel. But, of course, by filling the demand for civilian fuel, the U.S. will free India up to use domestic uranium for development of nuclear weapons. That, in turn, will almost certainly lead to moves by neighboring countries — particularly Pakistan and China — to build up their nuclear stockpiles.

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