What Modi-Abe's historic nuke deal will do for India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's November 2016 visit to Tokyo has marked a new era in the already historic India-Japan relations. The country's strategic community has been looking at Japan's technical capacity in the strategic field ever since 1968, when PN Haksar as secretary to the then PM Indira Gandhi wrote about seeking Japan's nuclear capabilities in his notes.

PM Modi is concluding a significant visit to Japan, where a historic nuclear cooperation agreement has been signed. Japan will now be opening its nuclear technology to India providing nuclear reactors and other aspects like fuel, components, et al.

Westinghouse (US nuclear reactor makers) is majority-owned by Toshiba (almost 90 percent) and a substantial emerging entity in China's nuclear market, involved with as many as four AP1000 nuclear power plants.

The Nuclear Power Cooperation of India Limited (NPCIL) has already been linked to Westinghouse for six of the AP1000s, which was the outcome of PM Modi's visit to Washington DC in June 2016.

The other end of the nuclear yarn leads from the French nuclear tech entity AREVA, run jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and French entity Electicite de France (EDF). AREVA was nearing bankruptcy in middle of 2015.

The nuclear industry of France and Japan is in challenging times and the future pace of nuclear energy in the countries is uncertain. Japan operates 42 nuclear reactors with another four under construction and another three (ABWR-Advanced Boiling Water Reactors) planned for future construction.

There are other kinds of nuclear mart intricacies. For instance, Japan Casting and Forging Corporation also provides components for the French nuclear industry. Many French reactors are made by Japanese manufacturers using Japanese steel forging. The search for new markets is driven by financial survival of these industries by capturing emerging nuclear mart in India and China. Other emerging markets are Turkey, Vietnam, et al.

There is much historical symmetry pulling the two sides together in this strategic cooperation since India had consistently held during the Cold War era that Japan's nuclear industry had been unfairly and heavily burdened by US regulatory requirements and the NPT.

The US, during the Jimmy Carter years, tried to put brakes on the plutonium reprocessing technology in which Japanese industry had invested as much as three billion dollars in the late 1970s. Thus, the historical understanding India has provided to the need for Japan to have an independent and strong nuclear power programme was a constant that the latter could cite to critics of the new agreement within Japan.

The nuclear agreement is a sure verifier that India-Japan relations are making the transition from their Cold War dynamics of warm, earthy understanding underlined by the geo-economic vector of Japan, which continuously invested in India's future. However, Japan was mostly circumspect of strategic opportunities being floated by Indian prime ministers and preferred to keep pragmatism to mould the bilateral balance.

Shinzo Abe is perhaps the first Japanese Prime Minister to approach India from an ideological perspective and not merely from one of pragmatism. It began with PM Abe's grandfather, PM Nobusuke Kishi, whom Nehru had invited to India in 1957. Kishi in turn invited Nehru to Japan. PM Kishi was a "cold warrior" and PM Abe in many respects inherits that ideology, but both had seen India through pragmatism and geo-economics. This is now verifiably changing.

PM Abe's clarity on foreign policy vision can be placed within the "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity" found in the diplomatic bluebook of Japan's ministry of foreign affairs. Within this, PM Abe has evolved an upgrade of India-Japan status, which has implications for both the countries' China policy as well as, to some extent, Japan's Russia policy.

These will become increasingly important in the light of more inward-looking US foreign policy administration expected under President-elect Donald Trump. Here, India-Japan relations would give the two countries an added strategic impulse needed to approach southeast Asian countries that are increasingly looking to modify their status with the major nuclear powers.

As for India's nuclear weapons programme, the very fact that the agreement has taken place knowing that India is currently on its way to develop a comprehensive deployable status for its nuclear triad delivery platforms is, in itself, a signifier that Tokyo accepts New Delhi's nuclear deterrence requirements.

It is known to Japan that India's principal nuclear adversary was China ever since the former's nuclear weapons' programme was launched covertly in 1968. India's department of atomic energy had even written a brief for the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in 1970 about the possibility of tactical nuclear weapon exchanges between India and China in the Himalayan region in a situation where Chinese troops would be frustrated in a possible aggressive incursion into India and may resort to use of tactical weapons.

PN Haksar, as secretary to PM Indira Gandhi, had written in 1968 that "nuclear 'stand-off' with China was essential as soon as possible" and that it had the ability to strike the industrial heartlands of China with long-range ballistic missiles. Thus, as mentioned earlier, Japan is aware of the built-in deterrent requirements in India's nuclear weapons program.

On the other hand, India is a strong supporter of PM Abe's push for a shift in the status of Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution, which limits the country's defence capabilities and deployment options to secure its national interests in the current global security environment. November 3 also marked the 70th anniversary of the promulgation of Japan's Constitution, which was essentially forcefully grafted by US general Mc Arthur onto Japan's post-war political consciousness.

Modi chose Japan as the first country for an overseas visit after taking over as Indian PM in 2014.

However, what would be the status of such ambitious agreements if India were to conduct a nuclear test? India must not give up its autonomy to conduct nuclear explosives underground testing as part of any such agreement - this can be secured through indirect language in the pacts, which allows both parties to vent disagreement while remaining committed to long-term nuclear cooperation.

PM Abe appears to understand the basic purpose of India's robust nuclear diplomacy, while Modi's strategists are seeking the alchemy of geo-economics with geo-politics. The evolution of the ideological dynamic of India-Japan relations must now be observed carefully.