Eyes on the Prize: India’s Pursuit of Membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group

What does India expect to attain by joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)? The forty-eight participating governments in the world’s most important multilateral nuclear export control arrangement need to 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 by controlling nuclear trade. Far more than all other states that have joined the NSG during the last four decades, India’s rationales and motives for seeking membership have given rise to questions and even suspicions.  This is for two reasons: Unlike all NSG participants, India is not a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); for the greater part of the NSG’s history, India deplored proliferation trade controls as a neo-colonialist, even racist tool of humiliation and discrimination used by other, mostly Western states, to hinder India’s technological development.

The U.S. director of national intelligence warned on Tuesday that time was running out for the United States to act on the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. North Korea presents “a potentially existential” threat to the United States and is likely to conduct more weapons tests this year, Dan Coats said at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on “Worldwide Threats.”  “Decision time is becoming ever closer in terms of how we respond to this,” Coats said. “Our goal is a peaceful settlement. We are using maximum pressure on North Korea in various ways.”

The head of the U.S. Pacific Command said Wednesday that the United States is hampered in keeping pace with China’s ground-based missiles thanks to treaties it has signed to limit its stockpiles. In particular, the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the United States and Russia is “self-limiting,” Adm. Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee, particularly since “over 90 percent of China’s ground-based missiles would violate the treaty.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in telephone talks Wednesday night to continue to put pressure on North Korea over its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. Abe told reporters after the conversation—which lasted more than an hour—that he and Trump affirmed they will maintain the pressure until North Korea seeks dialogue on the basis of giving up its nuclear program.

Within the next few years, Moscow and Beijing could possess "destructive" weapons for use in a potential space conflict, U.S intelligence agencies warned in a report on Tuesday. The two United Nations Security Council members are pursuing "anti-satellite weapons as a means to reduce U.S. and allied military effectiveness," the report said, reflecting input from organizations including the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency.

Iran’s ballistic missile program must be placed under international surveillance, French President Emmanuel Macron said, in an bid to get tougher on Tehran while preserving the nuclear deal that Donald Trump has threatened to scrap.