United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act

Floor Speech

UNITED STATES-INDIA NUCLEAR COOPERATION APPROVAL AND NONPROLIFERATION ENHANCEMENT ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 26, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this bill and to the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal.

Most people think that this is a debate about India. It is not. We are all friends of India, and we are all united in our view that the United States and India share a bright future of strong relations. This is a debate about Iran. This is a debate about North Korea, about Pakistan, about Venezuela, about any other country in the world that harbors the goal of acquiring nuclear weapons.

With this vote, we are shattering the nonproliferation rules. And the next three countries to march through the broken glass will be Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. And there are others with their nose up against the window getting ready as well. Flashing a green light to India sends a dangerous signal to all of those countries because these policies are interconnected.

We are now seeing the devastating financial consequences of years of Wall Street recklessness. The subprime mortgage pushers pretended that the laws of supply and demand no longer applied and that home values would always go up. Well, they were wrong. The Bush administration argues that breaking the nuclear rules for India will not lead to broken rules for anyone else. The Bush administration is wrong. And this deal will have serious consequences for our national security. Like the financial crisis that is now gripping the globe, this disastrous nuclear deal will come back to haunt us because there is no bailout for a nuclear bomb.

Nonproliferation experts tell us that India will be able to increase its annual nuclear weapons production from seven bombs per year to 40 or 50 bombs per year. That is absolutely a crazy situation for us to be engaging in. Does the Bush administration think that nobody is watching what we are doing? Pakistan is watching. Pakistan is watching its arch rival get welcomed into ``the nuclear club.'' Does the Bush administration think that Pakistan will just watch India ramp up its nuclear weapons production and do nothing? Pakistan will respond. Pakistan warned us this summer that this deal, and I quote, ``threatens to increase the chances of a nuclear arms race.''

Right now, according to nonproliferation experts, Pakistan is building two new reactors to dramatically increase its nuclear weapons production. The first of these new reactors could come online within a year. Pakistan is essentially telling India, ``We're in this game, too. We will match you step to step.''

This is an all out nuclear arms race. That is what President Bush should be working on, not fueling it, but trying to negotiate an end to it. This is what a nuclear arms race looks like. We lived through one with the Soviet Union, now we are fueling one in Southeast Asia.

And who is Pakistan? A.Q. Khan, right here, the world's number one nuclear proliferator, a criminal against humanity, he is in Pakistan. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the people that actually attacked us on 9/11--and we know have attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction--they are in Pakistan. And the Pakistani government, upon which we are relying to safeguard the nuclear weapons and materials, is dangerously unstable. We are feeding the fire of a nuclear arms race in the one country, Pakistan, where we can least afford to do so.

It's incredibly ironic that next here on the House floor we will consider a bill to increase sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program because the bill we're considering now makes an Iranian nuclear weapon much harder to prevent. By breaking the rules for India, we're making it less likely that the rules will hold against Iran or anyone else.

Iran is looking at this deal for India and they're saying, ``Where can I sign up?'' ``I want that deal.'' And where is it written that once these new rules are set up, that the Venezuelans can't cut the same deal with the Chinese, that the Iranians and the Russians will just continue merrily along the way? They will be pointing at us. They will be pointing at our explanation that we can cut a separate deal here with India. That is what we are establishing in this bill. This is the new regime for the world, not a comprehensive policy, but each big country who wants to cut a deal with a nuclear aspiring country can do so.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is the bedrock of our efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It is the foundation upon which all of our work rests. And this deal is ripping that foundation up by its roots.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at an historic point. This deal allows for a country which is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to be exempted from it. It's an historic moment not only in the history of the United States, but of the world.

This nuclear nonproliferation regime that President Kennedy told us we had to establish has worked. In 1963, when he said, by the year 2000 we might have to count the countries that don't have nuclear weapons because they will be fewer than those that do unless we put a regime in place, was accurate. And if you look now, in 2008, almost no new countries have obtained nuclear weapons since 1963; quite an achievement. But here tonight, we're about to create a new global regime. And we will look back on this in the same way that we look back on the day when we began to allow subprime loans, and we will wonder how a global nuclear catastrophe was created, and we will point back to this evening.

I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source