Julia Gillard's u-turn on selling uranium to India exposes Labor's decay

Leadership is a technical term meaning catering to the interests of the rich and powerful despite popular opposition. That is why the Right faction of the Labor Party calls itself "the leadership faction."

Its job is to ram unpopular party resolutions through party fora from the National Conference down, despite what Julia Gillard refers to as "noise," that cater to the interests of the rich. It seems that Real Julia, formerly Comrade Gillard, is set to display tonnes of "leadership" at the upcoming ALP National Conference in December judging by the supportive platitudes in the corporate media.

Comrade Gillard will be able to transfix us with the virtues of leadership courtesy of the backroom boys of the leadership faction.

The Left faction's main role is to provide "the noise" for the troops back in the branches and, having reliably done so, then it shall do what it does best; roll over and let the leadership faction walk all over it.

Take, say, the proposed sale of Australian uranium to India to be discussed at the National Conference with the declared, crucial, support of Comrade Gillard. The proposed resolution has just about zero real support within the broader Labor Party. Despite that the fixers of the leadership faction will ensure that Real Julia will be able to strut her leadership stuff for the six o'clock news.

O my how she will be praised for bravely and stoutly standing up for the concerns of the rich and powerful in the face of the ritualised noise, that's all it really amounts to, coming from the Left. This game is now old hat and the members are basically over it, hence the dwindling level of party membership.

When Gough Whitlam began the key first steps toward taking policy making power away from the organisational wing he famously declared that only the impotent could afford to be pure. But this has things in reverse. Labor now hardly takes any step that confronts the interests of corporate Australia. Julia Gillard might be in the Lodge but she dare not do anything to advance the beliefs and philosophies that animated her initial interest in politics.

She is thereby impotent and she knows it. Leadership of the ALP now means being both impotent and impure.

The latest news therefore tells us something about the state of democracy and the nature of machine politics within the ALP. Were the Labor Party a democracy the sale of uranium to India would not even be an agenda item for the National Conference. The ALP's looming policy U-turn on uranium will further demonstrate the complete and utter hijack of Labor by a cynical and odious cabal within the parliamentary party.

Should the ALP change policy, as expected, the scuttling of a key pillar of Australia's nuclear nonproliferation policy, namely the non export of uranium to states outside of the NPT, will have bipartisan support (although declassified Fraser era cabinet documents suggest that this traditional policy was cynically interpreted by cabinet).

Public opinion is divided on the matter of uranium exports, with a majority actually expressing opposition to open slather export despite the massive propaganda effort made in favour of exports over the past few years. Such bipartisan support would not be an accurate reflection of public sentiment.

Within a democratic society, in theory, bipartisan support for any given policy stands as a reflection of the strength and uniformity of public opinion.

But, in reality, within a society dominated by considerations of power and privilege bipartisan support is a reflection of elite consensus on policy. That is why both major political parties support procorporate neoliberal economic restructuring despite the depth of public opposition.

There are other more global matters also to consider.

Recently headlines around the world were devoted to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's past and present nuclear activities.

Iran is alleged to have engaged in a structured programme consistent with an objective to manufacture a nuclear weapon prior to 2003 and that some aspects of that effort continued beyond 2003. Never, either before or after, 2003 has it been established that Iran has conducted weaponisation activities with weapons grade nuclear material, which constitutes a crucial key step in any formal assessment in favour of manufacture.

Under the NPT ambiguity exists as to what constitutes "manufacture" of a nuclear weapon. The information publicly presented suggests that Iran has sought to develop a latent nuclear weapons capability or that it has in fact engaged in activities expressly devoted to the manufacture of a workable nuclear weapon.

Under Article II of the NPT nonnuclear weapon states pledge not to manufacture nuclear weapons nor to procure foreign assistance in the development of nuclear weapons. The prospect, in part, that Iran is violating Article II of the NPT has encouraged further speculation regarding military action against Iran given the importance we attach to nuclear nonproliferation.

The sale of uranium to India is unambiguously a violation of Article III of the NPT. Under this provision a country like Australia cannot provide "source material", which includes uranium, to a state not designated as a nuclear weapons state under the Treaty that does not accept full scope safeguards, defined as being over all nuclear facilities "anywhere."

India will not allow full scope safeguards. The Nuclear Suppliers Group of states have agreed to give India an "exemption" but that merely amounts to an agreement to violate the NPT.

Those who most blow the trumpet of war when discussing Iran's status with respect to Article II of the NPT are the most vocal in expressing support for violation of Article III.

India sits outside the NPT and has an active nuclear weapons programme which includes the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The export of uranium to India will, at a minimum (more could be said here but is left aside), free up India's domestic uranium stock to be used for the production of weapons grade fissile material and so serves to assist India's nuclear weapons programme.

In recent years whenever Australia has signed a controversial uranium export treaty a key selling point has been that the country concerned is not producing fissile material for weapons. That is not the case with India.

India is engaged in a strategic arms race with Pakistan. Supporters of uranium exports argue that India has enough nuclear weapons in order to deter Pakistan and so exporting uranium to India will not materially aid Delhi's weapons programme.

That argument ignores two points.

Firstly, India has an ambitious and comprehensive national security doctrine. A key component is the development of an operational capability to engage in a limited war against Pakistan. For example, under the controversial "cold start" doctrine India hopes to engage in large scale joint forces operations, a type of Blitzkrieg or what NATO called Air-Land-Battle during the cold war, against Pakistan's strike corps during a regional crisis.

India is acquiring sophisticated, including from the United States, conventional military assets to enable its general staff to feel something like "cold start" can work. But cold start will require some level of escalation control. Strategic parity with Pakistan based on a policy of mutual deterrence does not sit easily with such ambitious operational concepts.

Pakistan will not give up strategic nuclear parity with India without an almighty effort. Pakistan is developing an array of delivery platforms for its nuclear weapons and is also building additional nuclear reactors to supplement its fissile material stocks with plutonium. India also is augmenting its fissile material production capability.

The second of our two points is that India's nuclear weapons policy is not merely framed with respect to Pakistan. China is an important consideration. For example, India is developing a ballistic missile capability that will enable Delhi to hold significant targets within all of China at risk. Interestingly, China appears to be responding by beefing up its intermediate range ballistic missile capability aimed at India.

By selling uranium to both India and China Australia will be able to boast a grim consistency.

Moreover, India considers its nuclear capability to be a reflection of its status as a great power. Strategic parity with Pakistan hardly befits an aspiring global power. Indeed, India has indicated that it would like to develop strategic nuclear submarines and an intercontinental ballistic missile capability. Should India acquire such a capability it would become the newest member of the globe's nuclear weapons complex, a subset of the world's nuclear weapon states, which is defined as states with nuclear weapons of reach beyond their immediate region.

Selling uranium to India will likely help to fuel a dangerous arms race in South Asia, likely will assist India to enhance its strategic capability with respect to China as it boosts its fissile material stocks for more bombs and might well give Delhi more breathing space to develop a strategic nuclear capability of global import.

Nuclear nonproliferation is at heart an ethical principle. You support it, seek to nurture it and give it the highest priority, to the extent that your actions are consistent with it. Trashing Iran is easy. Australia's commitment to being a "good international citizen" with respect to nonproliferation is not to be judged according to how loudly Canberra condemns Iran. What matters is what Australia itself is doing with respect to its nuclear policies and arrangements.

To be sure the export of uranium will improve Australia's relations with India; however a consistent supporter of nonproliferation would argue that the nonproliferation norm should have higher priority. Additionally what is meant by "India" needs to be analysed. It would not include the poor and those who exist in a state of increasing material inequality within Indian society. India, again, is a technical term meaning the national security establishment and the cashed up elite.

Australia's political analysts are, by and large, complicit with the notion that adherence to "liberal internationalism," the so called norms and laws of the society of states, is what a labour and social democratic oriented foreign policy is all about. Notice that the NPT norm and letter of the NPT treaty is violated in this case. In a world where major power war is still a possibility and where advanced science and technology enables destruction on a vast scale humanity has a thin margin of survival provided, in part, by arms control treaties and regimes. The Labor Party, if it supports the position of the leadership, would be helping to further erode just such a regime in order to accommodate short term considerations of wealth and power.

Furthermore labour movement oriented approaches to foreign policy are, at least in theory, meant to be about internationalism understood as solidarity and support for the poor and oppressed of the world. This goes well beyond the narrow and shallow conception of an internationalist foreign policy promoted by our sophisticated and worldly analysts of international relations. But the likelihood of Labor in December adopting an international policy platform built around solidarity with the poor of India is about as likely as my receiving a reply from Santa Claus come December.

Australia is set to export uranium to India because the United States had first entered into a nuclear trade deal with India and used its diplomatic power, with the support of other nuclear exporters looking to make a buck and improve relations with "India," at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The U-turn comes hot on the heels of Kim Beazley's declaration that a US military presence in Australia would represent the "southern tip" of the US led system of global power aimed at China.

At the forefront are material concerns about profit and power.

Those "comrades," or "friends" as Real Julia now calls them, that still believe in the "light on the hill" would do well to ponder this, and much else besides, when it comes time, lo and behold in December, to renew their party membership.