The Ministry of External Affairs on 8 December 2017 welcomed the decision of the Wassenaar Arrangement to admit India as the 42nd member of the organisation, which aims to regulate trade and use of dual-use technology. Following admission into the club, India will get access to high technology, which will help address the demands of Indian space and defence sectors. It will also boost New Delhi’s chances of joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, commonly known as the Wassenaar Arrangement, is a multilateral export control regime (MECR) with 42 participating states including many former Coordinating Committee members for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) countries.

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The Wassenaar Arrangement was established to contribute to regional and international security and stability by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations.

Participating states seek, through their national policies, to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities, which undermine these goals, and are not diverted to support such capabilities.

It is the successor to the Cold War-era COCOM, and was established on 12 July 1996, in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. The Wassenaar Arrangement is considerably less strict than COCOM, focusing primarily on the transparency of national export control regimes and not granting veto power to individual members over organizational decisions. A Secretariat for administering the agreement is located in Vienna. Like COCOM, however, it is not a treaty, and therefore is not legally binding.

Every six months member countries exchange information on deliveries of conventional arms to non-Wassenaar members that fall under eight broad weapons categories ~ battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs), large-calibre artillery, military aircraft, military helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems, and small arms and light weapons.

The People’s Republic of China and Israel are not members, but they have aligned their export controls with Wassenaar lists, and are significant arms exporters. The Arrangement is open on a global and non-discriminatory basis to prospective adherents that comply with the agreed criteria. Admission of new members requires the consensus of all members.

India joined as the 42nd participating state on 7 December 2017. “Wassenaar Arrangement participating states reviewed the progress of a number of current membership applications and agreed at the plenary meeting to admit India which will become the Arrangement’s participating state as soon as the necessary procedural arrangements for joining the Arrangement are completed,” the grouping official said in a statement. India’s application was supported by Russia, USA, France and Germany.

“The Plenary meeting of the WA held on 6 -7 December 2017 in Vienna, Austria, has decided to admit India. The necessary procedural arrangements for India’s admission will be completed shortly,” the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs said at his weekly briefing.

On the scope of the Arrangement, he said, “India’s membership is expected to facilitate high technology tie-ups with Indian industry and ease access to high-tech items for our defence and space programmes. While membership of the Arrangement would not automatically entail any preferential treatment from other Arrangement-members, it would create the grounds for realignment of India in the export control policy framework of other Arrangement members, including eligibility for certain licensing exceptions.” Membership in the Arrangement has been part of India’s quest for membership in the export control organisations.

Russia had expressed optimism about India’s membership in the Wassenaar Arrangement. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov had said earlier that Russian support for Indian membership in the organisation will help bilateral ties, and added, “This is an example and reflection of Russia’s unwavering support to India’s membership of international nuclear control regimes.”

With its admission to the Arrangement, India has reached another important milestone in its decade-long efforts to join multilateral export control regimes. Its entry as the WA member follows its admission as a full member of the Missile Transfer Control Regime (MTCR) in June last year. It will enhance India’s non-proliferation credentials although it is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It will enable India to acquire critical technologies too.

Importantly, it is expected to strengthen India’s case for admission to the NSG. And finally, one of the Wassenaar Arrangement’s aims is to prevent critical technologies from falling into the hands of terrorist groups. As a country that has major concerns regarding state-sponsored terrorist groups, India can take the lead in strengthening the Wassenaar Arrangement’s hands in blocking the proliferation of technologies to terrorists.

India’s approach to multilateral export control regimes has undergone a huge change over the years. For several decades, it preferred to stay out of these regimes, as it perceived them as discriminatory. Its approach began changing in the wake of its signing of the India-US nuclear deal. With the door to trade in nuclear energy opening up, it realised the value of being a part of these regimes. Most of the suppliers of high-end dual-use technologies are members and if it wanted access to such technology, it would need to be part of such groupings. Consequently, India began seeking membership of these regimes. With its admission to the MTCR, India was able to sell the BrahMos missiles to countries like Vietnam.

So far, it has been admitted into the MTCR and the Wassenaar Arrangement. It is yet to secure entry to the Australia Group, which restricts trade in materials used to make chemical and biological weapons, and the NSG, which controls export of nuclear material and technology.

China has been blocking India’s entry to the NSG and is likely to continue to do so. India could use its membership in the MTCR and the Wassenaar Arrangement as a bargaining chip to get China, which is not a part of these two regimes, to endorse India’s entry to the NSG. This will not be easy but India should step up its diplomatic efforts to get China to rethink its obstructionist approach.

What is most striking about India’s NSG membership saga is not New Delhi’s persistent failure to make headway on one of the current government’s central foreign policy priorities, but the extent and durability of China’s uneasiness at allowing India a seat at the table. Beijing’s recalcitrance on the question of NSG membership for India is a clear signal that India is and remains a major nuclear challenger to China ~ at least where global recognition of the two countries’ non-proliferation credentials is concerned.

China may agree on the give-and-take principle to get access to MTCR and Wassenaar Arrangement with India’s help if it allows India to get membership of NSG without becoming a spoilsport.

(The writer is retired  Professor of International Trade. He may be reached at vasu022@gmail.com)