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SIUC guest speaker keeps it simple when it comes to U.S. foreign policy

BY SCOTT FITZGERALD, the southern

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:21 PM CDT

CARBONDALE - Chief Washington correspondent David Sanger of The New York Times knows how to keep it simple when he explains the complex issues that surround U.S. foreign policy.

A few hours before he talked to the Southern Illinois University Carbondale community Wednesday night in the SIU Law School Auditorium, he visited with The Southern Illinoisan at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, one of many SIUC branches that sponsored Sanger's visit to Carbondale.

Sanger is a past Pulitzer Prize winner for his work on teams that reported on the space shuttle Challenger disaster in the 1980s and struggles within the Clinton administration over controlling exports to China a decade later. He focused his talk Wednesday night on China, Japan and India and the rise of those particular countries as America's strategic competitors.

"I was in India two weeks ago. It's pretty dicey about whether they will accept it or not," he said about Indian reaction to U.S. legislation last summer that created a exception for the one of the world's largest democracies that has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Under the new law, the U.S., which was prohibited from selling commercial nuclear technology and fuel to India, can now do so even though the country refuses to sign the treaty.

Iran, on the other hand, has signed the treaty, yet the U.S. is seeking harsher economic sanctions against that Middle Eastern country, which is attempting to enrich uranium.

"It's a macro-dilemma. It's like the world turned upside down," Sanger said, noting that the U.S. lifts sanctions against a country that already has a nuclear arsenal, yet is trying to impose more sanctions on a country that does not have nuclear weapons.

"They (India) knew they wanted to build a bomb," Sanger said, noting that the communist party within India is dubious about the U.S. lifting sanctions because it could lead to giving up sovereignty and open the country up to more (United Nations) inspections.

The Bush administration wants to build an amicable relationship with India as a hedge against the threat of a military China in the future, the journalist said.

Sanger said he is also looking with interest at the current presidential campaign, noticing that the candidates are being very careful when talking about other countries that have nuclear weapon arsenals.

"You've seen the candidates operate with extraordinary care," he said with a smile.

scott.fitzgerald@thesouthern.com

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