Chill The Champagne...

After taking salute from the inter-services Guard of Honor infront of Rashtrapati Bhavan, President George Bush told reporters, "I havebeen received in many capitals around the world but I have never seen areception as well-organized or as grand." This was not simply an appreciationof the traditional Indian hospitality but a reflection of the warmth that alarge section of Indians really feel for President Bush. After all, contrary totrends in most other parts of the world, 71 percent of India’s populace holdsa favourable view of the US, with 54 percent supporting President Bush’shandling of global affairs. Even before the trip to New Delhi, President Bush’spersonal standing in India was higher than even in the US (where his pollingnumbers have declined, bad week by bad week, since February 2005) and it isbound to skyrocket after the recently signed nuclear pact between the twonations.

The nuclear agreement, which was first signed during thevisit of the Indian Prime Minister to Washington in July 2005, was awaitingfinalization and it hinged on the ability of the Indian government to come upwith a credible plan to separate its tightly entwined civilian and militarynuclear facilities acceptable to the US. After some tough negotiations over aperiod of seven months that were continuing even as the US President landed inNew Delhi, the two states did manage to arrive at an agreement. India has agreedthat 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors would be classified as civilian and would beopen to international safeguards. The other reactors, including the fast breederreactors, will remain as military facilities, thereby not subject tointernational inspections. The accord also allows India to build future breederreactors and decide whether to keep them in or out of the internationalinspections regime. India has accepted safeguards in perpetuity on its civiliannuclear reactors on the basis of a reciprocal commitment by the US to guaranteeunlimited nuclear fuel supply to India for its civilian program. Unlike othernuclear weapons states, however, India will not have the right to pull out anyof its reactors once they have been put under safeguards.

The ball is now in the US court which will have to get the USCongress to change domestic laws, thereby permitting the US to extend civiliannuclear help to India. The US will also have to get the Nuclear Suppliers’Group (NSG) to accept the deal and be open to nuclear cooperation with India. Itwill also have to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tocome up with India-specific safeguards.

The IAEA chief, Mohammed ElBaradei was quick to endorse thedeal, claiming that this agreement would not only help satisfy India’s growingneeds but would also bring India closer as an important partner in thenon-proliferation regime. But evolving India-specific safeguards could turn outto be a complicated task. Though India had declared itself a nuclear weaponstate after conducting nuclear tests in 1998 it is not recognized as such by theNuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. This makes India’s case uniquein a way and the IAEA safeguards would have to be negotiated accordingly. Indiamight demand that its safeguards regime should be almost equivalent to the levelof the inspection regime for the five nuclear weapon states. In fact, the IndiaIndian government would like the proposed India-specific safeguards with theIAEA to provide "on the one hand safeguards against the withdrawal ofsafeguarded nuclear material from civilian use at any time, and on the other,permit India to take corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted operation ofits civilian nuclear reactors in the event of disruption of foreign fuelsupplies."

But this nitty-gritty is for another time. Today, the mood inIndia is euphoric. And rightly so. The nuclear deal allows India access tonuclear fuel that it needs urgently in light of its fuel shortages andburgeoning energy requirements. It ends three decades of Indian isolation fromaccess to dual use and global high technology flows. At the same time, thestrategic nuclear weapons program that India has maintained for all these yearsdespite tremendous international pressure remains untouched. This is a verysensitive issue for the Indian scientific and strategic community and the IndianPrime Minister had to assure the Indian Parliament that "India will placeunder safeguards only those facilities that can be identified as civilianwithout damaging the nation’s deterrence potential." And he seems to havesucceeded in doing that.

More significantly, there is a sense in India that with thisagreement the world has finally reconciled itself to India’s status as anuclear power and a major global player. The US-India nuclear agreement has beenviewed by most in the Indian strategic community as a part of an emergingIndo-US strategic partnership. With the US making it clear that the nuclear pactwas unique to India and would not be repeated with Pakistan, one of the majorIndia complaints against the US that it tries to equate India and Pakistan alsoseems to have been redressed. The distrust of the US and a reflexiveanti-Americanism that thrived in India for long has now been relegated to asmall group of leftists whose views seem to have long outlived their usefulnessin the Indian foreign policy discourse. Despite its perfunctory criticism of thedeal with the obligatory accusations of the government ‘surrendering’ to theUS, the BJP must be rather envious of the Manmohan Singh government to havesigned the deal that ideally it would have liked to sign. The Left parties, on theother hand, are left with nothing to criticise as all their concerns seem tohave been taken care of in the deal. They perhaps never would have anticipatedthat India would end up getting such a fantastic deal.

With the exception of China, other major global powers suchas Britian, France, Germany, and Russia would willingly support this nucleardeal as it would allow them to sell nuclear fuel, reactors, and equipment toIndia. China, on its part, has made its displeasure with the nuclear pact clearby asking India to sign the NPT and dismantle its nuclear weapons. The officialXinhua news agency of China commented that the US-India nuclear agreement "willset a bad example for other countries." This is in keeping with China’slong-standing policy of preventing India from joining the ranks of major globalpowers and keeping it contained to the confines of South Asia. As this deal is arecognition of India’s rising global profile, China, not surprisingly, will doits best to scuttle it. A few months back it was reported that China has decidedto sell Pakistan six to eight nuclear reactors at the cost of 10 billiondollars. It was a not so subtle message to the US that if Washington decides toplay favorites, China also retains the same right. China’s action alsoconveyed to India that even as India tries hard to break out of the straitjacketof being a South Asian power by forging a strategic partnership with the US,China will do its utmost to contain India by building up its neighboringadversaries.

During his trip, President Bush argued that the United Statesand India are "closer than ever before and this partnership has the power totransform the world." It is this vision that had been the hallmark of the BushAdministration’s policy towards India from the very beginning and led it toproclaim openly that it would help India emerge as a major global player in the21st century. India is viewed not only as a potential counterweight toChina and militant Islam but also as a responsible rising power that needs to beaccommodated into the global order. And the nuclear pact was just one part ofthe larger package that included US-India bilateral cooperation on a range ofissues from investment, trade, and health to agriculture, the environment, andeven mangoes. One of the largest efforts towards joint operability between theUS and Indian armed forces was also announced, leading to the Logistics SupportAgreement that will be concluded shortly. This will allow the armed forces ofboth states to use each other’s facilities for maintenance, servicing,communications, medical care, and refuelling. The US and India also plan to moveforward with agreements that permit the launch of satellites with US-builtcomponents and even US satellites by Indian space launch vehicles.

But while India is celebrating the great "nuclear bargain"that it has managed to get from the US, the real drama has now shifted toWashington, DC and the Indian media and the strategic community would be welladvised to be cautious. The more the US Congress will hear about what a hardbargain India has driven and the euphoria that the deal has generated in thecountry, the more suspicious it will become of the nuclear pact and make lifedifficult for the Bush Administration. With President’s Bush’s popularity atan all time low, the Republicans in the US Congress are no longer in thrall ofhim and the Democrats are itching for a fight. 

Already complaints are being heard that President Bush hasgiven away far too much in the nuclear agreement with India in return for verylittle. Some like Democratic Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts haveindulged in hyperbole by claiming that the accord "undermines the security notonly of the United States, but of the rest of the world." Senate MajorityLeader Bill Frist wants a detailed briefing from the Bush Administration on theimplications of the nuclear deal for nuclear non-proliferation regime. In asimilar vein, Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on Senate ForeignRelations Committee would like the Administration to show the Us Congress thatthis deal would make the US more secure. Even President himself had admittedthat getting the approval of the US Congress is going to be difficult as theBush Administration will have to answer a number of questions satisfactorilybefore the deal is signed off by the US Congress.

President Bush has made it clear that he intends to sell thedeal as part of his energy security plan for the US as well as by highlightingthe importance of India in the US strategic calculus. It will be argued thathelping India, whose economy is projected to be one of the five largest by 2020,develop civil nuclear energy would reduce demand for fossil fuels and lowerpetrol pump prices for US consumers. As of today, India imports three quartersof its oil, natural gas, and coal and takes only 3 percent of its power fromnuclear energy.

The focus of the US Congress, however, will be on theconsequences of this pact for the nuclear non-proliferation regime, especiallyat a time when the US foreign policy is trying to grapple with Iran and NorthKorea. The non-proliferation enthusiasts (or "non-proliferation ayatollahs,"as sections of the Indian strategic community like to call them) have been verycritical of this deal from the very beginning. During the hearings in the USCongress, the majority of the experts empanelled by the House Committee onInternational Relations had argued that the deal weakens the internationalnon-proliferation regime. Only a few, such as Ashley Tellis of the CarnegieEndowment of International Peace, had dared to claim that bringing "India intothe global non-proliferation through a lasting bilateral agreement that definesclearly enforceable benefits and obligations, not merely strengthens Americanefforts to stem further proliferation but also enhances US national security." 

The Bush Administration will have to convince the US Congressthat the basic bargain of the nuclear non-proliferation regime, as exemplifiedby the NPT, will not come under strain with this agreement. The non-nuclearstates as identified by the NPT have pledged not to make nuclear weapons andhave their pledge verified through full-scope safeguards applied by the IAEA. Inreturn they are entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and toreceive assistance in its development. Under the US-India nuclear agreement,India will only accept safeguards on its designated peaceful nuclear facilitieswhile the remaining facilities and the breeder program would continueuninhibited. Concerns are bound to be raised that this apparent double standardthat allows India to escape full-scope safeguards and still obtain nuclearassistance while other states are held to a tougher standard can create problemsfor the future of the NPT.

There will also be concerns about the implications of thisdeal for India’s nuclear weapons program. This deal might allow India to rampup its weapons production as the supply of nuclear fuel to India would free upIndia’s existing capacity to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium forits nuclear weapons stockpile. The US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns isclaiming that he is confident that India will focus most of its future nucleargrowth on civilian energy development, not weapons-building. He is having "troubleunderstanding the argument that somehow this deal makes it more likely thatIndia is going to engage in an arms build up." But the non-proliferationcommunity is under no illusions as India has decided not to accept safeguards onthe prototype fast breeder reactor and the fast breeder test reactor as well ason the reprocessing and enrichment capabilities associated with the fuel cyclefor its strategic program. The idea that India will not focus on nuclear weaponsin the future is hard to square with the Indian Prime Minister’s categoricalassertion that "India will not be constrained in any way in building futurenuclear facilities, whether civilian or military, as per [India’s] nationalrequirements" and "no constraint has been placed on [India’s] right toconstruct new facilities for strategic purposes." 

Then there are more immediate issues such as that of Iraniannuclear aspirations and the signal this deal sends to the Iranian regime. Thevenerable New York Times has already editorialised twice on it andemphasised that "the India deal is exactlythe wrong message to send right now, just days before Washington and itsEuropean allies will be asking the IAEA to refer Iran’s case to the UnitedNations Security Council for further action." 

The Bush Administration’s ability to defend itself againstthese criticisms will in the end determine the fate of the US-India nuclearpact. On its part, India has decided to permanently shut down the Cirus reactorin 2010 and to shift Apsara reactor from the Bhabha Atomic Research Center. Thishas been done partly to assuage some of the concerns of the non-proliferationlobby that has long blamed India for going back on its word by diverting weaponsgrade plutonium to the Pokharan nuclear test of 1974. But whether this is enoughto allay the concerns of the non-proliferation hawks remains to be seen. TheBush Administration has made a remarkable leap of faith in signing the nuclearagreement with India and now they would have to convince the US Congress thatmaking an exception for India is in the interest of the US. Given thebroad-based support the idea of a Indo-US partnership enjoys in the US Congress,it should not be as difficult as it might seem.

But it would indeed by a pity if the US Congress ends upmissing the wood for the trees and declines to ratify the nuclear agreement. Itshould be kept in perspective that the nuclear pact is not an end in itself foreither India or the US. It is about the need to evolve a strong strategicpartnership between the world’s biggest and most powerful democracies at atime when democracy promotion is at the centrepiece of the US foreign policyagenda. To be sure, non-proliferation is an important goal for the US but bymaking India a part of the global non-proliferation architecture, the US willonly be strengthening the broader regime. Despite its long-standing oppositionto the non-proliferation regime, India has so far been an exceptionallyresponsible nuclear power, never having sold or traded nuclear technology andthis deal gives further incentives to India to try to maintain and strengthenthe nuclear regime. India’s recent stand against Iranian nuclear program isjust a case in point. Contrary to several reports that the Indian governmentacted under pressure from the US, India’s decisions to vote against Iran atthe IAEA were based on its calculation that nuclear Iran in a highly unstableMiddle East is not in India’s interest.

Global balance of power is in a flux at the moment. The USand India are both trying to adjust to the new emerging realities and theUS-India nuclear deal is an attempt to craft a strategic partnership that canserve the interests of both states in the coming years. The US Congress shouldweigh this reality carefully before it decides what to do with the recentlysigned pact. Only if the Indians can resist the temptation of breaking out thebubbly, just for a few more days.

Harsh V. Pant teaches in King’s College London.