It has been just over one year since President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a joint statement opening up the possibility of a resumption of full US and international nuclear aid to India. Such international support had been key to India's original development of its nuclear infrastructure and capabilities, and was essentially blocked after the country's 1974 nuclear weapons test. New Delhi's subsequent refusal to give up its nuclear weapons and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or otherwise open its nuclear facilities to international inspection has kept it largely outside the system of regulated transfer, trade and monitoring of nuclear technology developed over the last three decades.
Both New Delhi and Washington are lobbying hard for the necessary legislative approval of the deal from the US Congress, and for the blessing of the 45 countries who are members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls almost all international trade in these technologies. The deal has already passed through two Congressional commitees, as well as a vote by the full House of Representatives. With a final vote in the US Senate slated for September, in mid-August Prime Minister Singh went on the offensive against strident domestic criticism, emphasising that whatever restrictions the new US policy will have for Indian nuclear-weapons testing, "there is no question of India being bound by a law passed by a foreign legislature."
The 2005 agreement requires the US to amend its own laws and policies on nuclear technology transfer, as well as to work for changes in international controls on the supply of nuclear fuel and technology so as to allow "full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India". In exchange, New Delhi would identify and separate its civilian nuclear facilities and programmes from its nuclear weapons complex, and would volunteer the former for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection and safeguarding. Yet, as they consider the deal and ways to transform its broad framework into legal reality, the political elites in each country have ignored some crucial issues.
Policy analysts in the US have fiercely debated the wisdom of the Indo-US deal, but the discussion has been rather narrow. Confined to proliferation-policy experts and a few interested members of Congress, the discussion has largely focused on the lack of details in the deal, the order of the various steps to be taken by the respective governments, and the potential consequences for US nonproliferation policy. The larger policy context of a long-standing effort to co-opt India as a US client, and thereby sustain and strengthen US power (especially with regard to China), has gone unchallenged. There is also little recognition of how the agreement could allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal.