This is highly improbable because future US administrations are unlikely to respond to India’s increasing global importance in the same way that the Bush administration responded. Even when driven by the same imperatives, specifics of policies and strategies will change. The next administration in Washington may seek closer military ties or an arms transfer relationship, or even support India’s case for membership to the UN Security Council, but not necessarily a nuclear deal. The highly contingent nature of strategy should not be overlooked.

Second, the current administration’s offer of a nuclear deal was also conditioned by its general distrust of arms control regimes, as well as its specific distrust of the NPT and the NPT’s capacity to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

This is what explains the readiness with which the US moved to modify both its domestic laws as well as global nuclear non-proliferation norms to accommodate India and the outrage that it created among non-proliferation fundamentalists in Washington. Almost all critics of the deal in Washington agreed that it was vital for the US to improve ties with an emerging India, but they disagreed that the nuclear deal was the way to do this.

The third important factor is the Bush administration’s well-deserved tendency for unilateralism. Whatever our misgivings about that tendency, we should recognise that it is that same tendency that drives Washington’s willingness to unilaterally change existing non-proliferation norms for India. Equally, it is the others’ conviction that the US will go ahead on its own, no matter what, that mutes opposition.

... contd.