Facing enormous international pressure against India’s strategic programmes in the early 1990s, Rao understood the only way to break out of the corner was to conduct a nuclear test. Much of Indian nuclear diplomacy in the difficult days of early 1990s was focused on buying time for that big moment when the scientists were ready to blast off.

By December 1995, the nuclear explosive was ready and had been lowered into the L-shaped hole in the Pokharan desert. As the US intelligence picked up the signals of an impending test, the Clinton Administration formally reminded Rao of the costly political consequences. And for good measure, the Clinton Administration leaked the story to the “New York Times” which published it on December 15.

For three days, the Rao government was like a “headless chicken”, unwilling to either deny or confirm the report. Unable and unwilling to face up to the pressures, Rao called off the nuclear test barely 48 hours before it was to have occurred.

Like Rao, Manmohan Singh did all the hard work necessary for changing India’s nuclear standing in the world and regaining access to global atomic energy markets that had it been shut out for nearly three and a half decades. At the political level, the nuclear deal was about breaking the nuclear parity with Pakistan and regaining strategic equivalence with China.

But unlike Rao, Manmohan Singh did not have to face a hostile international environment. All the world’s leading powers, except China, had lent political support to India’s full-fledged entry into the nuclear club.

For three months now, what stood between India and its long-standing national objectives was a simple negotiation of a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Informal consultations with the IAEA in recent months had apparently indicated a viable understanding was within reach.

The Bush Administration was all geared up to get the IAEA approval as well as the endorsement of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group by December. Although the US Congress would have taken a while to vote on it, the Russians and French were all set to announce civilian nuclear cooperation with India — during Manmohan Singh’s visit to Moscow next month and the French President Sarkozy’s trip to New Delhi in January.

It is at this very moment that Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have snatched a political defeat from the jaws of victory. The CPM leader Prakash Karat’s objections to the deal in the final phase of its implementation have been interpreted in many ways. He was merely sticking to his own ideology, rigid and outdated as it might be.

In the end it was a political test for the Congress. Was it was ready to put national interest above political expediency? After their initial bravado, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh were not even willing to take the test. They have called in sick.

Sections of the BJP understood from the very outset that the Congress lacked the political courage to complete India’s unfinished nuclear agenda. Opportunistic as its opposition to the nuclear deal was, the BJP recognised that the Congress leadership would crack under sustained pressure.

The Congress’s reluctance to make bold on foreign policy has put more than India’s ties with the US at risk. The UPA was fortunate to inherit an extraordinary foreign policy legacy from the NDA government. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had done a lot of the hard work to end the nuclear dispute with the United States, negotiate purposefully with Pakistan on the Kashmir question, and find a way to resolve the boundary dispute with China.

The UPA government did pick up the ball and run; but has tripped itself at the goal post. As on the nuclear initiative with the US, so on the Kashmir negotiations with Pakistan, the UPA government abandoned the many opportunities that came its way during 2005-06 with Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The negotiations with China have made little progress in the last few years.

If the Congress does not have the conviction to complete the nuclear deal, so patently tilted in India’s favour, there is no hope in hell it will muster the gumption to proceed further with Pakistan and China on issues that necessarily involve territorial concessions.

To be sure, India will have to bear the short term diplomatic costs of the UPA government’s nuclear vacillations. Over the longer term, though, India should survive the UPA’s feckless foreign policy. After all, the US civil nuclear initiative was not a favour to the Congress but a recognition of India’s increasing weight in the international system.

If the Congress cannot or will not make consequential decisions for the nation, its successors might me less constrained. Just as Rao’s decision to blink in December 1995 allowed Vajpayee to get all the nuclear credit in May 1998, the UPA’s failure today will be some one else’s victory down the road.

The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore