In lifting the three-and-a-half-decade-old nuclear blockade against India, the international community has come to terms with a rising India and its geopolitical consequences for the global order in the 21st century. That it was a wrenching decision for the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and demanded unprecedented lobbying from the highest political levels in Washington and New Delhi, underlined the extraordinary scope of the issues at play.

Over the last three years, as India endlessly argued with itself the entry-price into the elite nuclear club that was outlined in the July 2005 agreement with the United States, its chattering classes refused to appreciate the kind of strategic readjustment that was being asked of the rest of the world — recognise India’s nuclear exceptionalism, discard the notion of nuclear parity between New Delhi and Islamabad, and accept India’s strategic equivalence with China.

All governments in New Delhi in recent decades have pursued these seemingly impossible national objectives. It is the Manmohan Singh government, however, that finally provided the long-awaited geopolitical breakthrough for India in partnership with US President George W. Bush.

That it took a lot of arm-twisting to silence the churlish white knights of the West and stop China from throwing a monkey wrench into the works highlighted the difficulties in getting the NSG to accept a change of nuclear rules painstakingly crafted over the last four decades, for India, and India alone.

The NSG was also asked to do this at a time when non-proliferation has emerged as one of the principal international security concerns and rules on high-technology transfers are being tightened against other countries.

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