To get an idea of the changes envisaged, one has only to revisit the original negotiation of the NPT. To quote George Perkovich “of the four major issues of concern to India - ending further production of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems; securing commitments to pursue nuclear disarmament; obtaining security guarantees; and retaining the right to conduct peaceful nuclear explosions - the nuclear weapon states offered little give. They concentrated their exertions on three narrower objectives (which included) precluding the transfer of nuclear weapons and sensitive materials and know-how to other states”. India of course lost that battle and opted out of the treaty. Perkovich adds: “India may have had logic, principle and the 1965 negotiating mandate on its side, but the United States and other nuclear weapon states had power on their side.” Presumably, this latter group included those protected by the nuclear umbrella of the nuclear weapon powers. The positions of Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland and New Zealand at that time are not known.

The issue today, of course, is not what countries did or did not do 40 years ago, but whether those countries which today feel that, in spite of the changed global scenario, India will accept conditions on international cooperation that are “prescriptive” are willing or able to stem the tide of change. Now, as then, the US has the ‘power’; it also has the obligation under the Indo-US Joint Statement of July 18 2005, to persuade its friends and allies “...to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India”. India’s role would seem to be more or less over.

... contd.