Given the widely divergent strategic goals and policies followed by India and the US in the past, particularly on nuclear non-proliferation, the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement was never going to be as simple as one, two, three!

The US, since the mid-sixties, has actively sought to deny proliferation of nuclear weapons/technology outside the P5 countries. It was the principal promoter of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). President Clinton revised the US nuclear strategy and doctrine for a more active role when new threshold states including India started emerging. The Defense Counter-proliferation Initiative of 1993 included eight functional areas: intelligence, counterforce capabilities, surveillance, inspections, passive defence, active defence, export control and counter terrorism. President George Bush upgraded it to a ‘forward policy’ in 2002 by including pre-emptive or preventive use of force in handling proliferation and ‘taking anticipatory actions to defend’.

For much of the Cold War period, India’s bilateral relations with the US had remained rancorous partly due to different perceptions of the world order but mostly due to US support to Pakistan. Some of those doubts continue to persist. When India blasted its way out of nuclear ambiguity on May 11,1998, causing a major setback to non-proliferation, the US reaction was immediate and severe.

Given this, the tight-rope walking involved in negotiating this deal can well be imagined, especially after

Dr Manmohan Singh committed in Parliament that India’s strategic autonomy shall not be compromised in any way, and the US Congress passed the Hyde Act in December 2006. It is evident that the 22-page ‘The 123 Agreement’, named after Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954, worked out after two years of tough negotiations cannot and will not meet every aspiration of the two parties in perpetuity. But I believe that, despite some doubts in a toothcomb analysis, India’s strategic autonomy has not been compromised.

... contd.