Despite the carping from what can only be characterised as India’s paranoid class, the US-India nuclear deal represents a great opportunity for India to change its relations with the global nuclear order. Most of the objections raised by the paranoids are fictional or inconsequential.

The most overlooked aspect of the US-India nuclear deal is that it is not just a ‘US-India’ nuclear deal. This is a deal between India and the global non-proliferation order. What it seeks to do is to modify the global rules of the game to benefit just one country: India. The current global rules do not permit any nuclear cooperation between India and the rest of the world because India is technically a non-nuclear state which refuses to accept full-scope safeguards — safeguards on all nuclear facilities in return for any nuclear transaction.

The new rules permit India to continue with its nuclear weapons programme but nevertheless transact with the rest of the world. It represents a victory for India.

Moreover, this is a deal that only the US can swing. Both France and Russia would love to change the current non-proliferation rules so that they could supply India with nuclear plants. Neither can do so because they just do not have the international political clout to change these rules or even to ignore them. And the changes in these rules will only benefit India: both Pakistan and even Israel, the other two nuclear hold-outs, will still be out in the cold.

... contd.