Nobody can claim the deal is perfect, or gives us everything we would have liked. But all international agreements require movement away from one’s first preferences. All too often in our history we have suffered by insisting on the ideally desirable and rejecting what is attainable. The key questions are: can we do better without the agreement, or, can we get a better one?

The answer to the second question is surely no. The agreement has given us as much as it has because of a most particular combination of circumstances which can hardly come again. To the contrary, there are forces at work internationally that will only complicate our position — eg. the growing pressure for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or the growing potential of American opponents of the agreement.

As for holding out for something better, we must examine dispassionately the two main charges against the present deal: that it binds us not to test, and that it ‘caps’ our nuclear arsenal. It is perhaps not sufficiently realised that even under the Non-Proliferation Treaty — from which we are being exempted — a state can opt out and conduct a test if it feels that is vital to its security, provided it is prepared to face the consequences. Nothing in the Indo-US agreement prevents us from doing likewise. Rights are not bestowed by others: they are what one is capable of exercising. The fear that the agreement negates our sovereign right to test is to overlook our sovereign right to abrogate. The real issue is facing the consequences, which is entirely a matter, not of laws and agreements, but of our self-confidence. What is called the international community has long sought to stop our testing by threatening penalties. We faced those when we thought necessary; we can do so again. The point of relevance is that if we ever decide to end our unilateral moratorium on testing, the international reactions can be no worse if we complete this deal than if we forego it.

... contd.