The prophets of doom who forecast the failure of Indo-US nuclear talks have been proved wrong and the Indo-US understanding announced on Thursday once again proves, as it did on July 18, 2005, that the leaderships of India and the US have the necessary political will to discard the Cold War baggage of the last sixty years and embark on a mutually beneficial partnership in a new world of balance of power. Why did so many, both in the US and India, go wrong in understanding the nature of the currently evolving international system and the need for the US and India to enhance their relationship and become partners?

Such misunderstandings are not uncommon. Just five years before India became independent and initiated global decolonisation, Winston Churchill declared that he had not become the first minister of her majesty’s government to preside over the liquidation of the British empire. Astute as he was as an observer of international political trends, he could not foresee the end of the imperial era. Mao Zedong made predictions about east-wind prevailing over west-wind with the Soviet Union developing inter-continental ballistic missiles and about the countryside overwhelming cities and developing countries winning against developed countries, just six years before China under his leadership was to switch over to the US side in the Cold War.

It is very human for most people to extrapolate on past memories and overlook the potential of discontinuous changes in international politics. It is also true that more powerful countries are in a position to trigger such discontinuous changes than less powerful ones. The US did it in 1971 when Kissinger persuaded China to change sides and now the Bush-Rice team is attempting a similar discontinuous change with reference to India. Therefore the predictions that the US leadership, in continuation of its Cold War policy, was intent on capping our nuclear arsenal and hampering our fast breeder reactor research proved woefully wrong. In the new balance of power game the US has every interest in ensuring an India with adequate deterrent capability as a balancer.

Similarly, even as the US reversed its policy of thirty years and started on a new energy strategy requiring burning of plutonium in reactors, that objective would not hamper our breeder research. No doubt, during the negotiations there were enormous pressures from the Non-proliferation Ayatollahs of Cold War vintage on the US administration, as there were from nuclear isolationists and people of a bi-polar world mindset on our side. In spite of such pressures, the leaderships on both sides — committed to globalisation, international balance of power, international energy solutions based on nuclear power and other new technologies aimed at reducing the dependence on oil and Indo-US partnership — prevailed and the result is the joint statement of March 2.

This is a victory for the Indian nuclear internationalists and the vision of the Department of Atomic Energy, which from the early fifties asserted its faith in the atom as one of the major sources of energy for humanity. It is a tribute to Dr Homi Bhabha’s three-stage plan for India nuclear energy development. It is also a vindication of those, both in the DAE and outside, who have been arguing since the mid-sixties that India would never get its due in the international system unless it joined the nuclear club, not merely to become a major nuclear weapon power but to earn respect as a provider of high technology in the energy sector. When Bhabha presided over the Geneva Conference in 1955 his vision was on energy, not nuclear weapons.

In fact, at that stage he recommended to Nehru that India should renounce nuclear weapons through a constitutional amendment. Jawaharlal Nehru advised him to focus on nuclear research and leave international diplomacy to him. A sound advice valid even today. Subsequently, Bhabha became a staunch advocate of India acquiring nuclear weapons. India had a major role in international nuclear diplomacy. It was a major beneficiary of Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme. Bhabha was an international leader in the advocacy of nuclear energy as a solution to the world energy problem. He played a leading but critical role at the time of creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and India became one of the permanent members of the board of governors of the IAEA. India was the first developing country to install a nuclear power reactor (at Tarapur) and start on developing the pressurised heavy water reactor with Canadian help.

During the sixties and early seventies India took a very active part in international research on peaceful uses of underground nuclear explosions. Though at one time, in the early ’60s, the US considered helping India with development of nuclear weapons, subsequently Cold War politics generated so much anti-India hostility that India’s quest for nuclear security guarantees was turned down in 1967 and technology denial under the Non-Proliferation Treaty was imposed on India following the Pokhran nuclear test in 1974. The height of the Cold War bias was seen in American tolerance of Chinese proliferation to Pakistan.