The Real Story Behind the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal

At about 2:30 PM on Wednesday, October 8th, President Bush signed into law H.R. 7081, the United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act, a.k.a. the "U.S.-India nuclear deal." In attendance were Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is credited as the architect of the deal, members of Congress and an array of Indian American supporters. It was the final milestone in a long road that started on July 18, 2005, when President Bush and India's Prime Minster Manmohan Singh announced the deal in a surprise joint statement. It was also a good photo op for a beleaguered president whose legacy will be an ill-conceived war and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The legislation signed by Bush is technically known as the 123 Agreement because it amends section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which regulates U.S. cooperation with other nations in nuclear matters and prohibits trading with states that have not signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Not only is India a non-signatory to the landmark treaty, it is, along with Israel and Pakistan, also in contravention of its underlying principle, having secretly developed the bomb by transferring fissile material from its civilian program.

But while the point of the legislation was ostensibly to enable India to meet its energy needs, in reality it was about much more than that. The primary motivation is the U.S. embrace of India as a strategic partner.

An important, unlikely ally

India is no small prize. A founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a traditional champion of "third world" countries at the U.N. and the World Trade Organization, gaining India as a collaborator rather than an adversary was not a stroke of genius by the Bush administration. It started under President Clinton, but could not be consummated because of India's nuclear tests in 1998. (Strobe Talbot, Deputy Secretary of State under Clinton, describes this in his book, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb.) Faced with the rapid

decline of the U.S.'s global popularity in the world and desperate for a foreign policy success, getting India on our side became a "win-win" proposition for the Bush administration. But the so-called "nuclear irritant," as Bush called it, was standing in the way. It had to be removed.

The payoff was immediate. India voted twice against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to an article published by the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, a former Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation, Stephen Rademaker reportedly remarked at a meeting in New Delhi in February 2007: "The best illustration of this [change in India's attitude] is the two votes India cast against Iran at the IAEA. I am the first person to admit that the votes were coerced."

Rademaker left the State Department in January 2007 to take up a "lucrative" job with Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, the firm hired by the Indian Embassy in Washington to lobby for the deal.

India's actions did not go unappreciated. While expressing his frustration with India's continued pursuit of an Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline deal in the face of U.S. opposition, at a hearing for the 123 Agreement this summer, Congressman Gary Ackerman, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Middle East and South Asia

subcommittee, called India's IAEA vote "courageous." But, he warned, he would not continue to make nice if India kept pursuing the pipeline. "Continued pursuit of the pipeline or other investments in Iran's energy sector ? will halt and potentially even roll back the progress made in bilateral relations over the last several years," he said.