Fast breeding confusion

There is persistent misunderstanding about India-US relations today. Their primary impulses are political ? not economic or military. The proposed India-US nuclear cooperation agreement is a case in point.

There is persistent misunderstanding about India-US relations today. Their primary impulses are political — not economic or military. The proposed India-US nuclear cooperation agreement is a case in point. Were it not entirely driven by geopolitics, there would have been no good reason why the US would tinker with the increasingly effective technology embargo on India’s nuclear and space programmes. No other friend, neither Russia nor France, was inclined to catch the nuclear bull by the horns till the US came along with a unique deal that would allow India to keep its nuclear weapons, as well as access nuclear materials, technology and R&D till now denied from the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel.

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Since politics trumps other considerations, we think the India-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement is very much on track. To dampen the impression that it was a done backroom deal, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and Undersecretary Nick Burns are now taking pains to point to the many complexities that still need to be resolved. Some of them are genuine, but others are holdovers of the past, not unexpected when you make a U-turn. The Bush administration needs to get the US Congress to pass legislation exempting India from the intricate web of restraints that have been in place since India tested a nuclear device in 1974. This is not an easy task in the American system. But recent remarks of people like John Kerry and erstwhile India-baiters like Dan Burton indicate that this is not an insurmountable task. In the Indian case, the Union cabinet does have the legal right to decide. Yet, they are going out of their way to take everyone, especially the nuclear science community, with them.

Unfortunately, tunnel vision is making some of them see the issue from a purely technical — and deeply flawed — perspective. Take the fast breeder reactor issue, for example. If this vaunted technology is for purely civilian use, then there should be no objection to it being placed in the civil list. To protect technology secrets, safeguards can be delayed till the reactor is actually working. But to expect the NSG to endorse a deal with this open-ended source of weapons- usable plutonium out of the civilian list is to demand a free lunch — an item that is usually rare in the real world.