The State Department on Tuesday said that contrary to some suggestions, it was “fully on board” with President George W. Bush’s policy of extending civilian nuclear cooperation to India.
Noting that the joint statement issued by the US and India on Monday pointed to a “transformed relationship” between the two countries, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters this was something that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “has been, very, very actively involved in.”
Mr Ereli said the development “represents an important step forward not only in our bilateral relationship, but I think in our strategic relationship in the region.” For the agreement to come into effect, the US Congress will have to change a 1978 law barring American nuclear energy aid to nuclear weapons states.
Some US diplomats have pointed to the “non-proliferation Ayatollahs” entrenched in the State Department who feel India should be punished for the nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998 and are opposed to any sharing of nuclear technology.
Writing in the “National Interest”, a public policy magazine, former US Ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill recalled his battles with the “nagging nannies” of the State Department.
Mr Blackwill said the recent transformation of US-India relations did not take place in Mr Bush’s first term because “for most of the President’s first four years, this strategic objective produced a constant struggle with two entrenched forces in the bureaucracy of the US government.”
The first was the non-proliferation lobby. “During the first year of the Bush presidency, I vividly recall receiving routine instructions in New Delhi from the State Department that contained all the counterproductive language from the Clinton Administration’s approach to India’s nuclear weapons programme,” Mr Blackwill wrote. “These nagging nannies were alive and well in that State Department labyrinth. I, of course, did not implement those instructions. It took me months and many calls to the White House to finally cut off the head of this snake back home.”
The second, Mr Blackwill said, was related to the “hyphenators” — those within the US Government who view India only through a Pakistan-India perspective. “With respect to their public statements during these years, if one does a Lexis-Nexis search using the word ‘India’, one will invariably find that the word ‘Pakistan’ appears in the same sentence or the following sentences, or both,” the former Ambassador wrote.
Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writing on the think tank’s Web log, noted: “Much of the arms control community has, predictably, responded with ire to Mr Bush’s announcement that the United States will allow India to buy technology for its civilian nuclear programme without requiring it to give up its nuclear weapons.”
Mr Daalder said that while Mr Bush was trying to change the rules, “it is not at all clear that this is the wrong thing to do.”
However, John S. Wolf, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation Affairs, was critical of the proposed nuclear partnership. Mr Wolf told the New York Times, “It’s disappointing that we’ve given something to India and not gotten something substantial in return. This agreement is difficult to reconcile with the international norms advanced by the United States for the last 40 years.”
At the State Department, Mr Ereli noted the agreement “was a long time coming.”
“It’s been on the basis of dialogue that we’ve engaged bilaterally for many, many years,” he said.
Asked whether the agreements reached between India and the US were intended as a counterweight to China, the spokesman said: “The major point here is that you have a country which is the world’s largest democracy, which is growing and becoming an increasingly influential player in the world scene in all aspects. And that there are opportunities for engagement and there are opportunities to help marry India’s ambitions and India’s capabilities with the United States and mutual interests.”
“We did this with India starting many, many years ago in recognition of the growing role of India, the growing influence of India, the growing power of India and the opportunity for working closely in developing a strategic partnership in ways that benefit both countries and frankly the international community as a whole,” Mr Ereli said.
