THE U.S.-INDIA CIVILIAN NUCLEAR COOPERATION AGREEMENT

India has always posed a unique problem to the global nuclear regulatory regime. Though a peaceful democracy, it has steadfastly refused to accept the NPT and been one of its most outspoken critics. For many years, the international community tried to ignore the nuclear activities of non-official nuclear powers but was unsure how to deal with them.

Finally, in early 2006, President George W. Bush signed a “strategic partnership” with India that would eventually rescue it from the “international nuclear wilderness.”¹ The partnership agreement lifts the ban on American sales of civilian nuclear fuel and reactor components to India without forcing India to join the NPT. In return, India will be partially included into the “non-proliferation mainstream” by bringing 65 percent (and eventually 90 percent) of its nuclear power generation capacity under international regulation. International inspectors have access to 14 of 22 civilian nuclear reactors.. India’s concession for the inspection of 80 percent of the reactors was made through the United Nations as a step toward implementation of the U.S.-India agreement.²

Critics of the deal object to the fact that India is not required to limit its arsenal of nuclear weapons, nor are its breeder reactors included in the group to be placed under international oversight. They warn,

“The rules had started to bite: India was running short of supplies of uranium for both civilian and military purposes. By allowing it to import nuclear fuel directly for its civilian reactors, America will be directly easing the bottlenecks in its weapons programme.

Furthermore:

[Bush] is gambling that the future benefits of accepting a rising India in all but name as a member of the nuclear club will outweigh the shock to the global anti-proliferation regime, already under sever strain…India could instead prove the exception that fatally weakens the rules.”³
As the India, Iran, and North Korea examples show, the international community still has not figured out how to deal with nuclear states that choose to circumvent the framework established by the NPT. The proposed US-India nuclear cooperation agreement represents an attempt at a compromise solution, an effort to foster positive habits of compliance in a reluctant state. But the agreement may undermine the very nonproliferation regime it seeks to protect and remove the crushing pressures of isolationism just when that strategy was beginning to work. The agreement was passed by Congress and signed into law on December 18, 2006.⁴