The political parties were mistaken in rejecting the nuclear deal on the grounds that it could stop India from carrying out further nuclear tests and on the grounds that it could damage India’s nuclear deterrent. The compulsions of coalition politics have forced the UPA Government to stall the deal, though Washington has recently clarified that there are no inconsistencies between it and the Hyde Act. There are apprehensions that any further delay in finalizing the process of operational sing the deal will in fact kill the nuclear deal altogether.
Since the position of the Left parties and BJP differs with the UPA government sharply on various questions pertaining to the nuclear deal, it is still unclear as to whether the Congress will be able to reach a broad political consensus among its coalition partners in the next two months. And since the Congress and its other partners within the UPA have given utmost importance to the survival of the current government, it is unlikely that they will be too eager at this juncture to go for early mid-term general elections over the issue of nuclear deal.
There are many in the political establishment in the US who are of the opinion that the Bush administration bent too far backwards to salvage the deal. It is quite possible that a Democrat administration in future will also favor strong ties with India, but is more likely to look at the issue of nuclear non-proliferation more closely than the Republicans, and impose more stringent conditions. The deal’s failure would signal to the US and the world that India still lacks confidence to play a major role on the international stage. The failure of the nuclear deal would mean that it has undermined some of its own self-proclaimed goals in foreign policy. India has long craved the status of a de facto nuclear power, which has been granted to it by the deal.
The nuclear deal granted India a one-lime exemption to retain its nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is unprecedented in the history of international diplomacy. India has also for a long time sought to delink its international fortunes from Pakistan, which the deal has done more or less. The Left consider the nuclear deal to be to India’s interests, but Pakistan is begging the US to for something very similar. In fact, for the first time, the US has signed a deal with big security implications with India and left Pakistan out of the loop.
If the nuclear deal fails in India over domestic political reasons, a new US administration in future, whether Democrat or a Republican, may want to let the dust settle over a period of time before considering what to do next. There is no doubt that the US has its own interests in forging a strong economic and strategic partnership with India at the beginning of the 21st century. Through developing more intensive security ties with India, the US’s primary objective is to maintain its own pre-eminent position in the region by facilitating the rise of friendly centers of power like India that will constrain any Chinese bid for dominance and allow the US to retain its preeminence in Asia.