An insider’s account of the U.S.-India Nuclear Deal
Hoover Institute Press at Stanford recently published a book by former U.S. Ambassador to India David C Mulford (2005-08) titled Forging Trust With India – The Dramatic Story of Achieving the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement.
This latest publication, available exclusively in electronic format at the Hoover Institution is an extract comprising two chapters from his previous book, Packing for India: A Life of Action in Global Finance and Diplomacy. These two chapters – ‘Writing a New History with India’ and ‘Going the Distance’ – give an insider’s account of the negotiation of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement in the milieu of global and national forces influencing the historic deal and what the two nations did to achieve this agreement. The book includes details of the people and events leading to the negotiation not only in the civil nuclear agreement but also in other areas of cooperation.
The pivotal moment in diplomatic relations in 2005 was led on the U.S. side by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and on the Indian side by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to establish India’s access to the world of civil nuclear commerce and technology. India had been isolated since 1974 by its unwillingness to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the development of its own strategic nuclear weapon.
Ambassador Mulford enumerates various phases of negotiations in the U.S. Congress, including the amendment of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the endorsement of wide-ranging changes by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the acceptance of India’s possession of civil nuclear technology by the unanimous consensus of the forty-five-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.
He writes that the two nations have not yet fully realized their potential in partnering on the commercialization of nuclear energy. On a personal level, the diplomat fondly reminisces about his and his wife’s decision to accept the Ambassadorship to India.
Factors leading to closer U.S.-India ties
U.S. impetus behind the compromises towards India was its strategic play of offsetting rising Chinese power and maintaining shared and balanced power in the region.
The major developments in the early 1990s that shifted India’s interests closer to the U.S.’ were the collapse of the Soviet empire and the near-bankruptcy of India in 1991 leading to the reform process and gradually opening to the global economy.
Mulford explains the nature and pace of the economic reform process in India as gradual but lasting – a tribute to India’s consensual approach to foundational changes put in place during the 1990s that promoted stronger growth. Notably, despite changing governments, there’s been no backward movement or reversals on the set reforms.
Mulford emphasizes improving U.S.-India relations and reduction in the role of government in India’s economy, mentioning liberalization in the telecommunications sector, including new startup opportunities and privatization of government entities; and the rise of India’s information technology sector.
U.S. India civil nuclear cooperation
India had developed its own nuclear weapons and a modest civil nuclear industry, writes Mulford, with regard to civil nuclear cooperation.
In recognition of India’s organic growth, keeping India isolated from the world was both unrealistic and a threat to the world’s nonproliferation regime. If isolated, India’s nuclear industry would develop its body of reactors without being covered by IAEA safeguards. The U.S. understood that it was better to have India’s future civil nuclear reactors covered by international safeguards than to leave India’s nuclear facilities entirely outside the system.
India had demonstrated that its strategic nuclear program had kept to a scale sufficient for deterrence purposes as opposed to being a growing arsenal for foreign aggression. In the future, India’s nuclear science community would clearly be able to make an important contribution to global nuclear affairs, which today, in its isolation, was beyond reach.
“On India’s side there would have to be a willingness to separate its civil nuclear activities from its strategic nuclear defense program. This was not easy, since civil and strategic nuclear development in India was one and the same. Also, although India had a clean record of nonproliferation, it did not follow the established regime of international safeguards on nuclear facilities or conform to the standards within the group of forty five member states making up the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India was not open to IAEA inspections or potentially intrusive U.S. demands for compliance in highly technical areas of civil nuclear activities.”
Another difficult decision for India was voting for sanctions on Iran for the first time thereby strengthening its credibility on nuclear affairs with both the U.S. administration and Congress.
Setbacks and realignment
According to the Ambassador, the two major events near the end of the nineties that caused a setback to India’s progress and its improving relations with the U.S. were the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and India’s decision in 1998 to test a nuclear weapon in direct contravention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1974, which, India had never signed.
But, U.S. sanctions lasted fewer than four years before they were lifted by President Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The negative fallout from sanctions on U.S.-India relations has been long-lasting and even today is still only gradually being overcome by U.S. defense suppliers, writes Mulford.
Attack on the Indian parliament shortly after the lifting of U.S. sanctions by Pakistani terrorists exposed the subcontinent as a more dangerous place than earlier perceived.
But Mulford opines that despite the traumatic events since 9/11 in the US, India’s large Muslim population was not radicalized. Islamic opposition to the U.S. had not taken root in India. India’s Muslims, writes Mulford, were Indians first and Muslims second.
Mulford mentions differing attitudes towards Pakistan amongst Indians based on age and location in India, and the misguided view of the U.S. State Department in Washington that Indo-Pak issues dominated all aspects of the Indo-U.S. relationship.
He writes about a wide range of subject matters emphasizing the far-reaching diversity of America’s growing interface with India.
“The future of U.S.-India relations would be driven more by our civil societies, private sectors, and interpersonal relations than by the official bilateral core of the relationship. The range of engagement was truly comprehensive, touching virtually every area of human endeavor.”
Besides political and economic relations, the U.S. engaged with India in science, health care and disease control, agriculture, space, education, transportation, civil aviation, U.S. AID, all branches of the military, defense sales, human trafficking, religious freedom, public diplomacy, FBI and legal affairs, intelligence, counterterrorism, and commercial services.
Balancing economic growth and environmental concerns
Ambassador Mulford enumerates several major constraints that India would need to overcome to reach its economic ambitions. Building a world-class infrastructure across the full range of its economy, diversifying its energy base to enhance its capacity for growth, reducing its dependence on imported oil and domestic coal, and transforming its rural economy to raise growth levels substantially in its agricultural sector are some of his suggestions.
The broadest challenge with implications for India’s social and economic progress over the next decade centers on education, he writes. He is critical of India’s primary and secondary education systems which are sadly lacking in both scale and quality.
“India will have the largest, most productive, and youngest workforce in the world at just the right time to propel India’s economy forward. This optimistic projection assumes that India successfully educates this bulge of young workers and provides them with jobs and adequate health care. Otherwise, an aspiring body of frustrated young people might prove to be a political liability.”
He also writes that the growth needed for India would require a giant leap in electric power over the next twenty years. If coal was its chief resource for electric power, India would become one of the world’s great economic powers and also the biggest polluter of the environment.
Ambassador Mulford lists complex challenges in various policy areas including the flow of funds for U.S. AID’s widespread social and economic programs in India.
“I found that in India, AID programs in the fields of agriculture, power, water, women’s rights, and health were effective and valuable, especially from social and economic returns on the relatively small amounts invested. I also found that AID’s people in India to be of high quality and committed to their projects.”
Counter-terrorism cooperation
Ambassador Mulford further writes that In the years following 9/11 in the US, after initial solidarity between the two nations, India was concerned about the apparent double standards of the U.S. government toward terrorism in India, due to its failure to act against Pakistan after repetitive terrorist attacks, including the attack on India’s parliament in early 2002.
The U.S. continued to regard Pakistan as a critically important ally, vital to its interests in Afghanistan. U.S. aid, including new or modernized F-16s, continued to flow into Pakistan without any significant conditions attached. In India, however, the attitude was that F-16s are not used for crowd control in situations of domestic unrest; they can carry nuclear weapons and be seen as for deployment against India.
Counterterrorism was the one critical area of U.S.-India strategic cooperation that had remained at a standstill for four years, writes Mulford. A new and highly classified technology that could be the key to India in its struggle to preempt terrorist activity on the ground in India was introduced for consideration.
The continued pattern of more frequent attacks around India, coupled with the now quite impressive seven-year track record of the U.S. in preventing another 9/11 at home suggested that India could benefit from U.S. cooperation in this area.
India’s most urgent challenge to identify and punish the perpetrators after the attack in Mumbai was also a turning point in Indo-U.S. counter-terrorism cooperation. The U.S. provided forensic assistance at the crime scene which India immediately accepted. FBI gave on-the-ground assistance to the Mumbai police leading to revelations that forced Pakistan out of its denial mode. It also gave visibility on the global stage that the attack was carried out by Pakistani nationals who had planned the attack on Pakistani soil.
The FBI and Mumbai police assembled the dossier of evidence implicating the government of Pakistan and distributed it to each of the eleven countries that lost citizens in the attack. The joint effort of the FBI and the Indian authorities marked a critical turning point in U.S.-India counterterrorism cooperation.
Yet Pakistan still denied government involvement, and the official position of the U.S. remained that no smoking guns had been found in Pakistan. Such was, and apparently still is, the capacity for denial in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the CIA writes Mulford.