The nuclear agreement should go through

George Bush said all the right things during his just-completed visit to India: he was “dazzled” by the state reception, reaffirmed that India is a “natural ally”, declared that India and the US are “brothers in the cause of human liberty”, even paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi by quoting the words of Martin Luther King.

Now comes the difficult part: returning to the prosaic reality that democracy remains a cacophonous and messy affair, doubly so when the “world’s largest” and the “world’s oldest” democracies get together.

Opponents of the president’s nuclear promises to India are digging in their heels for a Congressional fight. In India, the Left’s lingering suspicion of the US and concerns of overzealous international scrutiny of the country’s nuclear programme are generating as much opposition.

The nuclear agreement should go through. Not only is energy cooperation quite simply the most essential policy area for mitigating geopolitical rivalry today, but the nonproliferation debate is better served by recognising positive examples of nuclear safety and circumspection, such as India, rather than lumping the country in the same category as Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. Reality should not wait too long for antiquated logic to adjust.

Equally importantly, nuclear cooperation alone cannot define the relationship, and American fears might be considerably offset if India comes to be viewed as a partner in a broad range of economic and strategic arenas.

President Bush made a point to thank members of the Indian diaspora and the business community on both sides for building and nurturing the bilateral relationship even during times of mutual estrangement.

This has become a model of globalisation's virtues — interdependence and cooperation — trumping the geopolitical vices of rivalry, suspicion and competition. It also reminds us that necessary technologies flow from military as well as business ties, which require an equal amount of pressure from individual corporate leaders on both sides to help India advance economically.

India’s aspirations to great-power status will never be achieved by the trappings of military might and geopolitical positioning alone; the country needs to earn respect as a modernising and equitably developing nation. This requires that India consistently emphasise the non-military aspects of cooperation with the US in order to achieve maximum benefits.

The initiative on agriculture  announced by Bush and Manmohan Singh is instructive in this regard. Broad-based relationship-building measures will ensure that the Indo-US ties remain robust in between “dazzling” visits by leaders from both sides.

The writer is a Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC