Politics of the Nuclear Deal and India-US Relations

Dr. Stephen Cohen, Brookings Institution

Thank you, Prof. Malviya, Dr. Lawrence Prabhakar and Gen. Raghavan, for the invitation to come here. This is an ideal setting and I am delighted to perhaps talk about my own research project, which is the new book I am starting on Indian military modernization. It is seen in a large framework and analyses what kind of strategic partner India might make, and the partnership that it might conclude with the United States. The book assumes that the nuclear deal will go through or that if it doesn't, then the transformation in US-Indian relations will continue on its present track anyway.

The theologians or the ayatollahs, some of whom I think are dogmatic ideologues, have legitimate concerns about their own country's national interests. Once you get beyond the names, they are arguing about different estimates of the future. These estimates of the future are shaded by their interpretation of the past and the real question for both countries is - will the future be like the past or will the future be different? Both the opponents and the supporters of the deal have judgments about the past and about the future.

From an American perspective, critics argue that Indian behaviour in the past has been bad, that it is unreliable in the nuclear area, though not as bad as Pakistan. India has been unhelpful to American policy and particularly to the non-proliferation regime. They project that behaviour into the future and that is the dominant factor for them - India's proliferation behaviour in the future, which they see as a projection of past behaviour. In fact, there are two areas where it has not been exceptional. One is leakage out of India - there have been a number of little cases but none of them major. This is unlike Pakistan where nuclear technology, nuclear material and sensitive material have been transferred. The other area is that of non-proliferation. It is said that India has been very effective in not only keeping out of the NPT which was its right but also in trashing the NPT. In other words Indian policy has been not only to stay out of the NPT, but also to supply the Iranians and other countries with arguments against it. When you read the Iranian literature, they reiterate all the language that India developed 20-30 years ago. So, there is a lot of unhappiness among the opponents of the deal who are non-proliferation specialists.

What is surprising is that even the opponents of the deal actually like India, admire it, respect it and want India to be a major power. So the argument that the purpose of the deal is to constrain and shackle India is nonsense. It is a transformed relationship. Some critics of the deal argue that we are going to be pushed around by the Americans. There is no American who wants to push India around; well obviously the Americans would like India to be more friendly in terms of its Middle East policy, its Iranian policy in particular, but that is not the overwhelming American view at all.

On the Indian side, clearly the opponents project past American behaviour into the future and from their point of view, especially the scientists, America has consistently tried to keep India down. They believe that their global policy has been to target India and to restrain it, from the 1970s. This is simply not true. Most of the time, sanctions on India was focused on non-proliferation. In fact, America did not care about India's rise in one way or other. So, in a sense there has been an Indian self-hypnosis about its importance for decades, which simply does not compare with the facts. Now that India is important both in terms of economic power and potentially military power, it has been quickly recognized by the United States and by the whole spectrum of American strategists and that is an unquestionable fact.

So I think the opposition in both sides rests on the projection of the past. And I think the opposition in both countries may be right. There may be bad Indian behaviour in the future, and American sanctions that follow, but my judgment is that it is not likely. When I testified before the Senate, the critical question was of what India will do if it is given a green signal to acquire as much fissile material as possible. I told them that in my assessment of the future, India would pursue a very modest nuclear weapons program. I do not think it is in India's strategic interest to become a major nuclear weapons country. But it could, and in fact it might have to do that. That is an option open to India.

The nightmare scenario of the Indian opponents of the deal is that somehow India would get caught in an agreement or be prohibited from acting freely in the future. My judgment of the future is that if India's environment changes to the point where it feels it has to start testing and deploying significant numbers of nuclear weapons, we are going to be worrying about other things than India. We are going to be worried about an expansionist aggressive China, which has pushed India into this mood. I don't think that is going to happen. So my judgment of the future differs from that of the opponents in both countries and they have a lot in common.

Now let me talk about the politics of it. This is probably the best chance we will have for many years, to seal a deal like this. The deal may be imperfect but it is the best deal we are going to get in a long time. If the deal fails, I do not think it is going to destroy US-Indian relations because they have been transformed by India's economic transformation and India's more independent role in the world. For the Americans, it is the third major power in Asia or one of the three major powers in Asia, economically not quite so but certainly politically in terms of ideology, democracy and strategy. That argument was accepted totally by the Bush administration. In fact, some of them went a little bit too far, stating that we would like to build up India to be a balance to China. I was quite astonished by their statement that the goal of American policy is to build India to a great power. That has not been subjected to much critical analysis but I don't know when American policy was to build a country to be a great power. After World War II we wanted to revive Japan and Germany not as great military powers, but as great economic powers, to restore them. It is interesting that nobody has actually debated or discussed the assertion that American policy is and should be to build India as a great power. I think that India is going to be a great power whether we help it or not. I think that on the one hand, there is American expectation that India will be a new ally, a faithful friend in Asia and Indian fear of the same thing on the other. India will not be a new ally of the sort that we are used to having. India will pursue its own course. For the most part, Indian interest and American interest can overlap - whether it is strategic, economic, political or even ideological.

What you see in Washington is a bit of an oversell of the relationship. That is what happens when you try to persuade American politicians, you make a case which is exaggerated. I think India's importance in the world is by and large, true. On the Indian side, Dr. Manmohan Singh has had a difficult time explaining the relationship. I think the political constellation is interesting and if he cannot push the deal through, I am not sure the next government can do so. So I am waiting to see what the Senate does. I don't think the relationship will founder based on what the Senate does or does not do but I do think that it is good to at least begin the process of getting it off the table so that our two countries can concentrate on other things. We have a lot of strategic differences and a lot of strategic interests in common. China, Pakistan, technology transfer and terrorism in India's neighbourhood are all very important issues. From the Indian point of view, not having this deal is going to make it much harder to transfer technology - military and otherwise, and I think that is an important factor.

From an American point of view it is unlikely that another President will be as enthusiastic about India as this one has been. George W. Bush came to office, convinced that India was an important power. He seems to have tried to do everything his father did not do. His father was a great fan of China, Ambassador to China, and head of the CIA at one point, and his style was quite evident. George W. Bush, his son, does things that are pro-India. He is not a fan of China. He is very independent and ideological, but his father was a classical realist in many ways. I think the son really wanted to pursue a different path in developing a strategic relationship with India. You are not going to get a President with such enthusiasm for India. On the Democratic side, even Hillary Clinton, despite her husband's interest, has no special interest in India. I think we will find out soon whether the interest in having a long term relationship with India, which includes the nuclear aspect but also goes beyond it, is going to be strong. The House would probably go Democratic. The Democrats were somewhat less enthusiastic about the deal than the Republicans but there is strong support among Democrats. So again that depends on personalities and that is why it is best to get this done soon. We still have a long way to go in terms of negotiating the details of the agreement.

Let me conclude by saying that from the beginning, I thought that this was going to take a long time. It may still take a long time; it gives lot of people lot of opportunities to shoot it down. The US should not have made an India-specific agreement; it should have been on the basis of some criteria that India met and that other countries might meet. Given the past, I would give it a 60:40 chance of getting through the Senate and the House of Representatives. Even then, there is going to be lot of negotiation between the Indian government and the US government, and between Congress and the executive branch, and apparently between the nuclear scientists and the Prime Minister. I find these negotiations interesting but not distressing. You have two democracies, and what happens is that the critics of the relationship are widely reproduced in the other country as proof that we should not go ahead. So every anti-American, every anti-deal comment here is eagerly cited by Henry Sokolsky and others. Michael Krepon and others are eagerly cited as proof that the Indians are going to betray the deal, that they cannot be trusted. On the Indian side, people take bits and pieces out of our dialogue as proof that the Americans have forced India to do this, and I find that interesting and sometimes amusing. That is the way democracies do business. It is very hard for them to deal with each other, and it is much easier to deal with a dictatorship. India has always got along much better with the dictatorships of the world as have we. We have a great relationship with Pakistan; that is wonderful; there is no problem at all. And actually India's relationship with Pakistan is good; you can talk to the President without fear of contradiction. So I think that the politics of the deal is interesting. The nuclear deal may not go through. If that is the case, I won't lose much sleep, but I think that will be an opportunity lost and we should not allow that.