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NEW DELHI : A senior External Affairs Ministry official, who was a key player in negotiating the July 18, 2005 civilian nuclear understanding with the United States, says the accord "broke decisively with the past," showed the ability of both countries to "revisit fundamentals," and discarded orthodoxies that prevented their coming to terms with "reality."

Writing in Indian Foreign Policy, a collection of articles brought out by the Academic Foundation and the Foreign Service Institute, S. Jaishankar, Joint Secretary (Americas), argued that an Indian elite, little used to dealing constructively with the U.S., found it difficult to "comprehend an iconoclastic [Bush] administration bent on reshaping the world."

The deal unlocked larger global cooperation that was otherwise denied to India. "In that sense, the U.S. is negotiating not just on its own behalf but for the entire international community. To then evaluate this understanding purely in Indo-U.S. terms would be an injustice."

Cost-irrelevant exercise

Dr. Jaishankar said: "The costs of separation of civilian and military facilities have also been raised in the course of the debate [on the nuclear deal]. To a considerable degree, the separation should be regarded as a cost-irrelevant exercise."

The deal was based on the "assumption" that the future of Indo-U.S. ties was not a simple extrapolation of the past. "India and the U.S. arrived at an agreement after a difficult and painstaking process in which both sides expended considerable political capital." Neither party had an incentive to depart from a cooperative relationship, which was established with great effort. "Indeed, the larger the scope and extent of our cooperation, the more powerful will be the case against it."

Hinting at implications for India in case it goes in for another nuclear test, Dr. Jaishankar said: "While no relationship can be completely free of risk, a judgment could be made that a future U.S. administration will take into account the totality of our strategic partnership when making a decision that has consequences for a sensitive facet of our ties."

Referring to the new framework of the defence relationship agreed upon in June 2005, he said this was subject to scrutiny and was not without controversy on the Indian side.

"Many of the judgments passed reflected the assumptions of a past era and did not take into account the changing nature of contemporary threats... the new directions in defence ties can be judged to be promising but sensitive, in the last analysis, to the overall climate of relations."

Unable to keep pace

Dr. Jaishankar said many observers found themselves "unable to keep pace" with the developments in Indo-U.S. relations because they posited this equation in a static global situation. It was necessary to appreciate the "full consequences" of the end of the Cold War."For the United States, Europe is increasingly a competitor as well as model for alternate lifestyles and values. China's growing influence is a complicated and dynamic element in the calculus, made more uncertain by its unique political ethos. It is a society, in [U.S.] Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice's words, that needs to be helped to make the right choices.

"The structural limitations of the U.S.-Russia relationship are also quite evident by now... Japan remains inhibited about global responsibilities. ASEAN too is largely preoccupied with its internal dynamics. The U.S. relationship with the nations of West Asia is likely to be difficult in the foreseeable future. It is in this larger global setting that the United States has sought to reach out to India."

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