The decision five years ago by the United States to open up nuclear trade with India overturned decades of U.S. and global nonproliferation policy. Initially, it evoked only muted criticism from the nonproliferation community. Many U.S. and foreign experts hoped that the deal would fall through or that it could be salvaged by pressing India for nonproliferation concessions. Those hopes faded as the details and process of the agreement unfolded. Critics feared that global nonproliferation norms would be undermined by the extension of nuclear trade to India, a state that has tested nuclear weapons and never signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). They also feared that the deal could have the practical result of freeing up domestic uranium that India could use for its weapons program.

More than a year after the Indian-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement entered into force, multiple obstacles remain before U.S. companies can receive licenses for nuclear exports to India, documents and interviews indicate.

The countries have not yet agreed on a pact on Indian reprocessing of U.S.-origin material or worked out the arrangements for nuclear technology transfers from the United States to India. Nor has the Indian parliament approved nuclear liability legislation. Those issues have been publicly aired for months.

A leading Indian nuclear scientist has said the yield from India’s 1998 test of a thermonuclear device was less than expected and that the country should not close off the option of further tests.

The comments, reported Aug. 27 by The Times of India, touched off a debate that has lasted for weeks.

India and the United States have agreed on an end-use monitoring arrangement that will make it easier for India to acquire advanced U.S. defense equipment, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna announced at a joint press appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Delhi July 20. (Continue)

Ten years ago this month, tens of thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers faced off in a confrontation over the disputed Kashmir region. If not for intensive U.S.-led crisis diplomacy, that standoff and another in 2002 could have led to war between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

Since then, Indian and Pakistani nuclear and missile stockpiles have grown even larger, and the underlying conditions for conflict still persist. Indian military planners foolishly believe they can engage in and win a limited conventional conflict without triggering a nuclear exchange even though the Pakistani army's strategy relies on nuclear weapons to offset India's overwhelming conventional superiority. (Continue)

Historian Barbara Tuchman described the trail of misperceptions and bad decisions that led to mankind's worst self-imposed disasters as a "March of Folly." Now is the time for India and Pakistan to take steps to ensure that another war or crisis between them does not result in a nuclear exchange that destroys both societies. (Continue)

During a Dec. 5 visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to New Delhi, Russia agreed to provide India with four new nuclear power plants as part of a nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. The agreement marks the third such accord India has signed with nuclear suppliers since a Sept. 6 decision by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to lift a long-standing prohibition against providing nuclear technology to India. (See ACT, October 2008.) India signed similar agreements with France and the United States in September and October, respectively (Continue)