Abstract
The US-India Nuclear Deal opened up quite an intriguing chapter in the realm of international politics not just for the two countries party to it but for the world in general and South Asia in particular. The nuclear apartheid that was forced upon India ever since her first nuclear explosion of 1974, eagerly waited for an opportunity to get bailed out in order to reap the benefits of the growing nuclear technological advancement unleashed by the so-called ‘nuclear cartels’ of the world. Finally, an end to her nuclear pariah came at the behest of the US. The emphasis on the use of nomenclature such as ‘historic agreement’ and ‘strategic partnership’ to describe the deal by both the countries speaks about the euphoria and the magnitude of importance the two countries attached to the deal. Harsh V. Pant, the author of the book under review, too, posits that the deal struck is indeed a ‘remarkable achievement’ (p. 3) for it had to mar the negative past for this frog leap.
The book, in its introductory chapter, goes on to highlight the long stretched out path that the two democracies had to delve into to finally get through the deal. Pant writes ‘Foreign Policy making by democracies is often a long, messy process, and the US-India nuclear deal was no exception. It involved intense diplomatic bargaining from both sides, and it was widely acknowledged that the US-India ties will only be much stronger because of the extensive diplomatic energies that the process has consumed’ (p. 3). But the developments thenceforth shook this faith to an extent that it was enough to bring in an element of unease in India right from the political spectrum and the media to the public at large, that all was not well. The author rightly points out that it was the new incumbent of the White House—the Obama Administration— that caused the initial unease in the US-India ties because of their different non-proliferation priorities. But these initial fears were put at rest by the Obama administration’s continued insistence that they would in no way sabotage the deal. The American President Barack Obama himself, on 8 November 2010, in the Central Hall of the Indian Parliament, tried to brush aside some of these fears by reiterating:
For in Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging; India has already emerged. And it is my firm belief that the relationship between the United States and India—bound by our shared interests and values—will be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century. This is the partnership I have come here to build. This is the vision that our nations can realise together…and let me say it as clearly as I can: the United States not only welcomes India as a rising global power, we fervently support it, and we have worked to help make it a reality. (The Indian Express, New Delhi, 8 November 2010)
However, what unfolded in the future right from the L’Aquila summit of July 2009, whereby the G8 countries decided to ban the supply of Enrichment and Reprocessing (ENR) items and technology to countries who were not Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories, made the Nuclear Supplier’s Group (NSG) waiver appear as a beguile to strike the deal. This book however would have been in press when the third ballast came in the form of NSG’s renege with its announcement in September 2011 on banning the supply of ENR technology to non-NPT countries. This opened up a huge gamut of debate, contemplating if the deal had come back to square one. Therefore, while reading the book one will have to keep in mind NSG’s new ruling as the author at umpteen places has talked about the NSG waiver as a major strategic gain and a better bargain for India while negotiating the US-India civil nuclear deal. As he writes, ‘As a rising power in the international system, India renegotiated the terms of the global non-proliferation regime to gain a better bargain for itself. The NSG was forced to change its rules to accommodate the interests of a rising India. And the US heft was essential in making such a radical change possible’ (p. 14).
The book is divided into three parts, which encompasses six chapters. Pant takes recourse to the Levels of Analysis approach to study the factors that were influential in reaching up to the deal. Part one is completely focused at examining the dynamics of structural determinants, domestic determinants and the individual-level determinants that had a crucial role towards US-India rapprochement, which finally culminated in the deal. In the first chapter, the author contemplates a debate about the power position of the United States vis-à-vis the evolving international realities. He goes on to argue that though there is a degree of agreement among the scholars about the current dominant power position of the United States, there are differences on to what extent it is ahead of other states and for how long this dominance will last. The author suggests that there is a lack of theoretical consensus among scholars on the issue of whether any balancing is taking place with respect to US supremacy. He further opines that this seems palpable on seeing US military supremacy in Afghanistan and Iraq and their continuum pursuance of a unilateral foreign policy. The ‘power transition theory’ which the author talks about in this chapter offers a good theoretical premise to study the power dynamics of the multipolar Asia–Pacific region. In the later part of the chapter, the author tries to build up an argument that both the United States and India came together to contain China for their own specific interests and to have an open Asian order not threatened by any regional hegemony.
The policy frame of a country is shaped and influenced not only by the dynamics of international environment as argued by the classical thinkers but also by imperatives of domestic structures and pro-cesses as posited by theorists under the influence of neo-classical realism and the behavioural theory and the rational choice theory. The domestic environment, particularly electoral politics and economic compulsions, has a significant bearing on a country’s foreign policy. Hence, the author, in the second chapter, reflects at the crucial domestic political compulsions that pushed the two countries towards mutual realis-ation for a greater strategic engagement. If 9/11 was the starting point of this realisation for the US that redefined its entire non-proliferation orientation, for India it started right from the end of Cold War and the beginning of her economic liberalisation. The chapter further discusses factors like the rise of the BJP in the Indian political scene, the growing economic and defence ties between US and India, India’s search for energy security, the strengthening of Indian diaspora and the role of the public opinion and the media, which consistently strengthened and accelerated the relationship towards the culmination of the deal.
While analysing the factors which influence the making of any nation’s foreign policy, scholars have developed an approach which deals with personality factor. This approach seeks to study the effects leaders may have on foreign policy-making. In contemporary debates, the personality factor is being increasingly accepted as a crucial element in foreign policy-making and does not relegate it to the other established institutions. Back in the 1960s, Joseph Frankel had viewed it as a legitimate and important topic of historical analyses in all investigations pertaining to external state behaviour (Frankel 1963) and recent studies have gone even further. They have roped in psychological approaches to understand ‘the decision-makers’ cognitive system’: how it is formed and modified and how it operates ‘so as to structure perception and hence determine behaviour’ (Clarke and White 1989). The third chapter of the book is an attempt in this direction, which studies the individual capacity of the actors involved—from George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns, Robert D. Blackwill, Ashley Tellis, David Mulford, Manmohan Singh to Sonia Gandhi and many other foreign secretary level officials towards the deal-making process.
Based on the rational choice theory and using the ‘two level’ metaphor of Robert Putnam, the author analyses the negotiations leading up to the deal in part two (Chapters 4 and 5) of the book. He elaborately discusses the various domestic challenges that confronted the deal, both at Level I and Level II negotiations, as there were numerous pre-conditions attached to it that had to be attained to finally lock the deal. The way the negotiations proceeded from Level I to Level II till the deal was finally notched, reaffirms the theoretical premise of Putnam that domestic ratification of international agreements might seem peculiar to democracies. As observed by the German Finance Minister, ‘The limit of expanded cooperation lies in the fact that we are democracies, and we need to secure electoral majorities at home’ (Stolenberg 1986).
Pant, in his last chapter, which forms part three of the book, unleashes a debate that looks at the deal through a broader international perspective where the non-proliferation concerns were dwarfed to great power politics which was seen in the culmination of the US-India nuclear deal by the world’s two largest democracies. The deal hence refutes the very crux of the ‘democratic peace theory’.
The book indeed is a good attempt in documenting all the imperatives that went into making the deal the most potent symbol in US-India rapprochement. The theoretical premise on the other hand makes the reading more absorbing. However, with the Nuclear Liability Bill still being viewed as a plausible thorn in a budding nuclear partnership, what trajectory this reunion will take is elusive.