SOME PEOPLE just can’t take yes for an answer. A year ago, the White House proposed giving India civilian nuclear help in hopes of improving relations with New Delhi. That India had used earlier U.S. nuclear assistance to test a bomb in 1974 and then proceeded to test more weapons in 1998 was forgiven. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers went through the tedious task (over the loud objections of nonproliferation critics) of changing 30 years of U.S. laws so the White House could export sensitive nuclear goods to India. How has all this been greeted in New Delhi? With imperious contempt.
In a speech before India’s parliament on August 17, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it all too clear that India was not yet ready to accept America’s liberality. U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation, he argued, was about getting rid of technology controls, rather than–as White House officials had been insisting–a way to strengthen nonproliferation. “The central imperative in our discussions with the United States,” Singh said, “is to ensure the complete and irreversible removal of existing restrictions imposed on India through iniquitous restrictive trading regimes over the years.”
