The Dark Side Of The US India Nuclear Deal

While the US India nuclear deal has been greeted with smiles from President Bush and hailed by the Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh as "liberating India from the constraints of technology denial", the deal still has it's side effects.

First of all, the nuclear deal is a foreign policy victory on one side and a disaster on the other side. The good side is that the US would be able to improve relations with India but on the other hand, agitate and complicate the diplomatic efforts by the six world powers to halt the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea. These nations might argue that the US is indirectly admitting India as a de facto nuclear weapons state through the sale of civilian nuclear goods to India even though India is increasing the size of it's nuclear arsenal and not being a signatory of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Especially to Iran US action might be seen as bias as the US is openly pushing for nuclear trade with nuclear armed India while blasting Iran for it's civilian nuclear programme which Iran is legally entitled to do under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty which Iran is a signatory.

Another possible problem due to the fallout of the nuclear deal with the US is the possibility of the birth of a triangular arms race involving China, Pakistan and India. Just recently China and Pakistan have both somewhat opposed the deal. This is because they fear the deal would lead to a more sophisticated Indian nuclear arsenal as India could import it's nuclear fuel supplies leaving a much larger fraction of it's uranium reserves for military purposes.As a consequence to keep up with the "threat" of India ,Pakistan and China could use this situation as a pretext for increasing the size and sophistication of their nuclear arsenals, therefore dramatically risking the possibility of an open ended nuclear arms race and a lot less peaceful Asia.