Don't Dump The Deal.(International Edition; POINT OF VIEW)(United States-India nuclear deal)(Viewpoint essay)

Byline: Philip Gordon; Gordon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Should Congress abandon the nuke pact now, Americans, not Indians, will end up isolated.

More than three years after it was first negotiated, the U.S.-India nuclear deal has at last been sent to the U.S. Congress for approval. The agreement is the final stage in a process designed to let Washington provide New Delhi with the civil nuclear technology and fuel that the latter has been denied ever since it first tested a nuclear weapon in 1974. Every hurdle facing the deal--approval by the fractious Indian Parliament, the hammering-out of a "safeguards agreement" with the International Atomic Energy Agency and approval by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group--has been cleared, save this one. U.S. legislators are the only remaining barrier to greater U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation.

Congressional opponents of the deal--echoing the arguments of many arms-control experts and some leading U.S. editorial pages--have passionately insisted that the pact brings little of value and will blow a hole in the nonproliferation regime by authorizing nuclear trade with India without requiring that New Delhi abandon its weapons or forgo testing them. In fact, while hardly perfect, the deal has major advantages and limited downsides, and its rejection by the U.S. Congress could actually undermine the nonproliferation cause by transforming India from an emerging strategic partner into a resentful victim of what it sees as Western double standards.

Washington should remember that whatever it does, the Indians have no intention of giving up the limited nuclear deterrent they've possessed since 1974. Barring a global deal on nuclear disarmament--which India, unlike most declared nuclear-weapons states, actually supports--New Delhi will maintain its weapons and has both the technology and the natural resources (uranium) to do so on its own. The issue is therefore not whether the world is going to allow India to keep its bomb, but whether the United States and India are going to reap the considerable advantages the pact would offer. The Indian economy would benefit from the easing of restrictions on dual-use goods, while U.S. companies would get to enter India's nuclear-energy market. Promoting civil nuclear energy in India as a clean alternative to coal and oil would also help fight climate change. As for the issue of weapons testing--the main concern of the deal's opponents--the reality is that New Delhi is more likely to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty voluntarily if it believes it is being respected than if Washington tries to make the treaty a condition for nuclear cooperation.

Congress's passage of the agreement would also be a major boon to America's burgeoning strategic relationship with India, ...