India Makes Radical Move on Nukes

During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the United States, he appeared to reverse India's decades-long refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). On Fareed Zakaria's GPS show on November 29, Singh responded to a question by indicating that India would be willing to join the NPT as a nuclear weapons state. No Indian leader has ever publicly expressed willingness to accept the NPT.

The prime minister also suggested that India would welcome a US effort to help it become a nuclear weapons state under the NPT. If India intends to follow through on the prime minister's expression of NPT interest, this transformation will have significant implications for India as an emerging geopolitical actor and for nuclear diplomacy, including President Barack Obama's vision for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The NPT has been one of the most excoriated treaties in Indian foreign policy. Even before it was finalised in 1968, India made its opposition clear. India continued to criticise the NPT after its completion, complaining that it discriminated against countries that did not have nuclear weapons, heightened difficulties for countries trying to develop nuclear energy and failed to force existing nuclear weapons states to engage in serious disarmament.

India's NPT opposition has been presented as consistent with the principles of non-discrimination and the need for nuclear powers with massive arsenals to get serious about disarmament. But, India's hostility also reflected its security interests in developing nuclear weapons to deter threats from Chinese conventional and nuclear capabilities. India's NPT stance was, thus, grounded in principles important to the Indian polity and calculations about power-and the combination of principle and power gave India's opposition deep roots in its foreign and national security policies.