Russian reality check

There is no disputing the fact that the Russian President Vladimir Putin8217;s forthcoming attitude on civilian nuclear cooperation with India, including the conditional commitment to sell additional nuclear reactors, is a direct consequence of India8217;s bold nuclear diplomacy with the United States. Unlike the numerous critics of his foreign policy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had understood that the engagement with the US, including the nuclear deal, was about changing India8217;s standing in the world. It is only by moving the big piece 8212; the United States 8212; on the global chessboard that India can hope to inject positive dynamism into its relations with other major powers.

Dr Singh also saw that only the US had the clout to revise the non-proliferation regime in favour of India. Russia, for all its empathy towards India, could at best follow the US lead. With Putin making it quite clear that nuclear cooperation with Russia will go nowhere without American support, the Communist allies of the government would hopefully begin to see the political value of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left also insisted, inaccurately, that the nuclear crisis in Iran was about a confrontation between Washington and Tehran. Putin has underlined the reality that Russia and China are now part of the international consensus against Iran8217;s nuclear defiance. It would be unwise, to say the least, for India to line up behind an increasingly isolated Iran.

The country8217;s atomic energy establishment, which has generated a whole lot of needless fears, needs to recognise that its future access to Russian and other nuclear markets depends entirely on the successful implementation of the Indo-US nuclear deal. In a possible sign of new pragmatism, the Department of Atomic Energy seems prepared to live with some ambiguities in the prospective nuclear agreement with Russia. From publicly available information, the DAE does not appear to have got from Putin either a promise to build life-time inventories of nuclear fuel, or the right to reprocess after it is spent. Instead of making these deal breakers in the negotiations with the US, the government must explore innovative solutions. After Putin8217;s valuable reality check to his domestic critics, the PM must now order his diplomats to quickly and confidently wrap up the unfinished business on the implementation of the Indo-US nuclear deal.