Asian Window

[Updated after the US Congress approved the deal]

William S. Cohen in Forbes:

America will benefit if the Senate can act quickly. The U.S. State Department estimates that India plans to import eight 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactors by 2012. If the United States wins bids for just two of these reactors, it would result in 3,000 to 5,000 direct jobs and 10,000 to 15,000 indirect jobs in the U.S. French and Russian companies are already lined up to sell their nuclear technology to India. It would be an unfortunate irony indeed if bringing India into the world of nuclear trade and non-proliferation–a goal of U.S. diplomacy–would result in no economic benefits for American companies and workers.

All concerned with climate change should also support the U.S.-India agreement. Denying Indians the ability to make full use of nuclear energy will force that country to continue to rely heavily on coal, oil and gas. Now that the NSG has acted, India can replace an estimated 20 gigawatts of its coal-fired energy with nuclear power, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by more than 145 million tons per year. To connect this to my previous point, some of those nuclear reactors should be American-made.

More:

The deal is done: The U.S. Congress approved the landmark deal on Wednesday. The Senate voted 86-13 to ratify the agreement, sending the legislation to Bush to sign into law. Here’s the report in The Washington Post:

The agreement, which sparked fierce opposition from nuclear proliferation experts, acknowledges India as a de facto nuclear power, even though it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. India until now has been barred from worldwide nuclear trade, leaving its homegrown industry hobbled and short of uranium fuel to run its reactors. The administration said the deal would bring a substantial portion of India’s nuclear industry — though not the facilities that produce materials for weapons — under international observation.

Supporters, moreover, argue that the deal will help India become a responsible world power and will forge ties between two large democracies that have had an antagonistic relationship. With an agreement in hand, India has said it plans to spend $14 billion on reactors and other nuclear equipment next year, though France and Russia are also expected to be key suppliers.

Four days before the Congress approval, in an editorial headlined “A Bad Indian Deal”, the New York Times said:

India is a democracy, a rising power that has sent many thousands of talented people to live and work in the United States. Mr. Bush has correctly chosen to build a new relationship with India.

But he erred in making the nuclear deal the centerpiece of that relationship. And he erred in assuming that he could selectively break the nuclear rules for India and still argue that other countries had to do a lot more to rein in Iran. The deal approved by the House fails to meet legal requirements set previously by Congress.

Also read Manoj Joshi’s analysis: This is by far the best deal India could have got

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