Partnering with India

PRESIDENT BUSH'S visit to India, an episode in his administration's courtship of the world's biggest democracy, has been compared to Richard Nixon's Cold War opening to China. There are obvious differences between them, but if the comparison is based solely on the transformational effects of these two historic initiatives, then the blossoming of US-India cooperation has the potential to become a development of similar importance.

As with the earlier metamorphosis in relations with Beijing, however, suspicions need to be overcome and risks weighed. Not the least of these difficulties concerns the delicate and complex triangular relations among India, China, and the United States.

Indian officials, sagely, make a point of asserting in public that the new understandings they have wrought with the Americans do not have anything to do with a wish to contain China. A former US ambassador to India has said that nothing will empty out a room of Indian strategists quicker than explicit talk of a China-containment design. When India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sat for a TV interview with Charlie Rose Monday, he answered a question about containing China by asserting: ''We are not in competition with China. We are not going to be a part of any alliance against China."

It may be true that no formal alliance is being formed against China. Nonetheless, some aspects of the US-India partnership resemble the sort of common endeavors allies might undertake in regard to a common rival, among them joint protection of crucial sea lanes in Asia, sharing of intelligence, and close cooperation in security matters.

These elements of a US-India strategic partnership compose more of an insurance policy than a containment policy. At present, there are no serious points of conflict between India and China, or between America and China. Although India and China fought a small war in the early 1960s over their long, contested Himalayan border, they have been holding intermittent talks that are meant, in principle, to reach an agreement defining what is India's and what is China's. Meanwhile, both sides have been clear about their common desire not to let the border dispute detract from improving relations.

India's motivation is not merely a fear of frightening or provoking China into acting the part of a rising power threatened by military encirclement. There are also positive reasons for India to seek friendly relations with Beijing at the same time as it firms up a partnership with Washington.

Trade between India and China, which has soared from $332 million in 1992 to $13.6 billion in 2005, has been growing at more than 30 percent per year. With both economies expanding rapidly and guzzling energy, the two governments have realized they have a shared interest in not driving up the sale price for energy resources in third countries by bidding against each other. So in January they struck a deal on energy cooperation, agreeing not to compete for the same oil or natural gas concessions.

This overriding concern about future energy needs explains why India has insisted that the centerpiece of enhanced cooperation with the United States must be the civil nuclear deal that Bush and Singh signed yesterday. India desperately seeks a source other than oil to meet its burgeoning need for electricity. The Singh government views India's rapidly increasing dependence on fossil fuels as a threat to future economic development.

The Bush administration's rationale for striking a deal that is sure to displease supporters of nuclear nonproliferation is two-fold. Apart from the wish to enhance the ''strategic partnership" Singh invoked at a banquet for Bush yesterday, the administration has an interest in opening a lucrative market for companies that can expect to sell nuclear fuel, technology, and reactors to India. The deal promises a bonanza not only for US companies but also for French, Canadian, and Russian firms.

Compelling as the purely commercial argument for the nuclear deal may be, the implications of creating such a stark exception to the nonproliferation treaty deserve to be scrutinized skeptically by Congress. US laws will have to be changed to accommodate the deal, so lawmakers will have the opportunity -- and a responsibility -- to decide if the deal ought to be revised to limit the amount of weapons-grade nuclear fuel it will free up for increasing India's yearly production of nuclear weapons.

The case by opponents was weakened considerably by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, who welcomed the deal yesterday, saying it would help ''consolidate the nonproliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism, and strengthen nuclear safety." ElBaradei's approval reflects satisfaction at the role the IAEA will have in inspecting and ensuring safeguards for Indian reactors defined as civil rather than military. But Congress should nevertheless consider whether the deal, as currently structured, will undermine the case for getting North Korea to cede its nuclear weapons, for Iran to cease pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, and for Pakistan to continue clamping down on domestic proliferators.

It is unfortunate that the nuclear deal has been at the center of the Bush visit to India. The joint statement he and Singh issued yesterday includes beneficial agreements on trade, investment, agriculture, technology, and sustainable development that seeks to address ''concerns of energy security and climate change."

India is a good country to have as a partner, not merely because it is a pluralistic, free-market democracy, but because it can teach the Bush administration a needed lesson about the interdependence that even the world's two largest democracies must practice in the era of globalization.