India-US deal

摘要

It is being said that the Indo-US agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation is not going anywhere. However, the agreement when signed by United States President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington on July 19th was dubbed as 'a historical watershed.' The negotia- tors told their respective media that their side gave up little or nothing to win a great deal. If that was true, it is indeed a historic agreement between two democracies. However, we must ask as to what actually was the agreement and whom does it really benefit the most? There is no doubt that the pact makes India the only country in the world to have inked a strategic defence partnership with both the US and Russia. The Mukherjee-Rumsfeld agreement is extremely vast in scope and envisages a broad range of joint activities, including multinational operations, strength- ening the two militaries to promote security and defeat terrorism, and strengthening capacity to take on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.