The Role of Regime Type in the India-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation Agreement

• In Event: Democracy and Foreign Policy

Abstract

In 2005, the United States named India as a “responsible state with advanced nuclear technology.” This was an implicit sign that the sole superpower had accepted India’s 1998 declaration of Nuclear Weapon State status. To what extent, and in what ways, did India’s democratic regime type contribute to American acceptance of its nuclear program? Some see the declaration as proof that shared democracy can influence ‘hard’ security issues, while their opponents maintain that Indian democracy was irrelevant to the decision, which was driven by strategic calculations. Others claim that democracy mattered, but in the US, where an open and pluralist system helped pro-India lobbies. Yet others assert that Indian democracy, by giving space to anti-American voices, actually hindered the process of US acceptance. Drawing on public documents and interviews with India and American participants, the paper seeks to evaluate these competing accounts. It also aims to reveal the manner in which Indian elites deployed the country’s democratic status to secure their diplomatic goals. The paper should be of interest to scholars of nuclear weapons policy, foreign policy analysis, democracy, and Indian politics

Author

• Karthika Sasikumar