Not Much beyond “Carterpuri”: US Exemptions and Concessions for the Indian Nuclear Program, 1978–80

Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential election campaign criticized not merely the realpolitik of the Nixon/Ford era but also the Republican administration’s negligence of nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation. India occupied center-stage since by summer 1976 the Ford administration could no longer deny that U.S.-supplied materials might have used by New Delhi in its 1974 underground nuclear test. Once in administration, President Carter moved ahead with full gusto in hopes that the Morarji Desai government would be amenable to U.S. demands for full-scope safeguards on U.S. fuel shipments to the U.S.-supplied Tarapur reactors. Carter’s June 1978 visit to India, only three months after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA), was a public relations victory but achieved little of substance. A North Indian village renamed itself Carterpuri after President Carter visited it, but the Desai government held steadfast to the policy positions taken by the Indira Gandhi government, and refused to accept the U.S. request on grounds of Indian national sovereignty. The Desai government also sustained close relations with Moscow like its predecessor. The continuous Indo-Soviet proximity especially in the context of the 1979 Communist coup in Afghanistan, and the Desai government’s intransigence on the safeguards question, complicated the Carter administration’s India policy. The result was multiple Presidential exemptions to override Congressional opposition to U.S. fuel shipments to India, and to identify a suitable alternative nuclear supplier that would deny Moscow an upper hand. By late 1979, Washington found the ‘non-US, non-Soviet option’ to eradicate the nuclear bone of contention in U.S.-Indian relations: France would fulfill U.S. fuel supply commitments to India instead. By 1980, when Indira Gandhi returned to power in New Delhi and the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan had begun, nonproliferation could no longer be the sole priority. Like Pakistan’s nuclear procurement, India’s nuclear situation also had to be ignored