• Research
  • Emissary
  • About
  • Experts
Carnegie Global logoCarnegie lettermark logo
DemocracyIran
  • Donate
{
  "authors": [
    "George Perkovich"
  ],
  "type": "legacyinthemedia",
  "centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
  "centers": [
    "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"
  ],
  "collections": [
    "U.S. Nuclear Policy"
  ],
  "englishNewsletterAll": "ctw",
  "nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
  "primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
  "programAffiliation": "NPP",
  "programs": [
    "Nuclear Policy"
  ],
  "projects": [],
  "regions": [
    "North America",
    "United States",
    "South Asia",
    "India"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Nuclear Policy",
    "Nuclear Energy"
  ]
}

Source: Getty

In The Media

Global Implications of the U.S.-India Deal

By exempting India from nonproliferation rules, all 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group are complicit in the U.S.-India nuclear deal, and they should all feel compelled to cooperate to ensure that the India deal does not turn into a dangerous precedent.

Link Copied
By George Perkovich
Published on Jan 1, 2010
Program mobile hero image

Program

Nuclear Policy

The Nuclear Policy Program aims to reduce the risk of nuclear war. Our experts diagnose acute risks stemming from technical and geopolitical developments, generate pragmatic solutions, and use our global network to advance risk-reduction policies. Our work covers deterrence, disarmament, arms control, nonproliferation, and nuclear energy.

Learn More

Source: Daedalus

Global Implications of the U.S.-India DealOn July 18, 2005, President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced their desire to change a series of national laws and international rules that the United States had helped create over a 30-year period to strengthen the nonproliferation regime. These rules were meant to deny nuclear cooperation with India and other states that refused either to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or to put all of their nuclear facilities under international safeguards. Between 2005 and September 2008, Bush and Singh personally invested large amounts of political capital to win all the national and international approvals required to accommodate India’s request for nuclear cooperation. What began as an obscure, albeit revolutionary, quest by a handful of driven individuals in Washington and New Delhi, ended up as an agreement by the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to exempt India from nonproliferation rules that are supposed to remain applicable to all other states.

The making and enforcing of international rules is frequently quixotic. Making rules is often tedious and compromising, while their enforcement is often absent or feckless. The nuclear nonproliferation regime has suffered these afflictions. However, considering that the ambition is to regulate the most powerful technology and material known to humankind, the rules that have grown around the NPT since 1968 have been remarkably successful. The nonproliferation regime is a key structure of the nuclear order that most people in the world would rather not live without. Some wish that this nuclear order would more strongly incline toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, or would more actively promote distribution of nuclear energy. Others wish that it would concentrate more effectively on stopping proliferation. Few want the disorder that would follow a collapse of the bargains on which the current system of rules depends. Thus many observers and governments fear that the NSG-India nuclear deal is a bad portent: it may signal corrosion of the rules-based nuclear order.

About the Author

George Perkovich

Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, Senior Fellow

George Perkovich is the Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons and a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program. He works primarily on nuclear deterrence, nonproliferation, and disarmament issues, and is leading a study on nuclear signaling in the 21st century.

    Recent Work

  • Paper
    How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century

      George Perkovich

  • Commentary
    “A House of Dynamite” Shows Why No Leader Should Have a Nuclear Trigger

      George Perkovich

George Perkovich
Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, Senior Fellow
George Perkovich
Nuclear PolicyNuclear EnergyNorth AmericaUnited StatesSouth AsiaIndia

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

More Work from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

  • Commentary
    Strategic Europe
    Trump Turns NATO into a Tool of Coercion

    The full list of humiliations Europe has endured since Donald Trump returned to the White House makes for grim reading. But Washington’s adversarial approach to its allies undermines its own power base.

      • Rym Momtaz

      Rym Momtaz

  • Article
    India–Africa Strategic Partnership: Challenges, Potential, and Possible Pathways

    A partnership between India, a country of subcontinental size, and Africa, a continent of fifty-four countries, may seem asymmetric until one notes that both are home to nearly the same number of people—1.4 billion. This essay spells out the existing challenges to the partnership, its optimal potential, and the possible pathways to realize it over the next quarter-century.

      Rajiv Bhatia

  • Commentary
    Diwan
    Pushing Beirut into an Armed Conflict With Hezbollah Is Insane

    The party’s domestic and regional roles have changed, so Lebanon should devise a disarmament strategy that encompasses this.

      Michael Young

  • Members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) attend a meeting along with Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) President Amit Shah and Indian designated Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) at the central hall of the parliament, in New Delhi on May 25, 2019.
    Paper
    Delimitation After Defeat: India’s Unfinished Debate Over Representation

    The battle over representation and regional power has been delayed—not resolved—and will shape the future of India’s federal balance.

      • Louise Tillin
      • Andy Robaina

      Louise Tillin, Milan Vaishnav, Andy Robaina

  • San Francisco Skyline
    Paper
    California’s Global Trade Cities: Driving Local and National Outcomes

    Cities across the United States facilitate investment in American communities. Yet, because global attention remains focused on U.S. trade policy, their distinctive and bold local approaches to international trade and investment promotion are often underappreciated.

      • Wyatt Frank
      • Marissa Jordan

      Wyatt Frank, Marissa Jordan

Get more news and analysis from
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie global logo, stacked
1779 Massachusetts Avenue NWWashington, DC, 20036-2103Phone: 202 483 7600
  • Research
  • Emissary
  • About
  • Experts
  • Donate
  • Programs
  • Events
  • Blogs
  • Podcasts
  • Contact
  • Annual Reports
  • Careers
  • Privacy
  • For Media
  • Government Resources
Get more news and analysis from
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
© 2026 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved.