While that is indeed true, allowing them the trade without the NPT more or less condones and legitimatizes it.
I'm sorry, but the tired old tactic of placing embargoes on nations that we don't agree with is no longer relevant. U.S. foreign policy is a bunch of double-speak, treacherous non-sense. If you side with the U.S. you can do basically whatever you want; if you don't, then you suddenly aren't entitled to anything.
India didn't sign the NPT, and the U.S. isn't the world police. If they want to pursue nuclear power for infrastructure, I support it. If the U.S. doesn't want to invest in it because of political interests, then India will just have to find another investor, now won't it?
My view is that, given India's past relationship with the USSR, it would be far better for the U.S. to be that investor, since it places infrastructure under mutual cooperation. At least that gives the U.S.
some oversight without the need for petty political posturing.
Without inspections, how do we know what they we are selling them as civilian isn't being used for military? India is a big fat proliferation problem. I don't see how legitimizing it makes us safer.
The answer is: we don't know. I'm curious to know why you think that India is a proliferation problem, given that it already has nuclear arms. How much more of a problem can there be? Clearly the nuclear material within its borders has already been handled well in the past 20 years.
Not at all. But neither do the Russians and Chinese want us selling to India or anyone else that we are friendly with but hasn't signed the NPT. Hence why a unified front is far better as it eliminates the problems all of us have with each other making side deals.
I see your point from a U.S. strategic/power perspective, but that's the White House's problem. I'm looking at it from India's perspective. It wants more efficient energy sources, so it's going to go for them whether the U.S. wants it to or not. The U.S. has very little power over India's choice. We can either be the provider and thus have some oversight, or we can be righteous and say no... in which case they will turn to other nations as you have suggested.
Then we outta have both of them sign with nice fat packages of nuclear deals waiting once they sign. And objectively, it would be better for both of them to have outside assurance that neither side is cheating. But objectivity often dies first.
I really doubt that's going to happen, for multiple reasons.
