Executive Summary

This policy report addresses the central question: is India a responsible nuclear power? It does so in two, inter-related ways. First, it asks whether India’s nuclear behaviour is commensurate with what we might expect of a responsible nuclear power. Second, it asks to what extent India has been accepted as a responsible nuclear power by different groups of states within the international community.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is considered the prime institutional benchmark for ascertaining whether nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states uphold their respective responsibilities. Yet it is difficult to measure India against the norms of nuclear responsibility contained within the Treaty because India remains a non-signatory. Moreover, there are other dimensions to nuclear responsibility that require consideration, such as the security and safety of nuclear materials and activities, as well as national pronouncements and policies related to nuclear strategy. India’s record when it comes to observable and measurable benchmarks of nuclear behaviour is a mixed, but increasingly positive one. Among its strengths are its compliance with significant parts of the NPT, and its declaratory policy on nuclear strategy, which centres on restraint. But India’s standards of nuclear security and safety are the weakest element of its credentials as a nuclear responsible.

An analysis of India’s nuclear behaviour, however, says little about the extent to which India has been accepted as a responsible nuclear power by different states within the international community. Despite committing a major act of proliferation in 1998 by conducting five nuclear tests, India was labelled ‘a responsible state’ by the United States in 2005. The two countries signed the Indo-U.S. Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2006, which was endorsed two years later by the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a multi-national body that regulates the terms of global civil nuclear trade. This paved the way for the United States, France, Russia and six other countries to sign civil nuclear trading agreements with India.

India has thus succeeded in winning a limited degree of recognition as a nuclear power from the international community. This recognition is evident in India’s status as the only nuclear possessor state and non-NPT signatory permitted to engage in civil nuclear trade with other states. However, the majority of states within the international community remain resistant to India’s status outside the NPT and in opposition to India’s access to civil nuclear trade as an NPT non-signatory.

The degree to which India’s responsible nuclear status will be recognised more universally will depend on the extent to which India becomes successfully incorporated into key institutions of the global non-proliferation regime. There remain, however, significant institutional and political hurdles. Among these are the absence of a space for India within the NPT as it currently stands, and the continued resistance from a number of countries, in particular China, to the recognition of India as a legitimate nuclear possessor state outside the NPT. In regard to these challenges, the following policy recommendations may be considered:

1. Appeals for India to join the NPT should be deferred, at least for the foreseeable future. India’s nuclear status outside the NPT no longer poses the same challenge to the non-proliferation regime that it once did. This is because its quest for the status of a nuclear responsible has served to encourage responsible nuclear behaviour and will likely do so into the future. Joining the Treaty is less important than compliance with the Treaty.
2. India’s bid for membership in a number of multilateral regimes linked to the NPT regime should be encouraged and should not carry a prerequisite of NPT membership. India’s ambitions to join these regimes are encouraging it to establish and implement more stringent export guidelines at the domestic level.
3. China’s opposition to the recognition of India as a legitimate nuclear possessor state should be tempered if China does not wish to appear as an outsider to growing consensus on the inclusion of India within important components of the non-proliferation regime.
4. India should strengthen its own non-proliferation commitments by contributing to negotiations towards a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), implementing strengthened export controls, and improving the safety and security of its nuclear materials and facilities, in particular by reforming its nuclear regulatory agency.
5. India might also consider its wider image and how universal support for its nuclear status can be strengthened through, for example, proactive steps towards global nuclear disarmament.

About the Author

Kate Sullivan is Lecturer in Modern Indian Studies at the University of Oxford’s School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. She holds an MA in the Political Science of South Asia from the University of Heidelberg and a PhD in Political Science and International Relations from The Australian National University. Her research focuses on Indian conceptions of greatness in world politics, the history and identity of India’s Foreign Service, and India’s nuclear politics. She is currently preparing an edited volume, World Perspectives on India’s Global Role for Palgrave Macmillan.