Summary of Engaging India

Everybody’s Got the Bomb

On Monday, May 11, 1998, author and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot arrived in his office and plunged into the routine of meetings and discussions of the usual array of daunting, high stakes crises. On the agenda: the conflict in Northern Ireland, the conflict in Kosovo, Iraq’s attempt to avoid U.S.-imposed isolation and the upcoming summit of the G-7 economic powers. Then Phyllis Oakley, chief of the State Department’s intelligence and research bureau, arrived with the utterly unexpected news that India had tested a nuclear weapon just hours earlier. The test caught American intelligence services utterly unprepared - Oakley had learned about it on CNN.

India’s test was the catalyst for a serious overhaul in U.S.-Indian diplomatic relations. U.S. attention had not focused on India previously. Although India was the world’s biggest democracy, and clearly a nuclear power (even before that particular test), its affairs had rested on a rather remote back burner for most of the post-WWII period. But the bomb test forced a change, launching a dialogue between Talbot (on behalf of President Bill Clinton) and Indian foreign minister Jaswant...