Forging Trust With India: The Dramatic Story of Achieving The US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement
Forging Trust With India: The Dramatic Story of Achieving The US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement
David C. Mulford
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Preface vii
1 Writing a New History with India 1
1. David Mulford, Packing for India: A Life of Action in Global Finance and
Diplomacy (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2014), https://www.nebraskapress.unl
.edu/potomac-books/9781612347158/
vii
viii Preface
* * *
ere are times when one has to be completely honest with oneself.
Th
How often have we heard some public figure overdramatize a new ap-
pointment or opportunity with the words, “Everything I have done and
experienced in my life up to now has prepared me for this moment.”
Outbursts like this have always struck me as excessive and probably
inaccurate. The truth, however, is that when I became US ambassador
to India in January 2004, that very thought took shape in my own con-
sciousness. Fortunately, I made no statement except to my wife, Jeannie,
who had herself come to the same conclusion. In fact, she went further,
saying “You must write a book about your unique life, and I already have
the title: ‘Packing for India.’”
No doubt India was poised to emerge as a great nation. When I
was approached in the summer of 2003 about serving as US ambas-
sador to India, I was sure of India’s rise. The surprise turned out to
be that it happened so quickly and dramatically in the succeeding
years. President George W. Bush’s appraisal was right on the mark:
one-sixth of humanity, over one billion people, living peacefully in a
successful democracy. This has to be important for the United States.
Secretary Colin Powell called on a Saturday afternoon in June 2003
to ask on behalf of President Bush if I would be willing to serve
1
2 Chapter 1
of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire. The second
was the near-bankruptcy of India in 1991 that marked the beginning
of India’s reform p rocess and gradual opening to the global economy.
Suddenly, the Soviet economic model had collapsed, not only in the
Soviet Union but across the whole of Eastern Europe. Just as abruptly,
India virtually ran out of foreign exchange and was on the brink of
economic disaster. This was when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,
then acting as India’s finance minister, instituted India’s emerging eco-
nomic reform program, which gradually pulled India back from the
brink. The implications of the Soviet collapse took more time to filter
through India’s intelligentsia, but within two to three years India realized
that it was in its interests to seek stronger relations with the world’s
now-sole superpower.
It is important to understand the unique nature of the economic
reform process in India. Throughout the 1990s India was governed by
a series of multiparty coalition governments. Therefore, it is fair to say
that since 1991 the vast majority of Indian political parties have been
part of a government coalition that at one time or another engaged in
advancing the p rocess of economic reform. Indian politics can be col-
orful and divisive, but achieving broad consensus on economic transfor-
mation has been a priority in the p olitical process. Thus, while reform
in India and its movement toward opening to the global economy
has been frustratingly slow (compared, say, with China), reforms once
established have stayed in place. Despite changing governments t here
has not been backward movement or major reversals of reforms al-
ready put in place. This, it seems, is a tribute to India’s consensual
approach to change as it put in place during the 1990s the founda-
tions that l ater would promote stronger growth. Of course, the outside
world sees India as slow and disorganized, both accurate assessments
to some extent, but what is not so visible is the steady movement for-
ward without major political blowups. India conducts reforms gradu-
ally, under the political radar. Rarely are matters brought to a truly
divisive confrontation that results in retaliatory backward movement
or a collapse of the coalition government.
Writing a New History with India 5
and its capital and exchange controls, was for the most part protected
from the turbulence of international markets. Liberalization of India’s
financial markets as a part of its further opening to the global economy
was now on the back burner and would remain so for years to come.
The nuclear test of 1998 was also a costly setback to India’s global
opening aspirations. India developed its modest nuclear capacity for
energy and nuclear weapons to defend against its two nuclear-armed
neighbors, Pakistan and China, but for this India was ostracized world-
wide and punished for its strategic nuclear program. The United States
and most other members of the nuclear suppliers’ group of nations,
signatories to the 1974 treaty, imposed sanctions on India that dis-
rupted India’s economy. The Clinton administration, which had seemed
friendly to India’s overtures for closer relations, suddenly became the
key disruptive influence to India’s economy and its sense of military
security. The fact that India was not a signatory of the 1974 treaty and
had developed its nuclear capacity without inward or outward prolif-
eration counted for nothing. India’s isolation from nuclear commerce
was deepened and fortified, while modest military equipment pur-
chases were disrupted with painful and deeply resented implications
for India’s perceived military security.
US sanctions lasted fewer than four years before they were lifted by
President Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Still, the negative fallout from
sanctions on US-India relations has been long lasting and even t oday
is still only gradually being overcome by US defense suppliers.
Shortly after the lifting of US sanctions Pakistani terrorists at-
tacked India’s parliament in a blatant and destructive effort to un-
dermine Indian democracy and political stability. Suddenly the world
at large was focused on the terrifying reality of two mortal enemies,
sharing a border, armed with nuclear weapons, and inexperienced in
nuclear diplomacy, locked in a high-stakes confrontation. The poli-
ticians and global investors who might have seen India as a nation
with prospects were severely rattled, even a fter the zenith of poten-
tial nuclear confrontation had passed. The subcontinent was now seen
as a more dangerous place; at the same time, the near-miss nuclear
Writing a New History with India 7
* * *
Jeannie and I arrived from London in the middle of the night and
were taken directly to Roosevelt H ouse, the official residence and
our new home in India for the next five years. The full staff of eleven
and the residence manager greeted us with a brief candlelit Hindu
ritual of welcome. Delicious Roosevelt House soup was served, and as
we waited for our bags to arrive from the airport, we could see out into
the deep, softly lit garden and pool area. The night was deliciously cool
with a pungent haze of fog from the settling coolness and the smoke
of fires in the sleeping dwellings and encampments of road workers
and police strung along the roads of Delhi.
It was Sunday, so we had a day to rest and prepare for the first busi-
ness day at the embassy. Winter mornings in Delhi are invariably hazy
or even shrouded in heavy fog. When we arose, soft, filtered sunlight
filled the garden of large, exotic trees, some covered in bright orange
blooms, and a wide variety of brightly colored flowers. But what struck
us first that day in the garden, and e very day for the next five years, w
ere
the brilliant green parakeets and other birds that formed what we came
to call the “magic kingdom.”
Stepping directly into a major diplomatic post is not easy, especially
for a political appointee who had never before been in an embassy, ex-
cept as a visitor. My arrival had been anticipated for months, in both the
country and the embassy community. When we arrived, the US mis-
sion in India numbered more than two thousand employees, of which
approximately six hundred were American citizens, with the balance
being Indian nationals, many of whom were loyal and long-standing
8 Chapter 1
employees. In our years in India, the mission became the largest civil-
ian mission in the American system and also the most diverse in its
representation of US government departments and agencies. A num-
ber of US embassies have large groups attached to them, such as the
US Agency for International Development (AID) contingent in Cairo,
but in India the diversity of representation reflected the broad interface
between India and the United States, which touched virtually e very
field of human activity one could imagine.
Roosevelt House stood in its own garden next to the main chancery,
both buildings designed by the American architect Edward Durrell
Stone in the early 1950s and now categorized as preserved buildings
by the United States. The full compound covered forty acres, three city
blocks, and included a chancery annex where the large visa operation
was housed, garden-type housing units, a recreation center, medical
clinic, the marine barracks, a baseball field complete with lights, sup-
port buildings, and the American School of some fifteen hundred
students and teachers. Delhi city streets surrounded the compound
and cut through in two different places, one separating the school
and causing a significant security challenge, and the other separating the
marine barracks from the chancery and exposing the annex, where visa
applicants waited in long lines.
In the State Department training for new ambassadors and their
spouses, which takes place in Washington for two weeks, one is con-
stantly reminded that your first duty as ambassador is the security of
the embassy and all its staff at all times and u nder all circumstances.
This is no empty challenge. The marine detachment (ours was eleven
at full complement) is there to protect the embassy from intrusion and
to secure the communications facilities and interior of the embassy
from attack. The setback of buildings from the surrounding streets,
as well as the walls and gates giving access to the embassy, have to be
protected and kept u nder constant surveillance for signs of possible
attack. One needs only to read the daily intelligence traffic to know
that it is not an empty threat that America faces around the world.
Writing a New History with India 9
United States, but more than two years later, there was a mixture of
alarm and opposition to the US response in Iraq. India, after all, had a
Muslim population of nearly 150 million, some two-thirds of whom
were Sunni Muslims. Four months after 9/11 India suffered a bloody
attack on its parliament building in New Delhi, the symbolic and op-
erational heart of Indian democracy. The United States had, of course,
declared itself outraged by the attack and expressed its deepest sym-
pathies with the people of India. From India’s point of view however,
the attack, carried out by Pakistani terrorists against India’s parliament,
went unpunished by the United States in its relations with Pakistan.
When the State Department issued booming statements that all ter-
rorism anywhere in the world was equally unacceptable, where was the
evidence of that conviction in America’s continuing close relations with
the perpetrators of India’s own 9/11? No wonder that even at senior
levels of society, Indians believed that America, despite its strong words,
had a double standard when it came to terrorism in India, especially ter-
rorism spawned from Americ a’s friend and ally to the northwest.
Meanwhile, the lingering resentments from the 1998–2001 sanc-
tions, the sense of injustice caused by thirty years’ isolation from the
world of civil nuclear commerce, the denial of full access to sophisti-
cated space and defense technologies, and India’s rising concerns about
Americ a’s entry into Iraq and its presence in A fghanistan complicated
relations. Finally, among India’s intelligentsia, media leaders, academ-
ics, think tank communities, foreign service personnel, and many re-
tired bureaucrats, there remained a legacy of mistrust and suspicion of
the United States reaching back to the US support of Pakistan in the
Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
India, I discovered, was not alone in having such lingering suspicions
and resentments. They were also present in the US State Department
and Foreign Service as well as in the US defense establishment and
the CIA. In fact, while going through my brief period of orientation at
the State Department in Washington, I was told I faced a very tough
job in India and that I would no doubt have trouble recruiting Foreign
Service officers to serve there. Two years later I had fifteen to twenty
Writing a New History with India 11
and it was far and away number one in the world in the issue of H-1B
foreign worker visas.
For me, all of this underlined that the future of US-India relations
would be driven more by our civil societies, private sectors, and person-
to-person relations than by the official bilateral core of the relationship.
The range of engagement was truly comprehensive, touching virtually
every area of human endeavor. In addition to the highest-priority ar-
eas of political and economic relations, the United States was engaged
in science; health care and disease control (through the Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta); agriculture; space; education; transporta-
tion; civil aviation; US AID; all branches of the military; defense sales;
human trafficking; religious freedom; public diplomacy; FBI and legal
affairs; intelligence; counterterrorism; and commercial services, for which
there w ere seven branch offices.
These many areas of engagement promised to generate a steady
flow of government, NGO, and private-sector visits. As ambassador,
and given the kind of broad-based relationship I could see develop-
ing between the United States and India, I decided to give attention
to every type of program interface with India that was present in the
mission community. This would not only build morale in the mission,
it would also recognize the particular areas that I saw building in our
relations. In short, I decided that I needed to approach the ambassa-
dor’s job as a chief executive officer managing about twenty divisions
instead of simply a traditional ambassador focusing on the high-level
aspects of bilateral diplomatic relations. In the end I was able to do
both. In fact, the ambassador role and the hands-on CEO approach
were mutually reinforcing throughout my five years in India and ac-
count for the success I feel I achieved there.
* * *
In early 2004 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was nearing
the end of its five-year term. Elections had to be held by May, and the
BJP believed itself well placed to win the general election comfortably.
14 Chapter 1
it was felt that important US companies did not show the top-level
interest or commitment that India expected. He cited as an example
the Boeing Company’s approach to Air India’s current interest in the
tender for sixty-eight wide-body airliners as a part of India’s plan to
transform its airline industry. India and the United States, a fter years
of fruitless dialogue, had agreed after brief negotiations in 2003 to es-
tablish the world’s most liberal bilateral open skies agreement. In late
2003 India had agreed to buy forty-three single-aisle Airbus aircraft
after a contentious tender competition between Airbus and Boeing, in
which Boeing believed it had not been treated fairly. Boeing raised its
case with the secretary of state in late 2003 and asked the US govern-
ment to intercede on its behalf with the government of India. Secretary
Powell had declined to make an approach to the Indians, and I likewise
had advised Boeing’s representatives in India against taking steps in
court to try to force Indian Airlines, India’s domestic carrier, to rebid
the contract. Boeing’s representatives claimed that the company could
have improved its price by approximately 20 percent but were not given
the opportunity to do so. My advice, based on extensive experience
with similar situations, was to refrain from starting a fight they were
unlikely to win. The best strategy would have been to present their
most competitive price the first time around and be prepared to im-
prove marginally if that were required to win the business.
In any case, the Air India purchase would be for large, long-distance
aircraft that could perform nonstop service between India and the
United States. India perceived that it was losing its most important mar-
ket, the United States, to other airlines flying routes through Singapore,
Dubai, and Frankfurt, and to recover that market under the new US-
India open skies agreement it would need a fleet of the most com-
petitive long-distance aircraft. The value of such a transaction would be
approximately $9 billion.
Hence, when my visitor mentioned Boeing as an example of the
kind of US company India would like to develop a relationship with,
it is not hard to imagine how alert I became. Essentially, the point the
Indian official made was that Boeing did not project a broad vision for
20 Chapter 1
India from the top leadership of the company. Its representatives were
lower-level local sales representatives whose sole preoccupation was to
market airplanes to Air India, neglecting the fact that Boeing was a
major American corporation manufacturing a wide range of products
applicable to India’s future for air travel and defense. As a businessman,
the official felt certain I would understand the point he was trying to
make, and indeed his message was clearly understood.
A few days later I telephoned Harry Stonecipher, CEO of Boeing,
in Chicago. The tender deadline for the sixty-eight aircraft was set for
December 24, and it was now late November. When Mr. Stonecipher
took the call, I explained the approach I had received and suggested
that he should make a visit to India in the next two weeks to meet
with India’s top political leadership. His agenda should be to project
Boeing’s vision for India above and beyond the forthcoming tender.
He should be as broad as possible in product terms and emphasize
what Boeing could bring to India as a business committed to India’s
own development. I explained that I had on my desk a letter from
the secretary of state to the prime minister advocating on behalf of
Boeing, which I would feel much more comfortable sending forward
if I knew Mr. Stonecipher would visit India’s top leaders in the next
two weeks. Mr. Stonecipher came to India, paid visits to its leading
ministers, including the prime minister (all meetings I attended), and
successfully projected Boeing’s broad vision for India. The following
year Boeing won the order for sixty-eight new airplanes and went on
over the next three years to sell some $25 billion of aircraft to India.
Later still, its defense business made important breakthroughs as the
entire scale of its commitment to India changed.
* * *
The year 2005 marked the beginning of our g reat breakthrough with
India. President Bush had won his second term. Condoleezza Rice was
our new secretary of state, and she was succeeded in the White H
ouse
as national security advisor by her number two, Stephen Hadley. As far
Writing a New History with India 21
as I was concerned, this was in e very way a winning team. In the presi-
dent’s first term, his national security assessment had singled out India
as a top foreign policy priority for the United States. The NSSP nego-
tiation, which marked the first step t oward a new strategic partnership,
had made good progress.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stopped in New Delhi in
early December 2004 on a tour through the area that also included
Pakistan. This was an important visit, b ecause it provided the secretary
his first opportunity to assess India’s new coalition government. There
is nothing like face-to-face contact to see and feel India’s dynamism.
The visit helped repair the hurt feelings and lingering suspicions of the
major non-NATO ally fiasco the previous March. This was also the
first high-level defense visit since India had announced that it planned
to refurbish its air force with the purchase of 126 multi-role fighter
aircraft. I appealed to Secretary Rumsfeld to reconsider the Defense
Department’s irritating decision not to display any high-end fighter
aircraft at India’s second biannual Bangalore Air Show. Happily, within
a month after his visit, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the presence of
two US F-15 fighters, which stole the show in Bangalore.
Secretary Rice’s first visit to India was set for March 2005. The
thoughtful preparation of this visit and the secretary’s deft p resentation
of a new initiative for India caught the Indian government by surprise.
With the NSSP process nearing completion, the visit was defined by
the need for a new, ambitious initiative with India. In a surprisingly
visionary statement, President Bush declared that the United States
was prepared to support India’s vision of becoming a great economic
power. India’s annual growth had surged to near 9 percent, which, if sus-
tained over a period of years, would raise India to be one of the world’s
top three economies and at the highest levels of economic power.
In my public speeches and private conversations with Indian officials,
I set out what India needed to become a g reat economic power. If India
were to sustain growth in the range of 9–10 percent consistently over
the next ten to twenty years it would achieve its global vision and sub-
stantially alleviate its vast poverty. There existed, however, four major
22 Chapter 1
States, utterly disarmed the Indians of their habitual doubts and suspi-
cions. Indeed, two days after Secretary Rice had left India one had the
impression that the implications of this surprising proposal were only
just beginning to sink in. We had clearly changed the tenor of relations,
and try as the Indians might to retain their usual detachment there was
a genuine and unmistakable enthusiasm that they could not suppress.
Preparations began for Prime Minister Singh’s July 2005 state visit
to Washington. Both India and the United States began to reflect on
how such a nuclear initiative might be carried out. On India’s side t here
would have to be a willingness to separate its civil nuclear activities
from its strategic nuclear defense program. This was no easy m atter,
since civil and strategic nuclear development in India was one and the
same. Also, although India had a clean record of nonproliferation, it
did not follow the established regime of international safeguards on
nuclear facilities or conform to the standards within the group of forty-
five member states making up the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India was
not open to IAEA inspections or potentially intrusive US demands for
compliance in highly technical areas of civil nuclear activities.
The president understood and accepted that t here was no possibility
of India giving up its nuclear weapons and signing the nuclear nonpro-
liferation treaty of 1974 in order to gain better access to civil nuclear
technology. India had developed its own nuclear weapons and modest
civil nuclear industry itself. Its nuclear science community occupied a
special place of respect and financial support within the Indian gov-
ernment. Accommodating this mandate would, we believed, require a
change in US law, which would call into question the sanctity of the
world’s nuclear nonproliferation architecture. These possibilities raised
deep problems for the United States, which had sponsored, developed,
and defended that architecture since the 1950s. The US bureaucracy
and the staff of relevant members of Congress had spent their entire
careers building, perfecting, and enforcing the world’s nuclear nonpro-
liferation regime.
Still, the discussion between the United States and India proceeded. I
was blessed with certain members of my staff who were knowledgeable
26 Chapter 1
rrival ceremony on the White House lawn for the state visit of Prime
A
Minister Manmohan Singh, July 18, 2005. On this day the United States
and India announced the launch of the Civil Nuclear Cooperation
Initiative. Official White House photo by Lynden Steele, courtesy of
George W. Bush Presidential Library
on nuclear subjects, and from them I was able to glean a valuable edu-
cation. We had discussed the civil nuclear area before the secretary’s
visit to India as a means to help meet India’s energy requirements, but
once the subject was opened for serious consideration the potential
complexity for resolving major political and legal problems became
evident. Nevertheless, we engaged with the Indians to determine
whether any such vision could realistically be framed for the state visit
to Washington of the prime minister in July.
As we worked, a new political dimension took shape in India. Indian
intellectuals, some retired foreign policy officials, the large population of
New Delhi think tankers, and the leftists in the political arena began to
raise the sinister possibility that the new US-India civil nuclear initiative
was a plot by the United States to entice India into an arrangement that
would cripple or remove India’s strategic nuclear capability. This was
Writing a New History with India 27
the “back door” through which the United States would subvert India’s
strategic nuclear weapons program. They argued that the American
strategic partnership proposal was designed to bind India helplessly to
the United States. This theme gradually took hold in some quarters in
India and later became a serious threat to the entire enterprise.
But first we had to reach a preliminary agreement that would per-
mit the long and complicated negotiation that must follow to move for-
ward. Not surprisingly, the turning point came at the state visit by Prime
Minister Singh to Washington on July 18. After weeks of discussion
and negotiation we had reached an impasse around midnight the night
before the beginning of the state visit. The two sides left the meeting
resigned to failure. At six the following morning, the Indians called to
propose one last effort. Two hours later the final issue was resolved, and
work began on a brief vision statement to be issued by President Bush
and Prime Minister Singh announcing that the United States and India
would move ahead with the negotiation of an agreement that would
open the world of civil nuclear commerce to India. Final preparation of
an agreed text was still in progress as the two leaders stood before the
assembled media in the White House East Wing.
Reaction was mixed. The vision statement was read with much en-
thusiasm in India, but to many in the US media, Congress, and the
US bureaucracy, the statement raised more questions than it answered.
Chief among them was, why had the United States taken such a radical
step into a field that for many observers was fraught with complexities,
poorly understood by politicians and the public, and possibly danger-
ous for global security? The questions and arguments that had surfaced
in India a fter the visit of Secretary Rice were now raised in the United
States. It would be many months before the vision outlined in the joint
statement would be tested between the two countries and placed for a
vote before the US Congress.
However, before we could make a serious beginning, we had to
clear another hurdle. Following a worldwide diplomatic effort by the
United States in August and September 2005, a vote took place in the
IAEA in which for the first time India voted with the United States
28 Chapter 1
President George W. Bush (front left) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
(front right) meet in the White House Oval Office on July 18, 2005.
Among those present are (behind the president, seated left to right)
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Ambassador David Mulford, and Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns.
They sat with members of the India delegation, including Ronen Sen,
India’s ambassador to the United States (seated furthest back on
the right). Official White House photo by Eric Draper, courtesy of
George W. Bush Presidential Library
and others to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for
consideration of a resolution on sanctions.
The IAEA vote was a major foreign policy decision for India. Its
relations with Iran went back over thousands of years. The Mughal in-
vasions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had come from Persia
and had left a pervasive influence on India’s life and culture, including
India’s nearly 150 million Muslims. India invariably exercised extreme
care in its dealings with Iran. On Iranian nuclear matters India’s po-
sition had been that Iran, having signed the nonproliferation treaty
(India had not), should honor its obligations under the treaty. India
Writing a New History with India 29
also indicated that it did not favor Iran developing nuclear weapons.
These general expressions had never resulted in India actually taking
positions against Iran in international forums. On the contrary, India
was distinctly soft on Iran.
One could understand why—Iran was important in India’s politics.
Apart from historic and cultural links, India’s large Muslim popula-
tion was deeply sensitive to issues that appeared to disadvantage Iran or
pushed the government of India to take steps unfriendly to Iran. A large
portion of India’s Muslim population was Shiite, with sizable concentra-
tions in northern India, where despite still being a minority they could
exercise very considerable electoral influence. It was common to hear
people declare that India had a relationship with Iran g oing back five
thousand years, whereas India’s relations with the United States w ere
only a few years old. Others, while acknowledging the long-standing
relationship, felt that little in the way of concrete benefits had come from
Iran. Additionally, at the time of the campaign for an Iranian sanctions
vote, a grand energy project was taking shape on India’s northern hori-
zon. This was the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline proposal, which visu-
alized massive supplies of Iranian gas being piped across Afghanistan to
Pakistan and India. Despite the obvious practical and p olitical difficulties
of such a venture, t here was no doubt that the vision had strong p olitical
appeal. Pakistan would require new sources of gas within a few years
to feed its domestic utility industry, while India was looking for ways
to reduce its dependence on imported oil. Beyond the diversification of
India’s energy base, there was the dream by some of a vital cooperative
venture that would bring the principal countries more closely together.
Opposition to this project carried significant political costs in Indian
politics, and not just in the Muslim community. Alternatively, support-
ers of the pipeline enjoyed a costless political boost unlikely ever to
be put to the test of geographic and operational practicality. Inconve
niently, however, US legislation in the form of the Libya and Iran
Sanctions Act of 1996 required the United States to impose sanctions
on any investment project that provided significant assistance to Iran
in the development of its natural resources. This legislation, which had
30 Chapter 1
nder any illusions about the importance of the test India faced in the
u
UN vote.
In September India voted for sanctions on Iran for the first time
and thereby strengthened its credibility on nuclear affairs with both
the administration and Congress. This was not an easy decision for
India. I came away more convinced than ever of India’s serious inten-
tions to stay the course on civil nuclear commitments and to continue
building a strategic partnership with the United States.
* * *
little feel for the kinds of commercial and p olitical challenges faced by
businesses, challenges often designed or imposed by the governments
themselves.
I therefore sought to form a group open only to CEOs responsible
for leading the entire company, the final arbiters of global strategy and
allocation and deployment of the company’s global capital. I stood
firm on the principle that we accept no substitutes for attendance at
meetings, no matter how august that replacement person’s corporate
title might be. A chairman drawn from each country was responsible
for running the forum. Ministerial-level government officials were in-
vited to take part in meetings, but government bureaucracy should
34 Chapter 1
* * *
support was needed for the expected legislative p rocess. I was discour-
aged to find that the most common reaction to my visit was, “Why
on earth have you done this?” To those with knowledge of the nuclear
nonproliferation regime the United States had championed for over
fifty years, it seemed inconceivable that the administration should be
willing to give de facto recognition to India’s nuclear weapons and at the
same time provide India full access to the world of civil nuclear com-
merce. A fter all, apart from the Big 5 nuclear powers, all other signato-
ries of the 1974 treaty had agreed to deny themselves nuclear weapons
in order to have full access to civil nuclear technology and commerce.
Those views were fueled by Washington’s nuclear nonproliferation
“establishment,” whether in congressional staff, the executive depart-
ments, or in the think tank community. These people had both passion
and extensive in-depth knowledge of nuclear materials, weapons, tech-
nologies, and the history and intricacies of nuclear diplomacy. To many
of them, President Bush’s civil nuclear vision for India was a dangerous
misadventure.
We faced a formidable challenge to explain and justify to Congress
the president’s proposed change to the world’s nuclear nonprolifera-
tion architecture. The task of gaining support in the US government
and among the Nuclear Suppliers Group of nations was divided into two
stages. The first was to lay out the case for India to be brought into
the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime. India was clearly a ris-
ing nation whose population represented approximately one-sixth of
humanity. It had its own homegrown community of nuclear scientists
who had developed both a modest civil nuclear industry and sophis-
ticated nuclear weapons. India had not engaged in nuclear prolifera-
tion activities and was acknowledged to have observed the standards
of the 1974 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, despite being isolated
for some thirty years for its failure to sign the treaty. Nor had India, the
world’s largest democracy, shown itself to be militarily aggressive be-
yond its borders. China and Pakistan, India’s two nuclear-armed neigh-
bors, both of whom fought a war with India in the past fifty years, were
still regarded as major threats to India’s security. There was no realistic
36 Chapter 1
more business leaders and their employees visited the United States.
India’s student population in America rose to seventy-five thousand
and on to ninety-four thousand, the largest foreign-student commu-
nity in the United States by a substantial margin. Government officials
traveled to Washington frequently, and many Indian families chose
Americ a for their holiday travel. Visas processed by the US mission
climbed to a peak in excess of eight hundred thousand per year, second
in the US system only to Mexico, with whom we had a common bor-
der and long-standing economic relations. India was also the world’s
leading user of H-1B employment visas.
India was getting broader and more frequent coverage in the US
and international press. Tourism began booming as millions discov-
ered “Incredible India.” The stage was set for a program to educate
Americans about rising India. It seemed to Jeannie and me that the
world was coming to India. At the embassy and Roosevelt House we
met with countless delegations and visitors of all kinds and gave per-
sonal briefings to hundreds of visitors. I discovered that in the more
than sixty congressional deleg ations I met with over five years, the vast
majority of members of Congress, even t hose who had served multiple
terms, had never visited India before. Most visitors were struck by
India’s dynamism and by its potential as a serious friend and partner of
the United States. As time passed and the list of influential visitors grew
larger, I realized that a campaign for a better understanding of India
in the United States would be critical to winning support for the US-
India civil nuclear initiative, not to mention support for foreign direct
investment and institutional investment flows, defense sales, and co-
operation in education, science, and technology. As 2005 turned to
2006 there seemed to be no limit to the opportunity to expand and
deepen US-India relations.
The other purpose in cultivating support was to maintain the flow
of funds for US AID’s widespread and effective social and economic
programs. I was a long-time skeptic of US AID, which remained a for-
midable bureaucracy. However, I found that in India AID programs in
the fields of agriculture, power, water, women’s rights, and health were
40 Chapter 1
feed” for such ideas, and yet the State Department chose this moment
to cut funding drastically on all projects apart from health care proj
ects mandated by Congress. The AID budget fell from $150 million to
approximately $80 million in two years. Large numbers of irreplace-
able AID employees were terminated just as they were in demand as
never before for projects in which minimal financial outlays could be
leveraged by the rising interest of a population of entrepreneurs.
I lobbied members of Congress to understand that the State
Department’s rationale for cutting funds for AID projects in India
based on the fact that India’s economy was growing at 9 percent made
no sense, because the growth level was confined mainly to urban areas,
and India’s seven hundred million rural inhabitants remained desper-
ately poor. I also highlighted the potential for promoting important
structural changes in India’s economy.
My colleagues and I were successful to some extent in reversing a
modest amount of funding. For my success, however, I was reprimanded
in writing by the seventh floor of the department for appearing to be
working counter to the purposes of AID’s senior management. The
quality of leadership at AID in Washington was abysmal and out of
touch with their people in the field. They promised to consult their
field officers and promptly failed to do so. We found active support
among many members of Congress, and by 2011, two years after I had
left India, AID budget levels in India were restored. It was depressing,
however, to find that senior State Department officials in the Bush ad-
ministration were ignorant about how growth and structural economic
reforms are accomplished on the ground and why they are so important
in a country thirsting for progress.
Other policy areas were equally challenging. I found it was neces-
sary to engage ministers directly, bringing with me key staff members
responsible for any particularly difficult policy area, to ensure the ac-
cess we needed at lower levels of the bureaucracy to carry our business
forward. This meant, for example, raising the sensitive issue of India’s
poor record on human trafficking and child labor directly with the
minister of home affairs. It meant seeing the minister of health on the
42 Chapter 1
* * *
I thought I was d oing an important job for my country and that I was
also an important person in India. A sense of pride and accomplish-
ment was with me e very day. Then I learned true humility and profound
admiration for the courage, dignity, and humanity of another person.
This person was my wife, Jeannie Mulford, Madame Ambassador, the
keeper of Roosevelt House and the love of my life.
In April 2005, during a visit with family in Phoenix, Arizona, Jeannie
was discovered to have breast cancer. A young woman of picture-
perfect lifetime good health was struck by the most dreaded and most
Writing a New History with India 43
Jeannie’s heart anomaly that could impose a significant risk to her life. It
was recommended that Jeannie proceed immediately to the Cleveland
Clinic to see a prominent surgeon specializing in heart anomalies.
A day or two later we w ere on a conference phone call with the sur-
geons at the Cleveland Clinic, weighing and discussing the results of tests
Jeannie had undergone. The decision was that Jeannie would need to un-
dergo immediate open-heart surgery to correct the anomaly. The date was
set for June 28, the day a fter my birthday, which Jeannie insisted on cel-
ebrating at an Italian restaurant in Cleveland the night before her surgery.
All the doctors had agreed that there was no time to lose in complet-
ing the heart surgery some forty days after the breast cancer surgery, so
that chemotherapy could be started by a date in August within ninety
days of the original surgery. We stayed together in Cleveland for two
weeks, and once again doctors and nurses there saw a kind, calm, and
fearless w oman face a second g reat surgical intrusion in the space of a
month. A few days later, Jeannie was walking fourteen-minute miles
with me in the cool July Fourth weather along Lake Erie.
We left Cleveland for Washington, DC, on July 14. Four days later,
Jeannie attended the full day of events at the White House for the state
visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. That evening she was seated
at President Bush’s table for the state dinner, looking stunning in a long,
high-cut gown with her short, chic hair style. She gave no hint of pain or
fatigue and neither asked for nor received special treatment of any kind.
I knew that night, as I had known for two months, that Jeannie
was and is the most extraordinarily brave and composed woman I will
ever know. She stood through that day and e vening for me, for our
president and first lady, and for our nation—truly a lady from the g reat
heartland of America.
Chemotherapy began in August and would not finish u ntil mid-
January 2006. Jeannie’s sisters had never left her alone in New York.
I came back from India as often as I could, and together we faced the
transformative effects of chemotherapy. We went together to the chemo
treatment center, where again it was clear to me that Jeannie’s steady
kindness and good humor had made her everyone’s favorite patient.
Writing a New History with India 45
State dinner honoring Dr. Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India, and
his wife, Gursharan Kaur, on July 18, 2005. Left to right are Ambassador
David Mulford, Mrs. Kaur, Laura Bush, Prime Minister Singh, President
George W. Bush, and Jeannie Mulford. Official White H ouse photo,
courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library
presidential party took over the entire Sheraton H otel in New Delhi,
two dozen vehicles and limousines were brought into India, together
with helicopters and backup aircraft positioned at key points around the
nation in the event that a rapid or otherwise unusual exit by the presi-
dent was required. All motor routes expected to be used by the president
during his visit were given a close inspection by a helicopter manned by
American military a day or two before the visit. Each of these activities
conducted in the sovereign state of India needed to be negotiated and
approved down to the last detail.
There were moments of entertainment and frustration in the prepara-
tion process. When the US Secret S ervice personnel impressed upon the
Indians their sensitivity to the prospect of large crowds gathering,
the Indians turned the faces of the US agents pale with the observation
that getting a crowd of one million together in India could be accom-
plished almost anywhere in a few minutes. On the other hand, selecting
an interesting location for President Bush’s main speech in India and
obtaining permission for using such a site was a sensitive and frustrating
affair up to the very day of the speech. I was intent that the president
not speak in a h otel ballroom or other closed site. He should speak out
of doors at a site easily recognizable on television as India. We chose
a park encompassing a view of the ruins of an ancient Mughal palace.
Still standing, as a backdrop, were the ancient walls and Indian-style
turrets and rows of fulsome palms lining an avenue running back to
the outer wall and forming the vision before which the president would
stand at a single lectern. To the side w ere views of a Hindu t emple, and
in the foreground an ancient mosque. This place called Purana Qila was
perfect for the vision we wished to convey.
The Foreign Ministry took the position that we could not be per-
mitted to use a national treasure like Purana Qila without setting an
uncomfortable precedent for other head-of-state visits. Eventually, it
was determined that we could apply to the Indian Department of
Antiquities for permission to use Purana Qila, provided the event was
organized and sponsored by India’s two leading business associations,
the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian
48 Chapter 1
difficult of which was the need to meet India’s demands for assurances
or guarantees from the United States concerning supplies of nuclear
fuel to India over the medium to long term. The United States was
unwilling and unable under US law to guarantee future supplies to
India under all prevailing circumstances. If India were to violate, in
the opinion of the United States, future nuclear safeguards applied
to India, US cooperation with India would cease immediately. India’s
fear was that in such circumstances the United States would use its
global influence to once again isolate India from fuel supplies, even
if the rest of the world had not reached the same judgment as the
United States. At Hyderabad House on a sunny and pleasant day the
president approved the final draft language, which would be inscribed
in the separation agreement and in subsequent agreements to imple-
ment US-India civil nuclear cooperation.
At the press conference in the garden of Hyderabad H ouse, the
prime minister led off with the announcement that US-India agricul-
tural cooperation, which had powered India’s “green revolution” in the
1960s and ’70s, was to be restored, with a focus on new technologies.
The civil nuclear initiative received intense interest from the media in
India and from overseas. By putting cooperation in agriculture first on
the press conference agenda, at the request of the prime minister, we
had avoided making the civil nuclear initiative the dominant theme and
possibly causing division within the coalition. The overall impression
following the meetings was that the outcome reflected wide and diverse
cooperation between our two countries.
The president’s small, informal meeting with Sonia Gandhi, leader
of the Congress Party and in effect India’s most influential leader, was
warm and on policy issues extremely positive. This had not always been
the case over the many years of contact between the United States and
the Gandhi family.
On the final day of the visit, President and Mrs. Bush flew to
Hyderabad for the day. Jeannie and I accompanied them on Air Force
One and Marine One for the w hole day, and as during the entire visit, the
president and first lady could not have been more friendly and gracious
52 Chapter 1
Nicholas Burns (left), US under secretary of state for political affairs, and
Ambassador David Mulford during a press conference in New Delhi,
December 8, 2006, the day after the US Congress completed final
legislation for a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India, removing
contentious provisions that had raised objections by the US and Indian
governments. Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images
to their Indian hosts and to us. We had selected Hyderabad for the one-
day visit away from New Delhi b ecause it is a major city in the south of
India in one of India’s largest and most populous states, Andhra Pradesh.
Hyderabad has developed a diverse and rapidly growing economy (espe-
cially agriculture, IT, and pharmaceuticals). Its population is 41 percent
Muslim (although Andhra Pradesh is only 13 percent Muslim, which
is the national average for India), and Hyderabad is home to India’s
most prestigious modern business school. That e vening the president
announced that the United States would open a full-service consulate in
Hyderabad, the fourth such consulate in India and the first full-service
consulate established by the United States in more than twenty years.
This project had been developed over a number of months and involved
Writing a New History with India 53
For many years the United States and India w ere kept apart by
the rivalries that divided the world. That’s changed. Our two
great democracies are now united by opportunities that can lift
our people and by threats that bring down all our progress. The
United States and India, separated by half the globe, are closer
than ever before, and the partnership between our free nations
has the power to transform the world.
Likewise, the state dinner set that evening in the Mughal gardens
behind the Imperial Palace, now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan. This vast
and elegant building, designed by English architect Edward Lutyens
54 Chapter 1
in the 1920s in the great imperial style of India, provided the setting
for a spectacular gathering of elegantly dressed Indian glitterati, India’s
music, and fireworks. It was of course after dark, but the lights that
played on the surrounding flowers and flows of water exactly ren-
dered the atmosphere of mystery and romance that lies at the heart
of India.
When it came time to see the presidential party off, the president
told Jeannie and me that of all the places they had traveled, India was
the country they had most wanted to visit and that this had been the
best of all their visits. What came through to us and remains with us
today from the president’s meeting with embassy staff in the garden of
Roosevelt House to the state dinner at the Rashtrapati Bhavan was the
down-to-earth, genuine kindness and goodwill of the president and
first lady t oward every person and situation they encountered in India.
* * *
The next phase in the follow-up from the president’s state visit to India
was the campaign to move forward with the civil nuclear initiative. With
India’s separation agreement now concluded, we turned to the next and
most difficult challenge: the need to amend the US Atomic Energy Act
of 1954 to permit India to enter into civil nuclear commerce with the
United States. This involved not only a careful review of the separation
agreement by both houses of Congress but also a legislative strategy on
the part of the administration that would permit a united front to be
presented to Congress. There had always been opposition within the
executive branch and among staff of both parties on the Hill toward
any concessionary change t oward India in the global nuclear nonprolif-
eration architecture. Despite the formally declared policy of the Bush
administration, we knew we would face internal opposition and acts of
resistance in the legislative process.
Congress would support the necessary change in US law only if it
were satisfied that the separation agreement we had negotiated with
India would effectively separate India’s strategic nuclear weapons
from its present and f uture capacity to develop and operate a program
Writing a New History with India 55
59
60 Chapter 2
By the summer of 2006 the backlog for the visa applications, each
of which required a face-to-face interview with a US consular officer,
had reached the point where applicants faced a wait of 187 days to be
interviewed. For Indian citizens needing to go to the United States
for business meetings, weddings, funerals, or school this was an im-
possible situation, and in many cases it was deeply resented. Despite
an express program for certain designated businesses and an effort to
move students to the front of the line, the continuing pressure was
such that applicants were calling the embassy, including the ambas-
sador, for preferential treatment or paying visa agents with whom the
embassy had formal working relationships for earlier-priority inter-
view appointments. In fact, the visa agents w ere buying blocks of visa
appointments and selling them to desperate applicants who could
not wait six months for an interview. It was easy to see the scope for
abuse or influence in the management of the interview appointments
process.
The consular department, however, faced genuine problems that
weighed heavily on their people, many of whom w ere young, first-
assignment Foreign Service officers. When one considered that the mis-
sion through the embassy in New Delhi and its consulates in Kolkata,
Mumbai, and Chennai was processing some eight hundred thousand
visa appointments per year, simple math conveys the burden that t hese
officers w ere carrying. On every business day some thirty-five hun-
dred visa applications had to be processed, each requiring a brief face-
to-face interview conducted through the bulletproof glass of a cubicle
manufactured and imported from the United States. The pressure on
young officers conducting in some cases over a hundred interviews per
day after reviewing each applicant’s online application was clearly very
challenging, especially when it is understood that it was the responsi-
bility of the young officer to accept or reject each application and to
affix his or her signature on the bottom line reflecting that decision.
This requirement alone tended to encourage a risk-averse attitude, es-
pecially among young, inexperienced officers, with the result that rejec-
tion rates could often run quite high.
62 Chapter 2
As the delays for processing visas grew longer, I became more uncom-
fortable with a program that seemed to function in isolation from the
rest of the mission and was both defensive and protective of its apparent
prerogatives. Admittedly, visa fraud and security legitimately impact the
consular department’s mandate, but it seemed unreasonable to me that
the visa backlog should have built up so dramatically and that reducing
it to more reasonable waiting times should be beyond our capabilities.
I therefore took an interest in this specialized field, which few
ambassadors pay any more than fleeting attention to, and even then
usually on an individual-case basis. To me, the issue of visas to the
United States was a s ervice business. We charged each applicant an
upfront fee of $130 to apply, which was not refundable w hether the
applicant obtained a visa or not. America is an open society, and so
long as our security is protected and we are satisfied the applicant
does not intend to remain illegally in the United States, we should
welcome visitors without imposing excessive bureaucratic constraints
on legitimate visitors. Making all applicants wait 187 days to have
the interview and receive the final decision seemed to me to fly in the
face of our claim that America is an open society.
I began to watch the visa operation—for example, how many win
dows were open and in use how much of the time? Could we get addi-
tional help from Washington in the form of temporary officers? Could
we enlist assistance from other qualified officers in different depart-
ments in the mission to pitch in and help the consular people? And
finally, could we break the systemic practice among agents to hoard and
subsequently sell blocks of visa appointments?
In September I convened an offsite meeting in Jaipur for all senior
leaders and consular officers in the mission. The idea was to recognize
the serious challenge we faced and to expose and discuss solutions to
these problems. We also needed to show our young officers that we
were concerned about the burdens they were working under and their
need to be exposed to other types of work in the mission in order to
avoid a condition popularly referred to as “visa burnout.” Above all,
we needed to make a mission-wide commitment to removing the visa
Going the Distanc 63
* * *
64 Chapter 2
* * *
Perhaps the broadest challenge with implications for India’s social and
economic progress over the next d ecade centers on education. Part of
the case for India sustaining high growth over the next thirty years
rests on its claim to have the largest young population (55 percent
of Indians are under the age of twenty-four) among all the major
countries of the world. Moreover, India’s young people have high as-
pirations, are desperately keen to obtain an education, are comfort-
able with technology, and in general are fluent in English. Thus, while
China, Russia, Japan, Europe, and even the United States will suffer
in the near future from declining populations of young p eople, India
will have the largest, most productive, and youngest workforce in the
world at just the right time to propel India’s economy forward. This
optimistic projection assumes that India successfully educates this bulge
of young workers and provides them with jobs and adequate health
care. Otherwise, an aspiring body of frustrated young people might
prove to be a p
olitical liability.
Going the Distanc 67
The reality in India t oday is that India’s primary and secondary edu-
cation systems are sadly lacking in both scale and quality. It is true that
education is a top priority for families and that India’s elite schools and
universities produce large numbers of brilliant students who we see in
Americ a in large numbers. But tens of millions of young people are left
behind in the Indian education system, and the government’s present
policies, although improving the situation somewhat, lack the scale and
commitment necessary to accomplish the education of this young gen-
eration, which w ill be entering India’s workforce in the next few years.
While serving as ambassador I received more than sixty visiting
American university presidents, provosts, chancellors, deans, and del
egations of boards of trustees who came to India to explore accessing
India’s giant education market. A group of progressive ministers in
the government advocated greater change and the opening of India to
foreign universities, which at present are not permitted to enter India
on a fully accredited basis to offer their degree programs in-country
to Indian students. Although education is a state subject under India’s
constitution, the federal government plays an overriding role in India’s
national education policy. The minister of human resources, who was
in charge of education at the federal level, successfully resisted the
reform efforts by younger ministers during the full term of my service
with the result that only now, u nder the new Congress-led govern-
ment, is India beginning to consider legislation to open India to for-
eign direct investment in education. Unless India opens more fully to
the outside world and expands its own existing education system it
seems doubtful that it can scale up quickly enough to educate millions
more of its young people.
My relations with India’s minister of h uman resources w ere gener-
ally unproductive. Minister Arjun Singh was an important but ag-
ing political figure who was also a cultural nationalist who strongly
opposed entry to India by foreign educational institutions. He also
seemed to be opposed to the US-India Fulbright Scholarship Program
set up by treaty between the United States and India in 1951 under
the leadership of Senator William Fulbright.
68 Chapter 2
India’s Fulbright Program had been a major success story over many
years. Between the two countries there were thousands of Fulbright
alumni, and the program continued to enjoy the prestigious reputation
it enjoyed in other parts of the world. Yet major problems appeared
under the then current government. These were of two kinds: one
was inordinate delays in obtaining the necessary visas for American
Fulbrighters coming into India; the other was the fact that some
12 percent of the study programs of foreign Fulbright scholars w ere
denied without explanation. As ambassador, I began receiving let-
ters of complaint from Fulbright participants and in some cases from
their families. These complained of delays that greatly inconvenienced
Fulbrighters who had resigned from positions, given up appointments
or scholarships, or had otherwise put themselves in circumstances
inconvenient to them and their families to accept a Fulbright grant
in India. I discovered that of the approximately one hundred students
and faculty awarded Fulbright scholarships in 2007 more than three-
quarters had waited up to a year for a visa and some longer. Others
had had their study projects rejected without explanation or appeal.
One group of English language teachers had already waited for visas
beyond the term of absence agreed with their home school, as well
as beyond the portion of the Indian school year during which they
were supposed to teach.
When I looked more fully into the problem, I was struck by the
casual injustice of the system in India. At the embassy we issued vi-
sas to Indian Fulbright students g oing to America in a single after
noon and did not examine or question their study project in the United
States. When I reviewed the American study projects the Indians had
rejected, I could see no justification for such sensitivity and the blatant
interference with academic freedom. Contrary to the agreed-on time-
table that was to govern the program—awards in April and visas to
be processed by June—our people were waiting up to nine months for
visas and in some cases longer. My staff, who w ere charged with press-
ing the Indians to act more quickly, w ere forced to shuttle between
the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Home Affairs
Going the Distanc 69
* * *
digested by the Indians, but also b ecause a key element on the Indian side,
namely India’s powerful and privileged nuclear science community, was
not regularly present at our meetings, not in any case at its most senior
level. In fact, as negotiations proceeded during the first six months of
2007, it seemed to me that India’s nuclear science community had lost
its initial enthusiasm for the deal. There was no doubt that rising leftist
opposition was making itself felt in the nuclear community and in the
cabinet coalition. In addition, a community that had enjoyed the partic
ular favor and respect (not to mention funding and other privileges) of
Indian governments over some thirty years began perhaps to recognize
that it would be subject to new constraints and far greater demands for
transparency than in the past.
74 Chapter 2
the IAEA and India to be voted upon ultimately u nder the standard
procedures of the board.
The second issue divided us even further: how India was to win the
support of the Nuclear Suppliers Group for the transformation of its
status from nuclear outcast to full civil nuclear participant in the world’s
nuclear nonproliferation regime. The Nuclear Suppliers Group met in
plenary session at most only twice a year. The United States had made an
explanatory presentation to the group, but we clearly looked to India to
follow up with its own campaign to sell the plan for civil nuclear devel-
opment as well as the credibility of its plans to comply with the princi
ples and practices of nuclear nonproliferation. As the months passed, we
urged India to make its case before one of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
plenary meetings to begin to build the support that would be needed
when the 123 Agreement and the IAEA-India safeguards agreement
were placed before the group for formal consideration.
No doubt the p rocess for achieving a full consensus supporting
India in a group that functioned only by consensus as opposed to
majority vote was extremely challenging. Our view was that it was
vital for India to lay this groundwork at the few plenary sessions that
would present themselves over the next eighteen months. India’s view
was that it was the responsibility of the United States to achieve the
needed consensus on India’s behalf. Only the United States could
bring the necessary influence to bear on all the member nations to
move them to a full consensus. India’s efforts, they feared, would be
divisive, and in any case, India lacked the power to force recalcitrant
members to come to the table with positive attitudes. The result was
that as plenary opportunities passed, we waited for India, and they
waited for us while members of the group enjoyed the comfort of
almost complete withdrawal.
The climax of the 123 negotiation came in July at a meeting in
Washington. The outstanding points that remained unresolved w ere
few in number. Bringing the Indian side to the t able for final resolution
of these issues had taken months of talks that failed to move toward
resolution. One began to wonder whether it was the chairman of India’s
76 Chapter 2
nuclear power authority who held the power of final decision or the
prime minister. The coalition itself was divided, with the leftist parties
holding a position of inflexible hostility toward the entire enterprise. Fi
nally, we succeeded in getting all the senior negotiators from both sides
in the same room on the seventh floor of the State Department, with
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India Anil Kakodkar
ensconced in a nearby hotel room, positioned for private consultations
with the Indian team. I was present at the table with grave misgivings
about the once-removed status of Anil Kakodkar, who apparently would
have to sanction final concessions by India.
India sought to strengthen in its favor the provisions referring to the
supply of nuclear fuel to India under all circumstances and conditions
that might prevail in the future. The language governing this subject
had been agreed on with President Bush at the time of the completion
of India’s nuclear separation agreement the previous year. The gist of
India’s concern was that if, in the future, the United States imposed
sanctions or otherwise terminated nuclear cooperation with India, the
United States also might attempt to block the provision of fuel for
India even while India’s agreement with the Nuclear Suppliers Group
and the IAEA remained in place.
In order to soften India’s fears, we had agreed to assist India in cre-
ating a nuclear fuel stockpiling facility which if rationally managed by
India would overcome any US supply problem. For example, if India
stockpiled fuel not from the United States and used US-origin fuel for
current operations, the threat of a US disruption, which we believed in
any case not to be a relevant threat in world uranium markets, would
be overcome. The functioning of the world’s heavily private uranium
markets in our view removed the threat to India of the United States
exercising control over the world market. But India, which apparently
had weak faith in the dependability of markets and in its own ability
to manage a stockpile operation, remained fearful of US influence and
their vulnerability to p
olitical criticism in India. In the end, we refused
to soften the original presidential language to give India the comfort
it was seeking.
Going the Distanc 77
India’s other major demand was that it should be granted the right
by the United States to establish a facility for reprocessing nuclear fuel.
While we were willing to consider the m atter in principle in the future,
India sought the granting of this right up front in the 123 Agreement.
This proved to be a deeply contentious issue. The Indians refused to
budge. In the end, President Bush agreed to make the concession in the
form of agreement by the United States to immediately grant India the
right to establish a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility, subject to some care-
fully crafted language which in effect required a further negotiation with
the United States within a set time period and in accordance with certain
agreed procedures and conditions.
By the last days of July the 123 Agreement text was completed.
Formal parliamentary approval of the agreement was not required in
India, but the government was anxious to have the issue fully aired in
the form of a parliamentary debate during the monsoon session of par-
liament in August and September. Only then would the government
move ahead to the next phase of completing its negotiation of India’s
bilateral nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA. We w ere now
only eighteen months away from the end of the Bush administration.
The monsoon parliament erupted in chaos when the motion was
made to introduce debate on the US-India 123 Agreement. Day after
day, whenever an attempt was made to introduce debate, order could not
be established to permit debate. India’s media was vociferous and divided
on the merits of the deal reached with the United States. India’s BJP
opposition, which had initially introduced the idea of civil nuclear coop-
eration prior to 2004, now refused to recognize that its own aspirations
had been achieved and even exceeded. They refused to accept the written
facts of the case as presented in the agreement and demagogued all the
old shibboleths of a US conspiracy with the Indian government to rob
India of its nuclear independence and to subjugate India’s foreign policy
to US control. Leftist parties exceeded even these extreme accusations
and stated that if the government of India took any steps t oward advanc-
ing the p rocess to the IAEA or the Nuclear Suppliers Group, they would
immediately withdraw their support of the UPA government and call
78 Chapter 2
for a vote of confidence that surely was likely to bring the government
down. Other groups made the case that even though a parliamentary
vote was not required to “ratify” the 123 Agreement, the nuclear initia-
tive was so unique in India’s history that a debate and vote of confidence
to reflect the sense of parliament should be mandatory.
By early September we faced a complete standoff, and India’s
political process regarding the agreement was frozen in place. As I
tried to engage India’s s enior officials, pointing out the timetable con-
straints we and they would face in completing the entire process, I
was met with empty assurances of a rapid move forward to the IAEA.
To the argument that agreement had already been reached between
us on the 123 text and that India must advance to the next stage,
there was only a nodding caution and reminders of the complexities
of Indian domestic politics. September turned to October with no
sign of movement and no real engagement with the United States on
when any action would be taken.
Finally, on October 12, the opening day of the Hindustan Times annual
world forum event, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh announced that maintaining the coalition government for its full
term through May 2009 would take priority over completing India’s
civil nuclear agreement with the United States. I was stunned by this
remarkable statement and simply unable to comprehend the rationale
for turning away from what the Indians themselves had characterized
as the most important diplomatic initiative of the past sixty years. There
was sharp anger in the State Department and the White H ouse, to-
gether with the usual charges of incompetence, untrustworthiness, and
plain double dealing by the Indian government, a staple of the past fifty
years of behavior between the two great democracies.
This preemptive action was a heavy blow a fter two and a half years
of dedicated effort on an initiative that I knew to be of vital importance
to the Indian government. One could understand the UPA’s fear of a
withdrawal of leftist party support from the coalition, and one could
equally recognize the Congress Party leadership placing a high priority
on successfully managing a coalition government for the full five years of
Going the Distanc 79
parliament. What I found less easy to justify was the fact that this gov-
ernment had negotiated and agreed on the text of the 123 Agreement
after the US Congress had agreed to amend the Atomic Energy Act of
1954 for the first time since its original passage, and only then had they
balked. I also thought direction from the Congress Party leadership to
the nuclear science community to comply with what the leadership had
set as India’s f uture nuclear policy was more than overdue. We heard re-
ports of complicit actions between the nuclear science leadership group
and the leftist parties to delay the agreement, which to me seemed as
incredible as it was unacceptable. Who was really in charge of India, I
wondered, as the prime minister and the Indian cabinet had decided
long before to move ahead with the 123 Agreement.
Yet I had lived and worked for many years among difficult people
and in politically sensitive situations requiring supreme patience and
iron discipline against the temptation to become outraged and to
engage in satisfying but essentially unproductive public statements.
Besides, I knew from experience that an outspoken stance could result
in further backward movement. I firmly believed that the nuclear deal
was a fundamental interest of India, that the leaders genuinely wanted
to do the deal, and that given the complexities of Indian politics, the
best strategy was to wait, say virtually nothing, and be prepared for
any break. It was no different from my early football experience: if you
were sitting on the bench, your first duty to yourself and your team
was to be ready at any moment to enter the game and to score the
first time you touch the ball. It had worked for me in the past, and I
was sure there would at least be one chance at some point, and if the
chance came it could not be missed.
Once the government acknowledged that its top priority was the
preservation of the UPA coalition through the full term of its au-
thority (May 2009), it had in reality made itself hostage to the leftist
parties in the coalition and even to divisions within Congress and
among its more loyal coalition partners. The weakened position of the
government’s leadership therefore extended well beyond the question
of India’s civil nuclear initiative with the United States. The next eight
80 Chapter 2
United States in the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as well as
by the US administration’s powers to manipulate the Congress. Once
again, India’s facile assumptions that global realities could be overcome
at some final moment by the importance of the United States and
India conducting some kind of lightning strike persuaded the Indian
bureaucracy not to worry. I was told that the government wanted the
agreement to succeed and would find a way to work around its political
limitations. The reality was, however, that on the US side the shrink-
ing timetable and the complexities of congressional action would over-
whelm us. Meanwhile, the main point in India was not to politicize
the situation, a significant challenge in a country of constant political
turmoil with a hyperactive media.
For a period of nine months I made no aggressive remarks in pub-
lic, rose to none of the bait offered by the media or India’s active think
tank community. Instead, I expressed our understanding and respect for
India’s political p
rocess and our willingness to let the political p
rocess
work itself through. On two occasions I added simply that we w ere
aware of and concerned about the passage of time and its effect on the
deal timetable, with no further elaboration on the dozens of questions
which inevitably followed.
Privately, with Indian officials and with s enior ministers, including
the prime minister, I was more specific about the rising importance of
our timetable constraints. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, an ex-
tremely able and politically astute leader on many fronts in the Indian
government, was charged with chairing a committee in the Indian gov-
ernment on the question of moving civil nuclear talks forward in a fash-
ion that could be supported by the coalition, and especially by the
leftist parties. This, of course, was next to impossible, b
ecause the left-
ist parties had not been able to prevent the negotiation of e ither the
separation agreement or the US-India 123 Agreement, and as a result,
their only chance of blocking progress was to oppose any movement
by the government to begin negotiations with the IAEA on India’s
nuclear safeguards agreement. This, the left argued, represented the
first and critical step in making the 123 Agreement operational. Were
82 Chapter 2
the government to take such a step, the leftist parties would withdraw
their support from the government and call for a confidence motion
in parliament, which would surely bring the government down. Thus,
Foreign Minister Mukherjee was conducting a negotiation formed on
the basis of how many subtle steps could be debated on the head of a
very sharp pin without imperiling the survival of the government. As
time passed and the government became more enfeebled on a number
of different fronts, one could sense that the leftist parties had less to
lose by withdrawing support from the coalition and possibly some-
thing to be gained by disassociating themselves from a government
that was both less effective and more unpopular.
As the weeks following October 12 turned into months of waiting
and watching for the smallest signs of progress, I developed a vigil men-
tality, waiting on the sidelines for the chance to enter the game, take the
ball, and score. I had to be ready, to visualize every possibility, however
dull the waiting might be, and to avoid at all costs any sense of hopeless-
ness. Every day I was turning over our problem in my mind. Meanwhile,
Nick Burns left the State Department in May 2008, and I sensed that
others in Washington had given up and accepted what seemed to be
inevitable failure.
* * *
June 2008 was the low point in the popularity of Prime Minister Singh’s
government. A dramatic rise in inflation, especially in food prices im-
pacting India’s multitudes and in the price of petrol at the pump, fueled
the government’s widespread unpopularity. Looming food shortages
and price inflation even persuaded India to prohibit exports of essen-
tial foodstuffs, such as rice, to poor countries in Africa and elsewhere.
India, the traditional leader of the Third World who had so often lec-
tured the West about the morals of assistance, turned inward to brace
itself against the possibility of another failed monsoon.
We were approaching the annual economic summit of the heads
of state and governments set for early July in Tokyo. Prime Minister
Going the Distanc 83
Singh was to meet bilaterally with President Bush. The meeting looked
like the very last chance in an already failing nuclear initiative. In the
second half of June I asked to see Prime Minister Singh to make it
clear to him that w hatever he might be hearing from the bureaucracy
we were at the last possible moment for any hope of completing the
US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement.
In the constant process of turning over the problem of our impasse
on the civil nuclear agreement, I had developed a line of argument for
action by India that I thought might be appealing to Indian thought
processes. If India were to advance now to the IAEA and then to
the Nuclear Suppliers Group and finally lodge these accomplishments
before the US Congress in its last session, India might well achieve
two highly significant results. By gaining the approvals of the IAEA
and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, both of which would be supported
by the United States, the burden for further action would shift di-
rectly onto Congress and the administration. Even if the congres-
sional timetable and the rules laid down for processing final approval
made the task impossible to complete, India would be in a position to
argue that it had done its part to fulfill its commitments to the Bush
administration.
The second element of this approach was to consider what India’s
position might be if the exception granted to India by US law to ac-
cess civil nuclear technology from outside India w ere to be formally
recognized and accepted by both the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. These actions would have been proposed and supported by
the United States. The US Atomic Energy Act of 1954 was already
amended with commanding bipartisan majorities in Congress. The
change in US law, of course, would not have been activated by fi-
nal congressional approval of the actions taken by the IAEA and
the Nuclear Suppliers Group. One had to wonder, however, whether
actions taken by recognized international bodies of sovereign na-
tions, including the United States, might not remain valid for those
countries who decided to honor these decisions in their dealings with
India. If India, having accomplished t hese approvals, moved ahead and
84 Chapter 2
gaining the support of one of their severest critics, Amarh Singh, and his
handful of twenty-three votes in the lower house. Rumors were that his
party would not join the coalition government, but on this important
test it would support the policy of the government. In the end, Prime
Minister Singh won the confidence vote by a comfortable margin, but
not before some highly dramatic theater in parliament during the de-
bate preceding the vote. One member marched into the chamber with a
large suitcase in hand, which he opened on the speaker’s rostrum to spill
millions of rupees across the table and onto the floor. This, he said, was
the cash he had been offered to change his vote to support the govern-
ment. He raised his arms shouting that he would have none of it. The
government brushed the theater aside and immediately began its efforts
to advance to the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group. Once again we
were engaged with India in a common purpose whose urgency with the
summer break looming in E urope could hardly be overestimated.
Bureaucrats in Europe and those based in Europe from other coun-
tries invariably shut up shop in the month of August. We needed an
IAEA board meeting vote, and we estimated at least two plenary ses-
sions of the forty-five-member Nuclear Suppliers Group—all before
early September. It was common practice not to hold an IAEA board
meeting in August, and plenary meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers
Group normally took place approximately nine months apart. We also
faced the problem that the suppliers group would refuse to meet until
the IAEA had completed its work.
So, Vienna became the target for meetings in the languid days of
summer. One could imagine delegates being dragged back from holi-
days for business that many were not in any case keen to process. The
US Congress would reconvene on September 8, so we had five weeks
for a process we had imagined would require many months. We also
had a US Congress whose last session running up to the presidential
election in early November was rumored to be shrinking so members
could be home campaigning by early October.
Our first break came in early August when the IAEA agreed to
hold a board vote on India’s nuclear safeguards agreement. Work had
Going the Distanc 87
already been done on safeguards by India, and since the draft agree-
ment followed the many other precedents the IAEA had established
with other countries, the agreement was acted on relatively quickly.
This brought the focus of attention onto the Nuclear Suppliers Group,
which had a diverse membership of both large and small countries.
Consensus was reached that t here should be a meeting set in Vienna
for August 20–23, where the first full discussion would take place with a
view to reconvening in early September a fter governments had the op-
portunity of home office consultations, which for most countries meant
that top political leaders would have to make the final decision to sup-
port or oppose India.
I attended the Vienna meeting, which was a much larger, more for-
mal affair than I had imagined. Its plenary gathering numbered more
than two hundred, with delegates spread at desks across a wide but
rather shallow hall. The chairman presided at a small desk that was not
raised onto a rostrum and did not provide space for lieutenants flanking
him on either side. Statements were brief; there were a large number of
contributions, and the debate that followed was neither especially active
nor substantive in nature.
I suspected it was largely a behind-the-scenes affair, with most par-
ticipants there to gather information and impressions for their subse-
quent deliberations back home. One event that greatly surprised and
troubled me was a briefing we had scheduled for the Indian team led
by Shyam Saran and Shankar Menon. The briefing was held in the
luxurious plenary hall of the IAEA. The Indian team led off with sum-
mary remarks before opening the floor to questions and discussion. To
my surprise not a single delegate raised a question. I concluded that
either the periodic briefings over the past two years had effectively
answered all outstanding questions or that minds were already made
up and delegates did not wish to show their hands. I began to wonder
exactly how a consensus by the suppliers group, which had never had
a seriously divisive issue to decide, would be formed, and, more to the
point, expressed. There was to be no formal vote. What would hap-
pen if a country simply abstained from reaching its view on the India
88 Chapter 2
Washington at that time. We were less than two months away from
a strongly contested general election that stimulated highly parti-
san interests. In addition, the global financial crisis reached its peak
in September 2008, when political leaders and finance officials found
themselves staring into the abyss of a complete breakdown of the
world’s financial system. The meltdown of global financial markets was
sowing panic on Wall Street, in London, and in Japan, and Congress
was engaged in a frantic effort to enact economic stabilization measures.
On September 25 the president’s economic stabilization legislation
was defeated in Congress, and that e vening he hosted Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh of India for a small private dinner in the f amily din-
ing room of the White House. The prime minister was accompanied
by Foreign Secretary Menon, National Security Advisor Narayanan,
and the ambassador of India to the United States, Ronen Sen. Our
side included National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, and me. The dinner was memorable from the
moment President Bush entered the room. Despite having had one
of the worst days of his presidency, with collapsing markets and the
defeat of his stabilization package in Congress, he entered with a calm
and friendly bearing, conveying none of the frustration of his day. In
fact, as we sat down to dinner, he tipped back his chair and observed
that after such a day there was no one in the world that he would
rather be having dinner with that evening than Prime Minister Singh.
The president referred to the example of calmness and peace always
conveyed by the prime minister and expressed his gratitude for the
prime minister being at the White House on this particular evening.
We exchanged views on a wide variety of subjects that e vening,
including prospects for congressional action on the US-India Civil
Nuclear Agreement. The president was confident that the m easure
would be passed by the Congress before the general election recess.
This was the most heartening observation of the evening, and in less
than two weeks it proved to be correct. The congressional leadership
came together to agree to process the final very simple piece of legis-
lation that would bless and activate the agreement. Once again, large
Going the Distanc 93
President George W. Bush signs H.R. 7081, The United States-India Nuclear
Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act,
October 8, 2008, in the East Room at the White House. Behind President
Bush (left to right) are Rep. Joseph Crowley, Rep. Eliot Engel, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. John Warner, Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman, India’s ambassador to the United States
Ronen Sen, and Vice President Dick Cheney. Official White House photo
by Eric Draper, courtesy of George W. Bush Presidential Library
* * *
On the evening of October 25, 2005, I was invited to visit the campus
of the Pathways School, a relatively new boarding school about an
hour’s drive outside New Delhi. The school was founded by the Jain
family in New Delhi and in less than ten years had established itself as
a serious baccalaureate-program educational institution. The occasion
was a special e vening for parents and guests in which the students put
on a light show depicting the drama Ramayana, set around a small
lake and stone works in the center of the campus. I was driven out on
one of Delhi’s first cool evenings after the long, hot summer, and the
last ten miles down a narrow country lane at twilight u nder the rising
of a full moon was lovely, cool, and picturesque in the fading light.
I spoke before the light show to the body of assembled parents, stu-
dents, teachers, and visitors. When I finished, my security officer asked
me to step away for a moment. He told me t here had been a major ter-
rorist bomb attack on Sarojini Market in New Delhi, with a large num-
ber of casualties. Within a few minutes I was on my way back into Delhi
in a very different mood than on the outbound trip. Sarojini Market was
not far from the diplomatic enclave; it was frequented by large crowds in
the evenings, including many diplomatic personnel who were attracted
by its c onvenience and huge selection of goods. I could not imagine the
scenes of horror and hoped there were no American citizens among
the dead and injured. Traffic g oing back to the city was heavy and I
could understand why. Since the attack on India’s parliament in early
2002 there had been virtually no significant terrorism attacks in India,
apart from the almost daily incidents that swirled around Srinagar in
Kashmir and periodic local violence in India’s northeast. Sarojini was
clearly an attack of a wholly different type.
Going the Distanc 97
For the Indian intelligence community, the new strategy proved a de-
pressing and frightening challenge.
That the LeT could marshal a far more destructive campaign was
graphically demonstrated in the coordinated bomb attacks that took
place in Mumbai against the city’s commuter trains on July 11, 2006.
Over two hundred people were killed at the height of the evening
rush hour as they made their way home. For months afterward the
Daily News and Analysis in Mumbai published a personal sketch each
day of one individual victim, his or her life story as a working person,
a family member, wife, husband, son, or daughter, and how by sheer
chance that person came to be where they met their death in a train
ripped open by blasts in the midst of heavy monsoon rains. These ac-
counts were graphic and conveyed the pain, injustice, and pure chance
of death by the hand of cross-border terrorism.
These developments also raised serious problems for me as US am-
bassador in India. In the years following 9/11 in the United States, when
initially there was a notable sense of solidarity between the United
States and India, questions arose in India concerning the apparent dou-
ble standard of the US government t oward terrorism in India. The at-
tack on India’s parliament in early 2002, which had clearly been carried
out by Pakistanis, was not followed by any punitive US action against
Pakistan. Instead, the United States appeared to be largely insensitive
to Pakistani-led attacks across India following the Sarojini Market
outrage in 2005. The United States continued to regard Pakistan as a
critically important ally, vital to US interests in A
fghanistan. US aid
continued to flow to Pakistan without significant conditions. Providing
new or modernized F-16s to Pakistan, for example, continued to be
advanced as a policy objective of the US administration, whereas in
India the attitude was that F-16s are not used for crowd control in cases
of domestic unrest; they can carry nuclear weapons, which in India
were clearly seen as for deployment against India. Nevertheless, the
State Department continued issuing statements expressing our out-
rage and unconvincingly citing our shared interests in fighting terror-
ism. In fact, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and
Going the Distanc 99
Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice arriving
December 3, 2008, to dis
cuss rising tensions between
India and Pakistan follow
ing the late November
attacks in Mumbai by
Pakistan-based terrorists.
Pictured with Rice (left)
are Ambassador Mulford
and Jeannie Mulford.
Raveendran/AFP via
Getty Images
the terrorists w ere gradually overcome so that by late Saturday the at-
tack was over and the authorities were left fighting the fires and search-
ing hotels for bodies and survivors. Meanwhile, details of the street
attacks, the railway station massacre, and the utterly depraved attack on
Nariman House, the Jewish center, had emerged. Public outrage against
the Indian authorities for what appeared to be a delayed and inadequate
response swept the nation. Why couldn’t the government of India pro-
tect its people against predictable terrorist outrages? The public seemed
more intensely critical of their own authorities than against Pakistan,
the suspected perpetrator of the attack. The view among Indians was
that they expected this kind of outrageous behavior from Pakistan; it
was India’s inability to protect its own citizens that drew the ire of the
Indians. Incompetence and inaction from top to bottom was the pub-
lic’s bitter judgment, which later, despite the personal bravery of many
in the Mumbai police, proved to be for the most part true.
Going the Distanc 103
yellow dots indicating where the phone had been each day for the previ-
ous four weeks. The phone had never left Pakistan. It had been in the
border areas where terrorist training camps were known to be located
until a few days before the attack. Then the phone had gone to a partic
ular house on a named street in Karachi, and from t here to the Karachi
harbor and down the coast of India to Mumbai.
This and other revelations forced Pakistan out of its denial mode. It
was forced to acknowledge that the attack was carried out by Pakistani
nationals who had planned the attack on Pakistani soil. Yet it still
denied government involvement, and the official position of the US
government remained that of no smoking gun having been found in
Pakistan. Such was and apparently still is the capacity for denial in the
US Department of State, the National Security Council, and the CIA.
Meanwhile, the FBI and Mumbai police completed their work in
assembling the dossier of evidence implicating the government of
Pakistan and distributed it to each of the eleven countries that lost
citizens in the attack. The joint effort of the FBI and the Indian au-
thorities marked a critical turning point in US-India counterterrorism
cooperation. Home Minister Chidambaram, reappointed minister of
home affairs following the Indian general election of May 2009, has
continued the effort with the FBI, and I have no doubt that from the
tragedy in Mumbai yet another dimension of the US-India strategic
partnership will build greater trust and stronger counterterrorism co-
operation for the future.
About the Author
107
108 About the Author