The NSG Guidelines Changes: India Gets It Wrong

In a June 30th post, I wrote about the long-time coming changes to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) rules on enrichment and reprocessing technologies. Now Mark Hibbs at Carnegie has written a good synopsis of the evolution of the so-called “clean text”, the ultimately agreed-upon changes, and their implications.

Hibbs points out, for example, that India’s read of the impact of the changes in the guidelines vis a vis the U.S.-India nuclear deal is wrong. After the agreement, India shouted from the rooftops that the U.S. was going back on its pledge to provide civilian nuclear cooperation per the 2008 agreement and NSG exemption. Not so, says Hibbs. In fact, the U.S. had never intended to provide India with ENR technologies at all, nor did France and Russia, for that matter.