A Silver Lining to the US-India Nuclear Deal

India conducted nuclear research outside the limits of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and analysts disagree whether a deal between the US and India, allowing for trade and cooperation on civilian nuclear materials, hampers or strengthens that international treaty. “Without a doubt, the U.S.-India nuclear deal presents a serious challenge to the NPT,” writes physicist Pavel Podvig for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. ‘But it also presents an opportunity to strengthening the regime and its most important, relevant elements.” Podvig points out that the deal revives interest in the treaty’s goals to reduce nuclear weapons and also exposes some flawed assumptions about any nuclear arsenal, including the notion that knowledge is secure, held by only a few, and that the weapons provide any real security. – YaleGlobal