In his farewell address on January 17, 1961,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered the
prophetic warning: "In the councils of
government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military-industrial complex." He
was talking of the influence of the complex (for
which his epithet was to prove enduring) in
Washington’s corridors of power.

We in India had to wait until the second term
of a distant successor with very different views
on the subject to discover the relevance of the
warning to us. The US military-industrial complex
(along with its strategic-business partners
elsewhere) has just given us proof of its
influence in the councils of government in New
Delhi as well. The influence has, in fact, been
as important a factor behind the dramatic advance
towards the finalization of the US-India nuclear
deal as the diplomatic skills said to have been
displayed on both sides.

Conspicuous has been the omission of the role
of the complex in official versions of the
advance. By these accounts, it was the brilliant
negotiators on both sides who brought about the
advance. On July 18, 2005 President George W.
Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sprang a
nasty surprise on the peace-loving world with the
announcement of a nuclear deal to be worked out
in detail. On the same date last month,
high-ranking Indian officials started fresh talks
with their US counterparts in Washington to give
a final shape to the deal in the form of a
bilateral agreement, as required under American
law.

Days later, the two sides proclaimed to a
dead world that the deal had been clinched at
last. The text of the agreement was ready, with
well-advertised differences vanishing as if at
the touch of a magic wand. Nuclear scientists and
others, who had made so much noise about ’"the
national sovereignty" involved, suddenly fell
silent, with some of them even turning into
eulogists of the deal.

There is no doubt, of course, that India’s
“strategic concerns” over the deal seem to have
been addressed, to the satisfaction of nuclear
hawks here. The discretionary powers of the US
president, it has been delicately hinted, will
take due care of the letter of American law,
which had seemed to prohibit further nuclear
testing in India, for example. But there was more
to the advance than met the eye in mere official
statements.

Less than due publicity was given to the fact
that the military complex was conducting its own
parallel negotiation process. Buried in reports
on the advance was a semiofficial acknowledgement
of this accompanying exercise.

The former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy
Commission, M. R. Srinivasan, a late addition to
the pro-deal lobby, let the cat out of the bag. A
newspaper story reported him as saying that, once
the 123 Agreement was legislatively approved in
both countries, "French and American nuclear
businesses, holding talks with Nuclear Power
Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) could go
ahead with the selection of sites for power
plants and other modalities.“He added:”All these things will begin
rolling once the agreement ... gets final
approval from the Union Cabinet." The Cabinet, it
may be noted, has already approved the agreement,
though the text is going to be placed before
Parliament only on or after August 10.

On July 21, Ron Somers, president of the
US-India Business Council, articulated the main
concern of the military-industrial complex in the
matter. While hailing US civilian nuclear
cooperation with the "world’s largest free-market
democracy,“he said the agreement”will present a
major opportunity for US and Indian companies
...."

He took the opportunity to plead for adoption
by the US Congress and India’s Parliament of a
"multilateral Convention of Supplementary
Compensation (CSC), so US and Indian
private-sector companies can engage in India’s
nuclear power build-out." The convention will
provide a compensation mechanism against
unforeseen liabilities. “Without this mechanism,”
Somers said, "Americans would be put at a
disadvantage in competition with public-sector
companies from France and Russia."

The US-India Business Council, a division of
the three-million-member US Chamber of Commerce,
has been spearheading advocacy of the deal
through the Coalition for Partnership with India.

We have noted before in these columns the
expectations of corporations and experts from the
deal, and these bear repetition. Expert
projections made in December 2006 envisage an
increase in India’s nuclear arsenal by 40 to 50
weapons a year as a result of the deal. The
country is also expected to acquire 40 nuclear
reactors over the next two decades or so.

According to more recent reports, India has
announced plans to expand its current installed
nuclear-energy capacity from 3,500 megawatts to
60,000 megawatts by 2040. The expansion is valued
at $150 billion.

Last year, Somers said the deal would create
27,000 “high-quality” jobs a year over the next
decade in the US nuclear industry, "which has
been losing orders in a world increasingly wary
of nuclear power."

Corporations on both sides spent large
fortunes on hard-selling the deal to an initially
reluctant Congress. New Delhi has spent about
$1.3 million dollars in this regard on two
lobbying firms, one of which (Barbour, Griffith
and Rogers) is headed by US Ambassador to India
Robert Blackwill. The US-India Business Council
has not revealed the amount it paid Patton Boggs,
a lobbying firm known for its larger fees.

The Confederation of Indian Industries, for
its part, has helped to fund numerous business
trips to India by US congressmen and their staff
over the past few years. Modest estimates place
the cost of nuclear tourism at $550,000.

The US military-industrial complex does not
conceal its excitement at the mega-sized defense
agreements with India and the proposed Indian
cooperation with Bush’s missile-defense program.
Last year, talk in the complex was about a $9
million contract for Lockheed Martin to supply
126 fighter planes. There is talk now of more
profits ahead for the arms merchants from the $40
billion budget for India’s defense purchases by
2020.

When the nuclear warship USS Nimitz came
calling at the port of Chennai on India’s
southern shore last month, US Ambassador David
Mulford used the occasion to talk of a "new era
of defense cooperation." He recalled that last
year India had purchased the troop carrier USS
Trenton and hoped for the possible sale to this
country of C-130 aircraft, "the celebrated
workhorse of multi-role lift airplanes with the
longest continuous production run of any military
aircraft."

The cost of all the commerce the agreement
will make possible, for the poor people of India
and for peace in South Asia, of course, does not
enter at all into the calculations of the
military-industrial complex.