ABSTRACT
The same complexity that made the agreement the most discussed foreign policy issue in India, served to minimise public discourse in the United States. The deal’s technical intricacies, multiple steps and numerous implications meant that an awareness and understanding of the deal was relegated to only a handful of constituencies: sections of the government that worked on India and its region, segments of the corporate sector, portions of the
This paper is partially based on interviews and other un-attributable interactions with former offi cials of the US Department of State, Department of Defense and National Security Council between September 2005 and August 2008. The author is indebted to Carlos Pascual, Stephen Cohen, K. Subrahmanyam, Akihiro Iwashita, Pavneet Singh, and Daniel Simons for their helpful comments and suggestions, and especially to Cassandra Berman for her invaluable edits. Any inaccuracies that remain, however, are the sole responsibility of the author.
