LINK: Interesting post by Ivo Daalder on the Bush Administration's deicison to allow India to develop its commercial nuclear energy capabilities. Ivo lists a number of reasons to find the move to be a generally good one, but he does seem to omit the one that seemed most obvious to me on first reading about this move: it's really intended as a regional balancing against the potential hostility of emerging Chinese power. I think this is actually a fine example of how realist and idealist interests can coincide, as Ivo suggests:
"Third, and most crucially, India is the largest democracy in the world. Its leaders represent -- and I mean represent -- one in six people in the world. Maintaining good relations with the world's other democracies is the key to a successful foreign policy...
As I have noted before, Bush has challenged the reigning non-proliferation orthodoxy in important ways: Instead of focusing on weapons and technology, he's focused on the nature of the regimes that acquire them. Relaxing the rules for India -- a democracy -- is consistent with insisting on stricter rules for rogues like Iran and North Korea."
It's a really nice gesture of support for India (in implying that they can be trusted to develop new technology in acceptable ways), which happens to also make everyone a little better off than they were before. Not a bad move.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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