WHEN is an Asian nation that has nuclear weapons and has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a worthy partner for the United States in nuclear cooperation?
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The Bush Administration certainly makes a big enough fuss about Iran and North Korea in the nuclear weapons area, not to mention the war waged in part over Iraq's fictional nuclear weapons.
Israel, which has nuclear weapons and hasn't signed the NPT either, is a case apart, winning from its traditional alliance with the United States a pbutt on the subject.
India, the country in question, has just been shown by the visit of Prime Minister and Mrs. Manmohan Singh, to be something else altogether. He was given the signal honor of being asked to address Congress, providing a happy distraction for its members from the Karl Rove issue and the machinations surrounding the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. He also got a state dinner, one of only five that President and Mrs. Bush have hosted.
What is special about India?
The answer is that America's relationship with it is becoming increasingly important in both the business and commercial and strategic domains. If one is convinced by the pious rhetoric sometimes uttered by Mr. Bush and other senior officials of his administration, India could be said to be different because it is a democracy, even though it is a heavily armed democracy with unsupervised nuclear weapons.
It is also hard to argue that the United States should be friendly with Pakistan, India's rival and sometime enemy - which the United States wants to be friendly with, given its proximity to Afghanistan - and not be friendly with India, a bigger democracy with a growing economy.
Then there is the broadening and deepening business relationship between the United States and India, not only a major beneficiary of the outsourcing of many American jobs, and a big buyer of the $2 billion a day in revenue the United States needs to find to cover the debt created by Mr. Bush's tax cuts, but also a market of some 1.1 billion people.
That's on the economic side. It is also true that as the United States eyes warily a China that is building up its military buttets opposite Taiwan, including 600-700 short-range ballistic missiles, telling us to get out of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and challenging America economically across the world, we need a friend in the region.
At the same time, it is fascinating to see the double standard the Bush Administration employs in its stiff rejection of Iran and North Korea for their nuclear efforts, alongside its acquiescence - and cooperation - with India in theirs.
