Under-Reported Story of the Millenium

Okay, the millenium is only 5 years old, but this story deserves far more attention than Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

The Bush administration has been farsighted on this issue. With China rising and Europe and Japan declining, it sees India as a natural partner. It also recognized that 30 years of lectures on nonproliferation and sanctions have done nothing to stop, slow down or make safer India's nuclear program. Most important, it recognized that India was a rising and responsible global power—India has never sold or traded nuclear technology—that could not be treated like a rogue state. So the administration has proposed reversing three decades of (failed) American policy, and aims to make India a member of the nuclear club.

The benefits for the United States—and much of the world—are real. This agreement would bring a rising power into the global tent, making it not an outsider but a stakeholder, and giving it an incentive to help create and shape international norms and rules. For example, India is becoming more worried about a nuclear Iran for this reason, and not because it is being pressured to do so by the United States. When India was being treated like an outlaw, it had no interest in playing the sheriff.

India will be the next economic and military super duper power, and cultivating an alliance with this awakening giant, while keeping good relations with Pakistan has required a delicacy of diplomacy that few would have considered possible, even if we had a president and brilliant and nuanced as John Kerry.

It's a testiment to Bush's non-narcissistic approach that getting this done has flown under the MSM's radar, who generally need to have things not just spoon fed, but predigested for them.