Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party are in more trouble over the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Indian general elections than they would readily acknowledge, with the distinct possibility of losing power. On the other hand, if either the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-inspired Third Front or the BJP-led NDA form the government, there is certain to mild possibility of the nuclear deal being re-negotiated, which could increment the already growing downturn in India’s relations with the Barack Obama administration.

The Obama administration considers the nuclear deal another one of the toxic legacies of the previous George W.Bush government, in addition to the failed US economy and the disastrous Iraq and Af-Pak wars. President Obama tried but failed to introduce killer amendments to the nuclear deal as a senator, which was eventually passed by bipartisan consensus in the US Congress. But as a Democratic president, Obama is committed to non-proliferation goals like CTBT, FMCT and making NPT applicable to hold-out nuclear weapons’ powers like India, Pakistan and Israel. Several of his senior officials are staunch opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal. India is already smarting with suggestions in Washington that US nuclear fuel exports and reprocessing rights that are to come in the second leg of negotiations would be linked to Indian acceptance of CTBT and FMCT, with the fear that it would open the way for the US to find ways and means to cap, rollback and eliminate India’s nuclear weapons’ programme.

India’s May 1998 nuclear test was prompted by fears of the imminence of the CTBT’s entry into force, which the US Senate eventually rejected to its relief. But the thermonuclear weapon did not explode in the 1998 test or blasted sub-optimally, which makes it imperative to conduct more tests, since the mainstay of India’s deterrent is medium-to-long-range missiles tipped with thermonuclear warheads. While the then A.B.Vajpayee government put a voluntary moratorium on further tests to lower the intensity of consequent US sanctions, the nuclear deal builds on that, in effect turning a de facto commitment into a de jure one, which was one of the principal grounds for the BJP, a section of the strategic community and partly the CPI-M to oppose the deal. The deal also binds India to “assist” the US to negotiate a universal FMCT, even though there is little evidence that India has accurately estimated its fissile material needs to counter existing Chinese and Pakistani threats and in view of new weaponising alarms from Iran and the nuclear arms race that will enkindle among the rival West Asian Sunni powers lead by Saudi Arabia.

The Indo-US nuclear deal can, at best, meet three per cent of India’s energy needs, which makes Manmohan Singh’s compromises to the US on India’s military nuclear programme flatly unacceptable. (Indeed, any compromise on India’s deterrent is unacceptable.) Why Manmohan Singh made those compromises, forcing the CPI-M and other Left parties to quit supporting his government last year, is still not clear. His excuse of a nuclear fuel shortage for India’s existing power reactors is bogus because both government auditors and independent American studies say India has enough local uranium and blame milling and mining bottlenecks on the Department of Atomic Energy bureaucracy.

On the other hand, Manmohan Singh is a pro-US economist who opposed the May 1998 test and has no domestic political base to speak of. The Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian-born, nominated him prime minister in 2004 because she perceives him the least threat to the dynastic succession of her son, Rahul Gandhi. In quest of personal glory, failing all else, Manmohan Singh made the nuclear deal a prestige issue for himself, forcing the Congress party and its other UPA allies to purchase and split opposition votes to survive a parliamentary confidence motion in July last year. Up to the announcement of general elections, the government prevented the calling of a winter or late-winter Parliament session for fear of not being able to survive a second confidence vote.

While the BJP was earlier reconciled to the nuclear deal as a fait accompli (India has an enviable history of never reneging on an international treaty), it now mildly speaks of renegotiating it because that is what its future coalition partners may want, in view of the very successful CPI-M-Left campaign against the deal. On the other hand, if the CPI-M-led Third Front returns with a handsome victory, the nuclear deal will come under pressure, and since the US may not be willing to renegotiate it, there is an outside chance of it being altogether abandoned.

Besides the nuclear deal, the Left wants reassessment of the entire “strategic partnership” with the United States brought to fruit under the successive Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments.  The CPI-M general secretary, Prakash Karat, who is spearheading this anti-US campaign, is particularly livid about the June 2005 “New Framework for the US-India Defense Relationship” that controversially seeks India and the US to “collaborate in multinational operations”, “expand collaboration relating to missile defense”, and “assist in building worldwide capacity to conduct successful peacekeeping operations”, among other things.

To be prime minister again, Manmohan Singh is open to a second collaboration with the Left, and at least openly, given the cooling of ties with the Obama administration, may not pursue strong strategic relations with the United States. But Karat and other Left leaders are implacably opposed to Manmohan Singh, and Sonia Gandhi will have to replace him as the least condition to placate them, though it won’t be easy either for her or for them. But meanwhile, related but other issues, like the Af-Pak crisis, and end-use monitoring agreements covering American military sales to India, are dogging Indo-US relations. A perception is growing across the Indian political spectrum that the US cannot be India’s steady, reliable and understanding strategic partner. The general election is bringing that perception to a boil.