Three's a Crowd? Media Representations of the US-India Nuclear Agreement in the US, India, and Europe.

The US-India nuclear agreement is widely seen as a major shift in US policy, not only with respect to relations with India, but in terms of nuclear non-proliferation and global strategic alliances. India, self-proclaimed leader of the ‘non-aligned’ but perceived to be on the Soviet side during much of the Cold War years, also underwent a double policy volte-face in the last decade of the twentieth century. Faced with a severe international financial crisis it abandoned “socialist” economic policies and started on the road of economic reform; and in the ‘unipolar’world following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it cultivated relations with the sole superpower despite setbacks such as the immediate aftermath of its nuclear tests in 1998.The profound policy shift between US and India posed questions about the placement of Europe in this strategic re-alignment. Despite the march of the European project, “Europe” as a conceptual unit was largely missing from public discourse in India. As the US and India moved towards a new strategic embrace, it remained to be seen to what extent Europe in this context would be viewed and view itself as part of the transatlantic community, and to what extent it might develop a distinct strategic identity in a future multi-polar world.This paper will explore the representation of the shifting strategic relations between the US and India, and its implications for Europe’s strategic self-perception, in selected newspapers in the US, India and Europe. It will do so by examining the coverage of the US-India nuclear agreement, focusing on three ‘moments’ in this developing ‘story’: the initial understanding during the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Washington in July 2005, the passage of the agreement through the US Congress, and the failure of US-India talks on finalizing the deal in India in May 2007. The representative newspapers are the Washington Post in the US, The Hindu and Indian Express in India, Le Monde in France and Die Zeit in Germany. All are newspapers noted for discussions and critiques of national policy and international security issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]