| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As the world entered the last couple of decades of the 20th century, the sharply differing views and reactions of India and the United States (US) to unfolding global and regional events had brought bilateral relations to almost the nadir of the Nixon years. As James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden, the Washington-based editors of India: A Country Study have recorded (http://www.countrystudies.us/india/134.htm), "In the 1980s the Indian and United States governments had divergent views on a wide range of international issues, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Middle East, and Central America. Serious differences also remained over the US policy toward Pakistan and the issue of nuclear proliferation. India was repeatedly incensed in the Eighties when the US provided advanced military technology and other assistance to Pakistan despite the US' concerns about Pakistan's covert nuclear programme. For its part, Washington continued to urge New Delhi to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and, after the successful test launch of the Indian Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile in May 1989, called on New Delhi to refrain from developing a ballistic missile capability by adhering to the restrictions of the Missile Technology Control Regime". This unhappy prelude makes the vibrancy of the India-US bilateral defence relationship in general (and the maritime relationship in particular) over the very next decade all the more striking.
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