India?s emergence as a confident and responsible nuclear nation has required careful crafting of its nuclear policies. After Pokhran II and the Chagai Hills tests, the South Asian security architecture and, with it, the whole matrix of nuclear diplomacy had undergone a paradigmatic shift. India?s nuclear diplomacy too acquired a new prominence after these events. It was important for India to improve its bilateral relations with major powers for strategic reasons. At the same time, it needed to address the challenge of its burgeoning energy needs at home. Therefore, quite distinctive from its earlier stance, India?s nuclear diplomacy?after Pokhran II?commenced in a fundamentally changed context and with a considerably new orientation, culminating in the much-discussed Indo-US nuclear deal. This deal, the bellwether of India?s new-look nuclear diplomacy, and the special waiver (granted to India by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group) have won her a respectable place at the international diplomatic high table and have opened up possibilities of a whole new gamut of international nuclear commerce. This would, as envisaged, allow India to boost her domestic nuclear programme and widen her energy prospects. India?s Nuclear Diplomacy After Pokhran II presents an analytical, perspectival and narrative exposition of the facts and issues involved in international nuclear gamesmanship, taking every care to maintain objectivity and balance. Flowing from years of intensive research and reflection, this book breaks new ground by not dilating the issues of nuclear security and the making of the bomb, which have been subjected to scholarly treatment in a variety of works since 1998, but by focusing on India?s nuclear diplomacy with the major global and regional powers, and the rationale of its stand vis-?-vis the NPT and CTBT. To reach out to the general reader, in addition to scholars of the subject, this book unravels the intricacies and technicalities of the post-Pokhran II diplomacy in lucid and comprehensible phraseology.ContentsIndia?s Nuclear Relation with the United States: From Estrangement to Engagement The Indo-US Civil Nuclear Cooperation Deal: Issues of Energy Security and High-tech Growth Nuclear Weapons and the India?China Relationship Indo-Russian Strategic Ties: New Choices and Constraints India?France Nuclear Engagement: From Strategic Dialogue to Nuclear Commerce India?Pakistan Nuclear One-upmanship India and the Global Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime About the AuthorAjai K. Rai has served as Visiting Professor at the Jamia Millia Islamia. Earlier, he was Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, with full sponsorship of the Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, and at the Indian Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. He was also awarded a short-term fellowship by the Regional Centre of Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo. Rai has had a thirteen-year stint in the media, and was awarded the Press Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. He has authored more than a dozen research articles and three monographs, among which are ?Kargil War and the Indian Media? and ?US-led War on Taliban?. He has delivered lectures at important research centres, institutions and universities in India and abroad, which include the University of Leicester, UK; the SVP National Police Academy, Hyderabad; and National Defence College, Delhi. Currently, he teaches as guest faculty at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Foreign Service Institute and the Indian Institute of Public Administration.