Currying favor: forget about Iran--Strobe Talbott says we couldn't even keep our ally India from getting the bomb.

• Author: Waldman, Amy
• Position: On Political Books - Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb - Book Review

Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb By StrobeTalbott Brookings Institution Press, $27.95

Few foreign policy challenges are proving as daunting for the Bush administration as controlling entrance into the world's nuclear club. From Iran to North Korea, the administration finds itself awkwardly trying to stitch alliances and balance carrots and sticks to deter proliferators, all with limited success.

The extent of the challenge can be gauged by the difficulty we've had of keeping even non-hostile nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. In 1998, India conducted its first nuclear test. Two weeks later, Pakistan followed suit.

The tests triggered celebrations in both countries, suggesting that getting either to turn back was improbable, if not impossible. In an effort to put the genie back in the bottle, the Clinton administration entered into intense negotiations with India as part of a reengagement with a country that had been largely estranged from the United States during the Cold War, because of its close ties to the Soviet Union.

The point man for that reengagement, former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, has now written a book about the experience. Talbott argues that much good came from Clinton's effort. But his book also makes clear that a better relationship with a country is no guarantee that the United States will get what it wants.

Thanks in no small part to Bill Clinton's opening--capped by the President's rapturously received visit to India in 2000, the first by an American president in 22 years--America and India are on better terms today than at any time in the last 50 years. The reflexive anti-Americanism that was once pervasive here is gone, although vestiges remain. The American government takes India far more seriously as a potential strategic partner (and the American public takes it far more seriously as a potential economic power, thanks to the rise of outsourcing). American defense manufacturers are increasingly interested in India as a market, and top State Department officials are regular visitors.

But while Talbott makes a strong case that Clinton's presidency marked a "turning point" in U.S.-India relations, his book, Engaging India, is largely a narrative of failed diplomacy. Talbott's task was to persuade India to agree to four nonproliferation benchmarks, including the endorsement of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). His interlocutor in this effort was Jaswant Singh, then India's...