Lying to the legislature

Maybe, maybe not. It does not matter

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

The Indian prime minister told his legislature that India has the right to conduct a nuclear test. The US president told his, that the United States has the right to cease co-operation and repossess whatever was sold to India. Neither is being untruthful. But it is amazing that many Indians should automatically assume that it is their prime minister who lied to their parliament. Surely, they can’t be unaware of the rich tradition of US presidents lying to the US Congress?

The spanner that the non-proliferation ayatollahs threw into the works at the Nuclear Suppliers Group does not change the essential logic. As this blog has argued before, speeches, letters, understandings and agreements do not matter as much as the interests of the two countries. The editorial of the Times of India got it right:

At the end of the day, the US cannot take any position other than to assert that it has the right to terminate cooperation in such an eventuality. On India’s part, we have been equally vigorous in maintaining our right to test in compelling circumstances. This argument would be decided by sovereign decisions and national interests, not by legalistic wording. [TOI]

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