Project overview

Welcome to the University of Reading website for the 123 Agreement project, which examines the 2008 Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of India Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy (123 Agreement). This project runs from January 2009 to March 2012, and is being undertaken through integrated research and teaching initiatives. The project involves collaboration between academics at two partner institutions: the School of Law, University of Reading, UK, and the Post Graduate Departments of Law, the Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, Chennai, India. It is funded by a £30,000 UK-South Asia Partnership Scheme British Academy grant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 123 Agreement has a clear purpose: to "enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation between the Parties" and to "provide for peaceful nuclear cooperation and not to affect the unsafeguarded nuclear activities of either Party" (Article 2). It is intended to facilitate the exchange of civil nuclear technology between India and the US and marks the first time that a state possessing nuclear weapons outside the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), namely India, has had its civil nuclear energy programme "brought into the fold." The 123 Agreement is widely seen as a strategic coup for both states, perhaps particularly for India given its increasingly prominent political and economic role in international affairs.

This nuclear deal is exceptional in that it goes against the grain of several decades of US non-proliferation practice. A number of critics have argued that it unravels the NPT and sends the wrong message to states such as Iran and North Korea. Opinion in India is also sharply polarised, with some observers contending that the 123 Agreement surrenders India's sovereignty and conflicts with its policy of neutrality in international relations by inextricably aligning it with the US.

The 123 Agreement project provides an opportunity to analyse relevant issues related to the 123 Agreement and to give a legal angle to the politicised debate in South Asia. The project has been built around the following research and teaching themes in relation to the 123 Agreement: sovereignty; security and risk; trade and non-proliferation; and international relations and the role of international institutions. Under these themes, a variety of research questions have been addressed, such as the challenges that the 123 Agreement poses to the NPT; the impact of the 123 Agreement on the existing international non-proliferation regime; the reconciliation of free trade agreements with non-proliferation imperatives; the consequences of the 123 Agreement for India's strategic objectives and traditional distance from US influence in international relations; the implications of the 123 Agreement for other nuclear states, such as Pakistan; the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its safeguards system under the 123 Agreement; and the role of other international organisations, such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation, on nuclear energy cooperation.

The research themes of the project were considered in three workshops. These research workshops brought together academics, diplomats, legal practitioners and governmental representatives to examine the 123 Agreement from a variety of perspectives.  The project workshops will also be supplimented by two research seminar presentations.  Project research has been published in a special issue of the Indian Journal of International Law as well as in various other academic journals. 

In addition to the research goals of the 123 Agreement project, there is a closely related collaborative teaching element. This is benefiting the "next generation" of scholars in both the UK and South Asia. Teaching sessions devised jointly by the two partner institutions have been taken by postgraduate students in both Reading and Chennai.