In the middle of last autumn's financial crisis, George W. Bush found time to arm-twist Congress into enacting the US-India civil nuclear deal. There was no time to do much else, amid a general election and enactment of a controversial $700bn bank bail-out. But India, which had readily stepped up to the role of "natural ally" to the US during the Bush years, merited the attention.

Non-proliferation hawks in Washington spilt much ink criticising a deal they said would undermine the non-proliferation treaty by implicitly recognising the nuclear weapons status of India - a non-signatory. To no avail. It seems unlikely that Barack Obama, the US president, who is far closer to an NPT view of the world than his predecessor Mr Bush, would have initiated such a deal.