Bush Is Right on Nuclear India

President Bush has taken a lot of heat for the nuclear deal he’ll celebrate during this week’s visit by Indian PM Manmohan Singh, but it’s a wise move, Gideon Rachman writes in the Financial Times. “India is going to be one of the great powers of the 21st century,” he writes, so it’s time for the West “to move beyond a futile effort to sanction the country into renouncing the bomb.”

By welcoming India, a secular democracy, to the nuclear family, Bush is also striking a blow for the rule of law. “India already has nuclear weapons and nothing short of a global disarmament treaty is likely to change that fact,” Rachman writes. “Iran does not yet have the bomb, and it is important to try to prevent it from reaching that point.” (More nuclear weapons stories.)