It is a refrain in American politics that there are two things one should never watch being made-law and sausage. The crafting of public policy in America is messy and complicated. Battles between the President and Congress determine the direction of American law. This article explores how the complex dynamics between President Bush, the State Department, and Congress influenced the substance of the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Following President Bush's re-election in the fall of 2004, the President made several key decisions that would influence American foreign policy, the most significant of which was appointing his trusted foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as his new Secretary of State. Rice worked with her closest advisers to rethink America's policy toward India. Fearful of rising China, Rice envisioned a framework that would recast India's role in the world. Prior to Rice's March 2005 visit to New Delhi, the newly confirmed Secretary of State met the President to suggest expanding nuclear cooperation with India. According to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, President Bush seized the possibility of strengthening the world's largest democracy and ignoring India's past nuclear transgressions.

On returning from India in the spring of 2005, Rice worked with her closest advisers-Counselor Phillip Zelikow and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns-to lay the framework for an agreement which could be announced when Indian Prime Minister Singh visited Washington in July 2005. By design or fate, the deliberations in the State Department focused on the geopolitical benefits of the deal, rather than its potential non-proliferation consequences. The White House kept Congress in the dark about its plans. According to Kessler, the post of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control was vacant, as were many of the top positions in the non-proliferation bureaucracy at State. With Congress out of the loop and the non-proliferation bureaucracy at State without a powerful bureaucratic infighter, geopolitical priorities trumped proliferation concerns for Rice and her team.

In July 2005, President Bush and Prime Minister Singh announced the landmark nuclear partnership. In the weeks that followed, significant concerns about the deal were espoused publicly by members of Congress, and privately by non-proliferation experts within the United States Government. Representative Henry Hyde and Senator Richard Lugar chair Congress's foreign affairs committees and both men have staked their reputations on combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The extent to which the final agreement would reflect the priorities of Bush and Rice-rather than Lugar and Hyde-highlights the dominance of the White House in the realm of foreign policy.

Heading into Bush's historic trip to New Delhi in March 2006, American legislators were pushing the administration to make certain that any accord Bush signed would advance the US non-proliferation agenda. Once in India, with pressure from the President to conclude an agreement, Rice and Burns finalized a pact that strengthened India's nuclear capabilities, while ignoring the concerns of Congress.

Publicly, Congress reacted unenthusiastically to the accord. Privately, senior legislative aides described the profound concerns of their bosses-concerns that they had not been briefed, and that Bush had given away the farm on non-proliferation. Senators, Representatives, and their advisers huddled with former government officials to answer the question: What do we do with this? For many on Capitol Hill, reconciling America's competing priorities of checking China, strengthening India, and combating proliferation seemed impossible.

How and why did the opposition to the deal turn into support? Farah Stockman writes in the Boston Globe that immediately after the deal was announced, an extraordinary lobbying effort was initiated by the pro-India lobby and American corporate giants like General Electric and Westinghouse, which made it plain to lawmakers that the support of the Indian-American community would hinge upon their support for the deal.

Against the backdrop of an election year, Senators and Representatives made a strategic calculation to support the nuclear partnership. That calculus envisaged that: The damage to non-proliferation could not be reversed. The costs of altering the agreement would set Indo-US relations back decades, while facilitating China's rise to power, and opposition to the deal would mean tougher electoral prospects. For many lawmakers who found themselves between a rock and a hard place, supporting the deal was the least worst option. By the end of June 2006, overwhelming majorities in the Senate Foreign Relations and House International Relations Committees had endorsed the nuclear partnership.

At the start of his second term, President Bush and Secretary Rice sought to propel India from being an emerging power to a full-fledged world power capable of balancing China. By presenting the new accord as a fait accompli to Congress, President Bush reasserted his foreign policy dominance and successfully navigated the sausage factory that is the American policy process.