Nuclear Double Standards - So What?

Pakistan's foreign minister demands "equality of treatment" from the US on the nuclear deal. George McGovern, 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, writes that US is "maintaining flagrant double standards regarding nuclear proliferation".

We agree that this is clearly a case of double standards i.e. different standards for India than for the others (Pakistan, Iran, North Korea).

So what? In business, or in the business of geopolitics, not everyone is equal. The powerful have different standards. The 5 nuclear powers in NPT have different standards than the others. The same 5, on the security council, have different standards than others. America, with its pre-emptive strike policy, among other things, holds itself to a different standard than others. Large businesses get preferential treatment over small businesses all the time. One may not like it, but it is the inevitable consequence of power.

India is an emerging power, no matter how you look at it. Pakistan needs to realize it never was, nor will be, equal to India by any measure. Liberal critics' arguments about geo-political equality are as naively unrealistic as communism was with its misplaced sense of individual equality.

These folks need to shed their dreamy, abstract notions of equality and wake up to the real world of double standards.