I have personally been a little on the fence about the Indian nuclear deal as it has evolved over time, but I'm inclined to look upon the latest incarnation less charitably.

Why? Because of the double standard. In the world, the United States is permitted more latitude with double standards than other nations, mainly because we hold a lot of the cards. Our national wealth and the way our government can control access to that wealth makes people want to deal with us. We can usually get our way, regardless of the obvious duplicity in some arrangements.

But we're dealing in a different arena right now. India (and China as well) is seen by most as a rising second-world country. They have more customers, more productivity and a dynamic consumer culture we want to engage, understand, and sell things to. So, on the surface it might make sense that they get to take advantage of the double-standards this time.

However, the cost is too great. This administration and others have drawn a line when it comes to developing a civilian nuclear capacity alongside a weapons program. This is the key problem:

Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who opposed the initial deal and said he would try to defeat the new arrangement, said Thursday, “If you make an exception for India, we will be preaching from a barstool to the rest of the world.”

Though India would be prohibited from using the fuel it purchases from the United States for nuclear weapons, the ability to reprocess the fuel means India’s other supplies would be freed up to expand its arsenal.

“It creates a double standard,” Mr. Markey said. “One set of rules for countries we like, another for countries we don’t.”

Robert J. Einhorn, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that in “the first phase of negotiations with India, the administration made concessions that put the country on par with countries that have signed” the Nonproliferation Treaty. (Israel and Pakistan are the only other countries that have refused to sign it, and North Korea quit the treaty four years ago.)

“Now we’ve gone beyond that, and given India something that we don’t give to Russia and China.”

Iran isn't the challenge, though our rhetoric with Iran seems quaint compared to the Indian nuclear deal. (That India would use its nuclear weapons against a Muslim country, Pakistan, doesn't look so hot, either.) Russia and China are the problem. And it is a problem of image. We have set our nation up as the chief police of something, and whether the public agrees with us having that role or not, the public probably won't agree with the idea that you can care enough about nuclear proliferation to threaten war in some cases, but bend over backwards to accommodate a proliferating nation in another.