The former believes that we are making an historic strategic alignment with the US that should stand us well during the decades of US supremacy that they see ahead. It is argued by an eminent strategic thinker that “the US will need India more to sustain its pre-eminence than India would need the US to keep (sic) its ranking in international hierarchy” (thereby positing that India will have equal leverage within the relationship), and that “most countries, which rose to be world powers, did so only by depending initially on another”.

This piece argues that India-US relations shall no doubt strengthen on the basis of economic and political fundamentals, but any dramatic upturn in strategic relations, and its subset defence co-operation, as is being predicted by many, is improbable. The US wants more than the limited partnership India once had with the Soviet Union but India’s national interests and domestic politics are unlikely to permit that. Moreover, serious practical problems exist in boosting ties beyond a point – at nuclear, defence-industrial and military levels.

The post-1962 military assistance relationship between India and the US was short and soon unravelled, but the threads were picked up again in 1985 when the two signed an MOU on Defence Technology Co-operation. India’s hesitant economic liberalisation and the easing of the cold war made this possible. In 1983 India initiated three ambitious defence projects – Integrated Guided Missile Development Project (IGMDP), Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and Main Battle Tank (MBT). The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) needed help with all three. For good reasons India went for western rather than Soviet help.

Assistance from several sources including US Air Force laboratories and the supply of General Electric F404-GE engines helped the LCA fly. Help for MBT came mainly from western Europe. In the case of IGMDP, while two of its five missiles (nuclear capable Prithvi and Agni) were beyond the possibility of securing outside help, three others (anti-aircraft Trishul and Akash, and anti-tank Nag) were not. This period also saw a slow enhancement of military-to-military relationship, particularly with the US Pacific Command.

India’s sweeping economic liberalisation in the early 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union paved the way for the January 1995 US-India ‘Agreed Minutes of Defence Relations’. Through the constitution of a Defence Policy Group and a Joint Technology Group this agreement raised ties to a markedly higher level. Structured strategic consultations began, and cooperation in technology as well as in training and exercises got a boost. A setback occurred three years later because of India’s May 1998 nuclear tests, but the US accepted the new reality very quickly. Some sanctions were lifted within months and in October 1999 the US Congress authorised the then Clinton administration to waive, at the latter’s discretion, all nuclear related sanctions against India and Pakistan.

The speed with which the US came to terms with overtly nuclear India had good reasons. India’s steadfast refusal to sign NPT since 1968, possession of nuclear weapons for several years and the refusal to sign CTBT despite intense pressure had rendered the ‘cap, rollback, eliminate’ stance wholly sterile. The US’s long acceptance of Israel’s nuclear weapons and the shift in emphasis in US non-proliferation thinking from NPT to counter-proliferation, because of unipolar circumstances, were other reasons. India (and to some extent Pakistan) was seen as needing to be accommodated, not isolated.

Although Clinton had resolved post-test tensions and had supported India strongly on Kargil and terrorism, the Indian strategic community cheered Bush’s arrival in Washington in January 2001. The reasons were largely two – Bush’s disdain for NPT, a serious fetter on India, and his clear desire to contain China. Bush’s opposition to CTBT and Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) benefited India and so did his non-proliferation thinking that classified countries as ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’. No wonder India jumped and supported Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) in May 2001, despite Russia, China and most NATO countries voicing their opposition.

Three major US policy statements released in 2002 – Nuclear Posture Review in January, National Security Strategy in September and Strategy to Combat WMD in December – were judged as compatible with, if not in furtherance of Indian interests. In February 2002, the US cleared the sale of eight Raytheon counter-battery radars, the first US-India arms deal in four decades. Equally important, the US supported the sale of several advanced Israeli weapon systems including Phalcon mini-AWACS. India and the US signed a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GOSMIA) in August 2002 and a US-India High Technology Co-operation Group (HTCG) was constituted in November 2002.

During spring-summer 2003 the US exerted considerable pressure on India to provide a contingent of troops in Iraq. The Indian security establishment was largely in favour, but the idea was politically scuttled by a parliamentary resolution. Meanwhile, HTCG provided a forum to discuss high technology transfers in defence and dual-use areas. Building on HTCG, the Next Steps in Strategic Co-operation (NSSP) were announced in January 2004. The four-element NSSP envisaged cooperation in civilian nuclear energy, space and hi-tech commerce (including defence) and a dialogue on missile defence.

On March 25, 2005 a senior US official said that the US viewed south Asia as “vital to the future of the US” and that the US wanted to help “India become a major world power in the 21st century”. This set the stage for the June 28, 2005 defence agreement and the July 19, 2005 heads of government joint statement. The latter stated that “as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states” and that the US president “would also seek agreement from Congress to adjust US laws and policies, and the United States would work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India.”

Squaring the Nuclear Circle

On the face of it, the joint statement constituted a huge triumph for India in nuclear and foreign policy fields. If the statement, which makes India a de facto NWS (Nuclear Weapon State as defined in NPT), is translated into action, not only will India’s civilian nuclear industry escape its current stagnation but India’s defence industry, including its nuclear and missile sectors, will receive a big boost. India’s separation of its nuclear weapon programme could ensure not only its own release from quarantine but also that of the missile programme. This, in turn, could lower technology transfer barriers considerably in other defence fields.

But can the Bush administration square the NPT circle for India? The US-India nuclear cooperation project calls for considerable domestic and international efforts on the part of US administration. Domestically there is the need to modify the 1978 Nuclear Non-proliferation Act and change entrenched policies and mindsets across several agencies. Today India enjoys considerable support within the US congress, but how this body will act when it comes to changing major legislation, crafted after long consensus-building, remains to be seen.

Internationally, the obstacles are greater. The NPT is already under strain, as was seen during the recently concluded review conference, with the US accused of seeking to change earlier bargains to its advantage. Seeking to change the NPT in a major way, which is what the July 19 joint statement calls for, can open a can of worms. It is true that countries like Russia and France which have an interest in nuclear reactor sales would go along with amendments that serve that purpose. But it is doubtful if many others would agree.

There are other concerns too. Many countries including China may not agree to the idea of NPT, IAEA and NSG treating India and Pakistan differently. On the other hand, if Pakistan comes in, there will be serious proliferation worries. There will also be concern that if NSG (and MTCR) guidelines are bent, then countries like China and Russia may exploit them for their own strategic and commercial advantage. Moreover, while the Bush regime may have a cavalier attitude towards NPT, most other countries and indeed many influential quarters within the US consider a strong NPT vital to contain WMD risk.

India too will face difficulties in keeping to its end of the bargain. Splitting civilian and military nuclear facilities will not be easy. If India designates large chunks of reactor and reprocessing plant as military, they cannot feed into the power generation programme thereby hurting the latter’s economic viability. If it designates too little there may not be adequate fissile material for an uncapped weapon programme. Dividing R&D capabilities will be difficult too, considering that India has major tasks ahead including weapon development, uranium enrichment, fast breeder development and thorium exploitation.

Defence Industrial Cooperation

The June 28, 2005 agreement states that “The United States and India will work to conclude defence transactions, not solely as ends in and of themselves, but as a means to strengthen our countries’ security, reinforce our strategic partnership, achieve greater interaction between our armed forces, and build greater understanding between our defence establishments”. It talks of increasing “opportunities for technology transfer, collaboration, co-production, and research and development”, establishes a joint Defence Procurement and Production Group to “oversee defence trade as well as prospects for co-production and technology collaboration”, and promises to “expand collaboration relating to missile defence”.

The key idea here is that each defence transaction is to be looked at not only from the angle of its intrinsic worth but also from the angle of its contribution to strengthening the strategic partnership between the two countries. This has major implications for India, as the beneficiary of this logic will be the seller which is the US. It will be argued that mutual privileging will help India too by paving the way for easier technology transfer. But to judge if this (‘access to technology’ matching ‘purchase of material’) would happen it is important to look at the scope that there exists for each.

The US wants military sales to promote inter-operability and garner commercial benefits. US firms are very keen to gain as big a share of India’s defence market as possible, elbowing out the Russians and the French particularly. What they want to sell most are complete systems like F-16, F-18, C-130 and P-3C aircraft. Because of far bigger production runs, US companies can sell such systems, especially multi-decade old ones like those cited above, that are also cheaper than west European systems. On the other hand, new sub systems, which add considerably to weapon potency will cost disproportionately more from the US and can also get mired in protracted clearance tangles. This is also true of ‘current’ major systems like PAC-3 Patriot missiles.

US defence firms do relatively little co-production. Indians, who are accustomed to progressively expanding local content in major weapon deals with Russians and west Europeans, will find the US harder to bend. US firms, in turn, will find dealing with the Indian public sector, which has a near monopoly of Indian defence production, arduous work. Despite much talk, there is little likelihood of Indian private companies entering the defence sector in a big way. Structural barriers are considerable both to their entry and to making attractive enough profits.

While the production sector of Indian defence industry will be happy with a reasonable amount of local production, the DRDO’s sights are set higher. It wants transfer of high-end technology and sale of sub systems and components that would enable it to produce its own major weapon systems. But here US companies and the US government, for commercial and security reasons, are likely to be even less forthcoming than the Russians and west Europeans. A BrahMos type joint development and production deal is difficult to conceive with the Americans. It is likely that technologies that are approaching shelf life will be passed on, but that will be little help.

It is crucial to recognise that technological superiority is the foundational basis of US military power and therefore technology control is a cornerstone of US defence policy. The US guards defence technology tighter than any other country. A plethora of agencies in the US state, commerce and defence departments come into play on each transaction, be it a major system or a sub system. Agreements like GOSMIA that India signed in August 2002 play only a minor role. Political relations of the day as well as long-term confidence in alliance integrity influence each clearance.

As for joint R&D, there are few countries with which US has established such partnerships. The experiences of Britain and Israel have been good, but in both cases there have been special underlying relationships and also true burden sharing. The experience of Japan, though technologically advanced, has not been good. Japanese output from joint R&D has invariably proved expensive. Viewed objectively, it is doubtful whether India-US joint R&D can give a great boost to indigenous equipping. India’s non-strategic R&D record, exemplified by LCA, MBT, Trishul, Akash and Nag, does not engender confidence that it can take significant advantage of technology partnerships.

There is also the fact that Indian armed forces cannot be equipped on the US pattern. The US defence budget is 23 times the size of India’s and its equipment budget over 50 times as big. This has clear equipping implications. Moreover, the operational requirements and resultant hardware demands of the two countries vary considerably. Spending money on things like BMD is affordable to the US and Japan, but not to India, especially since India cannot make technological gains relevant to its needs through such spending. The road towards defence industrial cooperation between the two countries is thus more arduous than many imagine.

Military Cooperation

The June 28 agreement states that the two countries shall “conduct joint and combined exercises and exchanges” and also “collaborate in multinational operations when it is in their common interest”. On the face of it, the cooperative ideas spelt in the document commits India less in the military field than in the defence industrial one. But when both political and military leaderships are enthusiastic about military collaboration, which is the case today in both countries, the process can gain momentum beyond what words can indicate. It is worth noting that the military ties envisaged are unprecedented for India. The country’s defence relationship with the Soviet Union had been confined to equipment and technology; it had no ‘military’ content. We are now entering uncharted waters with the US.

With a military geared to operate in every part of the globe, the US has interests in developing military-to-military ties with as many countries as possible. The US has such ties, of varying intensity, with about 150 countries. India is particularly attractive because of its size and potential, the competence and infrastructure of its military, and its geographic position within Asia and relative to the Indian Ocean. India understands this and has assessed that military cooperation will secure for it valuable US support in political, economic and technological domains.

‘Training and exercises’ is an omnibus term that conceals within it a wide spectrum of collaboration possibilities and military closeness. India and the US have a training association that goes back over half a century and an exercise one that stretches over two decades. But now India has moved up several notches. Some development of combined operations doctrine is inevitable. In the inter-operability field, communication compatibility could be followed by co-ordination of C&C systems and some sensor interfacing. By developing an infrastructure for co-operation, these steps will create combined operation possibilities that do not exist today. The Indian military is attracted by the opportunity to get exposed to, and later acquiring, superior equipment. Fears of intelligence penetration, or more accurately of its consequences, have abated.

Collaboration is easiest between navies and it is here that US-India exercises first started. While the potency of US ships, submarines and naval aircraft has not declined, their numbers have. Today, the US can certainly do with Indian help in keeping track of happenings in the Indian Ocean. Indian ports would also be useful to US ships for R&R and logistics stops. Indian Ocean and its approaches are crucial arenas for the US-initiated Proliferation Security Initiative, intended to intercept WMD shipments at sea. There is a good chance of India joining the current 11-member group.

It is the combat-toughened Indian Army that Pentagon is eyeing keenly today, although army operations are more politically sensitive than those at sea. The US army, marine corps and the national guard are all painfully stretched and desperately in need of supportive boots-on-ground. Pentagon is still hopeful of getting the Indian army into Iraq and is looking for a combination of UN cover and pacified areas to make it possible. Peacekeeping, peace enforcement and combat operations now overlap considerably, and India and the US could find themselves moving across a large, politically problematic operational spectrum.

Airlift capabilities of the Indian Air Force, both fixed and rotary wing, are useful to the US, although Indian capabilities are not very strong in this field and ground logistics largely incompatible. Purchases of US aircraft could change this over a period. Pentagon is very keen to ensure ground support for its aircraft worldwide. India’s geographic position and excellent air force infrastructure make such support especially valuable. To avail of this there is no need for a big US footprint. Appropriately positioned ground equipment, partly under Indian control, and some liaison staff would be enough.

It is in the intelligence field that military co-operation can cruise ahead comfortably without much political fallout. Today, India’s intelligence targeting spectrum has a large overlap with the US’s. The latter’s exceptional satellite and aircraft based capabilities in reconnaissance and signal/electronic intelligence fields can be valuable to India. India’s human intelligence assets and ground support resources can be very useful to the US in turn.

Interests and Calculations

Common interests underpin all strategic partnerships. In the US-India context these include economic relations, democracy promotion, energy, terrorism, non-proliferation, regional security and Asian power balance. Economic relations is an arena where there is great scope for mutually beneficial expansion. But economic vibrancy between free-market democracies does not need to be propped up by strategic partnerships. And promotion of democracy, while undoubtedly valuable, hardly lends itself to be pursued as a joint project.

Energy is of vital interest to both countries. There is a scramble today to build gas and oil pipelines, not only to achieve cheaper transportation but also to create strategically advantageous pathways of flow. Interests of countries, except of neighbours, are unlikely to coincide here. Nuclear electricity generation, as a proportion of total energy generation, has been flat or declining in most countries for two decades and more. Higher petroleum prices and climate change fears are unlikely to reverse this soon. Technological breakthroughs in cost reduction, plant safety and spent fuel disposal are still distant. Economically decisive India-US cooperation in the nuclear energy field is not on the horizon.

India and the US have a vital interest in combating terrorism and WMD proliferation, and given Pakistan’s involvement in both activities, the two countries have considerable scope for cooperation. Intelligence is now the key issue in this struggle. Raising its quality and action-cycle speed has become critical and so has the need for much closer international cooperation. At the same time, military action in this context, except when integral to intelligence operations, is not seen as important as it once was.

It is the last two items in the common interest list – regional security and Asian power balance – that have a serious strategic dimension. India has always wanted to, and some in the US now want India to, manage south Asian stability without external interference. The US position is not a new development. From about 1985 (when it became evident in Sri Lanka) the US has not tried to undercut India in south Asia. But the US has also not been able to help India solve its core problem in south Asia, which is Pakistan. The latter’s nuclear weapons have not made it coercion-proof, but has raised the coercion threshold not just for India but also for the US. Crafting a viable joint approach towards Pakistan, with a thoughtful carrot-stick mix, is the crucial regional challenge facing both countries.

Asian power balance is now the code phrase for managing China. The US strategic community is acutely sensitive to China’s rise and the difficulties in engaging that country economically and confronting it politically. The position of US as the dominant Asian power is under growing threat. With Japan in relative decline and South Korea’s dependability in question, the US wants to increase India’s weight in the Asian power balance. Views such as Washington must “not only acquiesce but support the active development of India’s strategic deterrent” and that “India’s nuclear weapons at some point could become an asset to the United States” do not reflect broad US strategic thinking, because the military help that the US would need in the future is not at the nuclear level. On the other hand, the US desire to see an economically and politically stronger India is palpably obvious.

The security establishments of India and the US share a largely common view of China today, but this is unlikely to last long. India’s problems with China are not structural. Growing power and self-confidence will gradually open many options for India relative to China. While India badly needs US political support in the current unipolar phase, it cannot afford to get locked into a ‘follow-the-US’ line vis-à-vis China or any other country. A distinguished south Asian observer recently commented, “They (Indians) will ride our bus to the point where they think they can ride their own bus”. Very true, but equally true would be the observation that the US would let India ride its bus only so long as India remains a compliant passenger.

Prospects

Many in the two security communities perceive a window of opportunity today to forge a lasting US-India strategic partnership. The paralleling of a US desire to bind India quickly on its side vis-à-vis China and an Indian desire to use US’s current omnipotence as a ladder to move up globally is seen as having created this window. This is a monocular view. India and the US are choppy democracies containing a multiplicity of powerful interests and points of view. A dispassionate analysis of the socio-political makeup of the two countries would show that while there is plenty of common ground to support a strong politico-economic relationship there is not enough to sustain a strategic one centred on security interests.

More specifically, there are serious practical difficulties in forging the kind of defence-industrial and military relationships that are being talked about, and in squaring the nuclear circle. What took place recently in Washington, despite the spin and the hype, is no more than an expression of intent. It now has to be fleshed out at many levels and in many dimensions, a process that could stretch over several years. Both sides have taken on commitments, parts of which will be difficult to deliver when internal equations change and external conditions alter. The agreements will not get rolled back because they are elastic and caveated enough to make that unnecessary. But what is being visualised and what will get operationalised are likely to prove somewhat different.