A strategic defence pact
By Afzaal Mahmood (Dawn,9 july)


THE signing of a 10-year defence pact between the United States and India is the culmination of a post-cold war process to strengthen relationship between the two countries which, in the words of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “goes beyond security, proliferation or regional issues”.

The newly established defence relationship is designed to achieve two main objectives: to help advance America’s strategic goals in Asia and to help India become a ‘major world power’, which may project its military presence beyond its borders.

About 18 months ago, the two countries had agreed on “strategic partnership”, which, according to the then Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, was based on “common values and common interests”. The defence pact is a logical offshoot of that strategic partnership.

The defence pact, signed by US Secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee, stipulates the joint production of weapons and cooperation in missile defence. The pact also calls for increased military ties and for joint defence production and procurement. To meet the criticism that the US is not serious about selling high-tech weapons to India and cannot be trusted as a long-term supplier, the agreement provides for the setting-up of a bilateral “defence procurement and production group” to oversee defence trade and prospects for co-production and technology collaboration. However, at least for the foreseeable future, co-production is likely to mean re-assembling in India of CKDs produced in the US, with little or no technology transfer to the Indian side.

Interestingly, the New York Times has quoted a military analyst as suggesting that the US decision to sell the F-16 plane to Pakistan may have been aimed at inducing India to buy American products. “India would have gone its merry way,” he said. “But the announcement of Pakistan getting the F-16s changes the game. For years, India has coasted on Russian and locally made fighter jets. Now, if its adversary gets real new American planes, it has to have them too.” From the US government perspective, the New York Times adds, “weapons sales to Pakistan and India strengthen the American presence on the Chinese border and open new markets throughout Asia for military contractors, which are looking more to foreign buyers as the Pentagon budget comes under pressure.”

Rhetoric is usually a standard part of almost all joint statements, if one of the parties is a South Asian country; but the use of phrases like “unimaginable” and “unprecedented levels of cooperation” by the new framework for the India-US defence relationship, unveiled in Washington on June 28, is not entirely unjustified.

The defence pact is a clear indication that the US no longer treats India and Pakistan as equal competitors in South Asia and that it has finally accepted India as the dominant power in the region. Pakistan is a valued US ally in the war against terrorism and continues to be even a major non-Nato ally. But the US has a deeper and a more meaningful strategic relationship with India. The defence agreement is a significant development in the context of overall India-US relationship and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s forthcoming visit to the United States from July 18 to 20.

It should be a matter of concern for Islamabad that the US has ignored Pakistani apprehensions that the supply of the latest missile defence system to India will disturb the strategic balance of power in South Asia. The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) system is a big step beyond Washington’s earlier offer for sale of PAC-2 which India had rejected.

Unlike previous Patriots, which operate by getting close to targets and blasting them out of the sky, PAC-3 interceptors have no explosives, relying instead on kinetic energy (hit to kill concept) to eliminate short and medium-range missiles carrying nuclear, biological or chemical warheads. A PAC-3 system carries smaller but four times more missiles than PAC-2 (16 vs 4) and has a longer range (150 km vs 70 km). Until last year, 175 PAC-3 systems were inducted into the US army.

There is a real danger now that the transfer of PAC-3 to India will lead to an anti-missile race in South Asia, compelling Pakistan to either seek the same or similar anti-missile system for itself. This will necessarily mean an indecent increase in defence expenditure. The Pakistan budget for 2005-2006 has already increased the defence outlay by 15 per cent. A steep rise in military expenditure is bound to wipe away the benefits of economic growth achieved recently by Pakistan and keep the social sector as starved as before.

The price India has paid is in the form of dropping its demand for a UN cover for joint military operations. Beside other things, the defence agreement envisages the deployment of Indian troops in undefined US-led “multinational operations” around the world regardless of whether these are authorized by the United Nations or not. Of course, the text of the agreement does not specify that these operations would be US-led and adds the rider “when it is in their common interest”.

But multinational operations have always meant for the Americans subordination of all participating forces to overall US command and control. This has happened right from Somalia to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Exclusive control over “multinational operations” has been a non-negotiable element of US military strategy. It may be recalled that it was the Congress opposition to India’s joining any multinational operation other than a UN-led “Blue Helmet” force which forced the Vajpayee government to scuttle the proposed deployment of Indian troops to US-controlled Iraq in July 2003. Ironically, it is now the Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh that has agreed to do what it bitterly opposed two years ago as an opposition party.

The US is cultivating India as its lever to realize a goal that has now become fundamental to its strategy: to remain firmly embedded in Asia at a time when the continent is emerging as the world’s new centre of gravity and China as America’s would be challenger. According to an article in The Hindu (July 1, 2005) a senior US official told a closed-door gathering of strategic analysts in New Delhi last month that “the worst outcome for the United States, is an Asia from which we are excluded”.

The key challenge for the US over the past 100 years has been to “remain engaged everywhere and not allow any other industrial power to dominate a given region”. Continuing, he added, “If I were China I could be working on kicking the US out of Asia..... Right now we have a lot of alliances but there is no architecture embedding us in Asia. This worries us.” It appears the June 28 defence pact between India and the United States is seen by Washington as a vital element in the planned architecture.

The new US tilt in South Asia, as reflected by the defence pact, is not a sudden development but the result of a gradual convergence of interests between New Delhi and Washington after the end of the Cold War. The first high level discussion on their strategic interests took place in January 1992 in New Delhi, at the first meeting of the Indo-US army steering committee attended by Lt. General Johnny Corns of the US pacific command from the US side and Lt. General V.K. Sood from the Indian side.

At this meeting the US side reportedly expressed its concern about the spread of “Islamic fundamentalism” in the region. The US side was also of the view that in the most volatile part of the world, which included the Islamic crescent from Turkey to Malaysia, it was only India that could act as a regional stabilizing force.

It may be recalled that during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s South Asian visit a few months ago, India accepted the Chinese offer for a strategic partnership and both sides declared 2006 as “the year of India-China friendship”. India now enjoys the unique distinction of being “the strategic partner” of both the US and China. It will be a feat of Indian diplomacy if it can manage to maintain this contradictory posture for long.

As far as the US is concerned, it will be a net gainer from the defence agreement. Besides advancing American strategic interests in Asia, the defence pact will expand the global market for American defence contractors, especially at a time when the Pentagon budget is coming under pressure. The US arms sales are a highly profitable way of sweetening the overall strategic partnership package negotiated with India. But it is not clear what real good the defence pact will do to India in particular and Asia in general. And have the policymakers in New Delhi taken into consideration the very damaging consequences for South Asia if the hapless region gets sucked into the emerging US-China rivalry?

The writer is a former ambassador.