US-Indian Strategic Cooperation into the 21st Century

More than Words

Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell, Brian Shoup

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135989675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In this edited book, leading scholars and analysts trace the origins, evolution and the current state of Indo-US strategic cooperation.

During the Cold War, owing to opposing grand strategies, the two states frequently found themselves at odds. With the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, Indo-US security cooperation started in a fitful fashion, but in recent years it has acquired considerable stability. The armed forces of the two states have participated in exercises on land, sea and air and have also carried out joint humanitarian missions. Drawing on new information and with contributions from both academics and policy makers, this wide-ranging volume analyzes the strategic convergence of the world's two largest democracies, whilst explaining why important differences do remain. These notably include questions pertaining to the future of India's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, US-Pakistan ties and India's links with Iran.

This volume will be of great interest to students of South Asian politics, Asian security, US foreign policy and security studies in general.

1
INTRODUCTION

Brian Shoup and Sumit Ganguly

Strategic relations between the United States and India, historically beset by mutual animosity and mistrust, are in the midst of significant improvement. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to India in March, 2005 typified the changing temper of dialogue between the two states. Despite the Bush administration’s decision to sell F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, a move that prompted intense outcry from New Delhi in the 1990s, India’s response was more reflective of annoyance than rage. In many respects, the India–US relationship is evolving in response to the changing role of India as a regional power (and potential counterweight to China), the growth of India’s economy and its attendant impact on US interests in such varied realms as energy policy planning and foreign trade, and Washington’s interest in continued stability in the subcontinent in light of its stated objectives in the war on terrorism.

The existence of consistencies in Washington’s and New Delhi’s geopolitical interests, while a clearly necessary condition for future cooperation, does not guarantee that relations will remain sanguine. There remain significant, albeit surmountable, differences between the two states, particularly in regard to India’s disinclination to support the US mission in Iraq and its desire to develop energy links with Iran, and US concerns about India’s reluctance to conform to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); agreements, it should be noted, that India never agreed to sign in the first place. Nevertheless, developments such as the Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership (NSSP), a bilateral program announced in 2004, portend a future relationship built on the recognition of mutual interests.

This volume explores these mutual interests, as well as persistent disjunctures, with a focus on long-term prospects for strategic cooperation. Are we witnessing the convergence of grand strategies between two countries with a history of tenuous security links, or does the current atmosphere of cooperation merely reflect contemporary conveniences with little hope of long-term sustainability? The contributors examine this question in the context of a number of realms of present and future cooperation.

The Cold War era

Under Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s then prime minister and the key architect of its foreign policy, New Delhi pursued a Cold War era strategy based on the principle of non-alignment. In theory, the posture of non-alignment was intended to imply that India would pursue its own interests, free from domination by either the United States and its allies or the Soviet Union and the communist bloc. By extension, the policy also included a sharp focus on issues relevant to the recently de-colonized states that were rapidly emerging following the end of the Second World War. New Delhi, by virtue of its sheer size and its status as a global role model in ending British colonial rule, assumed the mantle of leadership for much of the developing world. As such, Indian foreign policy was aimed at advancing issues like global economic redistribution and the peaceful resolution of disputes. Far from being a wholly neutral policy, non-alignment was simply intended to grant states the capacity to make foreign policy decisions outside of the constraints imposed by the two superpowers.

In practice, however, India’s foreign policy was far from neutral in regards to Cold War considerations. Nehru himself was inclined to support the Soviet Union owing to Moscow’s repeated statements against colonial rule. Despite Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, Nehru and his immediate successors openly collaborated with the USSR on a wide range of issues. Certainly, Soviet support for India’s strategy of industrialization as import-substitution played a significant role in bolstering this relationship. By the 1970s the Soviets emerged as New Delhi’s principal arms supplier and could generally depend on Indian support vis-à-vis Washington’s grand strategy of containment. Common misgivings about China also helped cement this relationship.¹ Only briefly, following the 1962 Sino-India War, was there a brief period of cooperation between India and the United States and this quickly evaporated as incongruities between the two states re-emerged.² In particular, Washington’s persistent support to Pakistan hindered the development of cordial relations with New Delhi. US support to Pakistan, manifest in both arms sales and ambivalence toward India’s position on the issue of Kashmir, placed a considerable obstacle in the way of cooperation that persists to this day.

The upshot of India’s non-aligned status was that Washington and New Delhi would maintain, at best, chilly relations for the better course of 50 years. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent loss of both its raison d’etre and access to weaponry, did non-alignment diminish as a viable foreign policy strategy. Further, faced with the consequences of a half-century of gross economic mismanagement, Indian leaders increasingly recognized that the country could no longer maintain a system predicated on import-substitution, licentious rent-seeking by bureaucrats, and a casual dismissal of the price mechanism. Despite its status as leader of the developing world, Indian officials had roundly failed in their efforts to increase growth and improve the standard of living for literally tens of millions of people. Technological achievements notwithstanding, New Delhi’s economic policies could scarcely be said to provide a sound model for the poor states of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Further, by the early 1990s India was facing an unprecedented financial crisis owing to the rise in oil prices following the Gulf War, the repatriation of thousands of workers from the Gulf states and the loss of their substantial remittances, and onerous debt obligations. Given the choice between short-term loans and increased debt that would only see India through for a few more years on one hand, and a radical reorientation of economic policies on the other, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, chose to pursue a new course based on increasing economic competitiveness, reducing bureaucratic regulations and corruption, and improving foreign investment through significant tariff reductions. While the near-term implications of this strategy are difficult to glean, there is no doubt that India’s recent economic growth, consistently in excess of 6 percent, is indicative of the wisdom of their choice.

It is in this new environment of global geo-strategic change and economic reorganization that the first seeds of Indo-US cooperation have been sown. During the Clinton administration, both countries signed the Agreed Minute on Defense Cooperation a tentative framework outlining future military-to-military cooperation. This initial step, while representing a sea-change in Indo-US relations, was plagued by both New Delhi’s perception that Washington was overly obsessed with the Kashmir issue and by US concerns about India’s nuclear weapons program. Both concerns had merit. India’s decision in 1998 to test nuclear weapons brought a swift response from the United States in the form of economic sanctions. Despite the cessation of military-to-military cooperation, these sanctions did provide an opportunity for meaningful discussion on the nuclear issue. US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh led these high level talks, resulting in a significant recognition by Washington that its policy of “rolling back” India’s nuclear arsenal was not a viable strategy. In its place, the United States sought to ensure that New Delhi would adhere to principles of nonproliferation by not providing nuclear technology to other states. More significantly, the dialogue represented the first discussion between the two countries that was based on a perception of mutual equality. It is from this dialogue that much of the current optimism springs, particularly in the critical areas of high technology trade and military-to-military cooperation.

Indo-US relations in the post-9/11 world

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 led to a new US strategy based on the pre-emptive elimination of suspected terror havens, including the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Ostensibly, India was well placed to serve as a close ally to the United States India’s experiences with terrorism, including the heinous attacks by the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-i-Taiba in December 2001, gave it a natural understanding of the challenges inherent in anti-terror tactics. For its part, India immediately offered Washington logistical cooperation and access to intelligence. The United States, however, proved reluctant to take advantage of India’s offer and cast its lot, as it had so often in the past, with Pakistan and the regime of General Pervez Musharraf. Fearful of Islamabad’s conspiratorial accusations and the attendant loss of a critical regional ally, the Bush administration declined Indian assistance.

The Bush administration’s decision to cooperate closely with Musharraf, widely regarded in India as a sponsor of terrorism, was met with considerable dismay by policy-makers in New Delhi. As was so often the case during the Cold War, particularly during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s geographic position astride the politically volatile regions of Central Asia gave it a natural advantage when dealing with Washington. Christened a “major non-NATO ally” in 2004, Pakistan once again finds itself in the United States’ good graces, despite the fact that few states did more to precipitate the spread of radical political Islam in Central Asia, and particularly Afghanistan, than Pakistan and its military leadership.³ This is an irony not lost on leaders in New Delhi.

Despite India’s deep misgivings about the Pakistan–US relationship, it is increasingly clear that New Delhi sees value in the long-term strategic links it is forging with Washington. Indeed, a consistent theme running through the chapters of this volume is that India is taking proactive steps to “dehyphenate” itself from Pakistan, a reality increasingly acknowledged by the Bush administration. Washington’s willingness to rescind the sanctions imposed in 1998 and to maintain and increase military-to-military cooperation, as well as high technology trade linkages, suggest that the Pakistan–US relationship is best viewed as a necessary reality in the context of broader US regional objectives.

Areas for cooperation

The emerging “strategic partnership” between the United States and India is based on a shared respect for democracy and concerns about the threat of global terrorism as well as mutual unease about he long-term implications of the rise of China in Asia and beyond. At the same time, despite mutual interest in these areas, the authors in this volume note that recent improvements in Indo-US relations have largely been based on defense policy cooperation. This is not a trivial matter as meaningful bilateral relations must have a sound footing in defense related issues. Indeed, General Ved Malik and John Gill detail the expanding scope of military-to-military cooperation in their respective chapters, with a particular focus on the extent to which the improving defense relationship can pave the way for bilateral cooperation in other realms. Since 1991, when Lt. General Claude Kicklighter proposed a series of joint military exercises, Indian and US forces have coordinated on a number of training efforts, and in March of 2005 the Bush administration announced its willingness to move forward on a proposal to sell India advanced fighter aircraft and even potentially allow joint production of F-18 and F-16 aircraft. Nevertheless, wide ranging political initiatives and critical advances in bilateral trade have yet to wholly materialize.

A critical area of future focus lies in the area of high technology trade, particularly in those technologies that advance India’s interests in energy security, aerospace, and nuclear safety. Trade in the realm of these dual-use technologies is a key component of India’s long-term strategy of economic and political development and is likely to be the fulcrum about which future relations will turn. To coin the phrase used by Varun Sahni in this volume, the dual-use technology issue will likely become the “litmus test” by which healthy bilateral relations will be measured. That said, the issue of making these technologies available to India is not without its detractors. In July 2005 the Bush administration reached an accord which promises to relax key legal provisions that had prevented the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India. Critics of this move argued that such a decision weakens global non-proliferation regimes by rewarding countries that openly pursue nuclear technology and would encourage proliferation by known nuclear suppliers like China and Russia.⁴

It is no secret that India longs to join the world’s nuclear club, a status New Delhi sees as critical to achieving its aspirations as a global power. In India’s defense, it was never a signatory to the NPT, consistently arguing that the treaty was biased. Indeed, critics of the NPT can point to the failure of existing nuclear powers to adhere to the spirit of Article Six of the treaty which stipulates that nuclear states make good faith efforts to phase out their arsenals. Moreover, there are scant few observers who would suggest that India’s reluctance to sign on to the NPT is a consequence of some secret desire to distribute nuclear technologies. Rather, India’s nuclear programs must be analyzed as both a consequence of its own broader regional security interests, particularly as they pertain to China, and also as a result of its burgeoning energy needs. Both of these dynamics are worthy of study in their own turn.

An argument made by several contributors to this volume is that only by allowing India into the community of nuclear states can global non-proliferation objectives truly be realized. To its credit, New Delhi has expressed a willingness to separate out its military programs and subject its civilian nuclear facilities to full-scope IAEA safeguards, despite its status as a non-NPT signatory. According to this line of reasoning, the Bush administration, by easing legal restrictions on the acquisition of dual-use technology, is actually enhancing the sanctity of nonproliferation objectives by incorporating a state that has clearly crossed a threshold in regards to its nuclear status. Moreover, India’s legitimate security needs, coupled with its adamant refusal to share nuclear technologies with “rogue” states like Iran and Libya, stand in stark contrast to Pakistan, another state that has refused to sign the NPT. Unlike India, Pakistan has been exposed as a proliferator without peer. A.Q. Khan’s veritable nuclear bazaar provided technology to a number of states that are NPT signatories, a demonstration of Islamabad’s cavalier attitude toward the spread of nuclear capability.⁵

A second, and equally critical, factor driving India’s nuclear programs is its evergrowing need for energy. As this volume goes to press, India announced a quarterly growth mark of 8 percent. India’s rapid rate of economic expansion requires an attendant increase in energy availability. This need for energy reserves is a powerful motivator behind New Delhi’s close relations with Iran, a state whose vast reserves of oil and natural gas are viewed as a viable source of power for India’s growing economy. As of 2004, nuclear reactors accounted for less than 3 percent of India’s total energy consumption.⁶ According to this line of reasoning, the United States’ long-term interests are best served by enhancing New Delhi’s energy self-sufficiency through the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology. Critically, the July agreement between the United States and India formally binds the hands of New Delhi by securing a commitment to conform to international norms pertaining to non-proliferation.

Barriers to partnership: three’s a crowd?

Several authors in this volume note that India–US relations, despite obvious improvements, still have a number of obstacles to address. Initially, India’s left parties, who comprise an important source of support to the current government, are suspicious of the US intentions in South Asia and are reluctant to abandon their vision of a loose coalition of mid-range powers to act as a potential counterweight to American geopolitical dominance. While this camp’s influence is relatively small in comparison to its stature during the Cold War era, it remains disproportionately influential among many in India’s policy elite.⁷

Again, the key factor underlying suspicions remains the United States’ close relationship with Pakistan. Many Indians view Washington’s tolerance of the Musharraf regime as blatantly hypocritical in light of the United States stated interests in combating international terrorism. Given Pakistan’s role in sponsoring violent attacks in Kashmir as well as other parts of India via the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI-D), Islamabad’s relaxed attitudes toward terror organizations such as the Lashkar-i-Taiba, and the Pakistani government’s role in establishing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Bush administration’s decision to name Musharraf’s regime a major ally in 2004 was especially galling. B. Raman highlights the Indian perception of the Pakistan–US relationship in his chapter, emphasizing these frustrations in light of the December 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament; an attack widely believed to have been carried out by members of Lashkar-i-Taiba with ISI-D approval.

As with most variables affecting Indo-US strategic relations, the issue of Pakistan is complex. Indian policy-makers have clearly accepted, albeit reluctantly, that US objectives necessitate a permissive tolerance of Pakistan’s malfeasance, at least in the short-term. Moreover, the Bush administration’s willingness to provide some sort of quid-pro-quo to New Delhi, particularly in the areas of technology trade and arms sales, no doubt help to lessen the potential for acrimony. Nevertheless, this issue points to a larger problem confronting the emerging strategic partnership and one that the authors in this volume universally agree upon. Specifically, India’s political and economic maturation necessitates that it be detached from Pakistan in the geopolitical calculus of the United States. This need to “de-hyphenate” India and Pakistan is essential to India’s wider goals of achieving the status of a global power.

By virtually any measure, India has outpaced Pakistan and its future growth is clearly constrained to the extent that policy decisions by US lawmakers have been unable to keep up with the ever-widening gap between New Delhi and Islamabad. India has demonstrated a commitment to economic liberalization that has sparked unprecedented economic growth, is rapidly emerging as a high technology hub with a well-trained workforce in the IT sectors, and has abandoned its commitment to non-alignment and its attendant paradoxes. Pakistan, in contrast, is in danger of becoming a failed state and, US aid notwithstanding, is scarcely capable of servicing its crippling external debts.⁸ Suffice to say, it is illogical to view India and Pakistan as peers, a factor that Indian leaders are keen to impress upon policy-makers in the United States.

As noted, Indian policy-makers have held back their rancor at Washington’s coddling of the Musharraf regime, recognizing that the United States’ near-term interests in the war on terrorism must override its misgivings about Islamabad’s role in exporting radical Islam. This, in itself, is a significant advance in bilateral relations, made all the more remarkable by repeated US claims that it recognizes India’s growing role as a global player. Further, Wash...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Are We Present at the Creation?
• 3 Incompatible Objectives and Shortsighted Policies
• 4 An Overview of Indo-US Strategic Cooperation
• 5 Indo-US Defense and Military Relations
• 6 US–India Military-to-Military Interaction
• 7 Prospects for US–India Counterterrorism Cooperation
• 8 Indo-US Counterterrorism Cooperation
• 9 Limited Cooperation Between Limited Allies
• 10 The Future of Indo-US Cooperation in Multilateral and Bilateral Peacekeeping Operations
• 11 US Army’s New Peace Operations Era