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US motives behind nuclear deal with India - meaning of Burns’ article |
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Harjit Singh
While India and the United States are still fighting over ifs and buts on the key clauses in the proposed 123 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, an article by the US Under Secretary of State and the chief negotiator of the deal, Nicholas Burns, in the WASHINGTON TIMES has given enough hints that the ultimate aim of America is to take this agreement to the next stage of wide ranging military cooperation. He wrote the article on the eve of the visit of Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon to the US capital.
When President Bush took the initiative to take India off the US nuclear technology-related sanctions and sign a nuclear cooperation agreement in 2005 in spite of New Delhi’s refusal to sign the NPT or subscribe to the CTBT, the best explanation given was that the US was worried over the pressure the booming Indian economy will put on the international non-renewable energy resources. It was, therefore, prudent to help it develop nuclear power to meet its energy requirements. But, the article by Burns in the WASHINGTON TIMES has brought to the fore military and commercial connotations behind the American thinking in offering the deal to India. India, he writes, will be the US’s two or three most important strategic partners in the years to come – the other two being Japan and Britain At a recent conclave, the then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US relationship with India “has grown from an uneasy co-existence during the Cold War to true partnership based on our common values and common interests today.” About the economic fallout of the deal, he says American companies will be benefiting from the gigantic energy market. And on defence, he says India and the US can create a stronger military partnership. He specifically referred to the post-tsunami quadrilateral naval effort involving the US, India, Australia and Japan and indicated that President Bush would like this model to develop into wider security cooperation between this group of four. Implicit in Mr. Burns’ article is the idea that after the 123 agreement, waiting in the wings is the 126 agreement – an agreement on military cooperation.
In fact, so eager are the Americans to help India end its nuclear isolation and join the international non-proliferation mainstream and, in the process, help US strategic and commercial interests that a first ever Track II has been launched by the Centre for Contemporary Conflict, Monterrey, to catalyze the work-in-progress strategic partnership. Only last month, US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Franklin Lavin almost underlined India’s growing importance to America when he said: “India is booming. India is not a country. It is a continent with extraordinary opportunities from Boeings to laptops.”
Unnoticed but parallel to negotiations on the 123 deal, India and the US are inching towards a goal of military cooperation. The US military aircraft manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing are vying with each other to bag the $8 billion order for 126 multi-role combat aircraft the Indian Air Force is proposing to buy. The US wish-list also includes India signing the Defence Logistics Support Agreement, joining CSI and PSI, establishing hotlines, cross-posting officers in military establishments and winning the order for 126 MRCA. The first Indo-US Defence Joint Working Group met in New Delhi last month to discuss defence cooperation.
The US Navy is keen to rope in the Indian Navy in its Global Maritime Partnership, the 1000-ship Navy, an offer made by a senior US Navy official when he visited India last month. America is also toying with the idea of “Axis of Democracies”– made up of the US, India and Japan. The axis of democracies made news when on April 16, the US, India and Japan held a joint military drill in the Pacific, giving a strong message to China that the Indian Navy was moving out of its Indian Ocean operations to assert its blue navy status, of course, on the shoulders of the US Navy. This message to China needed to be conveyed because of its growing presence from Gwadar in Pakistan to Coco islands in Myanmar Islands, less than 50 kilometres from India’s Andaman islands.
Of course, as of now, military purchases from the US have been minimal. But the American arms manufacturers are not ignorant of the fact that India is the largest arms importer in the developing world. The country spent as much as Rs. 44,009 crore or around $10.5 billion on import of military equipment in the past three years. These are not figures put out by so-called informed sources, but are “official” figures put on the table of the Lok Sabha by Defence Minister A.K. Antony last week. The mother of all defence deals in the near future will, of course, be the contract for acquisition of 126 multi-role combat aircraft for the IAF. And some big ticket defence deals signed in recent years include the Rs. 18,798-crore French Scorpene submarine project, the Rs. 8000-crore British Hawk AJT contract, the Rs. 6,900 crore Russian Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier package and the Rs. 5,000 crore Israeli Phalcon AWACS. Russia, of course, has remained India’s largest defence supplier, notching sales worth roughly $1.5 billion closely followed by Israel with $1 billion. The US managed to clinch only two major deals. The first was the $190 million contract in 2002 to supply 12 AN/TPQ-37 fire-finder weapon-locating radars. The other deal was the recent $48.23 million one for the amphibious transport vessel USS Trenton, with the six UH-3H helicopters to operate from it costing another $39 million.
The US now finds, much to its regret, that while in the name of non-proliferation it was unilaterally enforcing sanctions on India to keep it away from nuclear bomb, other countries had been taking advantage of its absence from the offerings of military contracts made by India and were signing billions of dollars worth of defence deals with it, thus cutting into its business on the one hand and keeping a strategic ally in the Indian Ocean away from it. America, taking advantage of the 123 deal once it is finalized hopefully when the US Under Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns, visits New Delhi this month, is keen to engage India in cooperation, between the two navies and the militaries.
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