Negotiating varying Indo-US expectations
DURING his US visit last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that “the sky is not the limit” for India-US relations. Still, a note of caution needs to be attached to the extraordinary optimism, not forgetting that Lt Gen Claude Kicklighter’s 1991 initiative to boost the India-US defence ties became the linchpin of a relationship bereft of political underpinnings. The US guru on India and Pakistan, Stephen Cohen, would say that the turnaround in India-US relations paradoxically followed New Delhi’s nuclear tests till the 2005 India-US nuclear deal became the missing political framework for the Comprehensive Global Partnership. India’s coveted strategic autonomy is intact. India is aligned, not allied, with the US. What can they expect from each other when the chips are down?
Has sufficient mutual trust been created after a history of hesitation and suspicion? In 2004, India signed the Hawk trainer aircraft contract with the UK, stipulating that there be no US parts in it. Carnegie Endowment’s Ashley Tellis, who more than a decade ago advocated that US should help India become ‘strong’, recently called the investment America’s bad bet on India — as it will not involve itself in any confrontation with China that does not threaten its own security. He has semantically changed it this month, saying that the US bet on India is good but has constraints. The US National Defence Strategy states three priorities: Taiwan, Indo-Pacific and Himalayan LAC. As India has not formally articulated its threats, it is safe to assume these are China-Pakistan, Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific. Without naming China, Modi said in the US Congress that “dark clouds of coercion and conflict exist in Indo-Pacific”.
For India, China is its most consequential challenge. The US hopes to wean India away from Russia and counter China but it toned down its expectation after the Ukraine war — to deepening the partnership, much less leveraging India as a counterweight to China. The IISS Military Balance 2022 indicates that in India’s arsenal, 90 per cent of armoured vehicles, 69 per cent combat aircraft and 44 per cent submarines and warships (65 per cent armed with Russian missiles) are Russian in origin. Thanks to US generosity, India’s purchase of S400 AD missiles and Russian discounted oil did not attract US sanctions but Turkey, a NATO partner, was penalised for buying S400. Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has strongly defended India-Russia relations after Modi’s visit to the US.
As a prelude to the recalibrated Quad summit at Hiroshima in May, India’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and his counterparts from the US, Japan and Australia had met for a security conclave at California. They agreed that for obtaining niche defence technologies and deterrence, effective alliances were needed. The CDS, Gen Anil Chauhan, emphasised effective ‘partnerships’ and self-reliance. On deterrence, the US has moved from joint deterrence to integrated deterrence. Operationalising joint deterrence with India — a partner of first resort and no partner more consequential than India — is key. For deterrence to be effective, it must rest on an agreed view of a geopolitical picture in the Indo-Pacific and Indian Ocean and be credible. India and US defence planners and practitioners have to work this out as there are articulated differences in tackling China. Former Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an opinion piece in the Global Times published before Modi’s visit to the US, said it is the US that is pushing India to confront China and undermine China-India economic progress. China’s crucial role in supply chains cannot be replaced by India, he added.
Returning to basics, what precisely are the expectations of the US and India from each other against rival and competitor China? These vary from the US expectation of India as an active partner in collective defence against Chinese aggression to tackling China in countering and containing it. But India will not join the US in countering China unless its own security is directly threatened. The US National Intelligence Agency says that there is a good chance of an LAC border clash escalating but there is no clarity on how far the US will go in that contingency.
According to the Taiwan Relations Act, the US is committed to defending Taipei if attacked. Taiwan is considered the world’s most dangerous flashpoint and part of President Xi Jinping’s China dream. According to former Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, the impact of a blockade/quarantine of Taiwan on India will be crippling for trade as half of it flows east of the Malacca Strait. Disruption of shipping will affect exports, semi-conductor industry and submarine cables, dislocating data-flow and supply chains. India’s recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan has not prevented it from expressing concern over Chinese provocations across Taiwan Straits. What affirmative action can and will India take to deter China?
India will do its best in East Indian Ocean, centred around Malacca Strait, but whether it will impact China’s Malacca Dilemma is not known. For India, LAC is its most escalatory threat for which it is inadequately geared. Former Ambassador to China Ashok Kantha recently said that Chinese needling strategy along the LAC is to divert India’s focus away from the Indian Ocean to the LAC. India does not expect active help from the US in fighting PLA except as force-multiplier — as in real-time intelligence (the kind that forewarned about PLA attacks in Tawang last December), and transfer of critical technologies in defence, cyberspace, artificial intelligence and logistics. US transfer of technologies on jet engine, armed drones, micro-chips and AI is rejuvenation of the India dream.
China will make India’s embrace of the US costly; that’s why India and the US need some plain-speaking on what they can do for each other to ward off the “dark clouds of coercion and conflict”. Also, fingers crossed that the transfer of critical technologies does not stumble in the face of severe US defence export controls.
