India: Toward True Partnership

Anupam Srivastava

The horrific events of 9/11 re-ignited a long-running debate in the United States. Should America “retreat” behind its oceanic boundaries, or adopt a more muscular foreign policy to proactively shape outcomes to suit its interests? The Bush administration unwaveringly chose the latter. Its response to the attacks of September 11th marked the end of the “post-Cold War era”—a nebulous decade that had defied easy characterization. U.S. retaliatory strikes against Afghanistan in November 2001 signaled the start of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The theater subsequently was expanded by American preemptive strikes against Iraq in March 2003. Unmistakably, a new era was in the making.

Three issues will be critical to the United States maintaining this momentum in the years ahead. The first is to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery, and to create new “coalitions of the willing” to do so. A second priority is to combat state and non-state sponsors of terrorism. The third objective is to promote democracy in governance—both to ameliorate the marginalization that gives rise to terrorism and to improve the accountability of state actors. To implement these objectives, the Bush administration has emphasized creating cooperative frameworks for regional security. This has entailed constructing strong, if bounded, partnerships with “pivotal states” in key regions of the world.1

It is no wonder, therefore, that Washington has gravitated toward greater cooperation with New Delhi. India’s size and location—a sub-continent-sized country with long maritime borders, situated strategically between the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca—make it an indispensable ally for the United States in South Asia. And, while a host of reasons made them “estranged democracies”2 during the Cold War, the revised priorities now animating U.S. policy discourse resonate strongly with India’s new pragmatism and aspiration.

A reorientation in New Delhi

One of the biggest dividends of the economic reforms begun in New Delhi in 1991 was the gradual emergence of a new, less ideological and more pragmatic international posture. By the mid-1990s, this pragmatism had begun to animate India’s security discourse. At the same time, the paradigm shift generated by the end of the Cold War underscored the importance of re-engaging the United States.

Conceptually, India’s post-Cold War strategic frontiers can be divided into three concentric circles. The innermost ring represents South Asia (including Pakistan and Central Asia), the middle ring is Asia (including relations with Russia, China, and Southeast Asia), and the outermost circle is international (including other actors and factors).3 While it evolved independent of Washington, New Delhi’s strategic perceptions were similar to those of the United States—a congruence that has facilitated the deepening of bilateral ties on a number of fronts.

Proliferation

The United States today faces the challenge of retooling multilateral institutions to better address the proliferation of WMD and their means of delivery. Of the treaty-based institutions, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is the only one that seeks to eliminate an entire class of WMD. Its disarmament focus resonates with India, and although the country surprised many by declaring that it had developed a small CW arsenal, India and the United States are the only two countries that have met their scheduled CW destruction targets so far.

On the nuclear front, the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) remains the cornerstone of global non-proliferation efforts. But, unlike the CWC’s mandate of comprehensive disarmament, the NPT is saddled with the division of countries into “haves” (the P-5) and “have-nots,” with the former adopting a lackadaisical approach toward arms reduction. The effectiveness—and the legitimacy—of the NPT is further called into question by three states that have never joined (India, Pakistan and Israel) and three that are members in poor standing or who have withdrawn from the treaty (Iraq, Iran and North Korea).

Regarding the latter category, India contended that Saddam Hussein’s regime had not sufficiently reconstituted its WMD program to warrant preemptive military strikes, or that such a course of action would be prudent from the standpoint of Iraq’s long-term stability. India’s attitudes were informed by the existence of a large Indian expatriate population in the Middle East, and by the worry that involvement in the conflict risked radicalizing its large Muslim population at home. These issues were vigorously debated, and India ultimately decided not to send troops to Iraq, although it has otherwise participated in post-war reconstruction efforts.

India’s relations with Iran have recently been portrayed as the “litmus test” of its sincerity to partner with the United States. Indeed, India long has had close economic, social and cultural ties with Iran, given their proximity and civilizational bonds. But during the Cold War, New Delhi was repeatedly disappointed by the lack of support from Tehran when Islamabad tabled resolutions condemning the Indian “occupation of Kashmir” at various meetings of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference). Bilateral ties were strained further with the rise of radical Islam in Iran following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and when India subsequently learned of a secret understanding that Iran would assist Pakistan in a future war with India.4 Nevertheless, today, India’s growing energy requirements have persuaded New Delhi to negotiate the construction of a pipeline to transport Iranian oil via Pakistan into India.

But cooperation is not collusion. New Delhi has made clear that it would not be in its interests if Iran were to develop or acquire a nuclear weapons capability. That is the reason why, in line with U.S. expectations, India has voted twice at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council. And while India might have preferred to abstain, India’s national interest ultimately coincides with U.S. desires to prevent Iran from making further progress toward an atomic bomb.

When it comes to North Korea, by contrast, there is no ambiguity in India’s opposition to the DPRK’s dangerous quest for a nuclear capability. India had long articulated its concerns over Pakistan’s involvement in the funneling of uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in return for material assistance to bolster its missile capabilities.5 This nuclear-missile “swap” made eminent sense for both countries, providing Pyongyang with a convenient route for fissile material production and allowing Islamabad to benefit from North Korean upgrades to its Chinese-origin medium-range missiles.

In addition to sharing concerns over these regional security challenges, New Delhi has demonstrated growing affinity for Washington’s new initiatives to interdict proliferation: the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the Container Security Initiative (CSI). The first is a coalition of over 65 countries that cooperate in real time to board ships in docks and territorial waters or on the high seas to interdict prohibited WMD-relevant cargo and personnel. India, like several other countries, is debating whether interdiction on the high seas constitutes an infringement of international law. The second is an effort to upgrade technical, procedural and personnel safeguards to improve security and verification of international-bound cargo loaded onto ships and aircraft. And, while still the subject of considerable domestic debate, India has begun to respond positively on both fronts.

Missile defense and nuclear energy

An important indicator that New Delhi will support Washington’s attempts to restructure international security came in 2004. India was among the earliest supporters of the U.S. move away from the ABM Treaty and toward the deployment of a missile defense system. India’s support was logical; it had itself been working for years to develop such a capability, albeit on a much smaller scale. India’s open-architecture, multi-layered system seeks to integrate Russian platforms (the S-300 PMU-1 for its army and S-300-V for its air force) and AWACS systems (using Antonov or Ilyushin aircraft) with the indigenously-made “Rajendra” radar and short-range missiles.

America, in turn, has begun to engage India on this issue. U.S. approval has paved the way for the integration of Israeli technology—namely the Green Pine radar and Arrow interceptors—into Indian capabilities. Washington has also offered India a customized version of the Patriot Advanced Capability theater missile defense system (PAC-2 or PAC-3), and allowed Indian scientists and military officers to witness live missile defense tests on U.S. soil on at least three occasions since 2003.

But perhaps the single most significant indicator of Washington’s attempts to engage New Delhi is the proposed civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries. This deal, struck in July 2005, in essence requires India to separate all of its civilian nuclear facilities from its weapons complex and place the former under the safeguards of the IAEA. In return, the United States has pledged to amend its domestic laws and international provisions in order to permit participation in India’s civilian nuclear complex. The core rationale is to create a pragmatic mechanism to end decades of embargoes against India, a non-NPT member that first tested a nuclear device in 1974, and help it meet its growing energy needs.

Two significant wider benefits are associated with this so-called “nuclear deal.” First, India currently produces 3,300mW of electricity through its indigenous nuclear program—barely 2.8 percent of its total energy requirements. If this deal comes to fruition, New Delhi has set the target of generating more than ten times that amount via nuclear energy by 2025. Even if this target is only partially reached, the deal will reduce the upward pressure on global oil prices because India is the 6th largest consumer of oil and the 10th largest economy in the world, and its economy is expected to continue growing at about 7-8 percent annually for the foreseeable future.

The second benefit is in the non-proliferation arena. Under this agreement, reaffirmed in March 2006 during President Bush’s visit to New Delhi, the Indian government provided a blueprint to separate 65 percent of its nuclear complex—including power reactors, research facilities, and designated fuel fabrication and mining facilities—and place it under IAEA safeguards by the year 2014. In addition, this deal will bring a vast majority of India’s currently unprotected fissile material, which accounts for over 50 percent of the world’s total, under IAEA safeguards. At a time when an international consensus to negotiate a fissile material cut-off treaty remains elusive, this represents a significant interim development.

This “paradigm-shifting” deal has sparked an intense domestic debate in both countries, and elsewhere. Discussing the relative merits of those arguments is beyond the scope of this article,6 but it is safe to say that this agreement represents a crucial success for the Bush administration, which recognized the need to move beyond America’s historic predominantly sanctions-based dialogue with India. To be sure, India’s strong export controls and its commitment not to proliferate beyond its borders might have continued, but until now the international community had little direct leverage to ensure Indian compliance. The Bush administration’s incentives-based approach matches rewards with correspondingly greater Indian obligations. The results have been unmistakable: India has already harmonized its nuclear and missile control lists with those of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, and is improving its export control regulations.7 India is also working to harmonize its dual-use control lists in the chemical, biological and advanced conventional weapons spheres with those of the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Taken together, these multilateral export control regimes are critical to the success of global non-proliferation. And the nuclear deal forged between Washington and New Delhi has generated more cooperation from India vis-à-vis these regimes than two decades of inflexible dialogue had accomplished.

Counterterrorism and democracy promotion

The United States, as the world’s most powerful democracy, and India, as the largest one, share the view that terrorism has to be fought simultaneously on two fronts: by fostering transparent, accountable institutions and destroying terror networks. Indo-U.S. cooperation, therefore, is most visible in their leadership of the Conference on Democracy at the United Nations, in which both sides have pledged substantial amounts toward the creation of a Democracy Fund.8

At the same time, Washington and New Delhi have intensified coordination and are pursuing a subtle “carrot and stick” approach to promote democracy in South Asia. They are cooperating to curb Islamic radicalism in Bangladesh by improving economic conditions and facilitating its integration into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). At the same time, India in 2005 ensured that the United States was granted “observer status” within SAARC, facilitating U.S. trade, investment and broader economic cooperation with the region. Indo-U.S. technical cooperation, meanwhile, is focused on assisting Dhaka to disrupt the financial and logistical networks of terrorism in Bangladesh and their connections abroad.

Similarly, in Nepal, the festering Maoist rebellion has fused with broader dissatisfaction against the monarchy for its increasingly autocratic rule. The United States and India have conditioned further arms supplies to the regime of King Gyanendra on the provision of greater powers to the parliament, and linked closer economic cooperation to Nepal complying with its obligations under SAARC. Greater Indo-U.S. coordination is also visible in their efforts to address the festering Tamil-Sinhala struggle in Sri Lanka. Washington and New Delhi have expanded economic cooperation with Colombo but reduced their direct presence, instead encouraging the negotiated settlement mediated by Norway. At the same time, U.S. and Indian naval and intelligence teams have cooperated to intercept arms shipments to the Tamil separatists, while maintaining pressure on the government in Colombo to enter into a durable power-sharing agreement with the rebels and to strengthen democratic institutions in the provinces of the war-torn country.

The United States and India are also deepening their interaction on the maritime security front. Under a February 2001 agreement, the Indian navy has escorted high-value U.S. commercial ships through the Indian Ocean up to the Strait of Malacca, and permits American ships to refuel at southern Indian ports, saving them a 1,700-kilometer detour to Diego Garcia. The 2002 signing of the Generalized Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) has facilitated real time cooperation against piracy and drug interdiction, as well as in search-and-rescue and joint patrol operations. The U.S. Pacific Command has conducted a series of increasingly significant naval exercises with India involving aircraft carriers, frigates and guided missile destroyers, and plans to deploy technical assets on Indian ships for improved coordination and execution of joint tasks. Securing the sea lanes between the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia is a critical objective of Indo-U.S. cooperation, because over 45 percent of international maritime commerce transits through these dangerous waters, which are prone to drug and small arms trafficking and WMD-sensitive proliferation. The swift coordination of Indian, U.S. and Japanese naval assets within hours of the tsunami catastrophe in December 2004, including the de-mining of the Sri Lankan ports to expedite rescue efforts, was a concrete example of this growing effectiveness.

Transforming security cooperation

Although for different reasons, New Delhi and Washington increasingly agree on the value of diversifying India’s military arsenal from its predominantly Russian-based platforms toward Western systems. To India, in the midst of modernizing the world’s fourth largest military, such a step provides better terms-of-trade in defense cooperation. The benefits for the U.S. are also clear; India compares favorably in recent Pentagon assessments with other American allies in East Asia regarding the utility and cost of joint armaments production. From Washington’s standpoint, therefore, enhanced cooperation will secure a larger share of India’s defense procurement and facilitate greater military interoperability on a range of shared missions in Asia.

Bilateral defense ties between Washington and New Delhi received a big boost in June 2005, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee signed a landmark 10-year agreement expanding defense cooperation.9 The bilateral Defense Policy Group (DPG) remains the chief policy body overseeing defense ties, and under its aegis bilateral military contacts have expanded rapidly. The Indian and U.S. armies, air forces and navies have conducted over 20 increasingly complex exercises since 2002,10 while collaboration in defense R&D, network-centric warfare, and technology co-production have all increased.11

These initiatives—and the lifting of U.S. sanctions—have enabled some major sales of U.S. technology to India. During 2004-05, India purchased counterterrorism equipment worth $29 million for its special forces, $105 million-worth of electronic ground sensors to contain militant infiltration in Kashmir, and spent $40 million of self-protection systems for aircraft that carry the Indian political leadership.12 Current U.S. defense offers to India total well over $1 billion, and include maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft, multi-role combat aircraft (F-16s and F/A-18s), anti-missile systems (PAC-2 or PAC-3), and the offer to transfer the U.S.S Trenton amphibious transport ship to India in early 2007.13

Through the looking glass

Today, the burgeoning ties between the U.S. and India are both bolstered and reinforced by complementary strategic outlooks. India is a “net revisionist” state that desires international recognition for its growing capabilities and track record of responsible governance. The United States, for its part, wants to reorder world politics so that it can respond more effectively to new challenges confronting the global community.

But is an alliance between the two feasible in the near term? The answer is no, for four key reasons. First, the absolute “power gap” between the two countries is so great that India currently lacks the requisite military resources and domestic political consensus to become a U.S. partner in missions other than humanitarian and preventive diplomacy efforts. Second, while both countries share concerns about the future behavior of China, Washington and New Delhi alike have opted to expand economic and diplomatic ties with the PRC. If Beijing’s behavior becomes coercive or confrontational, India would be loath to enter into a U.S.-led coalition unless its interests were directly threatened.

Third, New Delhi and Washington sharply disagree on the means to be adopted to achieve their shared goals regarding Pakistan—assisting it to become a moderate Islamic state with greater democracy, at peace with itself and its neighbors. India contends that Pakistan’s armed forces, in cooperation with the landed aristocracy and civilian bureaucracy, have consistently undermined democracy by dominating the country’s economic, political and security arena.14 Since the early 1990s, this troika has calibrated the use of radical Islamic groups to pursue its aggressive goals regarding Kashmir, at low cost to itself. As such, Kashmir is a violent manifestation of a larger anti-India agenda—one that will impede bilateral relations between the two countries even if a negotiated settlement of Kashmir can be achieved.15 The July 2006 Mumbai blasts have reinforced these views in many Indian minds.16 While Washington has belatedly begun to share a diluted version of this assessment, it has repeatedly subordinated its demands for Pakistani democracy and an end to the insurgency against India in favor of more pressing U.S. goals (such as counterterrorism cooperation in Afghanistan and Central Asia). As such, American policies toward Pakistan will continue to cast a long—and negative—shadow on U.S.-India ties.

Finally, while the senior leadership in Washington and New Delhi is committed to transforming bilateral ties, the legislatures and wider expert communities in both countries still retain a measure of Cold War era mistrust. While this has begun to change, it will still take time for the new paradigm of U.S.-India cooperation to be accepted and embraced.

All of this begs the question: is an alliance feasible, or even desirable, in the medium to longer term? The answer is that at least three factors will fundamentally reshape bilateral calculations so that the partnership will progressively yield benefits comparable to those of an alliance. First, the two economies are becoming rapidly integrated in a range of civilian and military sectors. Second, the two-million-strong Indian-American community will not only remain a powerful “human bridge” between the two countries, but become an increasingly persuasive “policy bridge” as well, arguing in favor of Indian freedom of action abroad. Third, the old Communist adage reminds us that “one’s class perception is a function of one’s class position.” As India moves to a higher position in the hierarchy of nations, its interests and behavior might converge more fully with those of the United States, and will serve to transform it into a valuable, if spirited, American ally.

Dr. Anupam Srivastava is the Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Trade & Security, University of Georgia.