April 15, 2009
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By Centre for Land Warfare Studies |
The Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) organised a seminar on 'Indo-US Relations: Continuity or Change?' on April 15, 2009 at the CLAWS campus in New Delhi. The seminar was attended by a visiting delegation from the US Naval War College, Monterey led by Dr. Paul Kapoor and a select gathering from the Indian strategic community which included Dr. K. P. Vijaylakshmi, Associate Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Dr. Manpreet Sethi from Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), Dr. Harinder Sekhon and Dr. Rajeswari Rajagopalan, Research Fellows at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Manohar Thyagaraj, Director at the Alliance for US-India Business, a Washington-based trade organisation working towards improving economic ties between the two countries. Air Commodore Jasjit Singh (Retd), Director CAPS, chaired the seminar. Opening Remarks Dr. Paul Kapoor set the agenda of the seminar, the examination of Indo-US relations post the election of the new Democrat administration in the US led by President Barack Obama, especially in context of the Indo-US nuclear deal and its future. He said that the Indo-US dialogue was one of many similar interactions held with South Korea, Pakistan, Russia and China, where the intention really was not to judge, advice or coerce but to listen to views of the strategic community on important questions. Dr. K. P. Vijayalakshmi There are two or three probable areas for deeper Indo-US engagement within President Obama’s strategy in South Asia. The growing Asia focus of the United States is very welcome as from energy to population, there are several crisis areas that are presently pervasive in Asia and are expected to remain so in the future. However, India has some differences of perception on the American role in this region and its interest in the Asian century. At the end of the American century, two central questions have prompted us to re-engage with the dialectics of the Indo-US relationship. Firstly, is American power declining or will it come around? The second is, how will we help the United States walk through to a smoother multi-polar world, which is not violent? This new world needs to be analysed at various levels. We begin by looking at long-term interests, but more than that, philosophically and consciously, we begin by looking at the winds of change. The Obama administration and its policy focus denotes a marked change in the American consciousness and it is expected that this will in future impact on America’s world view. This is important for India since this will be a critical relationship to manage, in both the short and the long term. What are the components of Indo-US relations? Clearly, defence acquisitions from the US and the way they play out are indicators of the health of the relationship. Indian analysts treated the incoming Obama administration with some trepidation. Would the transformation in relations that took place in the Bush era hold? Nevertheless, with the strategic interests and goals remaining the same, there was expectation that there would be some kind of serious cooperation and that has come through. We’re now looking at the functioning of institutional arrangements and mechanisms that have been built in for further prospects of cooperation. We’re looking at a commitment to enhancing Asian security, where India expects to play a stellar role. However, divergences will also emerge where there is friction over issues such as the WTO, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or even climate change. We expect those differences to be there and to manage them. Dr. Manpreet Sethi Had the hurdle of nuclear estrangement not been overcome, there would have been definite limits to the distance the relationship has travelled till now. What are the prospects of the Indo-US engagement – will it deepen or will it flounder, especially at the altar of non-proliferation? Very broadly, the Indo-US nuclear relationship will see continuity, following the trend that the past administration set into motion. Both sides understand the import of what has happened, but the point of debate is the pace at which this will continue. The financial crisis and the Af-Pak crisis might leave little time for the resolution of pending issues on nuclear cooperation. The pace of the relationship in the field of nuclear energy will be determined by the commercial opportunities available to the US from a buzzing Indian nuclear market. But the two issues that need to be resolved are, from the Indian side, the liability issue, where American nuclear industry cannot participate in nuclear commerce with India unless the latter becomes party to the International Nuclear Liability Convention. The Indian government is very well aware of that and is working towards that end. The second issue is that of the US granting reprocessing rights for spent fuel that comes out of US origin reactors. This issue was left out of the 123 Agreement with both sides consenting that they would take it up later. This is important because reprocessing is a critical process in the Indian three-stage nuclear programme. There is also the debate over non-proliferation. There are several US official statements, including that of President Obama that tend to indicate that India is today an insider of the non-proliferation regime. In fact, there is talk of taking India as a partner in resolving the issues that are plaguing the non-proliferation regime. However, Indian apprehensions arise on account of the FMCT and the CTBT and the pressure that will come on India because of that. The FMCT will be easier to deal with because it’s not yet available in the form of a treaty. Mostly, on the FMCT, Indo-US interests converge in terms of the scope or content of the FMCT and also on the issue of the verifiability of the treaty, which is so sacred to India. The CTBT evokes a more emotional response in terms of India’s sense of betrayal at how the treaty was passed in the UN General Assembly and the outrage at the entry-into-force clause. During the debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the issue of testing really did put pressure on both sides. To resolve the issue, on the domestic front, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said India would not sign the CTBT while the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to get the NSG waiver, on the external front said India would continue with its voluntary moratorium on testing. In case the CTBT resurfaces today, after ratification by the US and China, it will call upon India to make a decision either way. This will generate strong domestic debate. Two factors can ease India’s ability to get to the CTBT – one is clarity on secret agreements that are alleged to have been made between the P5 at the time of the negotiation of the CTBT. Any whiff of discrimination will make it very difficult for India to accept the CTBT. Secondly, it will be easier to accept if the CTBT can have a linkage with disarmament because India in its larger conceptualisation of the CTBT sees it as a means towards a situation where nuclear weapons become irrelevant. Dr Harinder Sekhon South Asia has emerged as an area of critical concern for the United States. Afghanistan has been called the most dangerous place. After the recent US elections, the talk of de-hyphenating Afghanistan-Pakistan-Kashmir and India and that of naming Bill Clinton as special envoy to Kashmir had raised murmurs, especially when Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative for South Asia, reiterated it. That ended with effective lobbying by the Indian caucus on Capitol Hill. There is too much emphasis on the Pakistan Army in President Obama’s Af-Pak policy. But, one has to look at the larger picture, which includes Pakistan Army’s policy within Pakistan, its working as an institution, its policies towards India and the role of the ISI and the mullah-military nexus. If Kashmir is not an issue, do India-Pakistan tensions come to an end as far as Pakistan is concerned? One of the concerns here is US aid to Pakistan which is then used against India. The US definitely wants to maintain stability in Afghanistan, but the politics of aid to Pakistan is worrisome. Are there monitoring mechanisms that will ensure that the $7.5 billion aid package that has been allotted for development is actually used for that purpose? Secondly, the emphasis “to lessen tensions between two nuclear-armed states that often teeter on the edge of escalation and confrontation” equates India with Pakistan and its role in escalation and creation of tension. Is India also a part of the problem? These are some of the questions that have raised concern. The general impression is that there has always been a lot of appeasement of Pakistan. Even if the statements coming out of Washington right now are very tough on Pakistan, there are various other comments coming out on the ‘K’ question that indicate that India and Pakistan need to sort out differences between themselves and need to resolve Kashmir.. Besides, when Pakistan is seen as a victim of terrorism – there is no mention of India – it’s only the US and Pakistan. Mumbai hasn’t got the focus it should. There is concern that this de-hyphenation might negate the gains made during the earlier administration. Dr Rajeswari Rajagopalan The state of the US-China relationship casts a shadow over US-India relations. India does not want to see a very close relationship between these countries as was the case during the Clinton administration, when they kept in touch over South Asia, as also after India’s 1998 nuclear tests. On the other hand, India does not want to see them hostile to each other, especially a conflict scenario where India as a neighbour will be forced to take sides. There is particular concern over the rise of China, especially the ever-expanding military. This rise translates into hardline postures at decision-making forums in line with China’s national interests, which are in conflict with the border issues, the Tibet issue. These can be witnessed at NSG meetings, at the UN Security Council meetings and most recently at the ADB meet where China vetoed a development loan to be granted to India for development of the north-eastern region of Arunachal Pradesh. Such friction between India and China has affected Indo-US relations. Apart from the fact that India is seen as a major player in the Asian security structure that is emerging, the Indo-US nuclear deal had a China-centric logic, where more the security concerns with China, the closer India will want to be to the US. How and when the US reciprocates, is another matter. How the Obama administration views this is also important especially in a situation where the US and China are caught in a symbiotic relationship, their closer ties bound to impact the Indo-US relationship. This is not to suggest that there is a zero-sum game between India, China and the US. A warm Indo-US relationship is also a worrisome factor for China. It irks China to see a powerful India in its neighbourhood even though it hasn’t formally listed India as a challenge. There are many indications of China’s worries over a rising India with its democratic and capitalist orientations. China has continued to reiterate its claims on Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet in the last few years. India also has serious concerns about Chinese activities near the border region. China has unleashed a huge economic and infrastructural development programme in Tibet as part of the larger strategy of smothering Tibetan nationalism. Manohar Thyagaraj Is the Indo-US defence relationship likely to be affected by the change in administration? There seems to be no indication to suggest as much, that this administration is likely to change the drivers that have pushed the Indo-US defence relationship forward in the last eight years. President Obama’s national security team have been largely supportive of an India-US defence/strategic relationship. Since 2001, the process of defining this relationship has forked along two different arcs. The first comprises of military exercises, training exchanges and those are more robust than ever and show no signs of declining. The second is the process of defence acquisitions, where there are some pressing questions. But, existing issues have nothing to do with administration change and are organic issues about the functioning of systems in both countries. For example, the relationship between the US government and US industry is not as coherent as it is with other industry competitors that come from other countries. Further, there are procedural hurdles in relation to underwriting the costs of business development. Also, they are all publicly listed companies that are answerable to the stock market. This is a huge factor in how much risk a US company can entertain in a new market. The third factor is that exports are not still a key component of US defence industry, per se. The US domestic market is huge for many of these companies. There are some other functional issues such as end-use. It is the settled view in Washington that unless India and the US sign an umbrella end-use agreement, much of the defence technology relationship will suffer. This stalling factor is also true of the interoperability agreement called CISCOA ¬(Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement). The second functional issue that related to the procedure of acquisition is that the trial process introduces such a high amount of market risk that companies frequently look at programmes and say they can’t participate. All these issues raise questions whether US industry can actually compete in this market. How the new administration looks at technology transfer to India will be a key marker. Again, there is no indication that that will change at this point because the drivers have been set in motion. The key question to be asked at this point is: can the the India-US strategic relationship exist without an India-US acquisition relationship? I would argue then that that speaks to the broad question of what is the India-US strategic relationship. Ultimately, I think both countries view a strategic relationship completely differently. India views it as a somewhat fungible concept where it has these relationships with Russia, China, other countries, but the quantum of security within each relationship can vary. For the US, strategic relationships are security driven. With this divergence in perspective on the strategic relationship, and issues on the defence acquisition relationship, there are largely positive signs going forward. Where existing programmes may stumble is if the US market decides that the market risk in India is too much to bear versus other places where investments can be made. Discussion • There cannot be a strategic relationship unless there is coincidence on political and security objectives. Unless India and the United States are seeing eye-to-eye on Pakistan, no government in India will be able to sustain this strategic relationship. Conclusion The seminar concluded with the suggestion that there was plenty of room for agreement and disagreement and that there needs to be room for accommodation. The visiting delegation stressed that India was at risk of losing a partnership too, and thus both sides should accommodate each other. (Report prepared by Swapna Kona Nayudu, Associate Fellow, CLAWS)
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