Hillary Clinton Won Over India with American Weapons

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has finished her diplomatic journey to India, the main event of which became the signing of an agreement on military-technical cooperation, including the sale of the newest American weapons to Delhi.

According to the experts at Kommersant, the agreement is one of the world’s biggest arms deals; under the given terms, India will obtain more than a hundred American jet fighters, sharply increasing competition for the Indian market and pushing out Russian and European producers.

Hillary Clinton’s visit has brought closure to a period of distrust between the two countries, tension that began during the Cold War. The new partnership will turn India into America’s newest strategic partner in South Asia. On the eve of her first trip to India as Secretary of State, which began last Friday, Hillary Clinton presented a progressive foreign policy initiative to American diplomats and policy experts, citing India along with the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, and China) as potential partners for the U.S. in upcoming years.

Mrs. Clinton’s five-day visit gained much attention after heated discussions regarding her ability, after so much time out of the public eye due to an arm injury, to play a significant role in deciding key international issues facing the Obama administration. In spite of this, India, a place Hillary Clinton visited many times during her tenure as a senator from New York state, turned out to be an ideal platform on which to demonstrate her abilities as the lead diplomat of the White House.

Secretary of State Clinton’s stay in India included a visit to three cities: Bombai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Besides the negotiations with Premier Manmohan Singh and the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Clinton met with the chairman of the ruling coalition of the United Progressive Alliance, Sonia Ghandi, and opposition leader of the House of Commons, Lal Krishna Advani. Secretary Clinton’s primary achievement was the bilateral agreement regarding the military technical collaboration, signed by both Clinton and the head of the Ministry of Foreign Afairs, Somanahalli Malaya Krishna.

The final designation of the agreement makes provisions for the sale of the newest American equipment to India and will also allow the U.S. to test the uses and effects of those weapons without risking a technological leak to other nations. The signing of this document sharply increases America’s chances for success in the struggle for one of the world’s biggest arms contracts – delivering 126 new multipurpose jet fighters to India. That contract will significantly modernize the potential of the Indian air force, which, at this time, consists predominantly of Russian equipment.

According to the experts, the increased production of American military-industrial giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing will create competition for the Russian MiG-35 as well as the French Dassault Rafale, the Dutch Saab JAS-39 Gripen and the European Eurofighter Typhoon, produced by consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies.

“For the Russian military-industrial complex that has dominated the Indian weapons market for decades, the given agreement is both good and bad news. The bad news is that now we have a very strong competitor in India. The good news is that in order to maintain its position on the Indian market, the Russian producers will inevitably have to develop new technologies. In this way, the struggle for the Indian market will become a powerful stimulus for the modernization of the Russian military-industrial complex,” stated Peter Topychkanov, an expert at the Moscow Center for Analysis of Stratefies and Technologies.

Ruslan Puhov, director of the Center, agrees with Topychkanov. “The American-Indian agreement makes the American developers preferred in the declared Indian tender of 126 multipurpose jet fighters. At the same time, the chances of Russian producers decrease,” said Mr. Puhov. He also reminded us that the unreliability of a number of Russian partners, in particular the firm Iliushin, has also noticeably damaged confidence on the Indian side of the negotiations.