Indo-U.S. Interaction: Making a Mountain out of a Molehill

WHEN then US Secretary of Defence, William Perry, came to New Delhi in January, 1995, to sign the first Indo-US Minute on Defence Cooperation, neither side could ever visualise that professional engagement between the armed forces of the two countries would progress to the level that it has.

The agreement was signed in the aftermath of the collapse of the erstwhile USSR and suspicions, on both sides, were acute and spread across every aspect of the proposed interaction.

The Pentagon was chary of dealing with a former Soviet “ally” and our own defence establishment, given the US fascination for Pakistan, equally resistant.

It is, therefore, quite remarkable that we have come where we have in this short period of just over a decade despite the fact that the envisaged cooperation could not really begin until after 2000, given the tension in relations following American sanctions imposed after the 1998 Pokhran blasts.

All three wings of the Services, – the Army, the Navy and the Air Force – have exercised with their American counterparts several times in operations of increasing complexity and fared very well eliciting admiration, possibly grudging, of the other side.

This engagement with the most professionally competent military in the world has enabled our forces to assess their own capabilities, both of men and material, and to make course corrections where needed. This is an essential and continuous military process which decades of insularity had inhibited, turning our armed forces into “frogs in the well”.

The fact that in many of these exercises they have matched and even outscored their “opponents” must have added loads to their confidence in training and deployment practices.

The ten-year 1995 agreement expired in 2005 and has been replaced by the New Framework of Defence Cooperation and should lead to a stronger and even more coherent relationship between the two militaries.

In this same period, we have come out of the well, literally, and now interact with several militaries, including the Chinese PLA.

Credible cooperation between two militaries does not come from just some pieces of paper signed by leaders. It depends on trust and confidence between peoples and these are not generated overnight.

As highlighted earlier, the 1995 agreement came after four decades of mutual suspicion and distrust. Gradual and continuing engagement between personnel, at different levels, was an absolute must and it must be said to the credit of military leaders on both sides that 13 years down the line the deficit of trust, to quote former US National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, is significantly reduced, even if it has not still disappeared altogether.

This must be further built upon, not because the two countries are part of any military alliance or group but because as two credible Asian powers, one by virtue of its global interests and the other because of geography, they have no option but to engage with each other in the furtherance of their own respective interests.

These can extend over many areas, including relief during natural disasters and calamities, peace keeping, prevention of terrorism and safety of movement of sea-borne commerce. In the stretch extending from the Suez on one side to South East Asia on the other, India’s military is, possibly, the only regional force capable of playing a useful role in conjunction with that of the US.

For us, on the other hand, engagement with the Americans not only helps in securing the objectives mentioned above but also facilitates interfaces with other like minded militaries in the region.

In the emerging security environment in which non-traditional threats are coming centre-stage, these relationships are absolutely vital. So, the rationale for cooperation is clear.

It is, therefore, amazing that a set of utterly routine issues are creating the frustration that they are. These are the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), the Communications Interoperability Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) and the End User Memorandun (EUM) which have not yet been concluded; in fact, these have been so politicised by the Left that they are touted as compromising India’s sovereignty.

The fact, however, is that these agreements are of so ordinary a nature that they should be approved and signed by officials of a quite low level. It does not require retired US Admiral Dennis Blair to tell us these home truths as he did during a recent conference in New Delhi.

The LSA simply means that the two militaries can meet various administrative and logistics needs of each other such as berthing of ships in each other’s ports, airfield usage charges, supplies of fuel and rations and medical facilities etc through book transfers and adjustments as against cash payments as at present.

In fact, there is just no reason why this agreement cannot be concluded between the Services without bringing in the civil establishment at all. How such a trivial issue could have become a serious political issue defies imagination.

Similarly, the CISMOA is also something which the Services should sign amongst themselves a only operational issues are involved. It enables us to use classified communication systems used by the Americans during joint exercises.

As for the EUM, the Americans have this clause in force with every country to whom they supply anything military, including their closest allies. It is part of their legislated process. We do not understand this because in our system all such things are in the realm of the Executive.

To link just about everything to infringement of sovereignty is to behave like a little country with severe complexes of inferiority and insecurity rather than one which is a nuclear weapon state with aspirations of global power.

Surely, India is not going to kowtow to any dictates from anyone, even the super power, if it feels that its interests require it to act in a certain way.

To those who give so much weight to the intrusive and restrictive elements of the EUM, it may be pointed out that these did not prevent even a very weak Pakistan from using the F 104s, F 86 Sabres and Patton tanks in its wars with India.

So we should not hoist ourselves with our own petards. The first two of these agreements are clearly advantageous to us more than to them and as for the third, we can negotiate for change in phraseology.

With the kind of military acquisitions on line, the Americans, especially their companies like Boeing, Lockheed and Grumman, are going to lobby on our behalf but even if no substantive changes are possible, this is no cause to lose any sleep. In short, making non-issues into issues is not the best way of taking the engagement forward.

Finally, there is an obsession in India with the tactical rather than what is strategic. Two decades from now, unless things go very horribly wrong, India will sit on the Asian high table along with China, Japan and Russia, and the USA.

This scene will, by and large, be replicated on the wider international stage with some others thrown in. We must take stock of what the security equations will be at that time and prepare our own positions starting now.

Clearly, networked relations with major players must determine the strategy that we should adopt and America has to be recognised as the most important of them, not just today but even 20 years later.

If we look at Indo-US Defence cooperation with this backdrop, right choices will automatically fall into place. Making mountains out of mole hills is not going to be one of them.

The writer is a former Director General, Defence Planning Staff