China’s emergence as a revisionist power with a US$14 trillion GDP makes it the world’s second-largest economy, fueling its attempt to rewrite the world order and challenge US supremacy. As a result, the US has tried to co-opt India to balance China in the Indo-Pacific. Although like most bilateral relations, India-US relations have their own dynamics; the US effort to mentor India and India’s outreach to the US in terms of defense and security co-operation are also driven by the challenges that India faces from China in terms of territorial integrity and sovereignty.
In this article, I attempt to analyze both the potential and the limitations of India as a non-NATO ally of the US in three areas. First, there is the transformed relationship between the US and India. Second, we revisit the checkered past of the relationship, which continues to impact current bilateral relations. The third segment analyses the challenges that Indo-US relations face. Finally, I conclude that India will be able to withstand the headwinds.
Moving from ‘Estranged Democracies’ to Partnership
The India-US relationship has gone from what Dennis Kux, the US diplomat and author, called “estranged democracies” to the current “Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership.” A landmark development was the signing of the Framework for the US-India Defense Relationship in June 2015, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power with his nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general election of May 2014. These arrangements were further strengthened when the two countries signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in August 2016 following 12 years of negotiations. LEMOA is a tweaked version of the standard logistics co-operation that the US military has with dozens of countries and it enables the naval ships and aircraft from both countries to dock in each other bases for refueling and other purposes.
These and other agreements in the recent past attest to the convergence of security interests between the two countries. The signing of the Basic Exchange and Co-operation Agreement (BECA) in 2020 is another significant step in this regard. Now there is enhanced maritime information sharing and maritime domain awareness between the US and Indian navies. There is also increased co-operation between the Indian army and the US Central Command and Africa Command, including broader participation in exercises and conferences to promote shared security interests. Also there is a US Navy liaison officer stationed with India’s Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR); similarly there is an Indian Liaison Officer at the US Naval Forces Central Command (Navcent) in Bahrain.
A Checkered Past
It is worth revisiting history to understand better the transformation that has taken place. Ironically, the US and India, the world’s two largest democracies, did not engage with each other in a meaningful manner during the post-war period after Indian independence in 1947. What prevented India from engaging with the US despite shared values of democracy was India’s leadership in the non-aligned movement and the fight against imperialism and colonialism during the Cold War. While the US saw the Cold War as a fight between democracy and communism, India looked at decolonization through the prism of Afro-Asian nationalism. Indian foreign policy was guided by non-alignment, which the US saw as hostile. The outlook of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru also had a great impact on the country’s foreign policy. Nehru, who studied in the United Kingdom, was greatly influenced by Fabian socialism, which was reflected in his preference for having the state sector dominate the domestic economy. All of this made the post-independence era difficult for relations with the US.
In addition, the US cultivated a security relationship with Pakistan during the Cold War, which further estranged India.
China’s intervention in Tibet in the late 1950s and the India-China border war in 1962 tilted India’s relations in favor of the US. On Nov. 19, 1962, in the wake of the India-China border war, as Chinese forces reached the frontiers of India’s border, Nehru wrote two letters in quick succession on the same day to US President John F. Kennedy requesting the immediate dispatch of supersonic all-weather fighter aircraft and radar communications to defend Indian cities and towns against an anticipated attack by the Chinese air force.1 The US, the UK and the Commonwealth countries responded to Nehru’s request for military aid, the US supplying some outdated 4.2-inch mortars, 3.7-inch howitzers and Browning machine guns, which were subsequently replaced.
The growing India-US ties were again interrupted in the early 1970s with the struggle over what was then East Pakistan and India’s overt and covert support for the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. Indira Gandhi, who was prime minister during the period, entered into a treaty of friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union in 1971 prior to the outbreak of the war. When war broke out between India and Pakistan, the Soviet Union openly helped India. The US sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal apparently to restrain India whose army had already entered East Pakistan and was fighting the Pakistani army alongside the Mukti Bahini of the Bengalis. This soured the relationship between the two countries.
There was a later thaw in the relationship when Indira Gandhi visited the US in July 1982 and met US President Ronald Reagan. Welcoming the prime minister, Reagan showered effusive praise on India’s democracy, saying “India’s experience since independence exemplifies the gathering strength of the democratic revolution. And India stands in eloquent refutation of all those who argue that democratic institutions are not equal to the task of dealing with today’s problems, or are irrelevant to the needs of today’s developing nations …” Gandhi responded with equal warmth, quoting an unnamed historian, saying, “America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, and became great through experimentation.” Thus the relationship between the two democracies was back on track after almost a decade of estrangement.
India’s nuclear test in 1998 was yet another impediment to closer ties. US President Bill Clinton invoked the Glenn Amendment to the Arms Control Act, which imposed extensive economic and military sanctions on both India and Pakistan. In a letter to Clinton in The New York Times, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee explained the rationale for the underground explosion. “We have an overt nuclear state on our border, a state which committed armed aggression against India in 1962,” he wrote of China. “Although our relations with that country have improved in the last decade or so, an atmosphere of distrust persists mainly due to the unresolved border problem. To add to the distrust that country has materially helped another neighbor of ours [Pakistan] to become a covert nuclear test.”
During the Kargil War of 1999 between India and Pakistan, the US played a positive role in averting a major war and gave impetus to India’s relations with the US. The tilt in favor of India was seen when Clinton visited India in 2000. The visit was the first by a US president since Jimmy Carter’s visit in 1978. History came full circle in 2003 when Prime Minister Vajpayee, speaking to the Asia Society in New York, described the US as a “natural ally of India,” an adage once applied to the erstwhile Soviet Union during the heyday of the Non-alignment Movement. A milestone was reached with the agreement to undertake Next Steps in Strategic Partnership in January 2004. The high point was the Indo-US Nuclear Deal announced by President George W. Bush in July 2005. In 2008, the deal was formally signed by both sides. There has been no further turning back and there is now widespread support for the strategic partnership in both countries.
Challenges: China and Russia as Variables
The China factor. India has overcome some of its earlier hesitancy to embrace a strategic partnership with the US. There are, however, still some inhibitions with respect to both China and Russia. China has always been critical of India’s growing strategic partnership with the US, and India has spurned China’s offer to join its Belt and Road Initiative. India is also active in the South China Sea, where it is engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in Vietnamese waters. India’s foray into the South China Sea has both strategic and commercial intent. Its naval exercises with the so-called Quad (India, Japan, Australia and the US) have been scoffed at by China as an “Asian NATO.” But the Quad naval exercises are instances of a convergence of outlook and approach between India and the US in the maritime domain. Much to the chagrin of China, India has not hesitated to internationalize freedom of navigation with friendly countries including Vietnam and the US.
The economies of India and China over the years have been intertwined, notwithstanding a huge trade deficit against India. Traditionally India has been dependent on China for two critical strategic imports — pharmaceuticals and telecom equipment such as routers. It was felt earlier that any deterioration in the relationship would affect the import of critical components and hurt the economy and consumers. The outbreak of Covid-19 has somewhat dismantled the myth of India’s dependency on China. On the contrary, when India banned a number of Chinese apps and restricted Chinese investment in India, China protested, suggesting China’s dependency on the Indian economy and market. In fact, a study conducted by the Indian think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries established that out of the total imports from China, 327 products could be alternatively sourced and manufactured in India. Indian imports from China include products such as mobile phones, telecom equipment, cameras, and solar panels, etc., which account for over 75 percent of total imports from China. Dr. SK Mohanty, a professor at the think tank, used UN data to estimate the value of these critically sensitive imports at US$66.6 billion in 2018. According to Mohanty, domestic production of such items should be highly encouraged. The Indian government has been taking incentives to spur indigenous production of such items.2
The Russia factor. Russia, regarded as India’s tested and trusted ally, is yet another factor in India’s engagement with the US as a potential non-NATO ally. The US has put sanctions, under its Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, on India’s scheduled purchase of the S-400 missile system for US$2.5 billion from Russia by the end of this year. In reply to a question posed by a reporter, the Russian ambassador to India Nikolai Kudashev said: “Together with India we do not recognize bilateral sanctions as they are illegal tools of unfair competition, pressure and blackmail … With regard to the S-400, both sides are committed to the agreed timelines and obligations … this contract is being successfully fulfilled.” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he had spoken to India’s defense minister about the deal, adding that sanctions would be determined once the system was delivered.
India and Russia also differ in their approach to the Indo-Pacific. Articulating the differences, Kudashev said: “We want to call the attention of our Indian partners and friends to the dangers of emerging from the Western Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at the revival of Cold War-era thinking and Cold War-era structures.”3 This makes reference to the US-Soviet rivalry and the establishment of NATO to counter Russia.
Russia will continue to be a factor in determining the extent of India’s outreach to the US. Besides India’s historical and political ties with Russia, which supported India at very critical times like the Bangladesh war and supplying uranium to India’s nuclear reactors, India needs Russian neutrality in dealing with China. After the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and with China’s increasing footprint there, India will need Russia’s co-operation to deal with the emerging geopolitics in the region. Recent overtures by Russia to Pakistan, evidenced by the visit of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to Pakistan, during which he offered military equipment to Pakistan to fight terrorism, is a matter of strategic anxiety for India.
In deference to Russian sensitivities, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently reiterated India’s commitment, as a part of its Act East Policy, to work as a reliable partner of Russia in President Vladimir Putin’s vision for the development of the Russian Far East. Expressing happiness that the Chennai-Vladivostok Maritime Corridor is making headways, Modi said that the maritime connectivity with Russia will bring India and Russia closer to each other.4
The Road Ahead
India is trying to maintain a very delicate balance between the US on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. Russia knows very well that the India-US defense and security matrix is not a major problem for Moscow; the same is not true for Beijing, for which it is a matter of strategic anxiety. India knows well that China will continue to be a security and strategic challenge, and this will weigh in favor of India’s alignment with the US as a sort of non-NATO ally. In India, there is a broad national consensus in favor of the US partnership, with the exception of the miniscule communist faction in India’s Parliament. India has crossed the Rubicon and now it is time to consolidate a firm relationship with the US for a win-win situation.
While it is a matter of speculation as to how India is going to manage the purchase of the S-400 missile system from Russia without attracting US sanctions, Modi and Biden met at the White House on Sept. 24 in the first in-person meeting since Biden became president. They discussed a range of issues, but details of their discussions weren’t available at the time Global Asia went to press. On the same day, leaders of the Quad countries also met at the White House.
Notes
1 Rup Narayan Das, The US Factor In Sino-Indian Relations: India’s Fine Balancing (New Delhi: Institute For Defence Studies and Analyses, 2015), pp 17-19, www.idsa.in/monograph/USFactorinSinoIndianRelations_rndas
2 “327 items form 3/4 of imports from China, ‘can be alternatively sourced’,” The Times of India, Aug. 10, 2020, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/327-items-make-up-biggest-chunk-of-imports-from-china/articleshow/77453001.cms
3 “India, Russia committed to S-400 deal: envoy,” The Hindu, April 15, 2021, www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/india-russia-committed-to-s-400-deal-envoy/article34321706.ece
4 “Modi: Will partner Moscow to develop Russian Far East,” The Times of India, Sept. 4, 2021, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/will-partner-moscow-to-develop-russian-far-east-pm-narendra-modi/articleshow/85914364.cms
Back to Issue
Artmotion Asia
