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Indian defense policy in major
transition
By Stephen Blank
Recently the US journal Defense News reported
that the Indian government is working on a program
whereby Israel would replace Russia as India's largest
supplier of weapons and defense equipment by 2008. Since
Russia now supplies some 70 percent of India's weapons
imports, this report, if true, would mark a major
transformation in Indian defense policy.
Under
the terms of the program, India would identify the
products it wants and ask the Israeli government to
negotiate with domestic firms on its behalf as Jerusalem
does with regard to its own weapons. Israel is already
the second-largest supplier of military systems to
India, so this program could effect a major
transformation in India's security relationships.
The potential repercussions of this project,
which would clearly show a serious break with Moscow's
arms salesmen, are immense. Given the deep ties between
the US and Israeli defense industries, if this program
does materialize it will also probably enhance the
United States' competitive position in the Indian
defense market and result in further substantial
increases in the already rising amount of US arms sales
and security cooperation with India.
Those sales
could either be bilateral or brokered through Israel,
such as weapons made jointly by Israel and the United
States, including missile defense systems that India
reportedly is interested in acquiring. This program
would then also strengthen the developing tripartite
relationship among Israel, India, and the US in regard
to defense sales.
We can see this already
occurring, because the United States has brushed aside
Pakistan's objections to India's receiving the Israeli
Phalcon radar, made with US technology and thus subject
to US veto on its transfer to a third party.
Realization of the projected Indo-Israeli
project would also simultaneously symbolize and express
India's rising continental Asian status as a great power
with interests and capabilities across the continent,
allowing it to break free of its confining chains as
merely a major South Asian power if not the regional
leader, something that both Indian and foreign observers
have labeled as a prerequisite for a full partnership
with the United States.
Not only would those
trends strengthen Indo-Israeli ties, they would provide
fuel to the oft-reported desire on the part of at least
some US elites to create a tripartite alliance with
India and Israel against terrorism (if not for other,
broader objectives that would emerge later). Joint
Indo-Israeli defense collaboration on a scale envisaged
above would also, or so these advocates hope, tie into
the US alliance and Israeli partnership with Turkey,
creating a kind of pan-Asian bloc.
The new
program grows out of India's difficulty in negotiating a
US$10 billion multi-year defense acquisition program
with Russia. Three areas in particular seem to have
caused some anxiety in New Delhi.
In March 2002,
The Times of India reported that the Parliamentary
Standing Committee had urged the government to avoid
overdependence on Russia for armaments and spare parts.
The committee reportedly acknowledged Russia's previous
contributions and reliability as a provider of defense
equipment to India but cautioned that the current
dependence on Moscow for almost 80 percent of its arms
imports is unhealthy. It also observed that Russia was
not providing military hardware on the same beneficial
financial terms that it had during the Soviet era.
Therefore the committee also urged the Indian government
to cease making advance payments for weapons
acquisitions from Russia, and that in the future it seek
to put more defense contracts up for competitive tender.
Russia also has come under criticism because of
India's difficulty in obtaining and negotiating speedy
delivery of spare parts for these weapons systems. At
the same time it became clear that given its worsening
relations with Pakistan, India is seeking to diversify
its foreign purchases and use foreign partners to
develop its own defense industrial capability, eg by
conditioning purchases on obtaining offsets from the
sellers to develop its own indigenous capability.
The alliance, if it were to materialize, would
build on the already greatly improved Indo-Israeli
relationship that has led to large-scale military sales
from Israel and to India's rapprochement with the United
States as well. As the Phalcon deal suggests, it could
become possible to envisage tripartite collaboration
among these states on missile defense, especially if
India's great goal of securing the end to all US
sanctions on the transfer of both civil and military
technology is realized.
Moreover, the broadening
of India's ties and reach in political-military terms
through the acquisition of top-quality defense systems
would enable it to play the kind of role that analysts
in both India and the US postulate as being essential to
any serious strategic partnership with the United
States. And that role also accords very much with some
of the deepest aspirations of India's foreign and
defense policy elites, thus highlighting a congruence of
visions concerning India's future international
position.
In effect India's aspiration to play a
major role "from Socotra to Sumatra" would have been
both realized and blessed by the United States, as
Secretary of State Colin Powell implicitly suggested in
2001. India would then become not just a South or even
Central Asian power but a major player in the Persian
Gulf, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
At
the same time, India's search for new vistas in defense
acquisition and production relates very much to its
rising economic, technological, and military-industrial
capabilities as well as to its desire to strengthen
existing long-standing partnerships, eg with Russia. For
example, beyond the existing $10 billion weapons sales
from Russia to India, India is collaborating with Russia
on joint production of a fifth-generation fighter that
Russia feels vital to its military future. Both are also
collaborating on research that is probably tied to
missile defense and nuclear systems as well. More
broadly, India is the only country with whom Russia is
collaborating on joint production of sophisticated and
futuristic weapons systems.
Likewise India, not
China, gets the best weapons currently being produced in
Russia, systems that not even Russia's armed forces can
obtain. Moscow offers offsets in the form of technology
transfer of production skills and know-how to India, one
of its largest customers. Although India obviously seeks
to diversify its sources of foreign procurement, Russian
producers have until now been confident of their ability
to obtain the bulk of Indian defense contracts.
Whether or not this confidence is misplaced,
time will tell, but diversification and strengthening of
India's own capabilities surely would increase India's
scientific-technological and manufacturing capabilities
for weapons production. This objective also appears to
be a major goal of the deals now being made with Russia,
Israel, and presumably the United States. We see similar
deals with Italian and French firms for joint
manufacture of weapons systems.
India's leading
defense firm, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), is also
pressing an outsourcing program whereby it would help
private Indian companies find and choose foreign
partners to undertake such high-tech projects as
avionics integration, weapons-system integration, and
other related efforts to "lay the foundation for a
credible domestic aerospace industry base that could
meet the majority of India's military aerospace
requirements in the next 10 years". And it is no less
logical to assume that India would be thrilled to
duplicate this particular kind of relationship with
Washington, especially as India already has a large
space program with military applications and very much
wants US conventional-weapons systems and technology
transfer.
Indeed, a Pentagon-commissioned study
of Indo-American perceptions reported that on the basis
of many interviews, a uniform conclusion was reached
that "for Indians, technology transfer from the United
States is military cooperation's touchstone". Other
Indian assessments confirm the great importance that
India attaches to transfer of both civil and defense
technology as a critical and essential element in any
partnership with the US.
While India's
aspirations in the defense industry are common to other
countries that seek the capability for indigenous
production of most, if not all of their weapons, it is
nevertheless clear that this deal, if it materializes,
would utterly transform defense relationships among
major players in the defense business: India, the US,
Israel, and Russia. The major transformations in Asian
security that accelerated after September 11, 2001, have
clearly not yet run their course. Nor is it clear when
the overall Asian situation will stabilize or when also
the rising tide of weapons sales will abate.
But
there can be no doubt that major changes are in the
offing and that the future holds many more surprises and
jolts for all of those who seek to play a key role in
the security and defense of Asia.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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