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US arms industry fishing in
troubled waters
By Ranjit
Devraj
NEW DELHI - By offering
nuclear-capable F-16 Falcon fighters to Pakistan
and the even more advanced F-18 Hornets to India,
Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit
from the long-standing rivalry between the
nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts.
"This is a bit like the Aesop's fable in
which two cats fighting over a loaf take their
dispute to a monkey for settlement," said P R
Chari, research professor at the Institute of
Peace and Conflict Studies, a prestigious
think-tank devoted to security in South Asia.
In an interview with Inter Press Service
(IPS), Chari said what was happening was all too
obvious: "The Americans must be laughing all the
way to the bank."
Chari pointed to reports
in the Washington Post on March 16 that claim the
sale of F-16s to Pakistan may have saved 5,000
jobs in US President George W Bush's home state of
Texas, where the planes' manufacturer, Lockheed
Martin Corporation, is located.
Lockheed
and other global defense manufacturers depend on
sales of sophisticated military hardware to boost
their profits. The F-16 deal was "likely to be as
warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in Karachi",
the Post said.
According to Chari, there
is little doubt that US arms contractors are now
eyeing India's much larger market that had been
closed to them since 1974 when New Delhi first
tested a nuclear device. Washington at the time
reacted by imposing an arms and dual-use
technology embargo on India.
India, which
signed a military pact with the former Soviet
Union in 1971, has traditionally sourced its
defense needs from Moscow, although it also
maintains squadrons of French Mirage fighters as
well as British Jaguars.
But rapidly
expanding ties in recent years between India and
the US, the world's two largest democracies, have
seen a progressive lifting of sanctions and moves
toward defense cooperation.
A visit to New
Delhi on March 15-16 by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice produced a welter of new
concessions covering not only the sale of F-16 and
F-18 combat aircraft but also possibilities for
co-production.
Lockheed has so far sold
F-16s, currently costing US$25 million a piece, to
24 countries and the aviation giant also makes the
fighters in Europe, South Korea and Turkey.
As far as Pakistan is concerned,
Washington would actually be resuming deliveries
of F-16s that were halted in 1990 after a US law
barred military exports to Islamabad on suspicions
that it was clandestinely developing nuclear
weapons.
For India, the real icing on the
cake was an offer by Rice of cooperation in
India's civilian nuclear energy program, which has
since 1974 cut its own path with support from
Russia and France as a result of the US-led
embargoes. Some analysts, however, caution that
India would be wise not to get its hopes up, given
the many hoops the Bush administration would have
to jump through in Congress and within the
numerous non-proliferation agencies to sell
American nuclear power plants to India.
As
for the fighter deal, analysts like Chari see
little use for either India or Pakistan to be
buying expensive nuclear-capable aircraft when
they are not likely to be put to actual use.
Chari said neither country needed aircraft
to deliver nuclear bombs against each other since
both possessed missiles with more than adequate
range.
"After 1994, when both countries
declared themselves as nuclear powers they came
close to an all-out war twice - during the 1999
Kargil War and the 2002 border standoff - but on
both occasions they desisted from resorting to the
nuclear option," he said.
India and
Pakistan have been at pains to improve relations,
soured by a long-standing dispute over the
territory of Kashmir, and are currently engaged in
"cricket diplomacy", with a Pakistani team
currently touring India as part of a series of
confidence-building measures.
Rice had
words of praise for this peace initiative, but
ironically her actions were matched with the US
decision to sell neighbors with a history of more
than half-a-century of hostilities sophisticated
military hardware.
"The logic of
escalating military preparations contrasts with
the logic of dialogue and reconciliation," said
Professor Achin Vanaik, a well-known anti-nuclear
activist who teaches at Delhi University.
What was interesting to note, Chari said,
was that from a position of imposing sanctions
against both India and Pakistan for carrying out
the 1998 tests, Washington has come round to
supplying both countries with platforms capable of
delivering nuclear bombs.
"It just shows
that Washington has a flexible enough foreign
policy to accommodate what it judges to be in its
own best interest and this includes such issues as
nuclear proliferation," Chari said.
That
"claws in, claws out" approach has seen Washington
first offering F-16s to Pakistan during the war to
rid Afghanistan of its Soviet occupiers in the
1980s and then reneging on it on the grounds that
Islamabad was pursuing a clandestine nuclear
program.
Toward the end of the Bill
Clinton administration, Washington tilted heavily
toward India, attracted by its large, rapidly
opening market while Pakistan hovered on the brink
of being declared a failed state.
Post
September 11, the boot was again on the other foot
and Pakistan found itself designated a major
non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally for
its role in Washington's "war against terror" in
Afghanistan, and has been deemed fit once again to
receive F-16 fighters.
Indeed, said Chari,
many of the so-called concessions made toward
South Asia by Rice were best seen in the context
of the upcoming review of the Nuclear
Proliferation Treaty and Washington's eagerness to
deflect criticism from its own failings in South
Asia.
Indian analysts have been critical
of Washington's failure to prevent the alleged
supply of nuclear weapons know-how and parts from
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's
nuclear weapons program, to Iran, North Korea and
Libya.
On Monday, Indian External Affairs
Minister Natwar Singh said it was time that the
world took a close hard look at clandestine
proliferation. He declared that for its own part,
India was ready to sign a global treaty on
no-first-use of nuclear weapons. Singh said as
things stood, the security environment in South
Asia was seriously undermined by nuclear weapons
technology and parts flowing in and out of the
neighborhood.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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