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2 Arms sales: How the US is not
winning friends By Zia Mian
up for $3.5 billion worth of
weapons in 2006. It is now responsible for about
12% of all arms purchases in the Third World.
India has traditionally bought Russian weapons,
but is now interested in what others, especially
the United States, has to offer.
India may
spend some $40 billion on weapons purchases over
the next five years. High on the list is a
contract for 126 jet fighters, with a possible
price tag of over $10 billion. A State Department
official announced that the government will try to
help win the
order for a US company. US
arms manufacturers are already lining up. Richard
G Kirkland, Lockheed Martin’s president for South
Asia, has claimed that “India is our top market”
when it come to “potential for growth”. The
president of Raytheon Asia, Walter F Doran, claims
India may be “one of our largest, if not our
largest, growth partner over the next decade or
so”.
There is good reason for US
confidence. In 2005, the defense secretaries of
the United States and India signed the “New
Framework for the US-India Defense Relationship”.
The framework “charts a course for the US-India
defense relationship for the next 10 years” and
“will support, and will be an element of, the
broader US-India strategic partnership”. It
includes a commitment to “expand two-way defense
trade”. These arms deals, the framework statement
claims, should be seen “not solely as ends in and
of themselves, but as a means to strengthen our
countries' security, reinforce our strategic
partnership, achieve greater interaction between
our armed forces, and build greater understanding
between our defense establishments”.
More arms, less influence As
with Pakistan, these arms sales may not buy the
United States the influence it seeks in India. The
US-India nuclear deal offers an example of how
things may play out. In 2005, the United States
and India agreed on a deal to exempt India from
the 30-year-old US laws that prevent states from
using commercial imports of nuclear technology and
fuel to aid their nuclear weapons ambitions. In
2006, Congress approved and President Bush signed
legislation lifting the curbs on nuclear trade
with India. The two countries have been
negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement over
the past year.
The clearest exposition of
what the United States wants in exchange came in
testimony to Congress in support of the US-India
nuclear deal by Ashton Carter, who served as
assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton
administration, and in a 2006 article, "America’s
New Strategic Partner?" in the journal Foreign
Affairs. He argued that Washington needed India’s
help against Iranian nukes, in future conflicts
with Pakistan, and as a counterweight to China. He
noted there were “more direct benefits”, which
include “the intensification of
military-to-military contacts” and “the
cooperation of India in disaster-relief efforts,
humanitarian interventions, peacekeeping missions,
and post-conflict reconstruction efforts”, and
“operations not mandated by or commanded by the
United Nations, operations in which India has
historically refused to participate”.
And
finally, Carter offered the real kicker, “US
military forces may also seek access to strategic
locations through Indian territory and perhaps
basing rights there. Ultimately, India could even
provide US forces with ‘over-the-horizon’ bases
for contingencies in the Middle East.”
Carter recognized that there are other
interests too, which others might put higher on
the list. He acknowledged that “on the economic
front, as India expands its civilian nuclear
capacity and modernizes its military, the United
States stands to gain preferential treatment for
US industries”.
The process of putting
pressure on India to deliver has already begun. In
May 2007, key members of the US Congress wrote a
letter to the Indian prime minister warning that
they were “deeply concerned” by India’s
relationship with Iran, and that if India did not
address this then there was “the potential to
seriously harm prospects for the establishment of
the global partnership between the United States
and India”. In short, India was being told to
choose: Iran or the United States and the nuclear
deal.
However, the past few weeks have
seen a growing crisis in India over the nuclear
deal and how close India should get to the United
States. India’s communist parties, which are part
of the Congress Party-led coalition government,
have demanded a halt to the US-India nuclear deal
to give the country time to work out its
implications for Indian foreign policy. Their fear
is that the deal will give the US influence over
Indian decision-making. They have threatened to
bring down India’s government.
India’s
progressive social movements have also opposed the
nuclear deal. They worry that “directly or
indirectly, the United States will also enter the
Indian sub-continent, to manage intra-regional,
inter-country relations”. They see it as “not just
anti-democratic but against peace, and against
environmentally sustainable energy generation and
self-reliant economic development”. These basic
concerns about democracy, peace, sustainability,
and independence, are what will put India at odds
with US policy, no matter how many weapons it
offers to sell.
Zia Mian is a
physicist with the Program on Science and Global
Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs at Princeton University
and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus
(online at www.fpif.org).
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