C UDAY BHASKAR

Admiral Sunil Lanba, the Indian naval chief will embark on four-day US visit from today wearing the hat of Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) which is the closest to India’s fragmented joint military apex.

The high-density agenda for the Admiral is indicative of the importance being accorded to this visit by the Washington Beltway.

It may be recalled that India entered into a major defence cooperation agreement with the US in June 2005 – a month before the tectonic civilian nuclear agreement was inked in July of that year. At the time, the then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee signed a very comprehensive defence agreement with his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld. However ,from June 2005 to March 2018, the actual realisation of the potential of that defence agreement has been modest.

Admiral Lanba is scheduled to meet the US defence apex beginning with the defence secretary James Mattis who is the equivalent of the Indian defence minister. In addition, Lanba will meet with the US secretary of the navy and the military top-brass that includes the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as also the naval hierarchy comprising the Chief of Naval Ops (CNO), the Pacific Commander-in-chief and others.

The spectrum of meetings is indeed high-density and is a reiteration of the continuity and importance accorded by the US to the defence component of the uneasy and till recently discordant bi-lateral relationship.

The nuclear nettle that bedeviled the Washington-delhi relationship for decades was harmonised only in September 2008 and in the intervening decade, the US has transited from Bush through