TWO TO TANGO
INDIA AND THE US EMBARK ON THEIR FIRST ‘2+2’ DIALOGUE AS THEY LOOK AT WAYS TO RAISE THE RELATIONSHIP FROM THE DEPTHS IT HAS SUNK TO
India and the US embark on their first ‘2+2’ dialogue as they look at ways to raise the relationship from the depths it has sunk to
India and the US are to embark on their most significant bilateral summit on September 6 when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mike Mattis begin their first ‘Two plus Two (2+2)’ dialogue with Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The 2+2 dialogue is to build a high level of trust between the two countries and promises to be the first of an annual series of dialogues held alternately in each country. India’s tango with the US comes on the 10th anniversary of the landmark Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
However, the smiles and photo-ops are unlikely to disguise the fact that the Indo-US relationship is going through one of its worst phases in the decade since the nuclear deal was operationalised in 2008 (it was inked in 2006) to become strategic partners. US President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy of December 2017 called India a ‘major defence partner of the US’, with whom he promised to ‘expand our defence and security cooperation’ and simultaneously put the squeeze on Pakistan by suspending aid worth $1.8 billion for its failure to take action against Islamist terrorists. The president’s recent actions, however, have fuelled dismay in India. “The 2+2 dialogue is taking place amidst the uncertainty that President Trump’s policies have created in international affairs, disturbing the comfort zone of both US allies and adversaries, as well as the assumptions of partners like India,” says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.
All these agreements are set to unfold under the looming shadow of a draconian law called CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act). CAATSA, which came into force in April this year, imposes sanctions on two of New Delhi’s strategic partners: Russia, its largest arms supplier; and Iran, its third largest energy supplier. CAATSA empowers the US to impose ‘secondary sanctions’ on countries doing significant business with Russia. Last month, the US Congress passed a modified version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gives the US president the power to waive sanctions against India. It will allow India to sign a $5 billion deal to buy five S-400 long-range air defence missiles from Russia, which would otherwise have invoked US sanctions. But the respite is only a temporary one. It is not a blanket waiver, merely
a conditional one where the US has to certify that India is doing enough to wean itself away from its dependence on Russian arms. This leaves a huge lever with the US, which it can use to extract concessions from India.
Then there is the issue of India’s $10 billion worth of oil imports from Iran, a country the US has imposed sanctions on. The US wants a complete halt to oil imports from Iran by November, which diplomats liken to coercion. When the US imposed sanctions on Iran the last time in 2012, India complied and drastically reduced its oil imports. This time around, it cannot, because it has co-developed the strategic Chabahar port in Iran that gives India access to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan and the International North-South Transport Corridor, which drastically reduces cargo shipment time to Europe.
Another contentious issue likely to surface in the 2+2 dialogue is the US tightening regulations for granting H-1B work visas, giving them for shorter durations and making it difficult for workers to apply for green cards. In July, the National Foundation for American Policy, a US-based non-profit body, said there was a 42 per cent increase in the number of H-1B visa rejections for Indians.
India has put on hold the imposition of tariffs on the US imports of steel and aluminium from the country. Anticipating the 2+2 dialogue, India has postponed the enforcement of retaliatory tariff, thereby creating room for talks (see Averting a Trade War).
There are positives too. The 2+2 ministerial dialogue, which was postponed twice this year, is likely to discuss defence deals for missiles, drones and helicopters worth over $5 billion and the possible initialling of two significant foundation agreements with the US—COMCASA or the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement, which will allow India’s US-built military platforms to communicate with US and NATO platforms after the installation of special communication devices, and BECA or the Basic Exchange and Cooperation
INDO-US TIES HAVE MOVED AT AN ASTONISHING PACE IN THE AREA OF MILITARY EXERCISES AND ARMS SALES
Agreement that will allow the exchange of such information. COMCASA, Indian defence officials say, is likely to be ‘conditional’—with certain modifications—because of secrecy concerns.
DEFENCE SURGE
The Indo-US relationship has moved at an astonishing pace in the area of military exercises and arms sales. The militaries of India and the US exercise more with each other than they do with any other nation. This year, they will hold their first-ever joint services amphibious exercise, to be followed by a joint service counter-terrorism exercise next year.
India and the US have yet to sign their first deal for nuclear reactors, but between 2010 and 2018, India bought $15 billion worth of aircraft, howitzers, helicopters and missiles from the US. The US is India’s second-largest supplier of defence hardware, having provided frontline equipment such as Chinook medium lift helicopters, Apache helicopter gunships, P-8I Poseidon long-range maritime surveillance aircraft, C-130 medium transport aircraft and C-17 heavy lift aircraft. At least three of these platforms have seen repeat orders from India, helping the US realise its strategic aim of weaning India away from dependence on Russian equipment and toward US hardware.
“The entire relationship, especially in the Trump era, is almost totally transactional,” says G. Parthasarathy, the former Indian high commissioner to Islamabad. “2+2 is a good idea. Much of its success depends on how fruitful the first meeting is. If, as we are suggesting, we are considering purchase of American missiles and naval helicopters, it will chug along.”
Last year, the US declared India a major defence partner under the NDAA 2017, the US military budget. On August 1, the Trump administration put India in the Strategic Trade Authorization-1 (STA-1) list, which means India gets to buy high-end technology from the US. This US commerce department legislation means India does not need to get separate licences for the export of sensitive dual-use technology in space and defence applications. It puts India on par with US allies such as South Korea and Japan when it comes to accessing sensitive technology. The US grants STA-1 only to countries that are part of all four—the Wassenaar Arrangement, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and Australia Group. (India is yet to get into the NSG because of opposition from China.)
This relationship is set to continue, with India’s defence ministry last week approving the purchase of 24 MH-60R multi-role helicopters worth $1.8 billion from the US as a government-to-government deal. The MH-60Rs are meant to operate off Indian warships and address an acute shortfall of helicopters. Warships are currently being inducted into service without helicopters. Another significant deal under discussion, after being cleared for sale by the US last year, is for the MQ-9 ‘Guardian’ High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drones. Not only can the Guardian HALEs operate at an altitude of over 40,000 feet, nearly twice the altitude of the navy’s existing Heron Medium Altitude Long Endurance drone fleet from Israel, they can also stay aloft for 24 hours. Since they are controlled by satellite, the drones do not have to be within the line of sight of ship- and shore-based control stations. “The Guardians are game changers and will be key assets for us in tracking warships through the Indian Ocean,” says a senior defence official.
Of great concern is the sluggish pace of the various programmes under the US-India Defense Trade and Technology Initiative (DTTI). Mooted in 2012 by then US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the DTTI has seen six joint working groups, which identify areas in which the US can share defence technology with India. The DTTI’s six joint working groups meet twice a year. The ventures where the US is to provide technology that will lead to the development of advanced Indian weapon systems have yet to fructify. The Indo-Russian BrahMos missile, which started in 1998, provides the supersonic cruise missile for all three Indian armed forces.
Indo-US joint ventures are yet to take off because they are either at the low end of the spectrum—clothing—or are enormously expensive and too far in the future, such as the Electromagnetic Launch System (EMALS), which uses linear induction motors rather than steam pistons to launch aircraft from carriers.
The navy’s second indigenous aircraft carrier, the IAC-2, that could embark the EMALS has not received any funding and is at least a decade away. “The ball is in both our courts,” says former navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash. “We don’t seem to have asked for the right defence technologies and the US hasn’t offered us anything substantive.”
THE INDO-PACIFIC PAUSE
On May 30, the US officially renamed its Hawaii-based Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command, INDOPACOM. It’s the oldest and largest US command, which Pompeo said “stretches from the west coast of the US to the
west coast of India”. INDOPACOM, Pompeo recently said, did not only have geopolitical aims but also geo-economic cooperation plans. A lot of the new US strategy has to do with China’s astonishing rise and military muscle-flexing, particularly in the South China Sea, which China claims as its own territory and has fortified through massive island reclamations. The US response, as Mattis underlined in the US Department of Defense white paper in March, is to ‘strengthen our alliances and partnerships in the IndoPacific to a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains. With key countries in the region, we will bring together bilateral and multilateral security relationships to preserve the free and open international system’.
Washington clearly sees India as a regional counterweight to a growing China and an essential part of the ‘Quadrilateral’, an informal grouping of democracies comprising US, Japan, Australia and India. But India is wary of provoking China with which it shares a 4,400 km disputed boundary. India remains opposed to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mega infrastructure plan through Asia, passing through disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir.
However, in its tango with the Quadrilateral, India has been careful not to ruffle China’s feathers. It rejected Australia’s participation in the Malabar 2018 naval exercises involving the other members, the US and Japan. Significantly, this refusal to include Australia came immediately after the informal summit between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping in Wuhan this April. Modi had another informal summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin the following month, in May, to signal India was not part of any alliance against China and Russia.
No recent event illustrated India’s diplomatic balancing act more than the August 24 military manoeuvre ‘Exercise Peace Mission’, between all eight members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), including the armies of India, China, Pakistan and Russia, in Chebarkul, central Russia. One an old strategic partner, the other a strategic challenge and the third, an old foe. All three of them have reasons to make common cause against the US.
Diplomats say the Wuhan summit does not remove the basic contradictions between China’s global ambitions and India’s developing regional and international role. “Wuhan is just an episode in managing this contradiction,” says Sibal. “The India-US-Japan-Australia relationship is expressing itself in bilateral and trilateral formats, and the Quad, which has now met twice officially, is one more format. So long as the interests of the four countries in the Indo-Pacific in the face of China’s challenge coincide, the Quad concept will have salience.” Clearly, it is going to take more than two to tango.