The Hindu Business Line : India-US Defence Pact — I <br> Bonding of two unequal partners

Guardedness becomes essential when it pertains to any deal with a super-power, more so on Defence issues. Nevertheless, the Defence Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, decided that entering into a Defence pact with the US brooked no delay and did not want the issue to get mired in time-consuming controversy. Also, the Americans could not contain their joy when he showed himself more than willing to sign the deal without ado, says B. S. Raghavan.

INDIA'S Left parties have genuine grounds for grouse in regard to both the manner and the content of the India-US Defence pact, (formally titled "New Framework for the US-India Defence Relationship") to which the Defence Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and the US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, put their signatures on June 28 in Washington.

It will be unwise to dismiss their public expression of their opposition as yet another of the instances of sniping indulged in by them from the wings or as born out of any ideological bias.

While in respect of most other policies their resentment arose from their not being consulted as well-wishers of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) from the outside and for the reason of those policies deviating, in their perception, from the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) agreed to by all of them as a precondition for their support, in the matter of the India-US Defence accord, the sense of grievance is not of the Left alone but can be said to be shared by the people and Parliament of India as a whole.

Unwariness

Again, the grave reservations which the `framework' causes should not be viewed as something to do with the spill-over from any past hang-ups against the US.

Even those who are for strengthening and expanding the relations between the two largest democracies, as the clichéd expression goes, are uneasy about the unwariness shown in recent years in sewing up various kinds of agreements and arrangements with the US.

Guarding against such unwariness so that national interests are not wittingly or unwittingly compromised should be the core part of any country's foreign policy vis-à-vis any other country with which it has dealings.

Guardedness becomes all the more essential when it pertains to any deal with, on the one hand, a super-power which regards all the world its fiefdom brooking no trammels to exercising what it considers its innate right to impose its prescriptions and sanctions, and on the other, a self-made nation which has carved out a niche for itself with its own unique achievements in blending democracy with development. This consideration acquires paramount importance when it comes to Defence issues.

Thus, however, inconvenient and unpalatable, the opinion of the Left parties deserves the utmost respect, and cannot be brushed aside, as the Prime Minister did, with the consoling remark that the agreement is `innocuous' and merely updates the 1995 agreement.

For, the truth is that whatever else it is, innocuous it is not and it goes far beyond mere updating the Agreed Minutes of Defence Relations signed in Delhi in January 1995 on a low-key and at a subordinate level by the then US Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry, and the Minister of State for Defence, Mr Mallikarjun.

That the Americans also do not look upon the latest `framework' as just an extrapolation of the Agreed Minutes is obvious from the lengths to which they went to put it in place and celebrate the fact. The Agreed Minutes was relevant only to the extent that it was the precursor to the military-to-military cooperation and consultations, and the holding of joint military exercises.

Americans participating in them over a period were taken aback by the mastery of the strategic and tactical dimensions of the security environment on the part of India's Defence forces and the civilian authorities, the harmonious synergistic relations between both and the highly skilled conduct of the operations which, in many respects, even excelled that of the American counterparts.

Propitious curtain-raiser

This, and the unqualified support extended by the Vajpayee Government in 2001 to the US National Missile Defence programme and the readiness with which, in 2002, India facilitated US attack on Afghanistan by deputing two Indian ships, INS Sharda and INS Sukanya to `relieve' an American naval ship, Cowpens, and by patrolling the shipping lanes of the Malacca Straits, must have convinced the Bush Administration that Indian Defence policy-makers had been sufficiently `softened' to be receptive to a `framework' that would make India, a la Japan, an integral part of its efforts to preserve and advance its global offence and defence system and to put muscle into its Proliferation Security Initiative.

In this background, it was the Pentagon which reportedly was keen to finalise the pact and pressured the Defence Ministry in India to get it through well ahead of the Prime Minister's visit to Washington on July 18-20 so as to provide a propitious curtain-raiser to his talks with the US President and his speech to US Congress.

The power structure in the US has been greatly impressed by the exposition contained in a report of the reputed Defence and nuclear expert, Dr Ashley J. Tellis, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, emphasising the need for the US to bolster India as "a potential hedge against rising China" to arrest the "growth of Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean Rim lands and Chinese penetration of Myanmar".

Mr Pranab Mukherjee too was equally eager in view of his assessment that India was in "a dangerous neighbourhood" and "an increasingly untenable security environment" and needed to raise its guard sufficiently to deter potential trouble-makers.

Normally, it would have been proper in a matter as momentous as the one bearing on the country's security and Defence (which, as admitted by the Minister himself at a media meet, "are inextricably linked with politics and foreign policy"), to prepare public opinion by having it debated in Parliament and securing due national endorsement.

Apparently, Mr Mukherjee decided that entering into an agreement with the US brooked no delay and did not want the issue to get mired in time-consuming controversy. Americans could not contain their joy when he showed himself willing to jump the gun and sign the deal without ado.

So much so Mr Rumsfeld and his team turned on the full flow of their appreciation by according Mr Mukherjee and his delegation the rare honour of feting them over dinner the previous night before their official meeting before a glittering assemblage, comprising the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney; the National Security Adviser, Mr Stephen Hadley; chairman-designate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr Peter Pace; Senator John Cornyn, Texas Republican and co-chair of the Friends of India in the US Senate; and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, GOP co-chair of the House Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.

(Intriguingly, the media reports in India and the US have not mentioned the presence and participation of India's three Service Chiefs, the Defence Secretary or the Secretary to the Prime Minister in the signing ceremony.)

America's "best friend"

The Defence Minister, committing himself to act in tandem with the US on strategic defence priorities, as perceived by both nations, had also spawned a number of reports pointing to matters of such supreme importance as to come within the purview of Parliament but over which the Minister has maintained a sphinx-like silence.

For instance, it is rumoured that Washington has given the green light to Lockheed Martin and Boeing to offer F-16 and F-18 warplanes as candidates for the Indian Air Force's multi-role fighter programme, while also pledging support for Indian requests for other transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning, and missile Defence.

Reports are also circulating in Pakistan and elsewhere that the US administration had `cleared' the sale of the state-of-the-art PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) anti-missile system to India and that a deal had either been struck or on the verge of finalisation.

The Nation has disclosed that preliminary discussions were taking place without regard to whether India has decided to buy the system or the US has decided to sell it so as to have a better knowledge as to what the system is capable of.

The latest "framework", a brainchild of the US and a tool of realpolitik, is calculated to accomplish its own self-serving objectives — exporting what President Dwight Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex" to India, domination in the vital areas of Defence technology, production, command and control, putting China in its place, acting as an arbiter in determining the balance of power in the region and furthering the power and influence of the US in the directions most conducive to its interests with India as the front, making India an unwitting conduit for arms sales to third countries — under the guise of enlisting India as a "major world power".

The CPI (M) General Secretary, Mr Prakash Karat, wants its potential as an instrument to promote US interests to be neutralised by the Government taking care not to put any flesh and blood into it. Actually, even in its present form, it gives the US enough scope for manoeuvre.

One foreign media report, perhaps euphemistically or mischievously, says that India is now America's "best friend": Everyone knows the connotation of that phrase!

(To be concluded)

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