Where are things not quite so amicable? One sometimes fraught area has been cooperation on security issues of vital importance to India. The United States was understood to have been initially helpful in the aftermath of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, both with intelligence sharing and in placing pressure on the Pakistani military establishment to back off from the militants it had sponsored. But subsequent revelations that a US citizen of Pakistani descent, Daud Gilani, calling himself David Coleman Headley, had visited India several times to reconnoitre the terrain for the attacks, and that he may have been a US double agent, led to a great deal of recriminations in the Indian strategic community. Indian commentators alleged that, in effect, the United States had allowed the 26/11 attacks to happen, rather than revealing information in their possession to India, merely in order to protect Headley’s cover. Subsequent disagreements over the level of access to Headley required by Indian investigators of 26/11 became public in India, further poisoning the atmosphere and adding to the mistrust that often finds receptive ground in certain Indian circles.
Indians are chronically suspicious that US dependence on Pakistan over the years — as a staging base for attacks on Soviet troops in Afghanistan earlier, now as an ally and logistical partner of US troops in Afghanistan — always vitiates its broader strategic interests in India. Differences have also emerged between Washington and New Delhi in recent years over a number of issues: the two nations’ different reactions to the Arab Spring, in particular the revolts in Libya and Syria; incompatible views about the implementation of one key follow-up provision to the nuclear deal, the Nuclear Liability Law, where American companies are seeking exemptions from liability in the event of accidents, which New Delhi judges politically impossible to push through the Indian Parliament (where memories of the Bhopal disaster caused by an American multinational have not faded); and significant disagreements about sanctions on Iran for its nuclear programme, one which India is also concerned about but disinclined to back, given its own dependence on Iranian oil supplies. While these are issues that have played out over months, even years, one specific issue that caused some heartburn between the two countries related to India’s rejection of a US bid to sell the country a large number of combat aircraft.
American officials have been particularly alive to the opportunities afforded by the much-needed (and long-delayed) modernization of India’s ageing military and weapons systems, with estimates of some $35 billion of expenditure likely to be incurred in the next decade. US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake told an Indian audience in 2011 that ‘the [Indian] Cabinet Committee on Security’s approval of the purchase of C-17s from the U.S. is just a sample of the sales that we expect will occur over the next several years’.
In this context, India’s decision in 2011 not to purchase American planes for its $10-billion-plus fighter aircraft deal — the largest single defence tender in the country’s history — stirred considerable debate in strategic circles in both countries. The two US contenders, Boeing’s F/A-18 Superhornet and Lockheed’s F-16 Superviper, were deemed by the Indian Ministry of Defence not to fulfil the technical requirements New Delhi was looking for in a medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA). With the Russian MiG-30 and the Swedish Gripen also eliminated at the preliminary stage, two European planes, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the French Rafale, were the only aircraft still in the fray for an expected order of 126 planes (the Rafale finally got the nod, though at this writing that decision had been placed in suspense).
The Indian decision was immediately denounced by pro-American commentators as a setback to bilateral relations. India had never previously purchased an American fighter plane, and Washington had hoped its doing so would signal India’s determination to cement an emerging strategic partnership with a hefty cheque. US officials from President Obama on down had lobbied for the deal, which would have pumped money and jobs into the ailing US economy. The ‘deeply disappointed’ American ambassador in India, Tim Roemer, promptly announced his resignation from his post in New Delhi. In a typical comment, Ashley Tellis observed trenchantly that India had chosen ‘to invest in a plane, not a relationship’. The implication was that India should have sold its technical requirements short out of a desire to reward the US politically for its goodwill.
The notion that a major arms purchase should be based on broader strategic considerations — the importance of the United States in India’s emerging weltpolitik—rather than on the merits of the aircraft itself, has struck Indian officials as unfair. Sources in New Delhi are quick to deny that the decision reflects any political bias on the part of India’s taciturn but left-leaning defence minister, A.K. Antony. Instead the choice, they aver, is a purely professional one, made by the Indian Air Force, and only ratified by the ministry. The two European fighters are generally seen as aerodynamically superior, having outperformed both American aircraft in tests under the adverse climatic conditions in which they might have to be used, particularly in the high altitudes and low temperatures of northern Kashmir. Experts suggest the American planes are technologically ten years behind the European ones, and it doesn’t help that Pakistan, India’s likely adversary were the aircraft ever to be pressed into combat, has long been a regular client of the US warplane industry.
In addition, Indian decision-makers could not help but be aware that the United States has not, over the years, proved to be a reliable supplier of military hardware to India or other countries. It has frequently cut off contracted supplies, imposed sanctions on friends and foes alike (including India), and reneged on the delivery of military goods and spare parts, as well as been notoriously unwilling to transfer its military technologies. The current Indian fleet of mainly Russian and French planes has suffered from no such problems, and the existing ground support and maintenance infrastructure, geared to service them, would have needed major changes to handle the US aircraft. (It is likely that the eventual winner of the bid will be required to enter into a joint production arrangement with India, which the US companies would not have done.)
As if all this was not enough to drive the choice away from Boeing and Lockheed, the final clincher might well have been the Government of India’s desire to avoid any further procurement controversy at a time when allegations of corruption have beset it from all sides. A decision made unarguably on technical grounds, many felt, would be easier to defend than one skewed in a particular direction on political grounds. Defence Minister A.K. Antony even postponed a US — India strategic dialogue (scheduled originally for mid-April 2011) for which Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates were planning to travel to New Delhi, in order not to come under pressure from his American visitors to weigh political factors in making his technical decision.
Against this are the unarguable advantages of pleasing a major new ally for whom an Indian decision would have meant a great deal, and developing a pattern of mutual cooperation in supply, training and operations which has yet to evolve between the two militaries. At a time when US nuclear reactor purchases — made possible by the historic deal negotiated by the Bush Administration and sold by Washington to the forty-eight other members of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group — have been held up by US insistence on exemptions from supplier liability in the event of an accident, the rejection of US aircraft is seen by some as New Delhi gratuitously spurning an opportunity to demonstrate that friendship with India is in Americans’ interest too.