India rebuffs US jet sale offer
Washington security balance in South Asia takes a New Delhi twist.
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced last month that the US would sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, she also offered F-16s and even more advanced F-18 jets to India. It signaled a new era of security links in South Asia.
In an editorial,
The Christian Science Monitor characterized the weapons move as a diplomatic high wire act. It said
US interests were twofold: "Playing India off China, while engaging India and Pakistan together."
It's a risky but bold move by the Bush administration, considering India and Pakistan almost engaged in their fourth war - a possible nuclear one - just three years ago over the Kashmir territorial dispute. Both nations are hypersensitive to the US playing favorites and tipping the regional balance of power.
Japan is clearly a counterweight against China. Securing India as well would put the US on the offensive in the region. So, providing arms to both India and Pakistan was seen in the US as a win-win geopolitcal strategy.
But the
Monitor added a pinch of caution. The wild card in the region is that the US cannot take either India or Pakistan's self-interests for granted.
Such caution was sage advice. India this week
signaled its displeasure with the US decision to sell jets to Pakistan and that it "will play hard to get in all defense negotiations with the US," reports
Asia Times
Making India's irritation clear, Delhi has announced new defense orders to Russia, Germany, Italy, Israel and even Qatar, worth a total of US $746 million.
The US counted on the fact that with jet sales to Pakistan, India would find it imperative to upgrade its "aging air force fleet with a very poor safety record," reports
Asia Times.
India's reaction was quicker than expected.
The rising world economic and military power began the necessary steps to address its air defense needs in a manner displaying confidence with its new status. And not in the direction the US anticipated. India did not fall all over itself at the huge arsenal, including future joint US nuclear power development, placed in front of it by the US.
India began negotiating the purchase of French Mirage 2000-5s, Swedish JAS-39 Gripens or advanced Russian MiG-29s, in addition to an ongoing project to introduce the high-end Russian Sukhois, according to
Asia Times.
Asserting the "greater priority to its
off-shore areas than ever before," India on Tuesday announced "a huge defense expenditure of ($768.5 million) primarily to acquire ocean-going military weaponry," reports
Express India.
Nine offshore naval patrol boats alone, besides the upgrading of Sea Harrier planes and the purchase of C-303 submarine-fired torpedo decoy systems.
All these three are specifically designed for deployment over water and indicate that India will be taking very serious look at enforcing its suzerainty over its immediate neighbourhood other than its land border with Pakistan and China.
This may well be a message to other nations of its intent in the future.
Memory of the decades-long weapons embargo imposed on India since 1974 when it first tested a nuclear device, didn't evaporate when the US offered to sell New Delhi sophisticated weapons, writes columnist Binay Kumar in the
Hindustan Times. India displayed "
a cool maturity" on weapons sales making decisions based solely on its own interests.
Making New Delhi's intentions amply clear, India's Defense Minister announced [Thursday] the decision of the government to go ahead and purchase 12 Mirage 2000 V fighter aircrafts from Qatar and 11 Dorniers from Germany for maritime surveillance, in addition to inducting nine offshore patrol vessels for the Indian navy, and a C-303 submarine-fired torpedo decoy system from Italy. Mr. Kumar accused the US "of trying to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors by fuelling an avoidable arms race between the two." Whether this was to divert Indian efforts away from expanding its naval role in the Indian Ocean, to be the arms supplier to two nations so that if they went to war it could pull the supply chain on that war, or just to make a profit, it mattered little.
India should not allow the US to do "a Japan," opined Kumar, that is, stymie the "Japanese dreams of reclaiming the world for themselves" as it did prior to and after World War II.
A column in
The Times of India reminded the US that making sales does not mean
being an ally.
Even the social democracies of Western Europe were threatened with social and economic boycott when they refused to endorse Washington's invasion of Iraq. New Delhi should realize that multi-alignment is a better bet than crowding under Uncle Sam's defense umbrella. The irony of the initial offer of US arms sale was not lost.
Commentary in
Asia Times, citing P.R. Chari, research professor at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a think-tank devoted to security in South Asia, noted that from a "position of imposing sanctions against both India and Pakistan for carrying out" nuclear tests, "Washington has come round to
supplying both countries with platforms capable of delivering nuclear bombs."
Also...
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India refuses UNSC seat sans veto power (
Times of India)
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Wings of a Hawk: Why is Bush selling F-16s to Pakistan? (
Slate)
•
Indian Navy in the new millenium (
BHARAT RAKSHAK)
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