Trump visit: Being a treaty ally of Uncle Sam has been a strategic blunder for India

The Narendra Modi government sounded the death knell of the Nehruvian policy of non-alignment when it signed, with the United States of America (USA), the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 and Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in 2018. India effectively became a tool for realisation of US policy goals in the region, the principal of which is containing China. Thus, New Delhi has also aggravated the risk of a conflict between India and its larger neighbour to the north whose military is significantly larger and more powerful. Since the texts of the agreements are not public, this has led to wider speculation as to how India’s neutrality may have been compromised.

The United States of America (USA) has four foundational defence-related agreements that Washington usually signs with other countries. The Pentagon calls the agreements as “routine instruments that the US uses to promote military cooperation with partner nations”. The American officials maintain that while these agreements are not prerequisites for bilateral defence cooperation, they make the process simpler and more cost-effective.

The first of the four agreements, the General Security Of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), was signed by India and the US in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and the terror attack on Parliament. This agreement only enabled the sharing of military intelligence between the two countries with the ostensible goal of pre-empting terror threats.

However, LEMOA, signed by the two countries on August 29, 2016, is a different thing altogether. The LEMOA permits the military of either country to use the others’ bases for re-supplying or carrying out repairs. While the agreement does not make the provision of logistical support binding on either country and apparently requires individual clearance for each request, the meaning is not lost on sound minds. In a conflict situation, US troops will be allowed to be stationed in Indian military bases. US combat aircraft will operate from Indian air bases. The ships will anchor in our naval bases. During the Vietnam War, the Indira Gandhi government had denied permission for US warplanes to refuel on their way to Vietnam. This marks a sea change in India’s strategic vision.

Supporters of greater engagement between US and Indian military have maintained that LEMOA does not promote American geopolitical interests at India’s expense. If anything, the pact empowers the Indian Navy to expand its own presence operations in the Indo-Pacific region, they contend. Some have even gone on to say that in order to consolidate its status as a crucial security provider, the Indian Navy must act in close coordination with the US Navy to ensure a fair, open and balanced regional security architecture.

But what they have overlooked is that the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force rarely venture beyond the Indian Ocean region and the western border with Pakistan. It is mostly the US military that will be reaping the benefits. Indian bases will permit American troops to pull off longer, sustained naval and air operations in the extended region to realise US policy goals.

The third agreement, Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) was signed during the inaugural 2+2 dialogue in September 2018. It is an India-specific variant of Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) that enables the two countries to share secure communication and exchange information on approved equipment during bilateral and multinational training exercises and operations.

This is dangerous because India uses a wide range of Russian and indigenous cutting-edge components and weapons systems. If in a joint Indo-US air exercise, the Russian S-400 Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) system is used, does that mean that the US will now have access to the technical details of the same? Or the indigenous Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) in the SU-30MKI flankers?

Eminent security affairs analyst Bharat Karnad had called signing of LEMOA “perhaps, the most serious strategic mistake made by the country in its nearly seven decades of independent existence”.

India is bound to pay a heavy foreign

and military cost for this loss of strategic autonomy. India’s stepping firmly into an ally role of the US has seen Russia distancing itself from India and a thaw in Islamabad-Moscow relations.

The Russian and Pakistani militaries held their first joint exercise in September 2016. Remember that LEMOA was signed in August, 2016. A further August 2018 agreement stated that Russia might provide military training for Pakistani personnel.

Regarding arms trade, Pakistan purchased four Mi-35M attack helicopters, which were commissioned into service in December, 2018. In its February 2019 edition, AirForces Monthly reported that a follow-on deal for five more had been signed. Pakistan might

ultimately be interested in close to two-dozen of the cutting-edge attack gunships.

In a recent analysis, the Russian think tank Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) indicated that, given Pakistan’s military requirements and assuming Islamabad turned to Moscow to fill them, the two could sign a $9 billion deal. This would dramatically dwarf the Mi-35M deal. It is reported that a range of Russian equipment could be sold, such as Pantsir surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and modern offensive weapons such as T-90 main battle tanks (MBTs).

The new-found Russian romance with Pakistan is understandable as it would not like US Navy personnel to go over the Akula-II nuclear attack submarine, leased to India, with a fine tooth comb.

Also, the agreements have strained the Indo-Iranian relations which have also been hit hard by the Indian decision to comply with the US threats in stopping importing Iranian oil. The development of the Chahbahar port as an alternative Indian land route to Central Asia through Afghanistan, to undercut the China-Pak development of Gwadar, has suffered. The dream of opening a land route to Europe, via Russia’s Northern Distribution Network, is as good as dead.

Bharat Karnad spells out the situation: “The treaty ally status that India had scrupulously avoided all this time — even after signing the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 1971, Indira Gandhi resisted President Leonid Brezhnev’s efforts in subsequent years to make this treaty the cornerstone of a Soviet Union-led pan-Asia collective security system — far from preventing, will make it easier for Washington to access India’s sensitive strategic programmes (Agni, SSBN, nuclear weapons cell at BARC, etc) and seek to undermine them by offering the usual inducements they offer to most Indians they want to co-opt — green cards, subsidy for children’s education the form of “scholarships”, positions in the US industry, thinktanks, and similar setups, as a means of increasing India’s strategic reliance on the US. Already completely penetrated at the highest levels, MEA and other ministries of the Indian government will soon act as extensions or camp offices of their principal counterpart Departments in Washington.”

India has fallen a victim to a time-tested Washington modus operandi that has worked in various corners in the world and the Narendra Modi government is singularly to blame for this. It is not for nothing that the US maintains 800 military facilities, ranging from radar stations to giant bases, in more than 70 countries of the world while the number of NATO allies stand at just 29.

The fourth agreement, Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) has not yet been signed. It permits the exchange of unclassified and controlled unclassified geospatial products, topographical, nautical, and aeronautical data, products and services between India and the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Former Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar stated at the signing of the LEMOA that India would eventually sign the remaining agreements. Will the Trump visit seal a similar deal that will put India firmly into the Washington camp? We will get the answer in a few days.