Foreign Correspondence

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NEW DEAL:F-16s And The Bigger Picture

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By SWAGATO GANGULY

The supply of American F-16s to Pakistan has been a red flag issue in India-US as well as Pakistan-US relations for so long that its symbolism has overshadowed its real significance. When the Americans did not deliver on promised F-16s in 1990, it became for Islamabad a symptom of America’s bad faith. For Delhi, resuming supplies of advanced American hardware to Pakistan will encourage its general irredentism and adventurism in Kashmir. But larger developments have been changing the context of the F-16 debate, and need to be taken into account.
Following its economic success, Beijing has registered double digit growth in its arms spending annually over the last decade. That has prompted Delhi to unveil its own modernisation plans, including fighters for the IAF worth Rs 43,000 crore, the largest ever defence deal involving India.

Ongoing arms race
Then came the US initiative which, besides granting Islamabad’s wish for F-16s, is offering Delhi the licence to co-produce F-16s and the more advanced F-18 fighters. Along with this came offers of cooperation in other sectors, including space, missile defence and most significantly, civilian nuclear energy. The goal of all these moves, in the words of a state department spokesman, is to “help India become a major world power in the 21st century.”
The last statement is unprecedented in the history of Indo-US relations. Historically, the US has looked at India through the grid of its nuclear non-proliferation concerns, and its policy has been to use Pakistan to balance India. The present set of policy initiatives, if they come to fruition, would get rid of the “hyphen” between India and Pakistan. They would also get rid of the assumption of technology denial when it came to India. Taken together, they amount to a paradigm shift in Indo-US relations.
The Left has reacted predictably, stating that the American intention is to start an arms race in the subcontinent. Less predictably, the BJP too has taken up this refrain. From the sequence of events set out above, however, it should be clear that an arms race has been ongoing long before the US stepped in. As a consequence of it, the IAF picked the French Mirage 2000-V, the Russian Mig-29 M2, and the Swedish Grippen as contenders for a massive arms purchase. It had also sent out an enquiry about, guess what, the F-16. In other words, it is not so much the Americans trying to start an arms race as Delhi who invited the Americans in. And along with them the French, the Russians and Swedish. If there is a lot of arms hustling going on, then the Americans are not the only players.
To put things in perspective, Beijing has just undertaken to manufacture F-22P frigates for the Pakistani navy and JF-17 fighters for the airforce. The frigates are equipped with surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, and helicopters for anti-submarine warfare. The Americans are offering to supply more advanced hardware to India than to Pakistan. The Chinese supply military hardware only to Pakistan. Yet there is no brouhaha about this from the Communists, or even the BJP. Do we take it that because the Chinese supply only to Pakistan, they are exonerated from the charge of having mercenary or commercial motives?
Statements by Indian politicians are often emotive and demonstrative, the downside of which is that they lack clarity. In the context of a burgeoning arms race in the region, is it our position that we are unilaterally bowing out of it? That we will be relying on, say, Track 2 diplomacy when settling our problems with Pakistan? What if there is another attack on Parliament, as in December 2001? Then the same politicians will be baying for war. But they will not have acted, in the interim, to widen our strategic options, or equip our armed forces for that war.

Getting it right
The reality is that if a peace process is underway in Kashmir it is because Delhi is getting ahead, for the first time, in the strategic game with Islamabad. Looked at in a broader context it is astonishing that Islamabad should be able to conduct such a forward-leaning policy on Kashmir and elsewhere for such a long time, against a country with eight times its population and resources. Emotive considerations aside, it is because Delhi has not been able to strategically leverage its resources, whereas Islamabad has. The rules of the game, however, changed with 9/11 and the globalisation of the Indian economy. India has been growing at a faster pace while Pakistan is in an economic rut since the 1990s; the spotlight has shifted to jehadi militancy, a principal locus of which is Pakistan; Indian diplomats have been making the right connections; and Delhi demonstrated capabilities of military coercion following the attack on Parliament in December 2001. In other words Delhi has been learning to play realpolitik, instead of underpinning its foreign policy with quixotic idealism and selective pacifism.
What is interesting is that Washington is prepared to go some way towards addressing Delhi’s fears that it will not be a reliable supplier of military equipment. It is offering Delhi a technology transfer deal, whereby it could produce 126 fighters, including F-16s and F-18s, to its own specifications and on its own soil. Delhi prefers technology transfer deals, and Washington rarely makes this kind of offer, which suggests that it is serious in wanting to improve ties with Delhi. Washington has also removed hurdles in supplying to Delhi the Phalcon, an advanced early warning system that would act as a force multiplier in combat. The Phalcon is not available to China or Pakistan, as isn’t the Patriot anti-missile system that Washington has offered Delhi.
Of greatest significance, however, is the decision to make civilian nuclear technology available to India. A Goldman Sachs projection has found that due to structural and long-term reasons oil prices could double from currently high levels, and go up to as much as $105 a barrel. This could cripple India’s growth aspirations, unless alternative sources of energy are found quickly. Nuclear power could fill the gap, but since nuclear technology can be dual-use India’s civilian nuclear sector has been under sanctions since the Pokharan blasts in 1974. It operates under severe handicap as India’s nuclear power plants are old, expensive, inefficient and potentially unsafe. With access to American technology the nuclear sanctions are effectively over. Nuclear energy can play a significant role in India’s power grids, while Delhi gains de facto acceptance as a responsible nuclear power. If, indeed, Washington is serious about offering Delhi advanced military, nuclear and space technology, that would redefine the Indo-US relationship, exorcising the Cold War legacy and bringing it definitively into the 21st century.

US, India, China
What does Washington gain from all this? Indo-US cooperation in IT and BPO is helping American businesses stay competitive, a growing India would be a bigger market for its goods, it would also help stabilise South Asia which is currently a nexus of jehadi militancy.
Indian institutions are Western oriented, whereas Washington is threatened by the growth of Chinese power. This was evident in the fury in the US Congress when Europe proposed lifting its ban on arms sales to China. That this opposition has had some echoes in Europe and Japan as well, shows that the West is still basically uncomfortable with China. Delhi should work on resolving the boundary dispute with Beijing, and on improving trade and other ties. But it should be aware of the fact that there are inherent brakes on the relationship, stemming from the fact that China is a dictatorship.
Beijing’s opening up to the world will make its people increasingly resent this fact, and the last thing its leaders would like to see is a successful democracy next door. This is the factor that makes China uncomfortable in dealing with Japan, ASEAN or Taiwan, and make an “all-weather” friend out of an autocratic Pakistan. This will also make it uncomfortable in dealing with India.
It would be folly, of course, to enter into a strategic alliance with the US against China. But the US is the biggest player in the world, and any offer it makes should be evaluated on its merits, rather than processed according to pre-conceived notions. From the March 25 announcement, it would seem that Washington is willing to make a break from obsolete Cold War notions on South Asia.
Delhi should have the courage to do the same. It messed up its strategic options before, and bled heavily for it, most notably in Kashmir. It should not do so once again.

(The author is Assistant Editor, The Statesman)




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