By Anshu Kumar
Introduction
A wide array of deals and conclusions between India and the US during Prime Minister Modi’s State visit to the US is a major juncture in international politics which reflects a burgeoning India-US relationship in the face of Chinese aggression. India’s comfortable handshake with the US lies primarily on the touchstone of material interests. The recent defence deals between both nations showcase that the US is an indispensable partner for India, given India’s precarious dependence on Russia for military equipment owing to the Ukraine crisis. The jet engine deal and India’s purchase of MQ-9B predatory drones would add much weight to its military power. For a country which has struggled to make ingenious jet engines for decades, overwhelming technology transfers in the jet engine deal would be a boon in the short term, in the face of the Chinese challenge, and provide a springboard for its indigenous military production.
Dictates of Realism
Chinese strategy under Xi Jinping has forced India to forgo the belief that India could ‘manage’ China using its informal, diplomatic, or economic channels. It is also interesting to see India realize that it needs partners to boost its capability against an overwhelming China in Asia.
Classical realists like Kautilya have warned that change in the relative material capabilities would always cause security dilemmas among neighbours. Sun Tzu, too, believes that states would be cautious about their national power vis-à-vis their foes. World Wars have shown that despite great economic interdependence, even in terms of high vulnerability interdependence, and various diplomatic and collective action-oriented international groupings, such as the League of Nations, neighbors were always on the qui vive.
Albeit great power disparity between India and China, it is grotesque that Indian bureaucratic and foreign policy brass used to believe that India alone can handle China. Rajesh Rajagopalan, a Realist thinker, argues that India’s pomposity about managing China on its own is precarious especially ‘when India has been wrong about China so consistently over the last decade, whether it was on the initial outreach to Beijing, or the informal dialogue after the Doklam confrontation.’ India is always having a hard time accepting that power parity matters.
Despite so many chants of non-alignment and strategic autonomy, India has invariably preferred realpolitik decisions when it came to its material interests and tilted to one or another superpower during and after the Cold War period.
Modi’s official visit to the US showed that once material interests are finely knitted, the rest subsets of relationships— defence cooperation, people-to-people connections, collaboration on climate change, critical minerals, or supply chains —follow suit. Overcoming the ‘Hesitations of History’
India’s dilemma to balance Russia and the US, compounded by historical imperatives for Russia and a sceptical attitude towards the US, has reified the thinking, in its foreign policy strategic culture, that alignment with one partner may mean being chained up in a formal alliance.
Especially when a large portion of India’s military armaments and paraphernalia is dependent upon Russia for modernization and rejuvenation, it is no doubt that India would take a cautious and steady step towards tilting to the American side. But the Xi factor has created the importunateness in Indian strategic thinking that the US is an ‘indispensable’ partner in its attempt to defend the territory against the dragon.
Amidst the chant to create a multipolar world, India often blunts the fact that unlike China, which has a centralized state-to-society relationship complex and can choose to spend a great share of its already gargantuan GDP on its military in the long or short term, it does not have the luxury of national means given a multiparty democracy and already constrained military budget, of which a large chunk goes on salaries and entitlements of military personnel.
Due to the ‘confluence’ of Indo-US interests, India seems to have overcome the 'hesitations of history.' PM Modi remarked in his address to the joint parliamentary session of the US: ‘We were strangers in defence cooperation at the turn of the century. Now, the US has become one of our most important defence partners.’
Defence Deals— a Major Breakthrough
In this post-industrial era, the base for military power is ‘formidably complex’ military technologies. Owing to strict technology control regimes and the complex nature of modern weaponry, the prospects for technology proliferation are bleak. It takes decades of high-end investments in Research & Development (R&D) to produce intricate and ingenious weapons and their components. Despite such colossal investments, only a handful of states could maneuver the engineering and metallurgy to make jet engines. Nevertheless, they have struggled to modernize and evolve their jet engines.
Jet engines are one of the most intricate components to make. The ability to manufacture a jet engine which could achieve a very high rotation speed, withstanding increased temperatures up to 1200 degrees Celsius and every nuance of mechanical complexity and aerodynamic pressures, is a labyrinthine task to get done. The US is one of those handful of states which has engineered this impossible task.
India, for now, many decades, has struggled to produce the indigenous Kaveri jet engine for its Light Combat Aircrafts (LCA). The American General Electric (GE) agreement with India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to build jet engines in India, with an unprecedented eighty per cent technology transfer, showcase India’s importance in America’s current strategic calculus. This is underlined by the fact that the US has invariably chanted the ‘technology denial regime’ mantra, and it never transferred technological dexterity to such an extent even with its allies.
The proposed F414 jet engines would power India’s Mk2 jets. This engine would enable Indian the LCA to carry more payload and fuel, equip advanced sensors, and wingtip missiles and would ensure a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. A higher thrust-to-weight ratio ensures greater acceleration and thrust to skyrocket in the air.
Moreover, India’s plan to purchase the MQ-9B drones from the US is a major boost to its reconnaissance, surveillance, and precision strike capabilities against China in the North and the Indian Ocean Region. With an operation time of more than 27 hours and the ability to achieve around 50,000 feet of altitude, this expensive deal gives India an edge over China.
The drone suits India well in its grey zone warfare against China on several land and sea frontiers. The drone is a multipurpose remotely operated unmanned vehicle that can enable Indian forces to perform round-the-clock surveillance and strike missions against China on her Northern borders.
Thus, India’s overwhelming dependence on Russian military equipment and armaments at a time when the latter is entangled in Ukraine has raised eyebrows in the Indian strategic camp, especially akin to the debate surrounding the qualities of Russian armaments against the modern Western weapon systems. India’s strategic and defense ties with her ‘natural’ ally are a need of the hour at a time when a fiery dragon is ready to burn the Indian citadel.
Anshu Kumar is a Master’s student at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interest lie in India’s relations with great powers, the rise of China in the international system, strategic studies, and Indian foreign policy.