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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Defense Dysfunction

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The MMRCA decision illustrates the deep problems besetting the Indian defense establishment.

Much of the commentary about India’s elimination of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin bids from its hotly-contested, highly-lucrative Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition has focused on its meaning for US-India relations.  The air force is the largest beneficiary of the country’s burgeoning military budget and a number of foreign companies were looking to snap up the $11 billion MMRCA contract. The Americans were also expecting that the diplomatic capital they assiduously built up in New Delhi in recent years would turn the decision to their favor. Instead, New Delhi opted to reject the U.S. entrants and shortlist for final selection the Typhoon aircraft produced by the four-nation Eurofighter consortium (composed of British, German, Italian and Spanish defense companies) and the Rafale offered by France’s Dassault Aviation SA.

MMRCA_ImageMany interpret the decision as an emphatic rebuff of Washington’s overtures for closer security links. John Elliott, a long-time observer of the Indian scene, views the move as an effort at “keeping the U.S. firmly in its place.”  Others see it as a sign that lingering doubts still reside in New Delhi about the reliability of the United States as a defense supplier. Bruce Riedel, an informal Obama administration adviser on South Asia, argues that “there is a belief that in a crisis situation, particularly if it was an India-Pakistan crisis, the U.S. could pull the plug on parts, munitions, aircraft – precisely at the moment you need them most. Memories are deep in this part of the world.” Stephen P. Cohen, the dean of U.S. South Asianists, concurs: “India would have given the order to a U.S. firm if it had been assured that the United States would back India politically thereafter.  Since this guarantee was not available, and awarding a U.S. firm the contract would increase Washington’s ability to influence New Delhi, the United States was a not a good choice politically as a supplier.”

According to Ashley J. Tellis, one of the most insightful and well-informed observers of US-India affairs, both perspectives are wrong, however. In a superb review of the decision, he argues that it represents less an omen about bilateral ties than a sui generis episode involving the Indian air force’s rigid application of technical desiderata. The bottom line, Tellis says, is that New Delhi selected the European contestants for no other reason than they were adjudged the better flying machines.

Some Indian commentators are of the view that, with bilateral ties now so multi-dimensional and mature, Washington’s sense of letdown will dissipate quickly. This is likely to prove wishful thinking, given how aggressively the Obama administration lobbied on behalf of the American bids. But Tellis’s account at least reassures that the decision did not entail a repudiation of the US-India strategic partnership.

Less heartening, including to those in Washington who want to see New Delhi become a more capable global power, are the serious problems in the Indian defense establishment that are highlighted by the MMCRA selection process. Aiming to ward off charges of graft and extraneous influence that have plagued big-ticket military contracts in the past – Rajiv Gandhi’s government collapsed in 1989 due to the corruption scandal involving the Bofors heavy artillery pieces – Defense Minister A.K. Antony crafted a selection process that relied solely on narrow technical assessments that reportedly encompassed some 500 criteria. Relevant strategic, political and financial factors were purposively excluded from consideration. Following extensive field trials, the air force concluded that the two European finalists possessed superior aerodynamic capabilities relative to their American competitors.

Tellis agrees that, on the basis of narrow technical assessments, the Typhoon and Rafale represent the best choices and that the selection procedure was free of corruption. But if the process was clean, it was not in his view a rational or even well thought-out one. By making such a major procurement decision without examining other attendant considerations, the defense ministry, in Tellis’s view, runs the risk of misallocating precious resources, thereby undercutting India’s larger national security interests. Giving due weight to important non-technical factors, he contends, would have cast the American entrants, particularly Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, in a more favorable light. As he sees it, the Super Hornet is a truly cost-effective choice once issues like unit piece, technology transfer, offsets, production lines schemes and possibilities for strategic collaboration are assessed.

This specific judgment might be contested within the Indian air power community, but the post-mortem Tellis provides about this particular acquisition decision has larger institutional implications. He reveals, for instance, that the financial details of the bids were not examined prior to the short-listing. If they had been, evaluators might well have asked whether the marginally superior performance offered by the Typhoon and Rafale are worth their markedly higher price tags ($125 million and $85 million, respectively) compared to the Super Hornet’s $60 million. And even if Indian officials decided they were still getting their money’s worth, it would have behooved them to include the U.S. plane on the shortlist in order to enhance their bargaining leverage vis-à-vis the European companies.

It is also striking that only after the shortlist was announced did the defense ministry turn to consider important questions about technology transfer, offset arrangements and production efficiency. India’s defense industrial sector remains conspicuously immature, certainly in contrast to other world powers. (As Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta maintain in their new book, the well-funded military R&D system is remarkably short of accomplishment.) Yet Tellis points out that the European aircraft selected have a more limited capacity to transform the country’s technology base than their American counterparts. This, too, would seem to be an important matter to assess, yet it was deliberately excluded from consideration.

Geopolitical considerations were similarly absent from the decision, especially the issue of whether New Delhi should leverage the opportunity to enhance military-technological ties with the United States. With President Obama’s personally intervening with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the lack of integrated decision-making all but guaranteed negative diplomatic fallout. As Tellis notes:

“In its zeal to treat this competition as just another routine procurement decision falling solely within its own competence, the acquisition wing of the ministry of defense communicated its final choice to the American vendors through the defense attache’s office at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi without first informing the ministry of external affairs. This action put the latter in the embarrassing position of not knowing about the defense ministry’s decision a priori and, as a result, was unable to forewarn the United States.”


The upshot, according to Tellis, is that the thoughtless manner “in which these results were conveyed did not win New Delhi any friends in Washington, a process that Indian government officials now recognize and ruefully admit was counterproductive.”

New Delhi has now announced that a blue-ribbon commission is being formed to examine the deep problems besetting the defense establishment, including those in the areas of strategic planning, resource allocation and systems acquisition. A good point of departure would be considering the woeful institutional lessons offered by the MMRCA case.

India-US Relations Blog

Taking the Long View

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Over time, the expansion of Chinese strength will undoubtedly push New Delhi to tighten its security relations with Washington, though the process will neither be as smooth nor as speedy as many would like.

Just as US-India ties were at a nadir following New Delhi’s nuclear tests in 1998 – and just as the United States and China were declaring their own strategic partnership – Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee famously characterized Washington and New Delhi as “natural allies” who would form “the mainstay of tomorrow’s stable, democratic world order.” Two years later, Vajpayee reaffirmed this description.

Judging by the dense bilateral links the two countries have crafted over the past decade, Vajpayee phrase seems to have been vindicated. Not only have a landmark civilian nuclear accord and a spate of defense contracts been concluded, but the two countries have established some 30 bilateral dialogues and working groups on a wide gamut of issues, and the United States holds more bilateral military exercises each year with India than with any other nation.

Yet U.S. elites are suddenly shying away from the term “ally.” Assistant Secretary of State for South & Central Asia Robert Blake, for instance, states that “India and the United States will never be allies in the traditional sense of the term.”  Strobe Talbott, who as Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration began the first institutionalized dialogue between Washington and New Delhi, contends that the countries “are not now, and may never be, allies.” Stephen P. Cohen, dean of U.S. South Asianists, likewise maintains that “India is a friend, not an ally” and the new US-Indian strategic alliance is “still more symbolic than real.”

All three underscore the distinction between long-standing U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea, and partners like India that are not bound by formal security commitments. And Blake’s statement was undoubtedly in deference to Indian sensitivities about being sucked into America’s strategic orbit, although he adds that India can no longer be considered a non-aligned country given the “increased convergences in strategic outlook” between Washington and New Delhi. But Talbott and Cohen are less sanguine on this count. The former argues that:

“One reason we may never be [allies] or not in the any foreseeable future, is because there is still a huge constituency in support of India’s non-aligned status, despite the fact that I would say that non-alignment and the non-aligned movement is very much an artifact of the Cold War. I remember having a conversation with Natwar Singh [retired Indian diplomat and Manmohan Singh’s first foreign minister] when Congress was out of power and him saying to me that the proudest moment of his career was being secretary general of the non-aligned movement. That sticks in my mind. I took that as a sign that there are still a lot of Indians who take non-alignment seriously.”

Cohen strikes a similar note: “New Delhi has a deep commitment to strategic autonomy, as indicated by its insistent use of the moderating prefix ‘natural’ to describe its U.S. relationship. In the end, India got what it needed from Washington, including recognition of its nuclear weapons program and support for its permanent membership on the United Nations’ Security Council, at little or no cost.”

Believing that strategic ties remain, at best, “aspirational,” Michael Auslin, at the American Enterprise Institute, likewise notes that the

“continued adherence to Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-aligned strategy clearly animates the worldview of most thinkers [in India], even if the language used to describe it no longer partakes of such Cold War imagery. There is a firm commitment in New Delhi not to have any firm commitments to any one state. It seems the Indians have taken to heart, far more than the Americans, George Washington’s warning against entangling foreign alliances.”

All of these comments come at a time of widespread disappointment in Washington that the bilateral relationship has not lived up to the strategic and economic possibilities that seemed so alive just a few years ago. As my last post noted, some observers are even questioning whether the Bush-Singh nuclear deal has succeeded in its primary aim of invigorating US-India geopolitical cooperation in the face of a rapidly growing and more assertive China.

The Bush administration devoted singular energy to courting New Delhi as a key part of its strategy of strengthening security links with China’s neighbors. In a widely-read article, Condoleezza Rice, then serving as chief foreign adviser to the George W. Bush presidential campaign, observed that Washington “should pay closer attention to India’s role in the regional balance.” She pointedly noted that “India is an element in China’s calculation, and it should be in America’s, too.” In his first major foreign policy address as a candidate, Bush argued that “we should work with the Indian government, ensuring it is a force for stability and security in Asia.”

Once the nuclear deal was unveiled at a July 2005 summit between Bush and Prime Minister Singh, Rice justified it by calling India “a rising global power that we believe could be a pillar of stability in a rapidly changing Asia.” At the summit, a senior Indian diplomat was quoted as saying that “Bush has a vision that we in India often don’t have. With Europe in decline and China rising, the U.S. sees India as a future global power with the ability to maintain [the] power balance in the 21st century.” A Bush administration official closely involved in the making of policy toward New Delhi commented that “China is a central element in our effort to encourage India’s emergence as a world power. But we don’t need to talk about the containment of China. It will take care of itself as India rises.”

Singh-Wen_PhotoIn the years since, has the growth of Chinese strategic power nudged Washington and New Delhi into tighter security collaboration, as many in the Bush administration expected? Or is Michael Krepon, one of the nuclear deal’s prominent detractors, correct in arguing that “New Delhi continues to titrate improved strategic cooperation with the United States” and that it “continues to improve ties with Beijing.  It is folly to presume that Washington can leverage New Delhi’s dealings with Beijing.”

There’s no denying the American disillusionment caused by India’s rejection of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition and by the prolonged inability of U.S. companies to capitalize on the nuclear deal due to an Indian liability law that does not conform to international norms. It is also true that India and China have aligned to thwart U.S. objectives in global negotiations on trade and climate change, and that they often take the same side in UN deliberations.

But stepping back a bit in order to take in the wider perspective, it is clear that some fundamental geopolitical forces are at work in spurring India-China strategic frictions.  Instead of being the fraternal titans that drive the Asian Century forward, as envisioned in the “Chindia” chimera, it is more likely that their relationship in the coming years will be marked by increased suspicion and rivalry. The relationship has never really recovered from the trauma of their 1962 border war, and the strains have only increased over the past five years or so. Beijing is now taking a much more hawkish line on territorial disputes in the Himalayans, including asserting a brand new claim that the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is actually “Southern Tibet.”  It is also expanding its presence in territory controlled by Pakistan, and trying to block New Delhi’s efforts to play a greater role in regional and international institutions.

Much is made of the fact that China is now India’s largest trading partner and that two-way trade soared from $12 billion in 2004 to $60 billion in 2010, and that the countries are on track to reach $100 billion in 2015. When Premier Wen Jaibao visited New Delhi last December, he brought along a larger business delegation than President Obama did a month earlier, and the $16 billion in resulting trade deals eclipsed the $10 billion-mark struck by the Americans. Yet compared to US-India economic links, there are far more competitive elements, and far fewer complementary features, operating in India’s business interactions with China.

All of these developments have not gone unnoticed by the Singh government.  Famous for his cautious, taciturn nature, Singh has caused a stir with his public expressions of disapproval regarding what he terms Chinese “assertiveness.” In a September 2010 interview he complained that Beijing sought to “keep India in a low-level equilibrium” and that “it would like to have a foothold in South Asia.” Three months later, he shocked his Chinese guests during the Wen visit by refusing to reiterate India’s traditional endorsement of the “One China” policy or customary recognition of Tibet being an inviolable part of the People’s Republic.

Indian military planning is also increasingly focused on the threat from its northern neighbor, from taking major steps to fortify its northeastern border to accelerating the development of the Agni-V ballistic missile. With a reach of over 5,000 kilometers, and capable of carrying multiple warheads, the missile puts China fully within range of a retaliatory nuclear strike.

The strategic entente with India is Washington’s first geopolitical partnership to be forged in the post-Cold War era, meaning that its rhythm is bound to be quite different from the security alliances the United States rapidly created in the aftermath of World War II. Back then, the national power of Washington’s new-found allies was in stark decline, while India’s current power trajectory is visibly upward. The structural dynamics of a bipolar global order also were simpler than today’s messy multipolarity.  Over time, however, the expansion of Chinese strength will undoubtedly push New Delhi to tighten its security relations with Washington, though the process will neither be as smooth nor as speedy as many would like.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on India’s Policy towards its Neighbours

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rarely speaks his mind on the major issues of the day. However, on June 29, 2011, in his interaction with five editors from the print medium, he spoke at length on domestic issues as well as the geo-political scenario and relations with India’s neighbours. He noted with concern the deteriorating international economic environment and said India’s neighbourhood was a very uncertain one. He said, “India would have to swim through all this adversity and keep our heads high if we have to come through.”

credit: pmindia.nic.inThe Prime Minster said that the planned draw-down of U.S. and other NATO-ISAF troops scheduled to begin in July 2011, as approved by President Barack Obama recently, was not good for India. “It does hurt us. It could hurt us. No one knows what is going to happen in Afghanistan.” However, he did not spell out India’s options to deal with the emerging situation. He once again emphasised that India supported reconciliation in Afghanistan, “I (had) told the Afghan Parliament that the reconciliation should be Afghan-led. I think (President) Hamid Karzai and other politicians can work on that. You cannot carry the good-bad Taliban distinction much too far.”

Maintaining a cautious approach towards Pakistan, the Prime Minister repeated his earlier statement on visiting Pakistan. He had said that he would visit Islamabad only when he was convinced that there had been sufficient progress in the ongoing talks and there was a substantive agreement to be signed. He was not convinced that Pakistan had done enough to eliminate terrorism emanating from its soil but believed that “India should continue to talk and engage with Pakistan to solve outstanding issues”.

He expressed his satisfaction with the progress in relations with Bangladesh. “The Bangladesh Government has gone out of its way to help us in apprehending anti-India insurgent groups that were operating from Bangladesh for long. And, that is why we have been generous in dealing with Bangladesh. We are not a rich country, but we offered it a line of credit of $1 billion when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came here. We are now looking at ways and means of some further unilateral concessions. We are also looking at ways and means of finding a practical and pragmatic solution to the sharing of Teesta waters. I plan to go there myself…” However, he expressed his unhappiness about extremist forces in Bangladesh and said, “We must reckon that at least 25 per cent of the population of Bangladesh swears by the Jamiat-ul-Islami and they are very anti-Indian, and they are in the clutches, many times, of the ISI. So, the political landscape in Bangladesh can change at any time.” This became an embarrassing faux pas as his words were misinterpreted in Bangladesh to mean that 25 per cent of the population is anti-Indian.

The Prime Minister welcomed the defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. He advised the Sri Lankan government to find an amicable solution to the Tamil problem that is acceptable to the Tamilian people. He said, “The Tamil problem does not disappear with the defeat of the LTTE. The Tamil population has legitimate grievances. They feel they are reduced to second-class citizens. And our emphasis has been to persuade the Sri Lankan government that we must move towards a new system of institutional reforms, where the Tamil people will have a feeling that they are equal citizens of Sri Lanka, and they can lead a life of dignity and self-respect.”

The Prime Minister did not express any views on the continuing political and constitutional stalemate in Nepal or on India’s relations with China and Myanmar. Overall, the Prime Minister’s pronouncements reiterated India’s known position on most issues regarding India’s relations with its neighbours and were marked by a renewed emphasis on continuity. Observers who were looking for some bold initiatives to resolve ongoing challenges would have been disappointed.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Nuclear Dividends?

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Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble? Six years on, observers in both countries are accusing the other of perfidy.

Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble?  How have the expansive promises touted by its champions and dire warnings issued by its critics panned out? With the approach of the six-year anniversary of the landmark July 2005 summit between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, observers in both countries are at work tallying up the pay-offs and drawbacks.

PhotoThe Bush-Singh deal was momentous in both symbolic and material import. It implicitly recognized India as a nuclear weapons state, a gesture New Delhi very much wanted but which the Clinton administration refused to make. And by promising to end a decades-long embargo on nuclear energy technology against India, the Bush administration committed to overturning U.S. laws and global non-proliferation norms for New Delhi’s singular benefit.

At the time, U.S. advocates spoke of portentous opportunities in the strategic and commercial realms. A high-ranking U.S. official described the deal as “the big bang” designed to consummate a broad strategic relationship with a rising India that was aimed at balancing China’s burgeoning power. Ron Somers, the head of the U.S.-India Business Council, argued that “history will rank this initiative as a tectonic shift equivalent to Nixon’s opening to China.” Leading U.S. corporations quickly lined up, expecting that a grateful Indian government would reward them with lucrative contracts in the nuclear power generation and defense systems fields. Estimates were floated that access to India’s expanding nuclear energy sector would alone generate some 250,000 U.S. jobs.

Have the promised gains materialized? According to Michael Krepon (here and here), a prominent critic of the accord, they have not.  Pointing to India’s recent elimination – in the face of heavy U.S. lobbying – of Boeing’s and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition, as well as New Delhi’s failure to support U.S. diplomacy on the Libya and Syrian issues, he contends that the significant U.S. concessions made in the agreement have netted little in terms of a strategic or diplomatic return. Likewise, he notes the tough nuclear liability law adopted by India last year has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in the country’s nuclear energy sector.

The accord’s advocates contended at the time that by granting India a special position in the global nuclear order, the nonproliferation regime would ultimately be strengthened. But Krepon believes the reverse has occurred. By bending the rules for India’s sole benefit, a pernicious precedent was set, one that China has just exploited in justifying its sale of two more reactors to Pakistan. And the failure to extract meaningful restrictions on India’s nuclear-weapon capacity has only spurred a paranoid Pakistan to undertake a significant expansion its own arsenal.

Krepon does not deny that bilateral diplomatic and economic ties have improved measurably in the last six years. But much of this, in his opinion, would have occurred even in the accord’s absence. From his vantage, the accord’s actual benefits are far from what was pledged, while the costs critics warned about have been substantiated.

Krepon’s critique arrives at a time of widespread disappointment in Washington that bilateral ties continue to fall far short of the promise that seemed so glistening just a few years ago. In an interview prior to his departure from New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer chided the Indian government’s failure to live up to its side of the bilateral relationship, adding that “There’s no doubt this needs to be a two-way street.”

The reasons for this sense of letdown are many, with fault lying both in Washington and New Delhi. Nonetheless, U.S. champions of the Bush-Singh deal were under no illusion that India’s signature registered its enlistment as America’s junior partner in global affairs or the surrender of its foreign policy independence.  For example, Nick Burns, who as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the last administration played a key role in crafting the new U.S.-India relationship, cautioned at the time that “the United States must adjust to a friendship with India that will feature a wider margin of disagreement than [Washington is] accustomed to.”

And even as the deal was proceeding, the two governments were at loggerheads in multilateral trade talks, an impasse that helped bring about the Doha Round’s collapse.  Paradoxically, the U.S. Congress gave its preliminary assent to the nuclear deal in December 2006 at the same moment that frustrations with New Delhi’s position in the Doha negotiations caused legislators to cut some of India’s trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences. And in the months prior to Congressional approval of the implementing “123 Agreement,” a high-ranking Bush administration official publicly accused New Delhi of stymieing negotiations and “working behind the scenes for Doha’s demise.”

India’s decision on fighter aircraft was a sharp disappointment to an Obama administration that lobbied strenuously on behalf of the U.S. contestants – so much so that the decision may have even hastened Ambassador Roemer’s resignation.  And it undoubtedly deepens the perception in Washington that New Delhi has not lived up to its side of the bargain by reciprocating the huge commitment the United States has made over the past decade to bolster India’s great power prospects. But as Ashley J. Tellis demonstrates in a superb piece of analysis, the decision was sui generis, involving the Indian air force’s rigid application of technical desiderata, rather than the anti-U.S. move some have described it as.

The proliferation-related arguments Krepon reiterates formed the core of the criticism against the accord when it was originally announced. But these points were difficult to sustain at the time in view of the strong support Mohamed ElBaradei, then director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave to the deal. He called the agreement a “win-win” as well as “a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the non-proliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism and strengthen nuclear safety.” He has reaffirmed this view in his new book. And in case anyone missed the significance of ElBaradei’s endorsement, this is the same man who butted heads with the Bush administration over nuclear weapon allegations regarding Iraq and Iran – actions that helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.  In the end, most nations were persuaded by his view that it was better to welcome New Delhi into the nuclear clubhouse, even if somewhat awkwardly, than to continue leaving it out in the cold.

It should also be noted that as the nuclear accord was being debated by the international community, Beijing explicitly assured Washington that it would not exploit India’s special carve-out in the nonproliferation regime to provide more reactors to Pakistan. It is also unclear how large a factor the deal looms in the rapid expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon capabilities. Most likely, Islamabad’s anxiety about India’s “Cold Start” military doctrine – which focuses on deterring Pakistan’s use of jihadi proxies by holding out the threat of swiftly-mounted but calibrated military offensives against Pakistani territory – plays at least as significant a role.

While Krepon accuses India of failing to live up to the broad spirit of the Bush-Singh deal, Indian observers are presently charging Washington with an outright breach of faith. Specifically, they see restrictions just promulgated by the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an informal cartel regulating global nuclear commerce, as undercutting the privileged perch the accord gave India in the international nuclear hierarchy. The NSG prohibitions are designed to prevent the spread of uranium-enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing technology to countries, like India, that have not signed on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Technically speaking, the provisions, which were advanced by the Obama administration, are not country-specific. However, there is little question they are aimed squarely at India, and this has revived cries about American perfidy that were at fever pitch in New Delhi’s tumultuous debate over the nuclear accord three years ago. Once again, the Communist Party of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party are making allegations about Mr. Singh’s lack of candor in revealing the agreement’s details.

Anil Kakodkar, a former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission who played a major role in drafting the nuclear deal, has also joined the present fray, characterizing the NSG move as a “betrayal,” while G. Parthasarathy, a leading light in the foreign policy establishment, concludes that “we cannot trust the U.S. as a long-term and reliable partner on nuclear issues.” The Hindu newspaper exclaims that “the Indian side has scrupulously adhered to its side of the broad bargain and has assumed the U.S. and the NSG would do the same. But if the latter are going to cherry-pick which of their own commitments they will adhere to and which they will not, India may well be tempted to examine its own options.” Indeed, the Indian government has threatened to withhold coveted reactor contracts from any country enforcing the new rules.

Beyond the perceived affront to national honor, made all the more palpable since the NSG was founded in response to India’s first nuclear detonation in 1974, it is unclear whether the restrictions will have any practical effect. India already can reprocess material from its fast-breeder reactor program to supply its nuclear arsenal. And the country’s chief nuclear partners – the United States, France and Russia – have rushed to assure New Delhi that the restrictions will in no way impinge upon their previous commitments. Still, it is curious why the Obama administration chose to press the new restrictions at the very same moment it was championing New Delhi’s membership in the NSG (read the U.S. paper on India’s candidacy here).

The growing irritations on both sides will be aired out at the mid-July convening of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi. The confab was originally scheduled for April but was postponed, ostensibly at least, because Defense Minister A.K. Antony had to campaign in the Kerala state elections. More likely, Antony and others in the Indian leadership were looking for an excuse to dodge the Obama administration’s full-court press on the fighter aircraft decision. As it turns out, the meeting will now take place with both sides nursing grievances.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

How not to Exit Afghanistan

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According to Henry Kissinger (“How to Exit Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 8, 2011), four conditions must be met to make the exit strategy viable: “A cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism.” None of the four appears viable at present. Nor do these conditions look achievable in the 2014-15 time frame that the exit strategy is planned to be completed.

As had been widely anticipated, the Taliban has launched a vigorous spring offensive and the US-led NATO-ISAF forces have retaliated with equal force. The Pakistan army has apparently learnt nothing from the killing of Osama bin Laden and continues to pretend that his presence at Abbottabad was a mystery. Instead of reinvigorating its efforts to eliminate terrorists who are undermining Pakistan’s security, the army is still holding off from launching the long-delayed offensive against the TTP in North Waziristan. Meanwhile, reports of US drone attacks against terrorists along the Af-Pak border continue to trickle in virtually on a daily basis. While it is early days yet in this year’s military confrontation, a continuing stalemate can be foreseen.

A U.S. Congressional study report, released on June 8, 2011, has found that nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are floundering as the massive economic aid programme lacks proper oversight and breeds corruption. It says that most local officials are incapable of “spending wisely”. It also says that there is little evidence to support the view that even the “politically pleasing” short term results will be sustainable once the draw-down begins. The report notes that the Afghan economy could easily slip into a depression as it is mainly a “war-time” economy that is a “huge distortion”. It is well known, of course, that the U.S. military conducts its own development programme in the areas cleared of the Taliban to win the people’s support, irrespective of the aid programmes approved by the Afghan government.

The two-year old efforts to move towards reconciliation with the so-called “good Taliban” have not made much headway. Secret talks being mediated by Germany between the U.S. government and Tayyab Agha, said to be a close confidante of Mullah Mohammed Omar, are unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough as no one is quite sure whether Agha is actually negotiating on behalf of Mullah Omar or whether the Taliban are simply using the talks as a ploy to buy time. The Haqqani shoora, that enjoys ISI support and patronage, is not part of the reconciliation process.

While regional efforts to secure peace in Afghanistan remain haphazard, these are likely to slowly gather momentum as the date for the draw-down of forces approaches. During a visit to Kabul in mid-May, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh endorsed President Karzai’s “process of national reconciliation” and said, “We hope that Afghanistan will be able to build a framework of regional cooperation that will help its nation-building efforts.”

There is so far no sign that the U.S. and its allies are planning to make substantive efforts to put in place a viable international peacekeeping force to help the Afghan government to maintain security after their own exit from Afghanistan in 2014. If this is not done, the Taliban will gradually seize one province after another, with covert help from Pakistan, and will eventually force the capitulation of the government – paving the way for their triumphant return to power. Conflict termination on such terms would signify the failure of President Obama’s exit strategy.