Is India the American buffer against China?

On the day Union Defence Minister A K Antony met with United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon recently, the American Enterprise Institute -- that often reflects the views of the powerful military-industrial complex -- issued a strategic briefing paper calling on Gates to hard-sell India on buying the 126 advanced fighter aircraft it has said it requires as part of its military modernisation.

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'Both are acutely aware of the threat from Islamist terrorist networks, and share concerns about the effects of violent extremism on the long-term stability of Central and South Asia,' the think-tank added.

The paper said that 'India is also a rising power, eager to develop a military with global reach,' and urged that 'this is an ambition that the United States can and should help India realise,' and noted that 'time and again, Secretary Gates has stressed the value the United States stands to derive from assisting allies and partners in developing their military capabilities.'

It pointed to a recent article by Gates in the respected Foreign Affairs magazine, where the US defence secretary had said that 'helping other countries better provide for their own security, will be a key and enduring test of US global leadership and a critical part of protecting US security.'

The AEI said, 'Indeed, building so-called 'partnership-capacity' not only serves to ease the burdens on a US military with global commitments, but also creates the capacity for building effective, well-integrated coalitions during a time of war.'

Thus, it argued that 'there may not be a more ideal candidate for such an effort than India,' and predicted that 'if New Delhi is successful in its (military) modernisation efforts, India in the coming decades will achieve the capacity as planned, to (a) carry out simultaneous combat operations against Pakistan and China along both land and maritime frontiers, and (b) project power throughout the Indian Ocean and perhaps into East Asian waters as well.'

Reiterating how important is was to promote a bulwark against China and propounding the long-held neo-conservative argument that India would be the best bet in Asia in terms of providing that buffer, the AEI said, 'In an era of ever-increasing wariness towards growing Chinese power, an Indian military so-enabled would be a welcome development.'

The AEI acknowledged that displacing Russia, India's primary arms provider would not be easy, but said, 'Yet, India's defence trade with Russia is a vestige of India's Cold War strategic alignment, sustained out of habit, convenience, and perceived cost savings.'

But he said such an endorsement during Obama's visit or anytime soon was unlikely because "the Security Council issue is in a class all by itself. I would say there are even more smaller, but still very difficult questions to resolve", like the Entities List and the export control restrictions, something which the US was still to ease up on vis-a-vis India.

"In other words," he said, "there are several steps to go before there is anything close to a decision by the Indian government. The first step is to make sure -- that is to verify that all the competitors are qualified and meet the sort of minimum requirements."

"And so, it would make perfect sense for the Indian government to go ahead and let everybody qualify and see what kind of a deal they could get."

In such a situation, he noted, "These would include what kind of technology sharing, what is the offset arrangement, if any, and so on and so forth."

"I believe both sides really do want to have something to crow about during Obama's visit," he added, "but again, I confess to being a little bit of a sceptic in that. I am not sure that there's any immediate deliverable."

He acknowledged that "there is a lot of favourable disposition towards that, but that will also require a lot of hard diplomatic bargaining at the UN and you got the China factor, you got the Pakistan factor, and other countries will also say, if India, why not Brazil?"

"That is such a tangled mess," he said, and predicted that at most, in terms of some quid pro quo for India agreeing to some major defence deal, the US may remove the Indian agencies from the Entities List.