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New High-Tech Accord Seen as Giving Another Boost to U.S.-India Strategic Relationship

India Report by John E. Carbaugh, Jr.
January 29, 2004

The new high-technology cooperation agreement between the U.S. and India is being viewed as a significant step forward in the evolving strategic relationship between the two nations.

The improvement in U.S.-India ties has progressed at an unprecedented pace in the last couple of years. However, the recent accord to boost ties in sensitive technology areas, including civil nuclear and space, is being hailed as a new breakthrough in this relationship. Its importance was highlighted by the fact that President George W. Bush personally announced the agreement, hailing it as an "important milestone" in transforming the relationship between the U.S. and India.

Under the pact, the U.S. and India agreed to expand bilateral cooperation in three areas: civilian nuclear programs, space initiatives and high-tech trade. In addition, they also agreed to expand their "dialogue" on controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction and missile defense.

Agreement Praised

"This is a very important set of technical and process-level agreements that are also likely to yield broader and positive security dividends to each side," said Anupam Srivastava, executive director of the India Initiative at the University of Georgia, and of the South Asia Program of the University’s Center for International Trade and Security.

Indeed, the agreement is being seen as important for the broader U.S.-India relationship, with the White House describing the accord in the context of "the next steps on the strategic partnership between India and the United States."

Bush -- who agreed to fast-track the implementation of the accord during a White House meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha last week -- said that it would help both nations work together to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and "will deepen the ties of commerce and friendship between our two nations and will increase stability in Asia and beyond."

Concluded Bush: "The vision of U.S.-India strategic partnership that Prime Minister Vajpayee and I share is now becoming a reality."

Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also welcomed the agreement: "Indo-American relations have made remarkable strides in the past four years, as shown this month by the unprecedented U.S. offer on high-tech cooperation, including nuclear energy and missile defense."

New Access for Sensitive Technologies for India

The agreement, which was months in the making, gives India long-sought-after access to previously off-limits technology, with the U.S. lifting its ban on sales of civil nuclear and space program equipment and other ‘dual-use’ high-tech products that Washington imposed after India tested nuclear bombs in 1998 -- most of the other sanctions imposed had already been removed.

In this regard, some analysts see the agreement as further confirming Washington’s de facto recognition of New Delhi’s membership of the nuclear weapons club.

"New Delhi seems set on following the recommendations of its Nuclear Security Advisory Board to develop ‘a minimum credible deterrent’ force to meet the nuclear threat perceived from China and from Pakistan," predicts a Council on Foreign Relations/Asia Society report by a task force of experts released late last year. "India has not yet specified how large a force constitutes a minimum deterrent and is unlikely to do so. (Current estimates suggest that India has between fifty and one hundred nuclear devices.) In terms of nuclear doctrine, unlike Islamabad, New Delhi has declared that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons but will employ them only in response to a nuclear attack."

India also sees the new agreement as a sign of newfound -- and long overdue -- U.S. trust. New Delhi has complained in recent years that stingy access to advanced American technology has been one of the main obstacles to further advancing relations.

The agreement "marks a milestone … in the emerging strategic relationship between the two countries," declared a Financial Times editorial, echoing Bush’s enthusiasm. "… It is a statement by Washington and New Delhi that they intend to build a long-term strategic relationship. Aside from its economic and trade potential -- already characterized by a rich interchange between the two nations’ high-technology industries -- such a relationship would address mutual ambitions. India wants recognition as (at least) a regional power, with a place at the international ‘top table,’ eventually to be crowned by permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. increasingly sees India as a geopolitical counterweight to China in Asia."

U.S. Requires Tougher Indian Export Controls

In return for access to sensitive U.S. technologies, India promised to use the assistance for peaceful purposes and to help block the spread of dangerous weapons -- promises that include stricter export controls.

Indeed, U.S. officials stress that India will receive no substantial technology until New Delhi enacts tougher export controls to prevent the spread of sophisticated technologies. The Bush Administration has voiced growing concern about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction out of South Asia -- including the recent evidence that Pakistan had shared nuclear technologies with Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Proliferation expert Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that India has previously procured and transferred sensitive technology.

Srivastava predicts that the U.S. will likely require that India institute adequate "fire walls" to ensure that U.S. hi-tech imports do not find their way into the Indian military programs, or get re-exported to a third country. "The two sides will likely include this as a priority item in their ongoing official dialogue that currently comprises licensing, enforcement and government-industry outreach programs … U.S. hi-tech transfers to India would be contingent upon India instituting adequate technical and process-level controls to allay any U.S. concerns about ‘leaks’ of such technologies."

'Win-Win' Agreement

Nevertheless, Karl Inderfurth, an India specialist in the Clinton Administration, now an international affairs professor at George Washington University, noted that while India now gains access to sought-after American technologies, the accord is also good for the U.S.

"What the United States gets out of it is a strengthened relationship with a country that is going to play a major role in the 21st Century," he said. "We are looking to India for enhanced trade and economic relations, and we are also looking to India for assistance in the nuclear nonproliferation arena."

Thus the agreement, he added, is a "win-win for both countries."

The agreement lays out the beginnings of a series of "reciprocal steps that will build on each other" that India and the U.S. will take to implement the agreement. This will "include expanded engagement on nuclear regulatory and safety issues and missile defense, ways to enhance cooperation in peaceful uses of space technology, and steps to create the appropriate environment for successful high technology commerce," according to the White House.

Critical Areas of Cooperation

Civilian nuclear cooperation will likely involve scalable U.S. assistance to India’s nuclear energy sector and U.S. help to improve India’s existing technical and procedural safeguards on its civilian nuclear installations, according to Srivastava.

The cooperation in the civilian space sector could build upon U.S. assistance to the Indian rocket program during the 1960s and 70s, Srivastava said, although he cautioned that the updated cooperation will have to negotiate barriers that came into play with subsequent U.S. technology embargoes imposed on India’s satellite launch program in the 1990s. "Further, the new agreement visualizes greater scientific interaction to determine areas where U.S. and Indian national technical expertise can complement the civilian space missions of the two countries," he added.

Space cooperation is an especially promising area in U.S.-India relations, according to the Council on Foreign Relations report. India’s public-sector Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) develops and produces rockets used as launch vehicles for military purposes, including those for delivery of nuclear weapons, but also makes rockets that launch civilian satellites, the report noted. "ISRO would like authorization to work with Americans in areas such as telecommunication and scientific satellites," it added. "New Delhi also wants to launch for third countries purely civilian satellites that contain U.S.-licensed components."

The high-technology cooperation part of the agreement envisages simplification of U.S. procedures for licensing of exports to India, and limited re-categorization of certain hi-tech items, according to Srivastava. However, he cautioned that progress in this area will be contingent upon India improving the state of technology security within and across its relevant installations.

High-Flying Defense Ties

The high-tech accord comes on top of major moves already made to solidify a strategic partnership between the U.S. and India. Notably bilateral defense ties have taken off in the last couple of years. Joint military exercises have become commonplace, with these including joint naval patrols of the Indian Ocean, and special forces training in Ladakh near the India-China border. Next month, U.S. and Indian fighter planes will perform joint exercises off India’s western coast.

Defense sales also now look more promising. It is estimated that over the past two years, India has purchased approximately $200 million of American arms, including sophisticated counter-battery radars. The two nations also hope to complete a $1 billion deal that would see India buy P-3 Orion maritime-patrol aircraft from the U.S.

Only those Major Defense Equipment (MDE) items above $14 million now require congressional notice -- putting India in the same category with American treaty allies such as South Korea and Japan regarding military sales.

"After decades of limited contact, there has been a surge of high-level visits and cooperative activities between the U.S. and Indian military services during the past two years," the Council on Foreign Relations report pointed out. "U.S. forces and their Indian counterparts have parachuted to the ground near the Taj Mahal, held cold-weather exercises in Alaska and Ladakh, conducted jungle-warfare training in Assam, patrolled the Malacca Strait, and held joint air force exercises. Even though these activities have been small in scale, they have considerable political significance. None would have been thinkable during the Cold War. In short, U.S.-India military-to-military cooperation is evolving along lines that the Pentagon has established with many non-allied but ‘friendly’ countries. The policy challenge is to continue this enhanced cooperation and, where possible, to enlarge its parameters."

Missile Defense Dialogue

Cooperation on missile defense is seen by a number of U.S. observers as a potentially exciting area in bilateral military ties -- with the new agreement possibly paving the way for such cooperation by vowing to ‘expand dialogue’ in this area.

In what was a welcome surprise to Washington, New Delhi was quick to publicly endorse Bush’s ambitious missile defense initiative in 2001. "The move also signaled closer strategic alignment between India and the United States after relations were strained by India’s 1998 nuclear weapons tests," an Atlantic Council report released last year noted.

Indian defense experts have been invited to be observers at large antimissile workshop/demonstrations in the U.S., and the two nations also reached agreement to conduct a joint study of India’s missile defense needs. New Delhi is interested in both the Arrow-2 antimissile system from Israel, which was jointly developed by Israel and the U.S., and the U.S.-made Patriot-3 antiballistic missile.

Part of India’s attraction to missile defense stems from its potential to deal with the problem of missile proliferation, some observers contend. "India has been powerless to deal with the proliferation of Chinese missiles and technology to Pakistan," the Atlantic Council report said. "From this viewpoint, many Indians are hopeful that U.S. missile defense technology will provide a counter to the proliferation of Chinese missile technology. Furthermore, to the extent that India can gain access to related U.S. technology, a U.S. missile defense might also complicate military planning in Pakistan, and weaken the deterrent effect of Pakistan’s nuclear force.

"Indeed, the benefits of research and development across the wide range of technologies involved in missile defense are attractive because of their potential applications well beyond the missile defense arena," the Atlantic Council added. "While Indian officials are fully aware of tight U.S. restrictions on technology transfer, they also point out that India has done an excellent job in controlling its own nuclear weapons and missile technology, despite strong interest on the part of other countries" -- with the new hi-tech agreement a reward for this.

However, Srivastava cautioned that deeper missile defense cooperation may not necessarily come out of the new agreement any time soon. "It is premature to term this as cooperation, and more accurate to call it early consultations to determine domains of shared interests for the future. As currently visualized, this agreement does not include U.S. assistance to India to develop a theater missile defense system, such as the U.S. seeks to develop with Japan, South Korea and possibly Taiwan."

New Accord is Another Step in Right Direction

Overall, the new high-tech accord is seen as another important step in U.S.-India relations -- although Srivastava noted that the agreement should not be interpreted as taking the two nations to "a take-off platform" from where an entire range of bilateral defense and strategic cooperation becomes possible.

However, as the Council on Foreign Relations report noted: "After half a century marked mainly by disagreement, the world’s two largest democracies are finding increasing overlap in their interests and policies. In a landmark development in U.S.-South Asia relations, the United States and India are getting along better than at any time since India became independent in 1947. Over the medium term, the policy challenge through 2010 is to broaden and deepen the links that bind the two countries so that their relationship will mature into a genuine partnership."

This month’s high-tech agreement certainly provides a further nudge toward meeting this goal.