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The US and India are at arm's length but remain within reach

By Richard Halloran

After several decades of mutual suspicion, India and the US have been inching toward better diplomatic, military and economic relations. Even so, troubling issues still cloud the horizon.

The commanding officer of US forces in Asia and the Pacific, Admiral Timothy Keating, was in Hawaii 10 days ago to nudge that process along.

"There has been a sea change in relations between India and the United States," the admiral said, noting that the last time he had been in India was in 1985 when he was the flag lieutenant for a predecessor, Admiral William Crowe.

"We are natural partners," Keating said, "even though we may not see things eye to eye in every instance."

This week, US aircraft carriers Nimitz and Kitty Hawk and 11 other warships are scheduled to join the Indian aircraft carrier Viraat and six more warships, two Japanese destroyers, a frigate and an oiler from Australia, and a frigate from Singapore in a six-day wargame called Malabar 07 in the Indian Ocean. That will be the most powerful US flotilla to train with the Indians.

Further, India has invited two US aircraft makers, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, to bid on a US$10 billion contract to build 126 jet fighter-bombers, which would be the largest US arms sale to India ever. Bids from one manufacturer each in Russia, France and Sweden and a European consortium have also been requested by year's end.

Trade between India and the US came to US$18 billion in the first half of this year, up 20 percent from the same period last year. The US has become the largest foreign investor in India, with a total inflow of US$6.6 billion by last year. That is far less, however, than US trade with and investment in China or Japan.

Lastly, the most visible symbol of improved Indian-US relations is the civil nuclear agreement proposed by US President George W. Bush and accepted by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005. It provides for US assistance to India for peaceful uses of nuclear energy but bans transfer of that assistance to India's nuclear weapons program.

The rift between India and the US began shortly after India gained independence from Britain in 1947. India was shaped, says Teresita Schaffer, an US diplomat with long experience in India, "by its anti-colonial history, non-alignment between the world's two major blocs, [and] the related moral voice India wanted to inject into world affairs."

In the early days of the Cold War, however, secretary of state John Foster Dulles of the Eisenhower administration asserted that India's neutrality was "an immoral and shortsighted conception."

Moreover, India bought most of its weapons from the Soviet Union, making New Delhi seem pro-Soviet, and tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998. The end of the Cold War, the shedding of economic socialism in New Delhi and the rise of China as a potential rival caused India to rethink its relations with the US.

India, Schaffer says, began to see the US "as the key external friend who could help it realize its global ambitions." In turn, Washington accepted "it was going to have to deal with India as a nuclear power."

The nuclear agreement -- despite having passed initial tests in the US Congress, House and Senate -- is still highly controversial.

Some congressmen have expressed concern that India would not keep separate its civilian and military nuclear developments. Indian leftists have vigorously asserted that the agreement infringes on Indian sovereignty.

Similarly, critics of India's relations with the US said they would demonstrate against US warships in the Malabar exercise. Although officials of the participating nations asserted that Malabar was not aimed at China, an Indian defense specialist, Lawrence Prabhakar, said in the Asia Times that it sent a message to the Chinese navy that "its future presence will not go unchallenged in the Indian Ocean."

A minor indicator of Indian's reluctance to be too closely associated with the US was the cool reception for Admiral Keating.

While he met with India's foreign and defense ministers and the top military leaders, the press was kept at arm's length. No briefings were arranged, Keating's address to a think tank was off the record and a meeting with reporters late in the day was limited.

Even coverage of the admiral's wreath laying at India Gate, India's memorial to the nation's war dead, drew no television cameras.

Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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