During his recent visit to Taiwan to attend President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said that the US should build up its friends, including Taiwan, in the Indo-Pacific region as well as their security capability to deter China from its attempts to nibble away at the territory of its neighbors.
Pompeo is a vocal critic of the expansionist tendencies of communist China. Besides Taiwan, which has been a vanguard of democracy in the Indo-Pacific, India has also been bearing the brunt of Chinese expansionism since its independence in 1947.
After China transgressed into the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control in May 2020, Pompeo, then the US secretary of state with the administration of then-US president Donald Trump, voiced concern during his visit to New Delhi to participate in the 2+2 Dialogue between the two countries.
Although the Indo-US relationship has its imperatives in terms of shared values of democracy, the Chinese threat has given added traction to increased defense cooperation between them. In the initial years of its independence, India did not forge strong strategic cooperation with the US due to its non-alignment policy, which was tilted in favor of the Soviet Union. However, a Chinese attack in 1962 prompted then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to ask then-US president John F. Kennedy to provide arms and necessary support to meet the Chinese threat, with Kennedy obliging.
The Chinese attack opened a new chapter in India’s foreign policy and India’s security architecture with the US. The Bangladesh War of 1971, in which India was directly involved, and India’s nuclear explosions in 1974 and 1998, however, temporarily interrupted India’s relationship with the US. India’s rise as an economic and IT power coupled with the disillusionment of the US with China in the 2000s nudged the US to have a fresh look at India.
History came full circle when then-Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, speaking at the Asia Society in New York in 2003, described the US as a “natural ally” of India, an adage that was accorded to the former Soviet Union during the era of the non-alignment movement.
A turning point in bilateral relations was the announcement of the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” in January 2004. A milestone was the signing of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal or 123 Agreement in 2008 after protracted negotiation.
A major step in the defense cooperation between India and the US was the launching of the Defense Trade Technology Initiative in 2015. After 12 years of discussion, the two sides agreed on a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in August 2016.
LEMOA is a tweaked version of the standard logistics cooperation agreement that the US military has entered into with a dozen countries. The agreement enables naval ships and aircraft to dock in each others’ bases for refuelling and similar purposes.
It was in this backdrop that the US in a strategic gesture renamed the Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command in June 2018 in a clear message to China.
In September of the same year, the two countries signed the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) at the 2+2 Dialogue in New Delhi. COMCASA enables the Indian military to get a better picture of the Indian border region, which has witnessed Chinese activities in recent times.
In yet another boost to their defense cooperation, India and the US signed the Industrial Security Annex (INA) in Washington in December 2019. The INA facilitates the exchange of classified military information between the two sides. Taking the defense cooperation to still greater heights India and the US signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement in October 2020 in the wake of a bloody clash between Chinese and Indian forces in May.
It is expected that after the new government is formed in India next month and the new US administration is chosen later this year, India-US defense cooperation is poised to be strengthened to cope with China’s belligerence, no matter who comes to power in Washington and New Delhi.
Rup Narayan Das is a former senior fellow of the Monohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, and a Taiwan Fellow in 2022.
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