- Photo by The Wanderer’s Eye, Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-wanderers-eye/5549993130
May 1, 2011: The world’s biggest international military aircraft deal in two decades has been moving slowly through the Indian government’s procurement process. After years of discreet and not-so-discreet lobbying by aircraft manufacturers, heads of state, and everyone in between, the Indian Air Force announced on April 27 that it was short-listing the two European entries and excluding from further consideration the remaining four contestants, including two from the United States: a Boeing-led consortium with the F-18 and Lockheed Martin with the F-16.
The announcement sent shock waves through Washington. This was by far the biggest potential military sale ever contemplated with India. It had been regarded in the United States not just as a commercial bonanza at a time of economic distress, but as the opportunity to introduce a new level of operational and strategic understanding into the growing India-U.S. defense relationship. In the five months between the high of the Obama visit to Delhi and, now, the low of the aircraft decision, what have we learned about how the two countries are managing their partnership and where it is headed?
The way the Indian government made and conveyed its decision suggests a somewhat casual approach to the U.S. relationship. The decision itself seems to have been made entirely on technical grounds, and the Defense Ministry evidently left it in Air Force hands. At one level, this is entirely appropriate: the technical specifications were basically an Air Force decision, as was the evaluation of the competing aircraft. There is broad agreement among knowledgeable observers that the two short-listed contenders had the most modern platforms, much of the sexiest equipment, and very strong offset and technical transfer proposals. They also had the highest prices by a substantial margin. The Air Force was also known to be especially concerned about the possibility that the United States would be an unreliable supplier (based on the cancellation of the supply contract for the Tarapur nuclear reactors in the 1970s and, although no Indian ever raises this in the same context, the cancellation of Pakistan’s F-16 purchase in 1990).
The Prime Minister’s office was already caught like a deer in the headlights by the storm surrounding a series of financial scandals that weakened its political standing and its self-confidence. It decided as a result to stay completely out of these deliberations, lest it be accused of exerting improper influence. Indeed, according to knowledgeable observers, the U.S. was told the Prime Minister did not know what the decision was until the Air Force made its announcement, a claim Americans find hard to believe. There is an irony here: Manmohan Singh is accused of having allowed scandals to take place because he stayed too much aloof from his government’s decisions and activities in telecommunications; he has responded by…keeping aloof from his government’s decisions on defense.
So the Indian government made an aircraft procurement decision, but a strategic non-decision. Few Indian commentators have argued that the European countries whose aircraft were short-listed were India’s preferred choice as strategic partners; the more frequent observation is that the Europeans’ own defense is tethered to Washington. Rather, India simply didn’t choose the major strategic partnerships that were on offer, either from the U.S. or from Russia. Historically, some of India’s procurement decisions have been simply equipment purchases, but others, such as its long-standing arms acquisitions from the Soviet Union, were part and parcel of its strategic relationships. The Indian government knew that the United States saw defense trade in this light, and presumably recognized how it would interpret their decision.
From the U.S. government’s perspective, the most obvious explanation of these events is that the strategic relationship with the United States was given low priority by the Indian government. This message was reinforced, perhaps inadvertently, by the way the decision was communicated. Diplomats try to observe a “no surprises” rule when dealing with important relationships. There is little evidence that the U.S. was given much of a heads-up. To be fair, the U.S. has had serious lapses in this area in the past – not warning India about the 2004 decision to designate Pakistan as a “major non-NATO ally” comes to mind. That episode rankled severely in Delhi; this one does the same in Washington. More importantly, it is not clear that India has given the United States a good sense of where it sees the strategic relationship going.
In the United States, even boosters of the partnership with India recognize that it is a high-maintenance relationship, vulnerable to speed bumps. This is a significant speed bump. The danger now is a period of relative neglect – never benign for these two countries. In an unrelated development but with unfortunate timing, U.S. Ambassador Timothy Roemer announced his resignation the same day as the aircraft decision. President Obama’s foreign policy plate is overloaded with crises, and election season will be upon him shortly. He and his advisers will have trouble mustering the energy to tackle issues with India, after India, as they see it, has paid little attention to our concerns. Some of the administration’s major decisions on India were internally controversial. Moving ahead with things like reform of the United Nations Security Council and a permanent Indian seat will take energy and dedication; these may now be harder to deliver.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as already noted, is already beset by internal political problems. If his party does poorly in the state elections whose results will be announced May 13, his margin of maneuver will shrink further. He has had to accept a parliamentary inquiry into the telecom scandal that led to the jailing of one of his ministers. Never one to knock heads, he is picking his battles with even greater care than usual. The experience of the U.S.-India nuclear deal is instructive: Singh put the whole deal on ice for a year when it appeared likely to topple his government. Interestingly, the nuclear deal is the clearest example of the United States taking a major risk to accommodate India, but it obliged the Indian government to incur life-threatening risks as well.
The basic geopolitical drivers that make this relationship important, however, are still in place. India’s economy is still growing rapidly. To sustain rapid GDP and export growth, it needs strong ties not just with the United States but with East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Relations with China remain turbulent – a bit less strained than six months ago, but still troubled by China’s growing commercial presence and potential military footprint in the Indian Ocean and South Asia. The United States and India share a strong interest in keeping the Indian Ocean secure. Most importantly, neither wants to see Asia dominated by one country, and both want to ensure that they remain part of a network of strong regional partners in South and East Asia.
These are important and enduring interests. They should be the starting point for re-energizing the relationship. In particular:
- Focus on Asia. One of the success stories of India-U.S. ties is an increasingly active and sophisticated dialogue on East Asia. On the day the aircraft decision was announced, the Pentagon spokesman reiterated President Obama’s view that the relationship with India is “an anchor to our approach in Asia.” But the dialogue needs to get beyond talk. Both sides need to weave India more fully into East Asian consultative mechanisms, so that it increasingly becomes part of the fabric of the region.
- Solve some other problems – including some of special interest to the United States. The Obama visit to Delhi in November achieved results across much of the U.S.-India agenda – with two notable exceptions: nuclear liability and trade. Trade is the more tractable of the two. India and the United States have quite different perceptions of “who owes whom” in the trade area. Nonetheless, this would be a good time to resolve some of the hardy perennials – especially those that do not require legislation on the Indian side.
- Build up institutional military ties: Military-to-military ties are somewhat inhibited by the complex U.S. command structure, in which three military commands share responsibility in the Indian Ocean. India in the past has asked to have a liaison relationship with Central Command (which includes the Middle East and the area up through Pakistan). Pacific Command includes responsibility for India; the U.S. has insisted that it remain the primary point of access. This would be a good time to do both – to have India station an officer at Pacific Command and establish liaison with CENTCOM. It would also be a good time to sort out the problems with India’s integration into anti-piracy efforts in the Arabian Sea, a subject of major common interest to both countries.
- Appoint new ambassadors quickly: The U.S. appointment process is agonizingly slow, but without an ambassador, even the most talented diplomats are at a disadvantage. This is especially so if, as has been reported, the Indian ambassador in Washington is scheduled to transfer out this summer. Finding good replacements for both isn’t a routine personnel change, it’s an urgent policy necessity.
Each of these items will require both countries to deviate a bit from their standard way of operating. But that may turn out to be the secret of a successful partnership. India and the United States, each for its own reasons, sees itself as an exceptional country, not “just like everybody else.” Both expect their most important partners to recognize this “specialness.” That doesn’t mean throwing the entire rulebook out the window. But strategically chosen exceptions to the normal modus operandi will demonstrate that each of these partners recognizes the other’s unique character, and is prepared to work with it on that basis.
Teresita and Howard Schaffer
Wonderful website, overall. Great work!
If I can make one comment. Re: biggest ever military sale – yes, it was. But does a single transaction matter in the larger scheme of things?
In terms of other sales – Boeing says, “In 2006, Air India placed India’s largest single commercial airplane order ever with Boeing, for 68 airplanes with a value of $11 billion”.
This, aside from the $4.1 billion sale of C-17s, in addition to billions of dollars of trade now and expected in the future. The overall strategic outlook of the US cannot hinge on the sale of one outdated fighter platform. That’s just plain silly.
Yes, this one matters. Because of the particular importance of the fighter purchase in India’s strategic planning, it was an opportunity to establish a different degree of strategic relationship – or not.
This was a decision based on purely technical aspects – the biggest bang for the buck. Nobody from the Indian side was stopping American companies from offering a better aircraft at a better price!
Teresita,
I would like to turn your attention to the USAF’s recently concluded KC-X selection. A lot of people harped on the same lines-“strategic priorities” favouring the European KC-330 or adhering to the USAF’s guidelines which suited the selection of the Boeing product, now known as the KC-46. We know that the USAF favoured Boeing’s product for a contract worth 35 billion USD, which is more than twice the MMRCA’s value. Did US ties with EADS and its European stakeholders collapse???
The point that is not being addressed is this, what comes first-a strategic partnership or your military’s combat capabilities?? The F-16 is on its way to the retirement community after four glorious decades while the Super hornet was never known as an agile fighter. Did the Indian air force and government err in not selecting older American products? While I don’t agree that the US pushed inferior products to India, the fact remains that these aircraft were not the best of the lot and that matters if you plan to keep them in service for up to 40 years.
It’s amusing that somehow all these “post mortems” of the MMRCA deal seem to ignore the fact that US companies have won the most number of military contracts over the past five years. If Boeing wins contracts to supply Apache and Chinook helicopter and possibly even KC-46s, it will be the single largest defence vendor in India. The US partnership with India will grow. The US contractors, Boeing and Lockheed Martin seem to have gracefully realised it while ironically the think tankers seem to think India should remain obliged!!!
Finally, the US did not do India a favour with the nuclear deal. The US had its own calculations, including commercial ones to push such a deal. As it is the NPT and its associated treaties were coming apart.
>it was an opportunity to establish a different degree of strategic relationship – or not
There appears to be an assumption here that this was the only opportunity and there won’t be another one.
There will be countless other opportunities. Some of them will go in US’s favour and some not. One doesn’t believe that the US officials believe that the world has ended. If they were to disengage now, US will lose out on other opportunities, which will perhaps be more “lucrative” strategically.
Thanks for a fairly balanced US point of view, as always. Ultimately, however, it comes down to the lives of Indian pilots. We did not field the best planes we had to offer. Even the C-17’s that the Indians purchased from us are, perhaps with good reason, technologically toned down versions. And given our otherwise sensible domestic laws and export controls, there is “just too much hassle” involved in dealing with us. From the Indian Air Force’s perspective, choosing the best planes without operational technological restrictions will no doubt save their pilots’ lives in a combat situation.
So, the Indian decision is a signal by the Indian govt. to the US government. What is the US government doing about interpreting that signal and is it interested in addressing the concerns telegraphed by that signal? Or is it business-as-usual, with the US taking a Dullesian with-us or against-us view?
No amount of plane sales can alter the nature of the strategic relatinship between India and US than one simple policy change on the part of US: US use its enormous clout & levearge and force Pakistan to eschew the use of terror as an instrument of state policy against India. Make US aid to Pakistan contingent on its cracking down on Lashkar-e-Toiba. This simple policy change will earn US such enormous goodwilll in India that nothing else can. If US can come around to that, I would say India & US are truly strategic partners, not the sale of some outdated military aircraft to both India and Pakistan, and then watch the fun as India & Pakistan go at each other.
The sale could matter for the India-US partnership. But the Indians are not going to buy into this partnership unless the technology comes on their terms. There is a significant distrust of the US establishment in India because of past sanctions on Indian entities. These bad feelings do not go away overnight and the US has not made the kind of approaches, strategic approaches, in the region that shows to average Indian on the street that US means strategic business with India. Unfortunately, Pakistan continues to be America’s preferred ally. US is unable to get rid of Pakistan from its mind set. Indians are livid with this when I read Indian media reports day after day and year after year. Successive administrations double speak on Pakistani terrorism on Indian soil gets noticed by the average Indian on the street. It is one thing that a state department official talking loosely on the loss of life in Mubain and else where, but it gets to the heart of Indians about America. US has damaged its credibility with the political Indian with a set of policies and a commentariat that puts down Indian sensitivities.
Ms Schaffer: A cogent article.Thank you. Now, here are some of my thoughts, and I would invite you to please share your feedback.
If the US really thinks of India as a strategic partner, why didnt it offer the JSF or the F-15? These two aircrafts are more contemporary and top of the line compared to the 1970’s F-18 and F-16. After all, the JSF and F-15 have been or will be exported to multiple countries. Why enter a competition where the Europeans are providing 21’st century planes, and the US comes up with 1970s vintage. Talk of strategic relationship is fine; but why try to con India by providing vintage stuff?
Secondly, I think the whole momentum to the US-India relationship was provided by the GBW admin; what exactly has Barack Obama done? He came to India after being severely rebuffed by China, and conned by Pakistan, and announces that it is India’s responsibility to ensure American jobs, while railing against Indian IT and pharma companies all the time. The Obama admin has done precious little to keep the India-US ball rolling.
Finally, why tether the US-India relationship to just one deal? The US has won deals for P8s, C17s, C130s, and will probably win more deals for helicopters etc, but have the US companies agreed to transfer of technology like the European ones.
In conclusion, I would like to point out that a strategic partnership requires both sides to respond; it cant just be the US gouging India of money for employing American workers alone. India is not Pakistan or some middle-east sheikhdom – if there is no value in this partnership, India might as well choose different partners.
What does the strategic relationship entail?
What does India have to give in return? Give up its long standing relationships, perhaps, like the one with Iran of oil-supply?
India is the buyer here. Why must India attempt to please the seller?
The author has acknowledged the technical superiority of the choice that IAF made and also the unreliability of USA (Tarapore). How, then, can an argument be made for giving up better piece of machinery which will be good for India in the long run for something as nebulous as a “strategic” relationship?
The strategic relationship that India has is with India.
1. The machinery and its attendant technology spinoffs, will serve India for a long time. A obsolete technology, such as the one that US offered. will be an utter waste of money.
2. A strategic relationship is generally governed by more powerful nation’s (US, in this case) interests, and rightly so. They may not be aligned with India’s.
“the nuclear deal is the clearest example of the United States taking a major risk to accommodate India”
How is dismantling a control regime that the US actively supported to establish for the purpose (amongst others?) of shackling India supposed to be a great “accommodation” of India when it merely corrects a hostile act of penalizing India for acts India was not treaty bound to follow?
Let the US make a small beginning to establish its bonafides of “accommodating” India by a complete cessation of military and civil aid to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Given that the US has for some time now been victim of the duplicitous behaviour of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan that should not be a great ask.
Very good article as you point out that the decision was based on technical merit and the PM can’t veto the IAF’s decision due to political fallout.
The PM and political leadership is ready for a US-India strategic partnership, but the Indian armed services aren’t ready to sacrifice technical merit for the sake of strategic partnership. However, strategic partnership is a two-way street. Both Boeing and Lockheed did not pit their state-of-the-art (F22 & F-35) fighter aircraft for evaluation.
I would like to point out as the US ambassador to India has stated: “There is the possibility for $10-12 billion in defense sales in the next few years (C-17s. C-130Js, Apache helicopters, etc.)” and this will certainly help promote the strategic partnership over time. Therefore, the strategic partnership is beginning and not ending.
RSG,
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) which is part of the government cleared the shortlist, not the IAF. So cut the PM some slack; he or his subordinates could have made a technical call.
It’s a myth on some forums that the IAF somehow made this decision in the face of supposed political pressure; believing that is an insult to both the government and the military.
Excellent overview! US winning this competition would have improved safety & security of the SE Asia region and potentially avoid future conflicts.
It is time for deep introspection to find out why US lost the competition and what needs to be changed to gain a stronger foot hold in the Indian defence market.
Dear Teresita
I agree with you this was an opportunity for both US and India to establish a different level of strategic relationship and I failed to understand why the US did not offer F-35.
Great Website..
Peter,
US companies have won more contracts in India than competitors from Europe, Russia or Israel since 2005; people criticising the MMRCA decision won’t mention that.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Decks-cleared-for-biggest-ever-Indo-US-defence-deal/articleshow/8280558.cms
The net worth of those deals approach, if not exceed that of the MMRCA deal.
The F-35 was not offered since it would not be available for India in the set time frame (induction by 2015), it did not fit costs or technology transfer requirements. In short it was not ready. The Indian military selected newer European designs over American aircraft which were more or less at the end of their development curve with the F-35 on the horizon.
MMRCA would form around 30% of Indian Airforce’s fighter strength. Now to buy them from an unreliable and bully country like US who:
1.) Provided nuclear delivery platforms (f16) in 70s and looked away while chinese were giving pakistan nuke capability.
2.)The brutal way LCA time was kicked out of the offices when sanctions were put against India in 1999.
3.) The way US has been been giving arms AID to pakistan AMRAAM 120 C-5s (of course to fight Al quaida and Taliban Airforce) or anti ship missiles to fight Taliban, Alqaida Navies.
Thanks but no thanks, it would have been very unfair to other competitor countries/companies spending money on technical trials going on in India, to have rejected their superior Jets against inferior F18, f16 for the sake of parnership.
Not to forget CISMOA, EULA, EUMA etc.
No US can’t be trusted another PM in 9 years may decide to conduct nuclear tests, or go to war with pakistan and US would have been able to render useless 25% of IAF’s fighters ’cause US didn’t approve of it.
UK is US partner whom they gave Trident missiles. No MTCR, no EULA, no EUMA, no CISMOA for them.
To India US wasn’t ready to make any offer to waiver any of these draconian laws. So bye bye US
Actually, the U.S. has a CISMOA, EULA, EUMA, etc with the UK.
But UK is also called America’s lapdog. The Indians don’t want to be one such. That is the fundamental difference.