US pact drags India into muddy waters

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-01-071014.html



US pact drags India into muddy waters
By Ninan Koshy
Oct 7, '14

The decision by India and the United States to renew and extend for 10 years the 2005 defense cooperation agreement between India and the United States was announced last month during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's to Washington. US President Barack Obama and Modi stated their intention to "expand defense cooperation to bolster, national, regional and global security". The two leaders asked their defense teams to develop plans for "more ambitious programs and activities".

The 2005 agreement signaled an important stage in the implementation of the policy of the US "to help India become a major world power", declared by the George W Bush administration. It assigned the place for India as a junior partner in the grand US-led coalition. It was the condition precedent for the much-trumpeted India-US nuclear deal.

Renewal of the agreement assumes special significance today in view of the US's continuing military entanglement in West Asia and its "pivot" to Asia-Pacific, a region of which South Asia is made an integral part by Washington's cartographers.

Leaders and senior officials of the US had repeatedly stated from September 2001, when India declared whole-hearted support to the "War on Terror", that the India-US strategic relationship is essentially a military relationship on American terms and primarily in American interests.

Ambassador Robert Blackwill made it abundantly clear on May 12, 2003, in a leader page article in The Hindu on the eve of the end of his assignment in India: "The strategic objective is to have an Indian military that is capable of operating effectively alongside its American counterpart." The cooperation is for "future joint military operations". All this, he candidly admitted, was "in America's interest". [1]