Arming without Aiming: India's Military Modernization

America and Indian Rearmament

164 chapter eight America and Indian Rearmament Over the last sixty years American attitudes toward the modernization of India’s military and the idea of a strategically important India have waxed and waned. The Roosevelt administration at first sought early independence for India from the British, but later moderated this view in deference to its British ally. It did spend huge amounts of money to build up India’s infrastructure, including airfields, modernizing the railways and the arsenals and the aircraft repair facility in Bangalore, then Asia’s largest. Nehru chose not to build on this relationship. Subsequent administrations (Truman, Eisenhower) valued Indian democracy and national integrity, and supported these with the largest of all foreign aid programs, but were irritated at Nehru’s nonalignment and confounded by India’s military stalemate with Pakistan, which had become a formal American ally. Very briefly during the Kennedy administration, a vision emerged of an India allied against the Communist (Chinese) threat, and New Delhi received large amounts of grant military assistance, sales, and some military production facilities. The Arthur D. Little Report, still classified , chronicled the effort. It was also in the Kennedy administration that the United States briefly considered encouraging an Indian nuclear weapons program. In the end, India’s unwillingness to move very far, if at all, on Kashmir with Pakistan was frustrating; and after Nixon’s opening to China, India was relegated to the strategic margins, and its special relationship with the Soviet Union confirmed that status. The Carter administration zeroed in on India’s sole military innovation and moved to actively oppose the Indian nuclear program. This policy 08-0402-7 chap8.indd 164 7/12/10 5:09 PM america and indian rearmament / 165 continued through 1998. It was buttressed by the opinion that povertystricken India had no business rearming, let alone seeking a nuclear weapon. Why should the United States help one of the poorest countries (in per capita income) in the world to acquire modern weapons? India had been on the foreign aid dole for forty years. In the absence of a common strategic threat, there was no reason why the United States should encourage Indian military modernization. Doing so, administration after administration concluded, would also fuel an arms race with Pakistan. Transforming the U.S.-India Relationship In December 1990, Assistant Secretary of Defense Henry Rowen visited India, followed by a visit by the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Claude Kickleighter. Kickleighter prepared a proposal for expanded U.S.-Indian defense cooperation, including an annual exchange of visits, regular seminars and discussions, and joint training and participation in military exercises. A number of visits by senior Indian and American officers followed, and in May 1992, the two navies conducted their first joint exercise. These were efforts designed to help India modernize its armed forces, but they did not stem from a desire to see India evolve into a strategically more assertive state. The conflict with Pakistan still loomed large, and the United States was reluctant to once again arm both sides of an arms race. Nevertheless, the Indian interest in military-relevant technology was accommodated. After India’s 1998 nuclear tests, the Clinton administration engaged in the most extended strategic dialogue to date, a dialogue that took place before, during, and after the 1999 Kargil War.1 We have discussed the 1999 Kargil crisis in chapters 1 and 2 in the context of Indian military reform efforts, but the crisis also had profound implications for U.S.-Indian relations. Until the 1990s the Indian services justified their requests for equipment as preparations for an American attack on India; almost all Indian strategists saw the United States as strategically hostile. The beginning of military-to-military cooperation in the latter days of the Clinton administration, plus Clinton’s prompt, public, and strong support for the Indian position on Kargil, altered these perceptions. India found it helpful to have the United States in its corner ; it was no longer risky to talk about emulating American military practices , even if suspicions remained regarding American policy. The Singh-Talbott talks and America’s forthright pro-India position on Kargil made room for an initiative by the Department of Defense, which 08-0402-7 chap8.indd 165 7/12/10 5:09 PM 166 / america and indian rearmament proposed an increase in military-to-military relations, perhaps as a way of mending fences after...