Posted on 12/25/2002, 1:08:34 AM by milestogo
India-US missile defence talks ready to take off[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2002 05:27:49 AM ] |
NEW DELHI: India and the US will begin a new dialogue on missile defence. The first round, to be held in Washington on 15-16 January, will feature an inter-agency team from Delhi headed by the joint secretary (disarmament) Sheelkant Sharma from the foreign ministry. India has been keen on missile defence for a while, which had prompted its enthusiastic response to George Bush's NMD proposal last year. Living in a tough neighbourhood, India's argument for a defensive shield goes like this: it would obviate the necessity of sinking large sums of money into an offensive capability with ballistic missiles. Besides, it is in consonance with India's nuclear posture of no-first-use and only a 'survivable' second strike capability. It was also why India reacted almost positively to the White House strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction, focussing on the missile defence part of it. It is not merely Pakistan that India wants a shield against, strategists even point to the possibility of China emerging as a potential threat in the foreseeable future. Even the US' renewed focus on non-proliferation has not fazed India. "India is on the right side of WMD proliferation, it's other countries that need to be worried," say senior government sources. But that's not the reason for India's new found confidence. After several months of Indian non-papers on the holy trinity of nuclear, space and high-technology co-operation running aground in the bureaucracy of the US State Department and receiving what is known as "tactical responses", new light has appeared at the end of the tunnel. It took the recent US visit of the national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, and a three-hour meeting with the US national security adviser Condoleeza Rice to give a strategic push to bilateral issues. It was a strategic choice that India and the US made, and central to this decision was an agreement to not drag Pakistan in, clouding Indo-US issues. Mr Mishra proposed a Pakistan-free engagement which was accepted with alacrity. The US, in its turn, has agreed to put under the scanner at the political (read cabinet) level, bilateral issues. It was pointed out to Steven Hadley, Rice's deputy, on his latest visit that Indo-US issues tended to get lost in the State department, not for lack of interest, perhaps, but because the war on terrorism and Iraq tends to put Pakistan rather than India on their front-burner. In his surprised response, Mr Hadley even said that these issues had never made it to the committee of deputies, (comprising Amitage, Wolfowitz, Libby and Hadley). This gave Mr Mishra's visit to the US a greater consequence. Among the issues that India would like a US political decision will be the Arrow missile defence system that Indian wants to buy from Israel. Though the Pentagon sees little problem with it, Foggybottom has been agonising over an altered strategic landscape in this region. Among a slew of increased interaction in the coming months will include an Indo-US dialogue on East Asia, specifically China. Not that Beijing is particularly happy about this, but as India points out, the US regularly confers with China on South Asia. Nalin Surie from the MEA, who heads the East Asia division, will travel to Washington in February to start the dialogue. The Bush administration has made no secret of the fact that it sees India as a strategic counter to China in Asia. Increasingly, India too has expanded its own strategic vision in this region and an institutionalised dialogue with the US will only help. |
Sounds like a non-starter to me. India is not trustworthy, they were in Moscow's corner during the cold war. Missile Defense technology is much easier to counter if you have a quantifiable appreciation of the defense's capabilities. If you sell the systems to India, you might as well sell it to China, North Korea and Russia.
I personally like the Indians. But I worked on the Modernization of Terminal Services (MATS) Bombay/Dehli. The government of India can't pour concrete, can't install prime power, can't make a decision or reach a conclusion. And they have almost no foreign exchange to buy anything with.
There's an enormous gulf between being academically proficient and being capable engineers/managers. Americans are, IMHO, the world's best managers, with the possible exception of the Swiss.
You have to work with foreign bureaucrats to appreciate how generally effective American bureaucracies are in comparison.
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