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Deepening Alliance Between United States and India Faces Headwinds in 2020s

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It’s no secret that the United States and India have been steadily deepening their security partnership for over a decade. Washington sees in New Delhi a regional ally it hopes will help contain Beijing’s rising military and economic power. 

Unlike the deeply troubled U.S.-Saudi relationship, U.S.-Indian cooperation has long received bipartisan support in U.S. congress and presidency. But that relationship now faces headwinds that may hinder continued growth as we enter the 2020s.

A Brief Sketch of Modern U.S.-India Cooperation

During the Cold War, India became a military client of the Soviet Union and Europe, while by 1971 the Nixon administration overtly supported India’s rival, Pakistan. Pakistan was also allied with China, which had seized Indian territory in the Himalaya’s in a brief 1962 war.

Following the end of the Cold War, chilly U.S.-India relations began to thaw, particularly following U.S. mediation of the Kargil War in 1999 and the striking of a civilian nuclear technology treaty in 2005. Meanwhile, U.S.-Pakistan ties deteriorated due to its role in sponsoring the Taliban in Afghanistan, culminating in a reduction in  U.S. military aid in 2018.

India’s relation with China remains strained due to the legacy of the 1962 war; China’s military buildup of road infrastructure and military forces on the border with India; Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road initiative, which includes a road through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir; and Beijing’s military ties with Islamabad. 

Thus, the U.S. sees in India a regional heavyweight that may counterbalance China’s rising power. India’s relation with China remains strained due to the legacy of the 1962 war; China’s military buildup of road infrastructure and military forces on the border with India; Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road initiative, which includes a road through Pakistan-controlled Kashmir; and Beijing’s military ties with Islamabad. 

That India was also the world’s largest democracy made it easier for the U.S.-India alliance to grow rapidly with bipartisan support.  Recently, that alliance has yielded a 2016 military base-sharing agreement, transfers of sensitive defense technologies, and increasingly routine cooperation in military exercises.

But this natural match is now facing growing pains. We’ll first look at problematic political factors, then at industrial and strategic challenges.


New Delhi’s Aggressive New Foreign Policy Doesn’t Look Successful Abroad

In the aughts, India sustained several devastating attacks by Pakistani-based terror groups without militarily retaliating. But since 2014, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has touted a new willingness to use force in response to attacks.

 After a deadly militant attack in 2016, Indian infantry launched a “surgical strike” across the Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani controlled Kashmir. Then in 2019, following a deadly attack in India by a local Kashmiri, Indian warplanes bombed a militant camp in Balakot, the first Indian airstrike in Pakistani-controlled territory in 48 years.

It remains unclear whether either cross-border raids was militarily effective. After the Balakot raid, the Pakistani Air Force retaliated with a cross-border air strike of its own.  When Indian jets gave chase, a dated Indian MiG-21 fighter was shot down and its pilot captured

The aerial skirmishes might easily have escalated from there, putting the two nuclear armed states one step dangerously closer to a war. Fortunately, Pakistan returned the captured pilot and the crisis abated.

More recently Defense Minister Rajnath Singh warned India might reconsider India’s No First Strike policy on the use of nuclear weapons. Should that happen, that would increase the risk India might initiate a nuclear conflict—Pakistan already does not have such a policy

While Modi’s assertive measure have won him domestic support for his reelection campaign, they conveyed an impression of rash and often ineffective use of force to international observers, seemingly intended more to satisfy domestic constituencies rather than form a cohesive foreign policy.

Modi’s Anti-Muslim Policies Are Threatening Bipartisan Support for India

 In advancing his Hindu nationalist politics, Modi has also enacted policies at the expense of India’s over 200 million Muslim citizens (roughly 16% of the population). 

Following years of mounting unrest in Muslim-majority Kashmir, Modi doubled down in August 2019 by passing a bill stripping the region of its special autonomous status and pre-emptively detaining locals expected to protest the move. 

In southeast India, the BJP is pursuing policies that could result in the deportation of millions of Muslim Bengalis, including many born in India.

Most recently, India streamlined refugee admission processes for all religious groups except Muslims

New Delhi has cut off internet access to hundreds of millions of Indian citizens for weeks at time in response to protests, and has kept Kashmir on an internet blackout.

And the government has replied to criticisms of these policies with bluster and denials.

While the Trump administration is little disposed to criticize policies that target Muslims for discrimination and deportation, these policies are souring Democratic enthusiasm for India. An October 2019 congressional hearing on human rights in Asia was devoted almost exclusively to criticizing Modi’s policies.

Later, India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stated he would only address the House of Representatives if it excluded Washington state representative Pramila Jayapal—the first Indian-American woman in congress, and a critic of Modi’s Kashmir policy. Result: no address.

For two decades, strategic partnership between the U.S. and India has received bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans.  However, if India’s BJP party cements its tendency to play ball with just one of the U.S.’s two major political parties, support for the alliance may fluctuate depending on which party is in power. 

Saudi Arabia’s diminishing fortunes show that a sufficiently poor human rights record can eventually destabilize even an alliance sweetened with tens of billions of dollars of defense contracts. Speaking of which…

U.S.-India Defense Cooperation Has Yielded Only Modest Results

The promise of U.S.-India technology transfers and arms sales via a Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) has failed to deliver major deals despite much talk to the contrary.

In the last decade, India has purchased 18 P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol planes, 22 AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters (which may increase to 39), fifteen CH-47F heavy transport helicopters, eleven C-17 Globemaster transport jets, and twelve C-130J cargo planes  for use by Special Forces. While significant, these purchases don’t extend to core equipment of the Indian armed forces like jet fighters or armored vehicles.

For example, in 2018 India ducked away from a proposed a deal to co-produce Lockheed F-16 Block 70 fighters (rebranded as F-21s) in India to replenish its fighter squadrons.

Meanwhile, in 2019 India purchased Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile systems despite the U.S. having just sanctioned Turkey strongly for the same thing. Russia has convey to New Delhi that if it doesn’t maintain its military relationship, Moscow is happy to sell more arms to Pakistan instead.

Nonetheless, at a recent conference, the U.S. authorized new transfers of defense technologies related to drone swarms, maritime surveillance system, and short-range air defense systems countering drones and incoming projectiles. Such systems are the forefront of defense innovation—but that only matters if the authorization bears fruits in the form of  concrete deals.

Additionally, the Indian Navy and Air Force may also still end up procuring Super Hornets or F-21 multi-role fighters, though these face competition from European and Russian designs. 

Widening Capability Gap with China

Despite tougher rhetoric from New Delhi, the pace of India’s military modernization has been slow and China’s has not. India went from spending 66% of what China spent on defense in 2000 to just 26% in 2017. 

As a result, a 2019 study by the Center for New American Security concluded that the gap between China and India’s military power has only increased since the U.S. began its alliance with India.

While China is deploying stealth aircraft, long-range bombers and hypersonic missiles, Indian fighter strength will dip to just 26 squadrons in 2021, far below the target 42 squadrons as India retires accident-prone MiG-21 Bison and MiG-27 aircraft without having replacement aircraft to take their place. This despite having initiated a search for a replacement back in 2001.

While India has less than one-quarter China’s GDP, a major underlying issue is India’s notoriously slow, politicized and dysfunctional defense procurement process—one that shows few signs of improving.

The strategic environment may also be transforming adversely as China has negotiated deals for military bases encircling India (the ‘String of Pearls’ strategy) in places like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Siri Lanka and even Djibouti in Africa. 

To be fair, India has made strides in some areas. It recently deployed its first domestically built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine and an anti-ballistic missile defense system. It co-developed with Russia the supersonic Brahmos cruise missile, and it plans to eventually launch a third, catapult-equipped aircraft carrier

Still, the U.S. may be expecting too much of India as a bulwark against China given New Delhi's more limited resources, challenging neighborhood, and domestic problems. India also has its own foreign policy interests, and must balance defense expenditures versus combating endemic poverty and fostering economic growth. 

Still, Washington and New Delhi both doubtlessly would prefer that India remain the dominant maritime power in the Indian Ocean, and maintain its current Himalayan borders—objectives that should be doable given smart investments.


Undoubtedly, there remain compelling strategic and political motivations behind U.S.-India cooperation, and for now the prevailing momentum is for further deepening of that relationship. However, left unaddressed the above issues could spell trouble for the entente between Washington and New Delhi in the coming decade.

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