Modi's Challenge: Reshaping Indo-Russian defence ties
INDIA’S TIES with Russia has been a time-tested one for over six decades, founded on rock-solid grounds of mutual dependence, strategic cooperation and support for technological advancement. But that unrelenting friendship is suddenly seeing signs of losing sheen in the wake of developments of the past decade.
Since the 2005 civil nuclear agreement with the US, India is being seen globally as getting comparatively closer to the United States of America. The signs of such a tilt can be seen primarily in the defence sector, one of the key measures for geopolitical alignments.
In the decade between 2005 and 2015, India has bought arms and military platforms worth $17 billion from the US. That success in military sales has helped the US to edge past Russia and emerge as the largest supplier of arms to India in the three years ending 2014, according to figures submitted to the Indian Parliament a year ago.
The same year, India also emerged as the second largest defence customer for the US military industry, just behind Saudi Arabia, according to Pentagon’s figures. That trend has continued in 2015, too, with India signing two key military deals cumulatively worth $3.1-billion with the Obama administration and American aerospace major Boeing for 22 Apache attack helicopters and 15 Chinook heavy lift choppers, this September.
India had decided to reject Russia’s offers to meet its needs for attack and heavy lift helicopters, preferring to go with the American offers instead. This shift in favour of American military products was also witnessed when India chose to buy Boeing’s C-17s for heavy lift cargo transport aircraft requirement over Ilyushin IL-76, which already is the workhorse of the Indian Air Force fleet.
India is now buying more and more US weapons, highlighting the converging strategic interests between the two nations, which had strained relations during the Cold War. The stronger military ties between India and the US represent a shift for India’s approach, as it looks to reduce dependence on Russia for weapons and counter growing Chinese military capabilities. Russia and the Soviet Union supplied about 70 percent of its imports since 1950, figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show.
No wonder, this Indian preference for American military products in the past decade has irked Russians to unfathomable levels. Russian leaders have been now publicly talking about how they had come to the aid of India at times of need and crisis to build military technology and production capabilities, and to support war efforts such as the 1999 Kargil battle with Pakistan.
Not just content with their verbal outpourings, Russia has begun to look at other military markets — ones it would never have touched even with a barge pole, respecting India’s sensitivities — such as Pakistan. In a way, Russia was expressing its displeasure. But that anger has gone beyond just rhetoric. A year ago, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Islamabad — the first ever by a Russian defence minister.
His visit came about after noises were heard that Russia is now willing to sell Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan’s air force. Shoigu landed in Islamabad ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi in December 2014, and signed the firstever defence cooperation agreement with Pakistan. The iron curtain had come down crashing with that one stroke of a pen. Since then, there have been recent Russian media reports of Moscow looking at a possible combat planes sale, the Su-35 in particular, to Islamabad.
If that Russia-Pakistan deal came as a shock, or even surprise, India never displayed the unease, although it came out with usual diplomatic utterances of how Russia was an all-weather friend. When Putin was in New Delhi, he made a generous offer to help India make the Kamov Ka-226T light military choppers through its domestic industry, which was readily accepted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It is in this background that the Modi-Putin summit meeting this December will be viewed with greater interest, even as India is making a bid to placate an upset Russia over New Delhi’s growing tilt towards Washington. Ahead of Modi’s visit Moscow, India’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar visited Russia in the first week of November for his annual bilateral talks with his counterpart Shoigu. Ahead of that visit, Parrikarheaded Defence Acquisition Council gave its nod to proposals worth $2.2 billion from the country’s three armed forces, including for upgrade of 20 IL- 76 and six IL-78 planes, both of Russian origin.
That and more are seen as India’s bid to placate an upset Russia that has recently lost out on key Indian defense deals, as stated earlier. In an interview to Russian news agency, TASS, ahead of his Russia visit, Parrikar confirmed that he would talk to his Russian counterpart about a possible deal on S-400 Truimf (NATO name SA-21 Growler) surface-to-air missile system, apart from making progress on the stalled Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft deal. The details of these deals are yet to be made public, though.
India is once again looking at Russia to lease a new Akula-II nuclear-powered attack submarine, to complement INS Chakra that was leased in early 2012 for 10 years. India may also approach Russia once again for its generous help in building six news nuclear-powered submarines that is envisaged to boost the Indian Navy’s underwater fighting capabilities. These have shown how Russia remains an important defense partner for India.
Defence arena is where Modi would face the challenge of redirecting the trajectory of the India- Russia ties that has been way off the mark in the recent years. That’s also why Modi government’s decisions clearing around $60-billion worth of arms purchases in the last 18 months include several projects that India will be doing with Russia, including the Ka-226T helicopters, indicate the necessity for such a change in direction in defence ties.
For, too much is at stake in the Indo-Russian ties for both nations. It can be understood well that India has the needed purchasing power to modernise its armed forces and Russian military industrial complex would benefit much from the business that Indian armed forces can provide. The same cannot be said in the case of Pakistan.