India must debate embrace of US

During the recent visit of US defence secretary Ashton Carter, the Modi government has agreed in principle to sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA). This is causing serious concern even in quarters that seek a close collaborative relationship with the United States as a democratic force and the world’s most advanced repository of technology, knowledge and finance that has the greatest military, political and diplomatic clout in the world in spite of intimations of the putative decline in US authority internationally.

This concern flows from the conceptual understanding that signing such an agreement, expected in coming weeks or months, willynilly dovetails the Indian military into the Pentagon’s operations which is going on in practically every theatre of the world since the end of World War II. Under LEMOA, we will be offering the US Navy and Air Force refuelling, repair and rest bases, and get reciprocal favours on the basis of payments — all in an umbrella framework, and not on a case-by-case basis. But what is wrong with the latter?

In anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa, India’s naval ships have already used US refuelling facilities on payment basis. Indian security specialists and the Navy and Air Force establishment have long been uneasy about having to cede sovereignty in the military sphere through a permanent logistics deal. Many think of Pakistan’s Jacobabad airbase in Sind which has almost been under American control since years.

It is useful to consider that even in the heyday of nonalignment under Nehru and Indira Gandhi, India did not get into this sort of a military relationship with the Soviet Union, with which we had a close political understanding which yielded us the incalculable advantage of the Soviet veto in our favour in the UN Security Council on the vital Kashmir issue in the face of the US-led Western bloc being on a rampage against us.

Such a military embrace of USSR did not ensue even from the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Cooperation and Mutual Assistance signed when the US sent a flotilla to the Bay of Bengal to threaten us over Bangladesh’s liberation.

LEMOA is a part of a garland of three agreements, along with CISMOA and BECA, which deal with interchangeable communications, sensors and satellite coordination, deemed by the US to be “foundational” if defence and security relations are to be enhanced. How much have times changed exactly — with the USSR gone and China the new kid on the block — to warrant a mutually inter-penetrative pact with the world’s most definitive global power? Let’s not duck a national debate on this.