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India has repeatedly avoided taking sides in the Russia – Ukraine war. In February, India, along with China and the UAE, abstained from voting on a UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine sponsored by the USA and Albania. This has been a consistent approach, with the latest silence in October when disputed referendums in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine to accede to Russia came up for discussion. Over the months, however, Indian foreign service officials have started voicing out against particular acts of Russian aggression, such as the alleged killing of civilians in the Bucha region in April.
Taking sides is challenging when both are this formidable. On one hand is Russia, which is India’s second-largest supplier of crude oil and the source of nearly 60% of all military imports. The other is Ukraine, the last frontier in Eurasia of the USA-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). If its military firepower is not convincing enough, the USA has also reiterated that it will not distinguish between friend and foe in applying economic blockades for siding with Russia—a domestic law to this effect is named, rather tactlessly, Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). This is particularly threatening for India’s ruling regime, which seeks to remain the USA’s loyal ‘strategic partner’ in South Asia. This is why India continues its doctrine of strategic silence, also known as Non Alignment. Is Non Alignment nimble foreign policy-making? Or rather, are we being forced our hand so that the Indian ruling class can remain in bed with the neoliberal dream? The military dimensions of this question are summarised below.
QUAD Goals
In the post-liberalisation era, defence preparedness failures during the Kargil War were used to justify private participation in strategic sectors like defence manufacturing. 100% FDI was allowed in certain hi-tech areas of defence production in 2005 and, in 2007, 12 Indian-origin firms were given the status of ‘Raksha Udyog Ratna’ to bring them on par with Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs) and Ordnance Factories (OFs). In the name of ‘Make in India’, in 2015, the Modi government allowed foreign military giants (called OEMs) to bid for making submarines, fighter jets, helicopters and armoured vehicles, in alliance with Indian-owned ‘strategic partners’. To sweeten the deal, DPSUs were barred from bidding on fighter jets and helicopters while OFs were ordered to stop producing 87 items. Like in colonial times, even customs and tax exemptions to Indian DPSUs and OFs were withdrawn to provide a ‘level playing field’ to foreign firms and their Indian partners.
Still unsatisfied, a consortium of 400 major American corporations including Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed Martin pushed back against a ‘technology transfer’ clause where OEMs would have to share proprietary know-how and software as part of military manufacturing projects. Ultimately, the Defence Procurement Policy by the NDA regime adopted, what commentators describe as, a vague definition of ‘indigenous’ technology. A foreign OEM can claim indigeneity by tying-up with a wholly-owned Indian subsidiary as its strategic partner or source only component parts from Indian markets while retaining control over source codes and critical technologies. Such deals harm Indian self-reliance rather than bolster it. Even this has not been enough for those seeking mega-profits from war. In the Rafale deal, the union government was arm-twisted into accepting 36 fighter jets at a cost of $8 billion, without any transfer of technology, instead of the originally proposed 126, where 18 would be bought from the French aviation giant Dassault and the other 108 manufactured in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. So much for Make in India!
Ever since the Indo-US Nuclear Deal and the first India-US Defence Framework adopted in 2005, Indian elites have repeatedly bowed down to American interests for private gain. The Modi regime quickly solidified this merger with the USA between 2016-20. The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA, 2016) allows the American military to use Indian defence facilities and logistics on credit and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA, 2018) provides for sharing encrypted military communications. Together with the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA, 2020), these three agreements enable almost total interoperability between the American and Indian military, as it has with its NATO allies. The USA, which operates 750 known foreign military bases in 85 countries, has bombed 14 countries since 1980 and accounts for 38% of the world’s military expenditure (almost three times that of the next biggest military power, China) is now pushing to set up another base in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The takeover will then be complete.
India is the only QUAD country, which also includes Australia, Japan and USA, that shares a border with China. Indians will face collateral damage from any unprovoked American aggression in the South China Sea, as already witnessed by Chinese takeover of close to 1,000 sq. km. formerly-Indian territory in Ladakh’s Depsang Plains, Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso and Chushul regions in 2020. American guns are being fired on our shoulders.
Russian Bears
Apart from its dependence on the USA, India is also the world’s largest arms market for Russia, spending $5.51 billion on Russian weapons, out of a total military import budget of $12.4 billion between 2018-21. A separate deal worth almost an equal amount was signed for the S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems. This deal set off alarm bells in NATO because this technology uses the powerful Russian radar system and transmits sensitive airspace data. The USA has repeatedly threatened the stick for going ahead with this deal—it is deliberating CAATSA sanctions on India, as it imposed on Turkey earlier—along with $500 million defence ‘aid’ carrots.
This raises a serious question regarding the feasibility of an import-dependent defence strategy. The telecom industry remains a perfect example of such failures where in spite of 100% FDI, local industry with intellectual property rights within the country has less than a 3% share and close to 90% is imported. Even in relatively low tech sectors like automobiles and telecom, any real transfer of technology is almost non-existent, and the Indian big bourgeois remains dependent on foreign capitalists.
In this context, major strikes by DPSU and OF workers have challenged the ‘nationalist’ credentials of the RSS BJP regime. They underline that technological sovereignty in strategic sectors like defence can only be built by strengthening the public sector. The success of Godavari guided missile frigates, Vikram offshore patrol boats and submarines, including nuclear-powered ones, built indigenously and inducted into the Indian Navy as well as INSAS rifles are proof of this. But beyond building defence capacity, the aims and priority of defence and foreign policy must be reoriented on a sovereign basis. Non Alignment, instead of hiding the inability of the Indian leaders to go beyond the dictates of the big imperialist powers, must become reoriented in an anti-imperialist direction against the NATO-led ‘unipolar’ world order as well as the ‘multipolar’ forms imperialism may take on with the rise of China and Russia. Peace and the survival of future generations depends on this.
