Shoring up trust with Russia

MK Bhadrakumar
Former ambassador

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's informal meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Sochi last week principally aimed at sequestering the India-Russia strategic ties from predators. It must be said with satisfaction that the discussions shored up mutual trust. Much preparatory work went into the Sochi summit. In a manner of speaking, this has been the finest hour in National Security Adviser Ajit Doval's peregrination on the diplomatic arena during the past four-year period.  

Doval personally handled the preparations from the Indian side and visited Moscow more than once in the recent weeks in the run-up to the Sochi meet on May 21. To summon a Biblical metaphor, when it was perceived that "a little cloud about the size of a man's hand" was rising from the sea, Elijah shouted to get going - "lest the rain stop you." The little cloud, indeed, was the spectre of the US' sanctions against Russia haunting the longstanding and profound defence partnership between India and Russia. 

Sanction as a tool of statecraft is as old as the hills.  The author of the classic study of sanctions, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, traces the history all the way back to at least 432 BC in ancient Greece when the Athenian statesman and general Pericles issued the so-called "Megarian decree" to impose economic sanctions against neighbouring Megara, ostensibly to punish the abduction of three Arcasian slave women. Historians variously say that Athen's motive would have been to take revenge for the Megarians' strategic autonomy and equally, that it was a deliberate provocation against Sparta (which was allied with strategically located Megara) just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC.) The chronicler of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides treats Sparta's growing fear of Athenian imperial surge as the real cause of that epochal event in classical history. 

How far President Donald Trump is conversant with Thucydides we do not know, but US sanctions against Russia are motivated by much the same factors that prompted Pericles. Sanctions are the stuff of political dissimulation. The motivations behind them are seldom what they are stated to be. The ulterior objectives are invariably self-serving. Sanctions are risky, double-edged swords. The policymakers in Delhi understand the complexity of the situation surrounding the US sanctions against the Russian arms industry and their perceived "collateral" effect on India's cooperation with Russia. Russian reports hint that the principal aim of the Sochi meet — to shore up trust and mutual confidence in the relationship — has been realised. 

On the eve of Modi's departure for Sochi, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tina Kaidanow said in Washington: "CAATSA (American law on sanctions against Russian defence industry) is a feature and we need to take it seriously. The (Trump) administration is always bound by law. I'm hoping that not just India, but all of the partners we engage with will understand that we will have to evaluate any potential large defence purchase from Russia seriously because that's what the law demands of us." Why such angst? It is only a $4.5-billion deal, which is "peanuts" for the US with an economy of $19.42 trillion. The point is, defence trade is not really about business. Fundamentally, it aims at aligning the US' national security and foreign policy objectives with economic imperatives of support for its defence industrial base and for the broader economy. Curiously, arms market comprises only a tiny slice of world trade — around $100 billion annually (US' share is around $45 billion) — in comparison with cars ($1.35 trillion) or pharmaceuticals ($613 billion). Besides, defence trade is an inefficient employment generator.   

But defence trade becomes a powerful latent foreign policy tool. The US export control system is highly effective and is frequently used for influencing the end-user's foreign policy. (This is why the US, more than any other arms exporter, doesn't transfer cutting-edge weapons knowhow even to its closest NATO allies.) To quote Jonathan D Caverley, Associate Professor of Strategy, United States Naval War College and Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "US arms exports rely on a simple bargain: Clients join an American-dominated global supply chain in return for better value weapons, larger orders of subcomponents from local firms, and access to leading-edge weapons technology. These smaller states, in turn, surrender to the United States large swathes of their foreign and defence policies... The process is characterised by hard bargaining and by a considerable degree of coercion by the United States."

Defence trade is the stepping stone to building a robust partnership that the US' Indo-Pacific strategy requires. It is an important tool to build "interoperability" — that is, shared understanding of doctrine, command and control dynamics and standard operating procedures through combined planning and training — and it helps to align the Indian military closely with the Pentagon by creating shared platforms to work in concert with the US' allies in Asia. On the contrary, procurements like the S-400 missile defence system from Moscow involving really advanced military technology of a kind that India cannot possibly access from any other country would create an added dimension to our relationship with Russia lasting decades altogether, since the two militaries get "locked in" over the lifespan of the platform on training and maintenance. 

The "long, candid and friendly" talks in Sochi took the bull by the horns. It appears that India has held out the assurance to Russia that it doesn't factor geostrategic considerations into its defence procurement decisions, which will continue to remain focused on the needs of our armed forces to modernise to meet their long-term operational needs, and to leverage procurements to accelerate a domestic defence industry. This is how Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lvrov paraphrased the conversation: "President Putin and Prime Minister Modi expressed their unequivocal support for the new security and cooperation structure in the Asia-Pacific region to be based on the principles of non-alignment, openness and equal and indivisible security for all. In this vein, the sides mentioned the trends that are unfolding in Eurasia." 

The expression "principles of non-alignment" said it all. Lavrov acknowledged India's strategic autonomy. Which, of course, is precisely what Russia expects as India's undemanding friend and partner with which it is willing to share even the GLONASS, its super-sensitive global satellite navigation system providing real time position and velocity determination for military and civilian use. In fact, Lavrov singled out the GLONASS project, code word for the "privileged strategic partnership", as among topics discussed at Sochi.