 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're joined by Prabhupur Kaisan. We're going to be talking about the latest agreement signed between India and the United States, that is the BECA, that is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement. Now this provides the avenue for India and the United States to share data on satellite images on maps, on topographical and aeronautical data, and this is the latest in a series of four agreements which the two countries have signed over the past two decades which really strengthens military cooperation. Prabhi, thank you so much for joining us. So first question, which is kind of a basic question, what does this imply for, especially the Indian defence system in terms of the information it receives and what does India give in return to the US for this? You know, one key issue here, which we can talk about later, is why do we have an agreement of this kind with two senior functionaries of the government, which very soon could be a lame duck government? Because November 3rd is just around the corner, so should such a major agreement which ties both sides together, of course India much more than the United States, should it have been signed at this stage with people who are not, who may not be around too long? Now that is a question the government of India needs to think of, and I think we can come back to this issue a little later. But looking at the agreement, there are a set of what are called foundational agreements. The course of this was set in 2002 by the Vajpayee government, when they signed what is called, I really don't like this act, GSOMIA, which is General Security of Military Information Agreement. This is the first of the four foundational agreements, and then we had in 2016, after both this victory, we had the first logistical agreement which was what is called LEMOA, which meant that we can use each other military facilities. In the case of the United States, as you know, they have 900 bases all across the world, and they are in warlike conditions across the globe in a large number of countries, unlike India, which is hardly any military presence outside South Asia, if at all. This particular agreement therefore was really saying we would provide our airports, our ports, other logistical facilities to you, if you want to use them. Of course, the sanction or the permission of the country still would be required. Then we had what is called the... The Comcast, sorry. There is a sismoa, but that's Comcast. Then we had in 2018, a Comcast, which is essentially a communication agreement, and now we have what you said, the geospatial intelligence sharing agreement. With these four agreements, one after another that have been signed, essentially India is now militarily tied to the US in a way that we might as well have accepted what was offered to Pakistan, which Pakistan accepted, that we become a major non-nato ally. That's what Pakistan official status is. This is the kind of status now we seem to have reached. Why have we done this? For a long time, even the Vashpayee government was very wary of signing the three other foundational agreements, though it did sign the first one, which was an enabling agreement, so to say. And these are the agreements all four of them put together. They are the agreements which a NATO ally generally signed. So these are essentially we have reached the same kind of status, and I'll come to what they mean. So Vashpayee government was also not willing to sign these three agreements. And of course Manmohan Singh government, though it signed the nuclear deal, which as we know, was a hotly debated item in India. And finally, we don't seem to have got any of the promises Manmohan Singh had said the US will deliver through this deal. But we didn't sign that deal and that was certainly a step towards a strategic alliance in the United States. But the three foundational so-called foundational agreements started being implemented only when the Modi government came into power. And it is very clear that Modi's strategic vision ties up much more closely to the US one. And it was only the failure of the US to take this forward, not opening to India in any significant sense, not giving India any kind of trade relaxation, which Modi wanted, that then India started also playing with the other sets of powers in Eurasia, and also India's location as a Eurasian country, as an Asian country, therefore, bilateral trilateral relations, the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, all of these were came in. Till we have the north border clashes in Ladakh. And after that India seems to have run headlong into American hands. Now, if we look at all of this, the key issue really is that this interoperability means that we will be far more willing to buy American arms. Now if you see American exports today, it hardly has any export capability except military hardware. So we will be subsidizing the United States with high cost military hardware we will purchase in the name of interoperability. We have a whole defense establishment, foreign establishment in which there are significant number of people who have been extremely pro American, and it goes to also the post retirement post the Occupy, where the children go to study. All these are in public domain, so I'm not sharing any state secret here, but all of these means that US already has a section who are quite closely aligned to it, ideologically, or even otherwise. So it does mean that we are probably going to be inflicted with very heavy cost of arms procurement, which will be done in the name of this understandings, and also, of course, the kind of pressure the US will put on us to adopt their platforms. This is the interoperability issue, adopt their platforms, their equipment, their signaling systems, all of this. The risk that we also carry is that we have a lot of Russian equipment in fact a significant part of India's defense requirement comes from Russia. Now, how are you going to see them there and they're going to be only supplying us with low grade rifles assault rifles things like that, or all the high grade stuff is going to come from the United States. Russia has already shown that the S 400 system is one of the most advanced ones in the world, and even NATO allies like Turkey have been buying it or South Arabia. So are we going to say that those things will no longer be possible for India to buy because we're not able to integrate them with the American systems in which is what interoperability demands. These are open questions. The other issue people like Bharat Karnan who certainly know leftist has also raised that it means that the United States will have control over our firepower. So it's not just simply interoperability. It is also because of the superiority of their informational systems that communication equipment embedding them embedding them deep in the Indian military means some amount of control that they can assert even during battlefield conditions, because the coordination and geospatial intelligence is really that they're going to look at where you're going to shoot you're going to take American coordinates. You're going to take help of American military satellites and their information on such targets and use that to shoot where you want. Now this kind of things means the final trajectory of such delivery is then controlled by the American systems, not by you. So all of these are high risk issues concerning India's military or strategic autonomy. And I think this is increasingly a loss of strategic autonomy that we are seeing. And of course it comes also the kind of quad arrangement that we are getting into where India is being used to counterbalance China in Pacific Ocean, in the South or the Indian Ocean side. And this, this is not India's game. India has no major issues trying to contain China military. That's something the United States has been doing for a long time from South Korea to Japan, Taiwan they have used China with military bases. India becoming a part of that provides us with a significant leverage in this area, because Australia is a bit player also done. It's called a continent, but its population is really low. It's something which is virtually empty land as far when you look at it from the Indian point of view that a couple of cities in India are bigger than the entire Australian population. So given that kind of scenario, Australia is only a name in this so called quad. It's Japan, United States who provide some amount of clout, US is across the Pacific, but nevertheless because of his aircraft carriers is naval force and military bases that it has even in different parts of Southeast Asia and in Japan. They do, of course, have a base there, and Japan is the only other major country, but as you know Japan is not militarized the way either some of the leaders in Japan today want or the United States may want. And therefore the only real counterweight in this region would be, is it an interest? No, because our interest in Pacific Ocean is very little. So therefore to talk about India having a strategic interest in that region is basically trying to enable India entice India into this alignment and promising support on the northern border, which Pompeo did over here. But the reality is not the border. In the northern border, the US is not going to come and fight for India. And that is if anybody has a doubt on that score, they should really put it at rest. They should have an exam. So what you're getting is the belief that that access to American geospatial intelligence will help you find better. But the reality is that in that region, China still holds a militarily stronger position than we do. And that's what we are trying to reverse. But this agreement is not the way to do it. And unfortunately, it's neither in India or China's interest to have this kind of tensions persist. And this is something that India has to realize. China too, that if they can normalize their relations, then it's not only the economic interest, but the military drain of resources that will take place if they enter into a bilateral competition on the northern border is not conducive to either countries economy. So I think this is the big issue that it is not a step with respect to defense. It actually becomes a step towards offense. And that is not in India's interest has never been in the strategic policies. And that's in the interest of the United States, which is have always global alliances to contain either Russia or China, as in the time demands. The last point I want to make is what is the scope of intelligence sharing now that it takes place. The United States, though it accepted Pakistan as a non NATO ally, it never really shared intelligence with it. It has shared intelligence with what's called the five eyes network with the nine eyes which also Europe includes more European countries, and even what's called loosely the 49 so which are all European countries is India also going now to be a part of this network we already have an intelligence relationship with Israel. So we might be spoon fed interest in intelligence which is not in the, which is not true, but which could precipitate a move of India in a certain direction, and helps the Americans already Israel has the capability to do it in India. Will the United States also do it all of which means that we are being used to compete militarily with China, not as a counter way to China as we believe, but basically to serve in American interest. So I think this is an extremely unfortunate step that we have taken, and even, as I said, a right wing defense commentator, ultra nationalist defense commentator commentator like Bharat Kannan has condemned this saying that this is not an India's interest at all. And this also of course definitely means that India, the kind of role maybe it aspired to play in the mid 2000s late 2000s as a regional power as somebody who works with Russia and China there was bricks of course, and to form counter weights or alliances of the that's not all of that space increasing is becoming to decreases is beginning to decreases time passes because this both affects our relationship with Russia and China. You're quite right. Russia is going to be increasingly myth because of hostility of the United States towards Russia has been continuous and the sanction regime has only strengthened over time. And though there is this propaganda in the American elections that Trump is Putin's candidate, the reality is, Trump has taken harsh measures against Russia, probably even more than any earlier president has done. And of course his measures against Iran continue, which we promised before the elections and continue till today. So, Trump has been in spite of what some of us might have thought that he might be a more isolationist president. He's actually been quite an interventionist president is interviewed in various theaters in different ways. And he has been clumsy with his approach, but you know the US approach whether it's a smooth, more sophisticated approach of an Obama, or a bumbling, bullying approach of a Trump, both of one commonality the US always is transactional. It only sees its strategic interests and is willing to suffer with the devil if it serves their purpose and they have sacrificed their allies at the drop of a hat. So this whole issue of believing that if you lie with United States, you are going to get a strategic ally. That's really not true. If United States tomorrow for its own reasons wants to make up with China, the first country it will drop that is India. So these are reasons why for quite some time now, countries want to work out policies, foreign policies based on strategic autonomy. And this is something India treasured in during the non aligned movement, and it was not non alignment, it was decolonization, but also strategic autonomy. So by step, under the modern regime, we have now sacrificed our strategic autonomy, but this is in part what were the right right wing in India always believed that in fact the Janssen and its progenitor RSS always argue that our foreign policy is to align with Christians and Jews against Muslims and communists. This is the crux of their foreign policy. So they never subscribe to a strategic autonomy thesis. And Jai Shankar as the current foreign minister, I think is the architect of bringing India to the American for something which if we go to the week weeks dispatch the American embassy here believe the Jai Shankar was far more kind to the Americans. than most other officials in the Indian foreign establishment and I think that's something that he is now also showing. But it is that behavior, shall we say, the skill of execution by putting all of these things together. But the strategic understanding of this alliance really comes from the RSS, BJP, and earlier the Janssen understanding of foreign policy and I think that has been constant, except instead of communism now it's Russia and China. That's really the difference that we see. And this context that going back to the point your first trace, this maybe illustrates the reason why the agreement was signed during the end of a lame duck administration, probably the fact that there is an essential continuity in US policies that way, even if a new administration comes in. Yes, in fact, having netted India was the objective that was there much earlier. So these two have netted India for the United States. So I don't think any succeeding in administration is going to be unhappy with that. This is their long term goal anyway, under Obama, or even earlier. So this is something the Democrats and the Republicans have a common understanding, and it fits in with Obama's, you know, talk about moving towards a more anti China axis. So moving to Asia, that was his argument that this is where the future lies. So all of this kind of things means that there is a continuity on this, this continuity is on the Indian side. We believed, and there's huge sections in India, which believe that India should have geo strategic or strategic autonomy, that India should really have a strategic autonomy, because it's too big a country to be an ally of another country. It has to work out all its equations. India is an Eurasian country, and tying up with a country which has no borders with any other country except Mexico and Canada, surrounded by two major oceans. Force projections across the globe. This is not the kind of politics India can play. So therefore this is not a good fit. What we have done is therefore given up something which we have spent almost now 70, more than 70 years. Even the Vashpayee government which had signed the first agreement of this kind, the GSOMA or GSOMIA, GSOMIA, GSOMIA. So this even this foundational first foundational agreement having been signed by Vashpayee, he didn't proceed further. There is that hesitation that Indian security establishment, foreign policy establishment had, that India should not lose its strategic autonomy. This we seem to have given up. We hope that good sense will prevail and that India will not move too far away from its original goals. But right now the things don't look good. And I don't think that this is the Indian signing of the Pompeo-Espar agreement with other 2 plus 2 in the draft format. It really does not indicate any major alignments to only the Trump administration. But I think there is another message that may be read into it. I don't know how far it's true that India is playing the long game. Before Pompeo becomes the candidate in 2023, 2024, then we have a president in waiting with whom we have already built some rapport. That's a calculation that is there. But I don't know that political forces really calculate for over 5 years what's going to happen. So maybe it is that, but I suspect it is more that elections don't really matter in this particular scheme of things. So Pompeo-Espar or new Biden administration comes, which may or may not happen. I don't think these things are going to change. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching.