 Hello and welcome to NewsClick, this program with Real News. We have with us D. Raghunandan who has been studying the Indo-US relations for quite some time, particularly the defence relations. Raghunandan, we seem to have come across the kind of rubicon as it were with this designation of India as a major defence partner. By all accounts, this is equivalent to being a treaty partner, part of NATO or a part of what used to be Seattle centre which don't really exist anymore. What does it really mean in the relationship between the two countries in terms of defence agreement? I think it's been a long process of standing just this side of the rubicon till a formal declaration was made. I think this was what has been an offing since the India-US defence framework agreement way back which preceded the Indo-US nuclear deal. And this is what it has all been leading up to. But at that point of time India did not sign the Logistical Service Agreement which was a standard agreement as a first step to a defence relation. Exactly. But as I was saying, I think this is what all of that has been leading up to. It was an informal bilateral agreement to begin with but with a fairly explicit intention to gradually formalise it as one went along. So this process of getting India to sign the Logistics Agreement and the other agreements that would then form part of the architecture which then underpins this present agreement designating India as a major US defence partner I think has been some time in coming. There is a lot of pressure for India not to designate itself as a US partner, military partner particularly and that held back India. Exactly. Now this government seems to have decided there is no need to hold back. Initially the sweet talk with China signed. India seems to have now taken a very decisive tilt towards the US side. We saw that in the South China Sea issue also. India issued a fairly mature statement which finally because Philippines sort of backed off met that India was sort of an outlier in way it treated the South China Sea issue particularly the international court verdict. So do you see that India in this case is sort of increasingly becoming a part of the US attempt to really ring in China and sort of be a counterpart to China in this area. I think this is exactly what has been in the offing for some time. It has now come to fruition and actually signing on the dotted line to do this and in fact one of the many areas of or activities mentioned in the agreement between India and the US pertains to freedom of navigation and we all know what that means. That phrase may not have had the resonance that it does today 10 years ago but being specifically mentioned today it is very clear where this is headed and what it signifies. It also the agreement also talks about strengthening the US engagement in South Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific region and again we know what it means from a US strategic point of view. Basically getting India, Australia, Japan together that was always a presumption. You know one part of it is channeled we'll come back to this equation later but apart from that in terms of normal defence agreements the argument is interoperability of the two forces. Does it mean India is now going to be significant buyer of US equipment? Is that the implication of interoperability to my mind has always meant two things. One is increased use of Indian military facilities to host US military hardware and the second part has been this issue of buying US hardware because how do you ensure interoperability best which is what the US does with NATO allies. So, this has always been the case but in India there is this defence technology initiative that is a very important part of the India-US defence framework agreement which specifically talks about areas of collaboration between the US and India both for export of US hardware to India as well as co-development and technology transfer of sensitive defence equipment. One issue is India has always had sourcing from Russia. Do you think this would replace Israel, the US and other NATO partners is the major supplier of hardware in the future? Is that one of the implications? Absolutely, I think that's already been happening. India has been increasingly buying US hardware and of course Israeli hardware particularly missiles and so on but India has bought significant aircraft from the US. We've got the maritime reconnaissance aircraft. You've got the heavy lift transport aircraft, the globe master and the Hercules aircraft. You're buying Apache attack helicopters. India has just signed an agreement for M777 Howitzer's field artillery guns and I think there is very little doubt left anymore that India is soon going to sign up an agreement with the United States to manufacture in India either the Lockheed Martin F-16 or Boeing's F-A-18 aircraft. I think one of the reasons for reducing the purchase of Rafale aircraft from France from the original 126 down to 36 has been that India had already decided to buy American aircraft so why buy the French aircraft now. If this paves the way certainly for acquisition of US aircraft and importantly paves the way for technology transfer and technology transfer therefore has been specifically also mentioned in the agreement. Coming back to the issue of the China issue that's really the big one in this mix because India initially did under Modi did initially make a lot of noise with China wanting to be friends. Andaman Mohan Singh was pretty much in love with Bush which he said publicly and did bring India much closer to the US. But under Manmohan Singh India also had very good relations with China. In fact the relations were normalized with China quite considerably. So do you think this in some sense is also playing out of the China-Pakistan relationship which India seems to have taken a lot of embrace to and therefore it's in some sense India's reaction to China is conditioned with India's relationship with Pakistan. Do you see that playing a role and do you see therefore India becoming much closer to form an alternate access against China. I see that today Pakistan is extremely close to China. Its military relations with China have deepened. Technology transfer from China to Pakistan co-manufactured manufacture of the JF-17 aircraft, military aircraft. All these are proceeding much faster than they had done earlier. Arguably this is also to do with the closer India has got to the United States. The more compelled Pakistan has felt to deepen its military ties with China. So it's very difficult to say which comes first. Do you think India is making to me a mistake by actually treating China-Pakistan as a major issue for its moves with China? So is there a reason for India to hyphenate its relationship India-Pakistan and not look upon China-Pakistan-China-India as a different issue? The more India plays the Pakistan card the more India is limiting itself in strategic terms as a South Asian power rather than the opposite projection of India as an Indian Ocean power. You can't be an Indian Ocean power if you're constantly obsessed about an immediate neighbor. That's been a part of the problem with the Modi government and its vision. On the other hand, if India has a China-fixated vision and that China-fixated vision is linked with an Indo-U.S. military relationship that does not board well for the future, it runs a serious risk of irritating the Chinese dragon. This doesn't, as you said, it doesn't log well. It's really strategically a wrong move to get this kind of India playing its own role in that region, bilaterally with countries. Say for example, India is responding to requests from Vietnam to deepen defence relationships which is likely to have some repercussions in the South China seas, etc. Pursued by itself, it won't make such a big impact. But if India is seen to be doing all this as part of chessboard moves in tandem with the United States, I think that casts a very different look to what India does strategically in this region. It will be seen to be a subordinate. That's right. One last point I thought I would make is this particular defence agreement has now been legislated in the U.S. Congress. Within the American political context puts the India-U.S. defence relationship a little bit beyond the pale of fluctuations that might have been expected with the new Trump administration because this is now part of U.S. law. So this relationship is now set for the long haul. And this is something which I think we in India need to take into account from a strategic point of view. Thank you, Lagu, for being with us. We'll continue to discuss with you these issues and other issues as they develop. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. Please keep watching NewsClick for future episodes. Do visit our website and also our Facebook page.