India must continue to preserve its cherished strategic autonomy as it seeks to boost its defense capabilities by "stitching a close relationship" with the United States, an Indian expert has told Sputnik.
“Alignment with the US should not come at the cost of its strategic autonomy,” stated Dr. Raj Kumar Sharma, the Maharishi Kanad Fellow at Delhi School of Transnational Affairs, University of Delhi.
Sharma underlined that New Delhi’s neutral stance on Ukraine despite the western pressure exhibited how the world’s most populous nation has continued to preserve its strategic autonomy.
Partnership With US Always Comes With Strings Attached
New Delhi has refused to buckle under the western pressure of voting against Russia at the United Nations (UN), instead significantly ramping up its crude purchases from Moscow to the point that it now ranks as India’s biggest crude supplier.
Sharma warned that a closer defense relationship with the US could come with strings attached, given America’s history of using economic coercion tools such as sanctions, even against its allies, whenever it has felt threatened.
“In the past, the US had used sanctions when it felt threatened by Indian policies,” Sharma said, a reference to Washington’s sanctions against New Delhi when it conducted nuclear tests in 1998.
He said that Modi had a “comprehensive agenda” for his US visit, involving trade, technology, health, education, and defense.
“The meeting between Modi and Biden would be important for the security scenario in the Indo-Pacific, given the downward spiral in India-China relations after the Galwan (Valley) incident in June 2020,” Sharma reckoned.
The expert, however, underlined that there were “differences” in the way India and the US defined the strategic concept of ‘Indo-Pacific’ in the respective security outlooks.
“India seeks a central role in the evolution of the idea of Indo-Pacific. There are differences in the way India and the US define this term. That shows that India is unlikely to completely agree with the US on security developments in the Indo-Pacific,” Sharma said.
He added that there was a degree of “convergence” in terms of the maritime security interests of both the countries in the region.
US Willing to Ramp Up Defence Exports to India: Why?
American defense sales to India have surged to $20 billion in the last few years, with New Delhi being designated as a ‘Major Defense Partner’ of Washington in 2016.
Twenty years ago, there were practically no American defense exports to India.
The Pentagon said that it seeks to ramp up its defense-related exports to India in the domain of artificial intelligence, advanced sensor development, unmanned systems, quantum physics and undersea domain awareness to $5 billion in the next five years.
The US has made no secret about weaning India away from its defense relationship with Russia, which has consistently ranked as New Delhi’s biggest source of weapons.
India has stayed firm on continuing its defense relationship with its “time-tested” friend Russia, which supplied New Delhi with around 45 percent of its military needs between 2017 and 2021, as per data available with the Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).