Cmde Anil Jai Singh (retd)

In the last week of June, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a brief visit to New Delhi en route to Osaka for the G20 Summit and held meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the newly-appointed external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, a former foreign secretary and erstwhile Indian Ambassador to the US. Unsurprisingly, there were no definite outcomes on any of the flagged issues during the visit which was aptly summed up by Pompeo in benign diplomatese about being able to work through differences on trade and defence.

This was followed by the discussions between Prime Minister Modi and the US President Donald Trump on bilateral issues and a trilateral between India, Japan and the US where the main topic of discussion was the Indo-Pacific. Both these meetings did not deliver on the core concerns and the standard reassurances were reiterated. President Trump, true to form had earlier tweeted that “I look forward to speaking with Prime Minister Modi about the fact that India, for years having put very high tariffs against the United States, just recently increased the tariffs even further. This is unacceptable and the tariffs must be withdrawn!” which had caused some consternation soon after Pompeo’s visit. Fortunately, at his meeting with Prime Minister Modi, President Trump made all the right noises.

The Indo-US relationship, which has had more than its share of ups and downs with more of the latter, has been on an upward trajectory over the last 15 years or so ever since the US-India civilian nuclear deal was signed. This has been most evident in the military-security dimension with India having purchased more than USD20 billion worth of military equipment from the US through the unique ‘Foreign Military Sales’ programme of the US government. Despite India’s much vaunted and transparent Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) which focuses on a procedural process that is anchored in a competitive bidding process with the focus on indigenisation and self-reliance, the FMS arrangement with India bypasses all this. India’s ministry of defence concludes contracts with private defence companies in the US under the aegis of the two governments with neither competition nor indigenisation being considered.

The Indian armed forces have undoubtedly benefited greatly from these big-ticket acquisitions. The Indian Navy has greatly enhanced its maritime surveillance capability with the induction of 12 Boeing P8I Long Range Maritime Patrol (LRMP) aircraft, the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force now have a much improved strategic lift and expeditionary capability with the induction of the C-130, the C-17 and the Chinook helicopters and the army more offensive firepower with the new Apache attack helicopters and the M777 How