Of course there is tremendous potential for Indo-US strategic connectivity. The military component must be a part of it. Old India mindset should not obtrude on the relationship. To begin with, however, India will have to first break out of the nuclear syndrome which is threatening to undo a groundwork based on reciprocity and a step-by-step approach. US sanctions, imposed after the 1998 Pokharan tests, appear to have become captive to a US waiver. Insisting on India signing on the dotted line of full scope safeguards (of the International Atomic Energy Agency), as the Americans appear to do now, would be putting the cart before the horse.

The example of China acceding to all of Australia’s IAEA pre-conditions in return for an assured supply of natural uranium undersells India’s absolutely unique position. Our fast-breeder reactor technology at some point in the future, even far into the future, has the potential of making India totally self-sufficient in nuclear electric energy once the thorium fuel cycle is achieved. That is the kind of strategic paradigm that we must strive for and not one that makes it dependent through time-tested means on any military-industrial complex as do arms purchases particularly aircraft purchases.

Similarly, it would be truly strategic if India is able to break out of a security paradigm based on the use of terror from under a nuclear overhang to achieve goals that impinge on that intention. How can that happen? This is one thing that cannot be done overnight; yet this is one of the steps that will give true meaning to the avowed intention of “making a world power in the 21st century”. It is something that has, in fact, been enshrined in the very first documents pertaining to the Indo-US Next Steps in Strategic Partnership and this relates to cooperation in Ballistic Missile Defence or an Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defence. An ABM system would remove the nuclear overhang by which India’s minimum nuclear deterrence is be undermined.

The best defence is one that can destroy the enemy missile as soon as it is launched, that is, in the time span that a booster rocket burns out and hurls the nuclear warhead into its ballistic trajectory where intercepting it entails a series of complicated technicalities which are not necessarily fail-safe.

The boost-phase intercept concept has the potential of short-circuiting all the complications of intercepting a warhead in space; at the same time it seeks to ensure that if nuclear weapons do fall into terrorist hands any attempt to use them would be more insanely suicidal than a car bomb attack because it would threaten to wipe out not just the button-pusher but also the entire hinterland on which his power-projection capabilities depend.

Technically, the centrepiece of a Boost-Phase Interception system would be a missile that can travel at such high speed as to be able to hit the enemy missile from several hundred miles away. The US is working on such a missile and it would be in the fitness of things “strategic” that India gets the US to include India in the joint development and production of an ABM system with Boost-Phase Interception as its centrepiece.

Another field where the “strategic” aspects of relationships between nations become pronounced is in space co-operation. The reported decision by NASA to include an Indian astronaut in its exploration projects is welcome. India is currently engaged in space research that will augment its capacity for mass communications and nation-wide education facilities with satellite linkages. For this it is working on geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV) programme. Cryogenic (super cooled) technology is an integral and absolutely essential requirement if the thrust-to-weight of the GSLV booster is to be cost-effective.

Unfortunately, as a part of its post-Pokharan sanctions regime, the US has been discouraging Russia from either supplying complete ready-to-use cryogenic engines or allowing production here in India under licence for a long time. India’s space programme has been delayed because of this. The socio-economic thrust of the GSLV programme cannot be denied and India would serve its own national interest and of that of the region as well if it insists on more meaningful cooperation on cryogenic engine technology to accelerate what it has already achieved at the prototype level in its own laboratories. Inter-related at many levels is nanotechnology, work on which would benefit several sectors.

All three of the technologies mentioned above can be described as “frontier technologies” and Indo-US cooperation in these can be said to be truly “strategic” in nature and well beyond what mere arms sales would or licensed production of weapons systems would imply. Recently, there is a spate of reports that the US has decided to open the floodgates for weapons sales to India. This move, in some ways, is linked to the F-16 supply to Pakistan and underscores the merely “commercial” as distinct to the “strategic” aspects of Indo-US relations.

The Indian Air Force has projected a requirement of 126 multi-role fighter aircraft as part of its modernization programme in the next decade. If any US aircraft fits the qualitative requirements set by the IAF then it should be bought if for no other reason that it will tend to finally sweeten the “strategic” aspect of our relations.

However, it needs to be remembered that the lodestone which opens the entire gamut of Indo-US relations at the stratospheric level of “strategic” is the nuclear deal. Going by what the Government of India spokesmen have been saying, if there is no progress in the US Congress on the nuclear deal, it would be futile to expect India to open up its arms markets to US manufacturers.

Since both countries see in their relationship tremendous potential for mutual benefit, it would be appropriate that things proceed at the pace and sequence laid down at the Bush-Manmohan Singh summit in New Delhi. Without the nuclear deal and the removal of impediments in India’s quest for renewable energy sources unshackled from the petroleum fuel cycle things will appear to be nothing but pies in the sky.

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