Bharat Rakshak

V_Raman wrote:After a long time, great riveting analysis on BR! Kudos!

India needs tech to develop the Mil-Ind complex. There is no choice to USA to get that. They control all the levers. They gave it to China. They will extract their pound of flesh. It is up to us to dance.

SaiK wrote:Say we are taking the offence is the best form of defence move. Does LSA agreement mean they support all our operations against destroying Pakistan? How?

Does LSA becomes automatically void in fighting "friend of our enemy is their friend" case?

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/i ... 029736.ece
“As for LSA there is only one concern. What happens in the case of war?” he said.

Clarifications
“We do not support some actions and do not want to be part of it. Also we will not extend support for war with friendly countries. We asked the U.S. clarifications on how to deal with it,” he said. It could be done on a case by case basis.

ShravanP wrote:@rudradev

As of today, Indian military's offensive weapons are vastly/overwhelmingly non-American. Those treaties can stop India only if India's weaponry is US-based and I don't think India would be foolish to put all her eggs into one basket (i.e US).

India has asked the U.S. to submit a revised draft of the agreements which would then be studied in detail. “It should be on an equal footing,” the official added.

Rudradev wrote:Ramana garu, another observation in support of my schema.

When Xi visited India shortly after Modi's election, to talk about investments and trade... at the very same time, PLA troops were staging yet another incursion in Himachal.

WTF? I mean... what sense does that make, right? Why would you be leading a delegation to a country to boost economic ties and meanwhile letting your army challenge the territorial integrity of that same country? Who does that?

SaiK wrote:Well, if US allows us to bomb Pakistan (for this agreement/do we care if they allow or not. once taken a decision, the pakis are finished) it would be an issue between USA and Pakis. Now, that is not our headache even if it means destroying their complete infrastructure including nukes.

sometime it is hard to read and get what the khans mean and what they interpret per their laws. one has to be very careful. use case scenario analysis is ideal to get to the details.

it is better, such agreements are available online - perhaps **-ed for not revealing any secret reference to use of any type of weapon or capability.

Rudradev wrote: If my theory is correct: the US, Pakistan and China are all invested in building a CPEC or AfPak westward egress for China via Gwadar to the ME and onward to Europe. Such a corridor would serve multiple interests for all parties involved: China, Pakistan, US, ME nations and EU nations.

ramana wrote:

SaiK wrote:Say we are taking the offence is the best form of defence move. Does LSA agreement mean they support all our operations against destroying Pakistan? How?
Does LSA becomes automatically void in fighting "friend of our enemy is their friend" case?O. They wont support.It is to use Indian bases for their operations in Indian Ocean and prevent IN from policing it.
Also China does fear ideology from India will come back again.Falun Gong is repressed precisely for that reason.Further go back to Hegel. China is not devious. Its only wants its big umbrella under the Chinese Sun.They now have a replacement process for the Sun.We are also ignoring demography, economics and collapse of world trade on China.And West Asia is resurging to Arab-Persian conflict.

ShauryaT wrote:Sometimes, simple explanations are closer to the truth rather than complex geo-political balance of power games and least of all CT.

Modi wants manufacturing jobs. There are very few industries that have not already bolted and are taking advantage of the outsourcing option. The US government has the most leverage on its defense industry. It is large and can use some low cost labor, to reduce their own costs. Without foundational agreements, it is not possible to say service an F18 in India. Hence this deal. It is being viewed from a narrow prism.

http://defenceaviationpost.com/2016/04/ ... hter-jets/

While the previous United Progressive Alliance government had stopped the recovery of remains following objections by China, which claims Arunachal Pradesh to be its territory, the Narendra Modi government gave Americans fresh permission.

The US is seeking to recover the bodies of American aircrew who died in crashes while flying resupply missions between Assam and Kunming in China during the war.

ShauryaT wrote:Sometimes, simple explanations are closer to the truth rather than complex geo-political balance of power games and least of all CT.

rudradev wrote: Now why would Xi want to send this kind of a message to the new Indian PM Narendra Modi?

ShauryaT wrote:Sometimes, simple explanations are closer to the truth rather than complex geo-political balance of power games and least of all CT.

Modi wants manufacturing jobs. There are very few industries that have not already bolted and are taking advantage of the outsourcing option. The US government has the most leverage on its defense industry. It is large and can use some low cost labor, to reduce their own costs. Without foundational agreements, it is not possible to say service an F18 in India. Hence this deal. It is being viewed from a narrow prism.

http://defenceaviationpost.com/2016/04/ ... hter-jets/

Rudradev wrote: India is the only nation that can existentially threaten the CPEC or Gwadar. India must be constrained from doing so. How to achieve this?

ldev wrote:

Rudradev wrote: India is the only nation that can existentially threaten the CPEC or Gwadar. India must be constrained from doing so. How to achieve this?

What have you been smoking? India threaten Gwadar existentially!! Arre Bhai, India does not respond to Pakistani orchestrated and Chinese supported multiple massacres taking the lives of thousands of Indians on it's own soil for decades and you think India has to be constrained from going after Gwadar or CPEC??

johneeG wrote: China is simply following in the footsteps of the west. China is a better student of west compared to India.

Pulikeshi wrote:

johneeG wrote: China is simply following in the footsteps of the west. China is a better student of west compared to India.

You are overstating what China is doing and underestimating their autism... ironically playing into US arms...
The west never had and will perhaps never have ghost cities, slave camps, harmonious society, confusion-ism, etc.

SaiK wrote:from that link:

India has asked the U.S. to submit a revised draft of the agreements which would then be studied in detail. “It should be on an equal footing,” the official added.

so, what is equal footing?

ramana wrote:

SaiK wrote:Say we are taking the offence is the best form of defence move. Does LSA agreement mean they support all our operations against destroying Pakistan? How?

Does LSA becomes automatically void in fighting "friend of our enemy is their friend" case?

NO. They wont support.
It is to use Indian bases for their operations in Indian Ocean and prevent IN from policing it.

Cosmo_R wrote:They are all available online. Just Google.

The LSA would help Indian armed forces, especially its navy, to operate far from subcontinental shores at a moment when New Delhi has to secure its widely dispersed interests in the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Written by C. Raja Mohan


US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter being greeted by Indian officials on his arrival at Debolim airport in Goa.

There is good news and bad news from the agreement ‘in principle’ between New Delhi and Washington this week on signing the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), now re-designated as the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA).

The good news is that the Narendra Modi government has the political self-confidence to sign an apparently controversial agreement with the United States. The bad news is that India, as a collective, has taken more than a decade to decide ‘in principle’ on a fairly straightforward agreement with America.

The LSA would help Indian armed forces, especially its navy, to operate far from subcontinental shores at a moment when New Delhi has to secure its widely dispersed interests in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Much like the historic civil nuclear initiative, New Delhi has had a terrible time wrapping it up.

It’s a pity that the Indian political class, the bureaucracy, the strategic community, the commentariat and the media — have turned the debate on the LSA, which is so patently in Indian self interest, into an agonising one about the exalted concepts of ‘non-alignment’ and ‘strategic autonomy’.

India now is the world’s seventh largest economy (nominal terms) and third largest in PPP terms. It is also the sixth largest spender on defence, and owns the third largest armed forces and a small nuclear arsenal. None of this heft seems to reflect in the way India debates its relationship with the United States.

The Indian discourse on the LSA was never about its technical details. Like the historic nuclear deal, it was essentially about the lingering Indian distrust of America. There would be little public interest or private anxiety in New Delhi if it were negotiating similar agreements with, say, Russia, France or Japan.

Although the LSA has drawn very special attention in New Delhi, the United States has scores of these arrangements, known as Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreements (ACSA), with allies, non-allies and international organisations.

A typical ACSA defines the objective as “reciprocal provision of logistic support, supplies, and services to the military forces of one Party by the other Party in return for either cash payment or the reciprocal provision of logistic support, supplies and services to the military forces of the other Party”.

Many of these agreements explicitly prohibit exchange of weapons and other combat equipment. The agreement enables easy exchange of oil, water, food, billeting arrangements, repair and servicing facilities etc. during joint exercises and other pre-specified contingencies.

Like so many other creative foreign policy initiatives in our time — to reframe the border talks with China, secret negotiations on Kashmir with Pakistan, and the civil nuclear initiative with the US — the decision to expand defence cooperation with America came in the early years of the UPA government (2004-05).

The UPA government failed to pursue any of these initiatives to their logical conclusion. Ideological self-doubt and lack of political leadership saw New Delhi squander extraordinary opportunities that came its way during the time the UPA was in power.

After Pranab Mukherjee vacated the Defence Ministry in favour of A K Antony in 2006, the prospects for expansive defence cooperation with the US identified in the 2005 framework agreement steadily evaporated. If Antony deliberately limited the defence partnership with America, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was unwilling to overrule him.

It was in this extended tenure of Antony in the Defence Ministry (2006-14) that the issues involved with the LSA were allowed to be defined in terms of an “alliance” with America and a “strategic embrace” of the United States.

The proposition that the US wants to “entrap” India into a “military alliance” has always been a fanciful one. For the US, military alliances are serious business. They involve major legal, political, military and financial commitments that the United States has been generally unwilling to make since the height of the Cold war. In fact, the current political mood in the US is about retrenchment, and not making new alliances.

The US is certainly interested in stronger military ties with India. It is up to New Delhi to decide on the extent of convergence with Washington, and the terms under which it would cooperate. No one can compel India into signing agreements that it does not want.

The tragedy, however, was that the UPA government, instead of judging the issues of military cooperation with the US on merits, went into a funk. The defensiveness was reflected in the fact that New Delhi began to reject drafts of LSA that the Defence Ministry itself had proposed. Put simply, the US was indeed open to signing the LSA version drafted by India. But New Delhi, under UPA, would not accept ‘yes’ for an answer from Washington.

Returning to the good news, the NDA government chose to take a fresh look at the broader partnership with the United States. Modi moved decisively to resolve the outstanding issues on the civil nuclear initiative. The NDA government also renewed the 2005 defence framework cooperation for another 10 years. It reopened the negotiations on the LSA, and other so-called foundational agreements. The agreement in principle has come after New Delhi has satisfied itself that all its concerns have been met.

The Modi government has concluded, just like the UPA government in 2005, that security cooperation with the US would be an important part of improving India’s strategic salience in regional and global affairs. But unlike the UPA, the NDA government is less inhibited and more confident that it can deepen defence ties with the US on India’s own terms.

Modi’s most important contribution, however, may lie in turning the UPA government’s approach to major powers on its head. UPA justified its reluctance to deepen defence ties with the US by claiming that China would be upset.

Not moving forward with America during last few years, Modi knows, has not yielded much gains from China on issues of concern to India — whether it is terrorism emanating from Pakistan, or support for India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Nor does China defer to New Delhi’s sensitivities and limit its military engagement with Pakistan and other neighbours of India.

Modi recognises that it is best to deal with both America and China on the basis of self interest and by creating leverages. There is no question now of framing New Delhi’s relations with Beijing and Washington either on the basis of neutrality or equidistance. The defining question for New Delhi now is a simple one: “What’s in it for me?” While Modi is asking the right questions, he finds it hard to move New Delhi at a faster pace. That’s probably why we have an agreement ‘in principle’, and not the LSA closure.

Even as it draws close to the US in the defence arena, the NDA government has gone much farther than the UPA in opening up India for Chinese economic investments. No PM before him has battled the system in New Delhi for liberalising the visa regime for the Chinese.

Some purists in New Delhi might not recognise their versions of ‘non-alignment’ in India’s new economic pragmatism and muscular geopolitics. But India’s non-alignment was always like the tabula rasa that could accommodate as diverse initiatives as Nehru’s quest for a military partnership with America after the Chinese attack in 1962, Indira Gandhi’s Treaty of Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union in 1971 as Nixon and Mao warmed up to each other, and the more recent claims for New Delhi as a ‘net security provider’ in the Indo-Pacific.

ShauryaT wrote:I agree with RD here. ldev: The right leadership can change things overnight. What you are referring to is a leadership vacuum - not a capability one and certainly not innate capability.

ShauryaT wrote:

No LEMOA — possible reasons

Why specifically the Akula pullout? Because, per sources, the Russians fear that the air-to-submarine communications, which this agreement will technically facilitate, will permit the Americans to spoof the communications hardware on the ex-Russian SSN, etc., a risk the Russians are unwilling to take

ShauryaT wrote:Feel free to critique Karnad or anyone. What he is saying is, you cannot be in two tents at the same time. These choices made will have consequences that go far beyond the innocuous language of these foundational agreements.

ShauryaT wrote:Your prerogative to laugh. I know what my nation is capable of. Why do you forget Parakram or do you also believe we faked that and did not mean it? If so, the onus to show Parakram as being a phony threat is upon you to be proved via credible sources. Anyways Vajpayee was able to secure the political objective of putting a massive plug (even if a leaking one) on Paki terror via the 2003 cease fire. ABV was able to make Pakistan from a front line non-NATO ally to the premier terror exporting country. May not satisfy everyone 100% but Modi has big shoes to fill. BTW: Gwadar is still not operational and neither is CPEC. Have faith.