Vice Admiral GM Hiranandani (Retd), PVSM, AVSM, NM

A recent article by the US ambassador to India in The Times of India of 12 March 2002 mentioned some topics that have a bearing on future Indo-US naval cooperation:

1.      The US-India Defence Policy Group had “reviewed three subjects of great importance to the future security of both our countries. President Bush’s new strategic framework and its fresh vision of the role of nuclear weapons in the international system; energy security and joint operations to protect the sea lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean; and the challenges of maintaining strategic stability in the Asia Pacific region over the long-term.”

2.      “The US Navy has already conducted five port calls and a search and rescue exercise in the past fifteen months. Our two navies will undertake a variety of activities at least once a month over the next two years.”

3.      In the defence supply relationship, of the applications received for 81 items on the munitions list and under consideration, “20 have already been approved by the inter-agency process and are in various stages of notification to Congress. These include applications for” (among other items) “helicopter spare parts.” “A variety of other high priority items including (among other items) undersea remotely operating vehicles, submarine combat systems and multi-mission maritime patrol aircraft, are in various stages of congressional clearance.”

4.      “There will be occasional policy differences along the road, as there inevitably are between America and its closest allies. That is to be entirely expected, and to be adroitly managed.”

These statements indicate a degree of change in the American Navy’s perception of the Indian Navy. They also suggest the maritime roles and responsibilities the US may like India and her Navy to undertake. The ensuing discussion avoids foreign policy aspects except where inescapable. In the main, it confines itself to naval aspects.

Energy Security and Joint Operations to Protect SLOCs in the Indian Ocean

Energy security is as vital to India’s economy as it is to every other country. Should India’s energy supplies be in jeopardy, the Navy, together with all other departments of the government, would do whatever it can, availing of whatever cooperation is available from friendly countries, to safeguard against such jeopardy. If however the context intended is Indian participation with the US in the security of all tankers in the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) in the Indian Ocean, then it is a concept with considerable implications, both naval and in international law. When considering “Joint Operations to Protect the Sea Lanes of Communication in the Indian Ocean”, other factors enter the picture. To start with, the resources of the Indian Navy are sparse. For several decades, the Navy has adhered to a conscious decision taken in the 1960s for its ships to be as technologically contemporary with other navies as the budget would permit and for these ships to be indigenous to the maximum extent possible. The wholesome outcome can be seen in the handful of sleek and powerful destroyers, frigates and corvettes that comprise today’s Navy. With the ingenuity so characteristic of Indians, the Navy has achieved in fifty years what should have taken very much longer.

The down side, however, in the context of the present discussion, is twofold - the numbers of ships in the Indian Navy are too few and the ships are too powerful for prolonged peacetime oceanic patrols of the SLOCs. Undoubtedly, the latter factor affects the US Navy as much, if not more, than it does the Indian Navy because of the long distance from the maintenance and repair facilities at its base ports in the US. If the intention be that Indian and US ships spell each other, as it were, to ‘keep watch’ in the Indian Ocean SLOCs, then the problem becomes more manageable from the ‘numbers’ point of view. From the ‘too powerful for the peacetime task’ and from the ‘long-term’ points of view, it would be necessary to consider construction of ships specially designed for the task - ships with long legs, armament midway between today’s front line combatants and today’s Coast Guard and fitted with the best possible C 4 I to cope with whatever the terrorists can deploy in the SLOCs.

Maintaining Strategic Stability in the Asia Pacific Region Over the Long-Term

During the Cold War, India chose to remain ‘non-aligned’. For many in India it was then, and remains to this day, a rational strategy, adjustable to the circumstances that prevail. It has enabled India to pursue and protect its vital national interests and, in crises, to seek assistance from whoever has found it in their interest to help. In no way has India’s non-alignment disturbed strategic stability. Throughout the Cold War, the Indian Navy was not even a speck on the strategic radar screens of the Soviet and US Navies. During the last five decades, the Indian Navy’s goodwill visits to neighbouring and distant countries contributed to the national strategy. During the last decade, the Navy’s exercises with neighbouring navies have steadily built bridges of regional friendship and dispelled apprehensions arising from the Navy’s modernisation.

With this background, it seems plausible to infer that the references to ‘Asia Pacific Region’ and ‘long-term’ are part of a larger strategic canvas. The US has concluded, perhaps, that India - a major secular democratic state of Asia and the most stable nation in its region, having close and friendly relations with Russia and almost all other countries, striving to resolve vexed problems by negotiation and never by violence, a likely member of the Security Council - should start assuming a measure of responsibility for regional stability to start with, and for trans-regional stability in the long term -in strategic alliance with the US in both cases. Another equally plausible interpretation could be that the US has decided to extend the concept of Asia Pacific to include the Indian Ocean and hence the reference to ‘energy security and joint operations to protect the sea lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean’. In this interpretation, India’s responsibility will be the Indian Ocean and other regional navies like those of Taiwan and Japan could do likewise for their segments. To the extent that these constructs do not diminish the friendly relations that India has carefully developed with other nations, they are logical, rational and realistic. Few in India would quibble with their basic reasoning.

Responsibility for stability in the SLOCs has some implications. Of the three services, only the Navy would have the legs to show its presence. The Indian Ocean is large. The SLOCs from the Persian Gulf proceed eastward to South Asia, southeastward to the Straits of Malacca and southward to the Cape of Good Hope. Whether in sole cooperation with the US Navy or even with other regional navies also joining these two, the Indian Navy would need to have substantially more ships than it has. As mentioned earlier, these ships would need to be designed and built for this role, particularly since men of war operating in hot and humid tropical seas experience problems quite different from those of merchant ships.

The Defence Supply Relationship

During the Cold War, the Navy was fully aware that all naval sales had to be approved by the US Congress. The Navy acquired targets for its gunnery practices in the 1970s and periscopes and combat systems for its indigenously constructed submarines in the 1980s on commercial terms. The problem area was the embargoes. An embargo undermines a customer’s confidence in the reliability and dependability of a supplier. Against a talented nation like India, it can be counter productive. As one of India’s eminent scientists had occasion to remark after the negotiations for the purchase of a super computer had foundered on US suspicions of end use – “it was a blessing in disguise, it forced us to improvise and develop parallel processing on our own and in a few years we could export our super computers at a much cheaper cost.”

The Navy was fortunate, not only in finding a reliable and dependable supplier in the erstwhile Soviet Union on very affordable financial terms, but also in the interaction that blossomed with Soviet designers on the latest Soviet equipment that could be fitted in the latest Indian hull which had as much indigenous equipment as possible. Even though the Navy’s transactions with Russia are now on commercial terms, the confidence in dependability remains firm. Given the constitutional constraints of the US in the realm of Defence Supplies, the Indian Navy’s confidence in the dependability of US defence supplies can only develop gradually in step with other facets of the Indo-US strategic alliance.

Prospects

Both nations and both Navies have long memories. Much will depend on the regard shown to each other’s sensitivities. There are not many scholars in the US who are sufficiently acquainted with the Indian Navy. Nor are there many Indian scholars who have grasped the historical and contemporary compulsions that drive the US Navy. The number of well-informed scholars on both sides will  also increase gradually, in step with the frequency and intensity of Indo-US strategic and Indo-US naval interaction. Meanwhile, the events after 9/11 augur well, as long as we do not expect too much from each other at the outset.

The author retired as Vice Chief of the Indian Navy.Reproduced with permission from Lancer Publishers Ltd - Indian Defence Review Volume 16 (5) 2002.