Thursday, February 03, 2005

India-Israel relations

Khaled Ahmed in The Friday Times: Excellent, as usual.


India-Israel relations

Khaled Ahmed’s A n a l y s i s

Late ML Sondhi, head of New Delhi’s prestigious Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR), and his associate at the ICSSR, Bharat Karnad, spoke to a scholarly gathering at Brookings Institution in Washington in September 2000. On the eve of prime minister Vajpayee’s visit to the United States, they chose the topic carefully: Democratic Peace: US-Indo-Israeli Strategic Cooperation .

The message was prefaced like this: India and Israel began as state-controlled economies, then liberalised. Both were democracies surrounded by states ruled by dictators armed with weapons of mass destruction, with societies subject to fundamentalism. Both had problems with politics of internal division and strife. It is recommended that they now move closer on the basis of permanent moral principles rather than pragmatic temporary interests, as the US did with the Arab states in the Gulf War but was not able to get their support in the post-war period. India and Israel should move on the basis of strategic-military commonalties: Israel should be helped by India to maintain its defence industry in the face of larger adversaries, and Israel should help India in upgrading its defence equipment. It should project its power by strengthening India’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) system and development of second-strike capability through a submarine-borne nuclear delivery system.

India’s manpower, Israel’s technology: Israel could consider offering to India some of the anti-ballistic missile technology it obtained from the US as the relationship advances. In return, India can offer Israel partnership in the Indian Ocean - an arrangement that will integrate India’s regional status with Israel’s technological ascendancy. Israel’s defence industry was not helping much in relieving the burden of the defence budget which is extremely high at 10 percent of the GNP as against approximately 2 percent in the case of India. According to an Israeli source, Israel’s defence industry needed to export 75 percent of what it made to be viable. India, a big buyer in the field, could actually bail it out economically.

Despite India’s good relations with the Arab states, India will be in a position to provide Israel ‘elusive second-strike retaliatory platforms’ away from Israel’s narrow 200 km shore on its own 8000 km long coast. All Israel has to do is give India a second strike capability by nuclearising and technologically advancing its submarines. There could be problems with the US trying to protect technology loaned to Israel. This will not impede all the joint ventures but may obstruct some of them, if that, because the trilateral ‘partnership’ will sooner rather than later put to rest America’s mistrust of India. India’s ‘partnership’ may be impeded by Israel’s covert military cooperation with China, but India hopes that Israel and the US will one day wake up to the strategic compulsion of offsetting China’s growing ‘non-democratic’ power in Asia.

The real challenge to the US, it was stated, is the rise of China as a global rival. In the South Asian region, therefore, India becomes a very plausible ally. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic liberalisation in India, the US remained ‘reticent’ in its relations with India. This reticence changed to hostility in 1998 after the Indian nuclear test, but Pakistan’s misadventure in 1999 at Kargil suddenly changed America’s perception. America now relates to India as a ‘partner’, which feeling should extend in time to a policy of bolstering an Indo-Israeli partnership in the region.

A new Monroe Doctrine in Asia: Bharat Karnad thought that India should be helped by the US and Israel in setting up its own Monroe Doctrine. The area covered by this Doctrine would be: South East Asian littorals in the East, East Africa in the South, the Gulf in the West, the Caspian and Central Asia in the Northwest, coming down to Tibet. The US announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1810 to exclude further Spanish incursions into American continent, but was unable to patrol it on its own. The Doctrine was finally enforced with British naval help. ‘Monroe Doctrine had British teeth’. In the same manner, India would not be able to enforce its Doctrine on the large region with its present military capacity. The US wants to monitor and control the globe but wishes minimal military involvement and avoids situations where its nationals may risk death.

India could provide the capacity to take casualties while the US and Israel could lend money and technology. This is how Karnad put it: ‘The US in the future will doubtless appreciate the democratic ballast provided by a nuclear armed and politically stable India in the broad energy-rich swath asimmer with ethnic and religious conflicts and social turmoil and identified by New Delhi as falling within its Monroe Doctrine orbit’. He quoted the Indian Chief of Naval Staff Sushil Kumar as stating: ‘The US cannot patrol the Indian Ocean region and needs an ally it can trust. That is where the Indian Navy steps in and polices the region.’

Post-Kargil upsurge in relations: In the post-Kargil and post-9/11 era, Indo-Israeli cooperation has grown apace. In 2004 Israeli prime minister Sharon visited New Delhi to highlight the relationship. One of the more conspicuous military deals was the sale of three early warning radar Phalcon-fitted aircraft, the same model as those denied to China. After initial hesitation the United States allowed the sale, which may be the beginning of a trend. Indian procurement in Israel in 2002 totalled more than $1 billion. It seems that the tension between India and Pakistan, accelerated deals currently on the agenda, so that this astronomical sum seems likely to grow in coming years. In addition to the Phalcon deal, other major deals include the sale of the Green Pine radar system, which is part of the Arrow missile-defence system, as well as the Baraq ship-borne missile and Galaxy aircraft for the Indian Navy. An Indian diplomatic source notes that the two countries’ space agencies are due to sign cooperation agreements in the near future.

In addition, Israel was upgrading 180 old Indian guns and was competing to supply 500 new ones. India has purchased unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV’s] costing a total of some $400 million. In June 2002, Pakistani fighter aircraft shot down an Indian Army Searcher UAV that was operating deep in Pakistani territory. A metal plate discovered in the wreckage revealed that the UAV came from Israel Aircraft Industries. This incident led Pakistan to repeat its warning to Israel against getting involved in the region. Pakistan has voiced various claims in the past, some refuted, about the degree of Israel’s involvement in the subcontinent. In 1998, a Pakistani newspaper reported that an Israel intelligence ship had sunk off Pakistan’s coast. According to the report, the ship had been escorted by an Israeli submarine, which had been supposed to send signals to Israeli F-16’s that intended to destroy the Pakistani nuclear testing site. The Islamic world is anxiously monitoring the close relationship. Dr. Abdul Kalam visited Israel even before the nuclear tests that India carried out in 1998.

India spends big in Israel: The Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv in 2002 issued some 30,000 visas for Israeli travellers. The interesting thing is that the Jewish community in the United States is involved in assisting India to move closer to the United States. The Indians view the Jewish communities as a model of the effective organization of the diaspora. From Israel’s point of view, a deep strategic link with India means that a country with one billion people on the extremity of Israel’s strategic zone, with a large potential for growth and a fundamental lack of sympathy for political Islamism, will be like a shelter against those whom Israel doesn’t like. Israelis talk of a peripheral belt around the Islamic world. There are parts of the Arab World where the Indian strategic presence is already being felt. In certain conditions, the Indian Navy could become the dominant element in Arabian Sea.

Non-military trade between India and Israel reached $1.27 billion in 2002, up from $202 million in 1992. India has also been spending an estimated $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually on Israeli military technology and equipment. Military analysts estimate that Israel now rivals and possibly exceeds Russia as India’s largest military supplier, while India is now among Israel’s largest clients. Israeli munitions have proved particularly valuable for India as it tries to bulk up its conventional defences against its nuclear-armed neighbour, Pakistan. Israel has supplied India with surface-to-air missiles, avionics, sophisticated sensors to monitor cross-border traffic, remotely piloted drones, and artillery. The United States and others restricted technology exports to India in response to its 1998 nuclear tests, making Israel’s responsiveness all the more welcome.

Jewish-Indian lobbies cooperate in Washington: In 2004, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security also approved the purchase of a $97 million Israeli electronic warfare system for ships. And India wants Israel’s Arrow missile defence system, although that would require American approval. In Washington, Jewish and Indian-American groups have been joining forces. In July 2004, the U.S.-India Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee jointly organized a Capitol Hill reception. Head of the American Jewish Committee’s Washington office, described India and Israel as democracies surrounded by ‘hostile neighbours, well armed and numerous’. He said it made sense to jointly work on issues where both countries stood to benefit.

In the years when India was opening up to the world existing on the other side of the road of Cold War, Pakistan was in the process of receding into self-isolation. In 2001, the policy of self-isolation brought it dangerously close to becoming the target of the UN Security Council resolution 1373 under Chapter Seven. Its isolationist strategists made very little effort to break the walls of a policy they had popularised by calling it jihad. When extreme flexibility was required to soften hardline isolationism, they failed to get popular approval for initiating contacts with Israel to offset some of the damage the new Indo-Israeli equation was perceived
as causing to Pakistan’s interests.