The Great Game: 21st Century Style

As the US seeks to strengthen ties with India, the effort dovetails with attempts to weaken the historical ties between India and Russia (particularly with respect to weaponry) and offset China's increase in defense expenditures and foreign policy objectives.
To that end, Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to India was not surprising given that, as the LA Times reported, "Gates spent more time discussing New Delhi's security challenges with Beijing than with its traditional regional rival Pakistan."
Gates, of course, is an old hand at such things and thus took the path of diplomacy by saying "I don't see our improving military relationship in the region in the context of any other country, including China. These expanding relationships don't necessarily have to be directed against anyone."
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True enough, on its face.
Yet Washington is--as it must be--mindful of the challenges China, and to a lesser extent Russia, presents going forward. From Thaindian News comes this:
"On his part, [Indian Defence Minister A.K.] Antony pointed to the close India-US engagement through forums like the Defence Policy Group, the Joint Working Group on Defence, the Military Cooperation Group, the Joint Technical Group and the Executive Steering Groups at the military-military level, saying that all of them had been meeting 'without slippages'."
"This degree of engagement hardly exists with other countries," Gates noted, adding, interestingly, that, "... they see it as we do -- a long term enterprise by two sovereign states. We are mindful of India’s long tradition of non-alignment and are respectful of that, but I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand on this relationship, and I think that was the feeling on the part of the Indian leaders that I met with, as well."
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While the issue of the moment was the arms sale of six Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules (valued at $1 billion), Gates said he was interested in having US defense contractors bid on 126 combat aircraft valued at roughly $10 billion: "I indicated that we obviously are interested and believe we are very competitive in the selection of the new fighter ... and we ask no special treatment. We simply are pleased to have a place at the table, and we believe that in a fair competition that we have a very good case to make."
And this is in the context of the rumored, potential Indian purchase of the soon-to-be-decommissioned US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. According to BusinessWeek, "India desperately needs aircraft carriers, too, as its purchase of the Russian ship Admiral Gorshkov is delayed, and India's own carrier, the INS Viraat, is aging fast."
(A Navy spokesman dismissed the rumor, saying, "We're not doing it. The Navy has no plans to transfer the Kitty Hawk to India, nor is this a subject of discussion between our navies at any level.")
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But beyond specific weapons purchases and potential carrier purchases/transfers is the strategic calculus regarding Russia and China. As an anonymous "senior Pentagon official" put it (notwithstanding Gates' denial that the visits to India, Indonesia and Australia weren't designed with China in mind), "there is a fundamental commonality of interests between the US and these three democracies that we have visited. There are reasons for having interoperable weapons systems ... not in an aggressive sense but certainly as a hedge."
And this hedge is to be against more than just conventional weaponry, namely missile defense. Gates: "We’re just beginning to talk about perhaps conducting a joint analysis about what India’s needs would be in the realm of missile defence and where cooperation between us might help advance that."
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Of course, the larger issue affecting US-India bilateral relations is the civilian nuclear agreement between the two nations. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Joe Biden, said, "time is of the essence. If we don't have the deal back with us clearly prior to the month of July it will be very difficult to ratify the deal -- not on the merits (of the deal) but on the mechanics on which our system functions." He stressed that if an agreement didn't reach Congress in time, "it is highly unlikely the next president will be able to present the same deal ... [and that] it will be renegotiated."
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Nevertheless, US-India relations are most likely to strengthen in the coming years. As K. Alan Kronstadt of the Congressional Research Service assessed, India's suspicions and "sense of insecurity ... regarding China’s long-term nuclear weapons capabilities and strategic intentions in South and Southeast Asia," are easily understood.
"In fact, a strategic orientation focused on China appears to have affected the course and scope of New Delhi’s own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Beijing’s military and economic support for Pakistan — support that is widely understood to have included WMD-related transfers — is a major and ongoing source of friction; past Chinese support for Pakistan’s Kashmir position has added to the discomfort of Indian leaders. New Delhi takes note of Beijing’s security relations with neighboring Burma and the construction of military facilities on the Indian Ocean. The two countries also have competed for energy resources to feed their rapidly growing economies; India’s relative poverty puts New Delhi at a significant disadvantage in such competition.
Analysts taking a realist political theory perspective view China as an external balancer in the South Asian subsystem, with Beijing’s material support for Islamabad allowing Pakistan to challenge the aspiring regional hegemony of a more powerful India. Many observers, especially in India, see Chinese support for Pakistan as a key aspect of Beijing’s perceived policy of 'encirclement' or constraint of India as a means of preventing or delaying New Delhi’s ability to challenge Beijing’s regionwide influence."

That alone would explain a strengthening of US-India relations.

And so the "Great Game" continues.
It's just a shame its played by wasting such vast resources.