Ash Carter in India: ‘Act East’ Meets the ‘Rebalance’

While it may not have stormed headlines, the world’s largest and oldest democracies signed a framework outlining the scope of their bilateral defense cooperation for the next decade. The U.S. Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter was in India recently as part of a tour of Asia. He and his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar, oversaw an update to the U.S.-India Defense Cooperation Framework agreement that sets out a road map for bilateral cooperation through 2025. Carter’s visit and the bilateral momentum leading up to it underlined India’s growing importance for the United States’ ongoing rebalance to Asia. Carter left India having charted an ambitious path forward for U.S.-India cooperation on defense and security matters. New Delhi and Washington are looking to cooperate on everything from maritime security to next-generation aircraft carrier technology.

Carter’s visit adds another notch to the unmistakable security rapprochement between Washington and New Delhi that’s been gradually ramping up since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office, just over a year ago. During Modi’s September 2014 visit to Washington, the two countries got the ball rolling. As I noted at the time, the joint statement that came out of Modi’s inaugural U.S. trip suggested big things were coming in U.S.-India defense and security cooperation. In January 2015, Obama made history by becoming the first U.S. leader to visit India as the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day celebrations. Modi didn’t let that opportunity go to waste: The two leaders, once again, kept the positive momentum of September 2014 going. When Obama left New Delhi in January, it was apparent that whatever damage U.S.-India relations had suffered in early late-2013/early-2014 over the Devyani Khobragade affair (the arrest of a senior Indian consular official by U.S. authorities in New York) had been set aside in favor of pragmatic rapprochement.

In both September 2014 and January 2015, the U.S.-India joint statements emphasized the role of a little known bilateral defense cooperation mechanism known as the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI). The story of the DTTI is intertwined with Carter’s own history with India: as deputy secretary during Chuck Hagel’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon, Carter oversaw the birth of the DTTI. As such, Carter needed no icebreaker in New Delhi – his experience negotiating with Indian defense decision-makers, albeit under a previous government, proved an asset.

The burgeoning DTTI was perhaps the best sneak peak of the new U.S.-India defense cooperation framework: The U.S.-India defense relationship was on track to gain strategic depth. The United States opened itself to exploring defense technology transfer to India, and New Delhi in turn saw benefits for its indigenous defense industry. As Modi and Obama noted in September 2014, the U.S. and India would “treat each other at the same level as their closest partners” on issues including “defense technology transfers, trade, research, co-production, and co-development.”

Fast-forward to late-May 2015 and Carter’s return to India, this time as the head of the U.S. defense department. Carter spent three days in the country, generating headlines as the first U.S. defense secretary to visit an Indian operational military command. He was greeted by Parrikar at India’s Eastern Naval Command in Vizag, on the coast of India’s Bay of Bengal. If Carter wanted to encourage India’s “Act East” policy and highlight the complementarities of that initiative with the United States’ own rebalance, visiting India’s Eastern Naval Command was an apt choice. In Vizag, Carter received a briefing and was given a tour of the INS Sahyadri, an indigenously built Indian stealth frigate. Thereafter, in New Delhi, Carter and Parrikar announced two small joint U.S.-India technology co-development projects, one on next-generation solar technology and another on a protective chemical-bio suit. Carter was careful not to let the fact that the two sides would allocate just $1 million to the endeavor detract from the broader message that the United States and India were ramping up defense co-production: “We have big ambitions. Some of the projects that we’re launching just now are in part intended to blaze a trail for things to come,” Carter told reporters in New Delhi. Emphasizing the DTTI, Carter noted that these projects were an attempt to “move beyond” a “buyer-seller” kind of defense-industrial relationship.

The big-ticket accomplishment of Carter’s trip was the signing of the 2015 Framework Agreement for U.S.-India Defense Cooperation. The agreement didn’t come as a surprise – it is effectively a ten-year extension of the previous framework that was signed in June 2005, contemporaneously to the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear cooperation agreement. The framework closely resembles its decade-old predecessor with a few notable updates. The DTTI is mentioned, maritime security cooperation is given emphasis, and both sides pledge to cooperate in sharing experiences and practices on “operating common defense platforms.” The framework includes some big picture normative statements – for instance, the U.S. and India pledge to work together in support of a “rule-based order” in Asia in addition to protecting the free flow of commerce. Amid rising tensions in the East and South China Seas, that statement will reverberate on the other side of the Himalayas, in China.

For the United States, Carter’s time in India emphasized the role of the U.S.-India bilateral partnership in the ongoing U.S. rebalance to Asia. His trip was significant given the broader context of his Asia tour. Prior to arriving in New Delhi, Carter oversaw the signing of defense agreements with Vietnam and Australia. Additionally, in his remarks at the 2015 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the defense secretary presented clear restatement of the United States thinking on preserving the status quo of the Asia-Pacific’s regional architecture. In that speech, Carter emphasized that the United States intended to cooperate with its allies and partners in Asia so that all states – not just the big ones (read: China) – could “win.” The United States certainly appears to be enlisting New Delhi’s help in that endeavor.

India, for its part, is starting to deliver on its “Act East” policy. As Carter left New Delhi, four Indian warships prepared to make port calls in Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia. One senior Indian naval officer noted that the deployment was geared toward “[showing] the Indian flag in this region of strategic importance.” In the eyes of the United States, such eastward excursions by the Indian Navy will be most welcome as China continues its bid to assert its maritime claims in the region, potentially placing the principle of freedom of navigation at risk.

Defense cooperation between India and the United States has plenty of room to grow, and Carter’s visit appears to have established a positive vision for how these two states can work together for mutual benefit. The devil, however, remains in the details, and the United States and India have found ways to stall progress on actual defense cooperation deliverables. Ideas such as cooperation on aircraft carrier design, including carrier propulsion and fighter launch systems, and joint production of weapons systems remain aspirational at this point.

Murmurs of strategic convergence between Washington and New Delhi have disappointed observers of this important bilateral in the past. Be it a lack of sustained attention toward India from the United States or an eruption of U.S.-skepticism in Indian politics, a variety of factors have prevented these two countries from capitalizing on mutually beneficial strategic cooperation. In the wake of Carter’s visit, it will still take sustained political energy on both sides to convert vision into reality.