Making Moves on Defense With India

Since January 2017, the Trump administration’s implementation of its “America First” approach to U.S. foreign policy has left many Asian states uneasy. Allies and adversaries alike have faced difficulties in dealing with the administration’s mix of protectionist inclinations and unilateralist impulses. For India, this much has been true as well. New Delhi, for instance, saw its rapprochement with Iran – including stepped up purchases of hydrocarbons – disrupted by the Trump administration’s decision in May to place the United States in violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Similarly, Indian technology outsourcing firms have suffered at the hands of the U.S. administration’s restrictive immigration policy and New Delhi has seen pressure over its trade balance over the United States.

Despite all this, tensions aren’t new to the U.S.-India relationship. Even under the Obama administration, the two countries ran into unexpected difficulties that threatened to derail years of rapprochement, ongoing since the 123 Agreement in 2005 under the Bush administration. For instance, the 2013 arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York sparked a major row, leading to vociferous Indian criticism of U.S. law enforcement practices. Taking the long view of the U.S.-India relationship, it appears that the Trump administration – for all its disruptive effects across Asia – has mostly succeeded in maintaining the positive momentum and upward trajectory in the U.S.-India relationship. Nowhere has this been truer than in the defense and strategic relationship between the two countries.

In the first week of September 2018, for the first time the top foreign and defense officials of India and the United States met in New Delhi for a so-called “two-plus-two” meeting. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis together met Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to discuss a range of issues of mutual interest. The headline outcomes of the talks included the conclusion of a long-pending foundational agreement on defense cooperation, known as the Communications, Compatibility, and Security Agreement (COMCASA), an India-specific version of the generalized Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum Agreements (CISMOAs) the United States has concluded with several other partner states.

The U.S.-India COMCASA follows in the footsteps of two other important foundational agreements. One of these – the  General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) – was concluded in 2002. Another – the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) – followed 14 years later, in 2016. GSOMIA paved the path for years of closer U.S.-India military-to-military contact, including a wider range of exercises, while LEMOA put in place a standardized set of procedures to allow both the United States and India to reciprocally access each other’s logistics and resupply facilities with compensation in kind or in cash. With COMCASA, the United States has now concluded three out of the four foundational agreements necessary to facilitate closely woven military cooperation and interoperability – the closest it can maintain effectively with a nonallied state. The last remaining agreement, for which serious negotiations have yet to begin, is the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation (BECA), which would govern the sharing of maps, imagery, and other geospatial data. (The United States has shared a template of BECA – the starting point for India to state its concerns.)

The Trump administration deserves credit for getting COMCASA over the finish line with India – especially since it wasn't clear just weeks before the two-plus-two meeting if India was even ready to sign on just yet. As in the past, sovereignty concerns had held up India’s signing of the agreement. As a vestige of the old era of nonalignment, and partly a result of sensitivities toward India’s developed and historic defense relationship with Russia, many in New Delhi have been wary about these foundational agreements with the United States. These critics have long alleged that by slowly ramping up defense cooperation with the United States, New Delhi is welcoming a Trojan horse that would in a crisis bind its hands to the whims of Washington. Earlier on with the COMCASA negotiations, one of the holdups, for instance, was India's concern about end-user monitoring – where U.S. inspectors would visit India to ensure that equipment transferred under the agreement was being used appropriately. That issue was overcome after months of working-level talks.

In the end, COMCASA “will facilitate access to advanced defense systems and enable India to optimally utilize its existing U.S.-origin platforms,” as the joint statement released at the conclusion of the two-plus-two meeting outlined. In practice, this will allow Indian military platforms involved in exercises and operations with the United States and other friendly navies (such as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force) to share information with fewer restrictions. This has serious implications for maritime domain awareness and anti-submarine operations in the Indian Ocean, for example. In the near term, COMCASA will pave the way for India to take delivery of the Sea Guardian unmanned aerial vehicles it will be purchasing from the United States. The system’s transfer will require India to operate equipment and sensors, the use of which will be governed under the agreement.

Aside from COMCASA, the two-plus-two outlined the quickly expanding breadth of the U.S.-India strategic relationship. Building on long-standing cooperation on defense innovation under the U.S.-India Defense Technology and Trade Initiative, the two sides agreed to further cooperation between their respective defense innovation organizations. They also agreed to establish communication hotlines between the U.S. State Department and the Indian External Affairs Ministry at the highest level. Pompeo will have Swaraj on speed dial, allowing for more frequent and quicker contact that should, in theory, improve policy coordination between the two countries. The Indian Navy, additionally, will be sending an attaché to join the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain – a move that gives ballast to India’s “Think West” policy, which privileges a more active role in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Finally, the two countries will hold their first iteration of a new bilateral tri-service exercise in 2019, allowing for advances in joint interoperability.

The Trump administration has succeeded in pushing the relationship with India to a new plane and, looking back, it’s obvious that this represents some of the strongest policy continuity for the United States in Asia more broadly. In 2016, before leaving office, U.S. President Barack Obama declared India a Major Defense Partner of the United States, conferring on New Delhi an effectively bespoke status roughly comparable to that of a major non-NATO ally. The benefits of that status have taken a while to make themselves known and, with the conclusion of COMCASA and other outcomes of the two-plus-two, India is getting closer to reaping many of those advantages. (The U.S. Department of Commerce’s elevation of India’s strategic trade authorization tier earlier this summer is another key point in this area.)

The Trump administration’s bid to pursue a “free and open Indo-Pacific” has additionally given India greater pride of place in U.S. thinking toward Asia. Challenges remain ahead for the U.S.-India relationship – namely in the areas of trade and commerce, where the United States will insist on deficit reduction and the continuation of restrictive immigration policies. But on defense and strategic cooperation, we have evidence of one of the bright spots for continuity in U.S. Asia policy.