PM Modi’s upcoming state visit to US and likely GE jet engine deal are veritable wins for Indian exceptionalism

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Narendra Modi’s upcoming state visit to the United States. The prime minister has been to the US seven times since assuming office in 2014 and has accepted invitations from Joe Biden’s predecessors Barack Obama and Donald Trump to visit the White House prior to this occasion. This, however, will be Modi’s first official state visit to Washington DC that includes a state dinner hosted by the White House and will be replete with all the ceremonial pomp and honour associated with the highest-ranking invite offered by the POTUS to a head of state. Modi’s impending visit is epochal in more ways than one. It has been variously described as a “pivotal moment”, and a “consecration” of the partnership “as the most important bilateral relationship for the US on the global stage”. At a subliminal level, however, the invitation itself extended to Modi to embark on a state visit and address a joint session of the US Congress — a rare gesture of honour and warmth reserved for America’s closest allies and partners — not only demonstrates the importance the US attaches to the partnership with India but also reflects the bipartisan consensus in an otherwise polarized Washington DC that India-US ties are marked by a high degree of trust and mutual confidence. And this confidence and trust has become entrenched, incredibly, amid a treacherous geopolitical climate that has seen India and the US differ majorly in their stance towards the conflict in Europe. Nowhere is this dichotomy exemplified better than the fact that the invitation comes despite the two countries’ stated policy, legacy and associated differences over Russia and Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Modi will be joining the rarefied few such as Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, or Benjamin Netanyahu in addressing a joint session of US Congress twice (he has done so once in 2016) despite leading India to pursue an independent Russia policy centred on ensuring energy security for Indian citizens and managing Moscow’s status as India’s leading source of arms imports. So, while Modi has steadily intensified India’s partnership with the US across a range of domains, the maritime in particular where India’s and America’s shared vision of a free, open, inclusive and resilient Indo-Pacific that is free of China’s assertiveness and coercive tactics merge in a neat dovetail, he has also been able to maintain India’s strong partnership with Moscow that allows a San Francisco-bound Air India flight suffering from technical difficulties to land and park itself in Russia’s Magadan for a couple of days for repair work. This speaks of the dynamism of Indian foreign policy. But it also raises a legitimate question. Why is the US bent on bestowing such accolades on Modi and India when such a yawning gap exists in Russia policy, more so considering the centrality of Russia still in American domestic politics? This question has been raised before and continues to be raised, most recently by former Trump administration official Lisa Curtis. In a recent piece for NatStrat, she writes, “Outside observers may question why the Biden Administration is extending the courtesy of a state-level visit to Modi, whose government has given succor to Moscow by abstaining from several United Nations resolutions condemning Russia, drastically increasing imports of Russian crude oil, and participating in Russian military exercises.” Before we answer that, it is also worth pointing out that while the state visit is a prestigious event, it is also a natural progression of the trajectory of the relationship between India and the US that is multifaceted, strengthened across multiple domains and pivots on such secure fulcrums as a burgeoning security and defence relationship and robust people-to-people ties. When it comes to India-US coordination on defence, especially, virtually nothing is off the table even though the two countries are not, or ever likely to be treaty allies. The relationship has flourished even further under the Biden administration with the Quad attaining summit-level heights and achieving tangible outcomes, but the groundwork has been laid by successive American governments that have marked and reinforced India’s status as ‘major defence partner’, a pivot of US Indo-Pacific strategy (Trump administration) and a net security provider in Indo-Pacific. The Biden administration in its Indo-Pacific Strategy released last year vowed to continue building a strategic partnership in which the US and India work together and through regional groupings to promote stability in South Asia; collaborate in new domains such as health, space, and cyber space; deepen economic and technology cooperation and contribute to a free and open Indo-Pacific. It sees India as a “like-minded partner” and “leader in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, active in and connected to Southeast Asia, a driving force of the Quad and other regional fora, and an engine for regional growth and development.” And this relationship could take a quantum leap still if the US agrees to let GE co-produce one of America’s most advanced fighter jet engines — the F1414 — in India on complete transfer of technology (ToT) basis so that these engines may power HAL-designed Tejas MK2 light combat aircraft and go a huge distance in making India ‘aatmanirbhar’ in defence production. Transferring of jet engine technology is a very big deal, considering the fact that only four countries in the world — Britain, France, Russia and the US — possess the skill. It forms the crowning glory of American engine technologies, one that forms part of its most closely guarded state secrets and is offered only to the closest treaty allies. “Fighter jet engines are highly complex. The design and manufacturing processes associated with everything from the housing to the individual turbine blades have been refined through decades of development and the generations of engines that preceded the F414. Any technology transfer carries associated risks of falling into the wrong hands or being reverse engineered by an adversary. This is precisely why the US has been reluctant to share jet engine technology with any but its most trusted treaty allies,” point out John Venable and Jeff Smith of The Heritage Foundation in their latest report. And yet there is a clamour even within the US, as Venable and Smith make the case, that the jet engine deal along with technology transfer, could be mutually beneficial for both Washington and New Delhi, “one that bolsters collective security in the Indo–Pacific and elevates the defense partnership to new levels.” If the deal goes through, and if the Biden administration is successful in persuading the US Congress and bureaucracy in lowering the regulatory barriers such as International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR) related to defence exports — the buzz in both Washington and New Delhi is that an announcement is in the offing when Modi visits Washington — it could mark the beginning of a partnership that enhances India’s military capabilities and hews New Delhi even closer to Washington in terms of interoperability of systems, simultaneously and eventually weaning India off the legacy Russian platforms. It is precisely here that there has been pivotal change in US thinking towards a more realist view of its partnership with India. It isn’t ‘strategic altruism’ based on the future hope that it may induce India to assist the US in some manner of form during a possible conflict with China over Taiwan, but the delayed recognition of the idea that it is in American national interest to integrate the defence industrial bases of the two countries and engage in co-production and co-development to advance India’s military modernisation. Now, let us revert to the question raised by Curtis on why instead of imposing costs on India for its Russia policy, Washington is drawing India closer — and as we can see — preparing the ground for transferring top-of-the-edge fighter jet engine technology, as well as sophisticated equipment such as MQ-9B Predator armed drones. To explain the shift better, we need to understand what the US considers as its priority theatre and how it sees India-US partnership within that context. To quote top Pentagon official Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of Indo-Pacific security affairs in US Department of Defense (DoD) who had accompanied US secretary of state Lloyd Austin during his recent visit to New Delhi, US national defence strategy is based on the idea that China is America’s “pacing challenge” and Indo-Pacific is Pentagon’s “priority theatre”. Speaking to Curtis at a recent CNAS event, Ratner said that Pentagon’s “primary point” is “we continue to invest in the Indo-Pacific as the priority theater.” This, he said, has “manifested itself in the ongoing development of new operational concepts, the investments in the latest budget submission, in terms of the capabilities that the administration is focused on — 40 per cent increase in funding toward Pacific Deterrence Initiative. So from a concepts and capabilities front, really putting our money where our mouth is, in terms of our focus on the Indo-Pacific and the China challenge.” Curtis concurs, as she writes in her piece for NatStrat that America’s ongoing effort to support India’s military modernization is a “calculated long-term strategy to ensure India remains part of a networked security architecture in the Indo-Pacific and maintains the confidence and capabilities to stand up to Chinese aggression.” The statements by the former and current top administrative officials, therefore, reveal a continuity and a recognition in American thinking that a strong India capable of defending its own interests and sovereignty, a contributor to regional security and stability that is capable of power projection in Indian Ocean while networking with the US and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, was crucial for America’s own national interest. We get a feeling of the Biden administration’s buy-in of Modi government’s policy when Ratner says that among US priorities are “strategic alignment around the question of co-development and co-production between the US and India on the defense side. This is a priority for prime minister Modi to strengthen India’s indigenous defense industrial base as well as advance India’s military modernization. And for all of the reasons… that’s in the interests of the US.”

This is a near-total achievement of consensus in strategic objectives as well as the means to achieve the objectives. This is the fulcrum for a collaborative and burgeoning bilateral defence cooperation focused on co-production and co-development. This shift towards a more realist posture, however, wouldn’t have been possible without a concomitant ideological rethink in the Biden administration. The US, which sees treaty-based alliance systems as the logical progression and inevitable outcome of strategic alignment, seems to be making an exception for India. In other words, the US has come round to accepting Indian exceptionalism. It does not mean that the US sees India as its ‘equal’, but it understands that India will never be tied down in a sovereignty-sharing, treaty-based system. For instance, India’s foreign minister Jaishankar said at a recent presser to a query on the possibility of India joining the ‘NATO’ framework, “a lot of Americans still have that NATO treaty construct in their heads. So, any situation they deal with, they use that like a, it seems almost like that’s the only sort of template with which, or only viewpoint with which they look at the world. The reality is, that is not a template that applies to India. I must say, a lot of it is actually outside the administration. The administration understands this very, very well.” Jaishankar is on the money. The US has set aside its own exceptionalism, guided by the view that it must make some exceptions for its non-treaty partner India, such as lowering the barriers for export control, taking a lenient view on licensing issues, and exploring the outer limits of bureaucratic processes that are still based on “presumption of denial” when it comes to sharing critical technologies in defence cooperation or enhancing India’s defense industrial production. Because that, ultimately, is in America’s own interest. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.