As of this writing, India’s relations with the United States have reached its lowest in the last couple of decades. This has surprised many who were bullish about Indo-US ties. The tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on Indian imports, reasoning that India’s buying of Russian oil is sustaining Moscow’s war machine, are viewed by contemporary observers as undoing decades of diplomatic hard work on both sides. One of the key factors driving the relationship was the ‘China’ threat, which the present US-India animosity seems to have obscured, resulting in New Delhi trying to mend relations with Beijing. Although popular opinion tends to blame Trump’s miscalculations for the current state of Indo-US affairs, an objective historical assessment reveals that no country has surprised and antagonised India as often as the United States. This article, therefore, argues that India’s grand strategy requires a readjustment of its strategic intelligence priorities to lend it a degree of predictability in its foreign relations.
At the grand strategic level, India assumes a great power status and desires significant influence in global politics. Absent written documents, this strategy is largely reflective of its vast geography, large population, and a civilisational identity. There is, however, a fundamental disconnect between this strategic aspiration and its intelligence institutions. In fact, the roles of its national security institutions have never been articulated, leaving them merely responding to emerging crises. For instance, India’s foreign intelligence organisation, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) was created in 1968 only after the wars of 1962 and 1965 with China and Pakistan, respectively. Since then, agency has focused on India’s immediate neighbourhood, primarily Pakistan and China, and the Indian Ocean Region. However, in achieving India’s grand strategic objectives, it has been the US that has consistently been an impediment but has received no attention from India’s foreign intelligence.
The list of US surprises to India’s national security is indeed long. The earliest dates to 1954-55 when Pakistan entered the US led alliance systems. An alarmed Indian leadership directed the Intelligence Bureau, R&AW’s predecessor, to monitor US arms sales to Pakistan and its impact on Pak defence capabilities. The next surprise came a decade later when US defence supplies to Pakistan provided the impetus for Pak’s military adventurism in 1965. In 1971, the entry of the USS Enterprise into Bay of Bengal significantly altered New Delhi’s thinking about the US’ presence in the Indian Ocean, leading to a short-lived trilateral intelligence cooperation between India, France, and Iran. During the 1980s, the US’ covert war in Afghanistan allowed Pakistan to sponsor terrorism in India whilst acquiring nuclear weapons – both ignored by Washington. All this while, India focused its intelligence capabilities only on Pakistan, instead of the US that was sustaining Pakistan’s actions that were threatening regional security. Later, during the War on Terror, India trusted the US to be a reliable partner. Yet, when the 2008 Mumbai Attacks occurred, it was again betrayed by a lack of unequivocal support from the US and its English-speaking allies against Pakistan.
Beyond these episodes, there is a fundamental incompatibility between Indian and US grand strategies that has remained consistent since the 1950s. For instance, when India approached the US during the mid-1950s for food assistance, it was held to ransom by a demand for changes to India’s foreign policy. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had refused to barter India’s “self-respect or freedom of action” even for something it desperately needed. Where Washington’s grand strategy was clearly a derivative of material power, India’s grand strategy emerged from abstract notions of freedom and self-respect. Fast forward to the current crisis, and it is the US’ penchant for coercion that is fundamentally at divergence with India’s preference for self-respect and freedom of action. Therefore, the strategic orientation of the two countries makes ‘surprise’ an inbuilt feature in their bilateral relations. This realisation has seeped well into India’s counterintelligence logic. Consequently, India’s nuclear tests were well shielded from US intelligence coverage; and American spies operating in India have been regularly targeted and neutralised. The same consciousness, however, has not extended to India’s foreign intelligence. Hence, moving forward, India must recognise that achieving its grand strategy requires not only partnering with the US, but also truly ‘knowing’ it. The latter requires India to transform its intelligence-free grand strategy to one that reorients its foreign intelligence to the right targets.
Dheeraj Paramesha-Chaya
Lecturer in Intelligence
School of Criminology, Politics, and Law
University of Hull
UK
