Putin's India visit revamps Russia-India strategic partnership
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Zoglul Husain
THE 22-hour visit of the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to India on 12 March reinvigorated the Russia-India strategic partnership, which was relegated to a rather low key existence since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin, along with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan singh, witnessed the signing of a raft of about fifteen treaties and supplementary agreements between Russia and India on nuclear generators, high-tech aircrafts, defence supply, space cooperation, energy and other scientific and economic fields.
As India developed the present Russia-India strategic partnership in parallel with US-India strategic partnership, which also involve nuclear generators, defence and strategic agreements, etc. and as there is no strategic partnership between the US and Russia, the present development will probably affect the strategic and politico-economic equations in South Asia with its repercussions in the world scene.
Along with this, Israel's defiance of the US on settlement plan, the dispute now taking a rather serious turn, the hitherto existing US-Israel-India axis may encounter quite serious problems. Could the love-love relations between the three strategic partners change to love-hate relations or even worse? Yes, it could.
The treaties penned between Russia and India on 12 March aim at a bilateral trade growth from the $7.5 billion in 2009 to $20 billion by 2015, according to Putin in a live webcast interaction with Indian businessmen. He said it was time for the old Cold War allies to boost trade beyond the limited scope of defence.
Russia agreed to construct up to 16 nuclear reactors for power generation in three states of India, six of them by 2017. In March 2009, the installed power generation capacity of India stood at 147,000 MW. Of this, about 75% is generated by thermal power plants, 21% by hydroelectric power plants and 4% by nuclear power plants.
India wants to increase nuclear power generation from its present level of about 5,000 MW to 40,000 MW within the next 10 years with the help of US, Russian and French companies.
The deals on defence included modernising and refitting the Soviet-era heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, to be renamed INS Vikramaditya, the long dispute over price now being settled at $2.34 bn. Also there were agreements on $1.5 bn dollar contract for delivery of MiG-29K/KUB carrier-based fighters. According to the head of Russian plane maker Sukhoi, Russia will build more than 1,000 stealth fighter jets within four decades, including at least 200 for its traditional weapons buyer India. India is in the middle of a $50 bn boost of its defence development.
This year's military budget alone is $30 bn, a 70% increase on the budget five years earlier, in view of India's stated possible conflict with Pakistan and China and with its not-so-covert plan of emerging as a regional super-power, however beset with internal armed conflicts and poverty.
Other agreements included collaboration in energy sectors, space, satellite navigation, agriculture, diamonds, technical cooperation, etc.
Putin's visit thus swings India back to its Cold War era strategic partnership, which started in the 1950s after the death of Stalin in 1953. India set up its first steel, pharmaceutical and nuclear power plants in collaboration with the former Soviet Union. For decades Russia supplied India with jets, tanks, warships etc., which constitute 70% of India's present military equipment.
The Russia-India relationship was strengthened by a Friendship and Cooperation treaty signed in 1971, which essentially was a war treaty in that it had the clause that if one of the contracting parties is attacked by any external power, then the other would take it as an attack on itself and that they would respond jointly.
India, however, maintained a tenuous link with the US power bloc in the name of non-alignment.
As the bipolar world of the Cold War era came to an end with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and as a unipolar world under US leadership emerged from then on, India took no time to veer and start working for strategic partnership with Israel from 1992 and for strategic partnership with the US from 1998, eventually succeeding in forming the US-Israel-India axis, during Bush's oil and strategic wars.
Bush went out of the normal way to accommodate India in his nuclear club and, in 2008, reached a landmark nuclear agreement which ended a 34-year ban on trading nuclear fuel and technology with India, which was imposed as a punitive measure for India's development of atomic weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
India has, however, swerved again. This time, as in the aftermath of the world financial crisis of 2008-09, the US showed definite signs of irreversibly going downhill and as the unipolar world, which emerged from 1991, gave in to an emergent multipolar world, India decided to be equidistant between the US and Russia, which Russia suggested to India in the heyday of India's close relationship with the US.
In the name of equidistance or non-alignment, India now probably turns closer to Russia than the US, which will probably change the strategic and political considerations in South Asia and the rest of the world. All the countries in Asia, West, East, North, Central and South, would follow the turn of events generated by the renewed Russia-India strategic partnership and adjust their strategic parameters accordingly.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail: zoglul@hotmail.co.uk
THE 22-hour visit of the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to India on 12 March reinvigorated the Russia-India strategic partnership, which was relegated to a rather low key existence since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin, along with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan singh, witnessed the signing of a raft of about fifteen treaties and supplementary agreements between Russia and India on nuclear generators, high-tech aircrafts, defence supply, space cooperation, energy and other scientific and economic fields.
As India developed the present Russia-India strategic partnership in parallel with US-India strategic partnership, which also involve nuclear generators, defence and strategic agreements, etc. and as there is no strategic partnership between the US and Russia, the present development will probably affect the strategic and politico-economic equations in South Asia with its repercussions in the world scene.
Along with this, Israel's defiance of the US on settlement plan, the dispute now taking a rather serious turn, the hitherto existing US-Israel-India axis may encounter quite serious problems. Could the love-love relations between the three strategic partners change to love-hate relations or even worse? Yes, it could.
The treaties penned between Russia and India on 12 March aim at a bilateral trade growth from the $7.5 billion in 2009 to $20 billion by 2015, according to Putin in a live webcast interaction with Indian businessmen. He said it was time for the old Cold War allies to boost trade beyond the limited scope of defence.
Russia agreed to construct up to 16 nuclear reactors for power generation in three states of India, six of them by 2017. In March 2009, the installed power generation capacity of India stood at 147,000 MW. Of this, about 75% is generated by thermal power plants, 21% by hydroelectric power plants and 4% by nuclear power plants.
India wants to increase nuclear power generation from its present level of about 5,000 MW to 40,000 MW within the next 10 years with the help of US, Russian and French companies.
The deals on defence included modernising and refitting the Soviet-era heavy aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, to be renamed INS Vikramaditya, the long dispute over price now being settled at $2.34 bn. Also there were agreements on $1.5 bn dollar contract for delivery of MiG-29K/KUB carrier-based fighters. According to the head of Russian plane maker Sukhoi, Russia will build more than 1,000 stealth fighter jets within four decades, including at least 200 for its traditional weapons buyer India. India is in the middle of a $50 bn boost of its defence development.
This year's military budget alone is $30 bn, a 70% increase on the budget five years earlier, in view of India's stated possible conflict with Pakistan and China and with its not-so-covert plan of emerging as a regional super-power, however beset with internal armed conflicts and poverty.
Other agreements included collaboration in energy sectors, space, satellite navigation, agriculture, diamonds, technical cooperation, etc.
Putin's visit thus swings India back to its Cold War era strategic partnership, which started in the 1950s after the death of Stalin in 1953. India set up its first steel, pharmaceutical and nuclear power plants in collaboration with the former Soviet Union. For decades Russia supplied India with jets, tanks, warships etc., which constitute 70% of India's present military equipment.
The Russia-India relationship was strengthened by a Friendship and Cooperation treaty signed in 1971, which essentially was a war treaty in that it had the clause that if one of the contracting parties is attacked by any external power, then the other would take it as an attack on itself and that they would respond jointly.
India, however, maintained a tenuous link with the US power bloc in the name of non-alignment.
As the bipolar world of the Cold War era came to an end with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and as a unipolar world under US leadership emerged from then on, India took no time to veer and start working for strategic partnership with Israel from 1992 and for strategic partnership with the US from 1998, eventually succeeding in forming the US-Israel-India axis, during Bush's oil and strategic wars.
Bush went out of the normal way to accommodate India in his nuclear club and, in 2008, reached a landmark nuclear agreement which ended a 34-year ban on trading nuclear fuel and technology with India, which was imposed as a punitive measure for India's development of atomic weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
India has, however, swerved again. This time, as in the aftermath of the world financial crisis of 2008-09, the US showed definite signs of irreversibly going downhill and as the unipolar world, which emerged from 1991, gave in to an emergent multipolar world, India decided to be equidistant between the US and Russia, which Russia suggested to India in the heyday of India's close relationship with the US.
In the name of equidistance or non-alignment, India now probably turns closer to Russia than the US, which will probably change the strategic and political considerations in South Asia and the rest of the world. All the countries in Asia, West, East, North, Central and South, would follow the turn of events generated by the renewed Russia-India strategic partnership and adjust their strategic parameters accordingly.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail: zoglul@hotmail.co.uk