To combat China in the Indo-Pacific region and wean New Delhi off its reliance on Russia for weapons, the US is initiating a number of ambitious technology, space, and defense ventures with India.
Ajit Doval and Jake Sullivan, the national security advisers for India and the United States respectively, met on Tuesday in Washington as the two nations announced their cooperation across several areas, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G wireless networks, and semiconductors. They have also developed a system to facilitate their ability to produce weapons collectively.
‘The Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies’ is US President Joe Biden’s most recent initiative to improve compliance with allies and partners in the tussle against China. Following their meeting in Tokyo in May 2022, Biden and Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, agreed to establish the program.
Statements from US’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan: –
“A deeper ecosystem between the US and India will serve the strategic, economic, and technological interests of both countries”, according to Sullivan. “It is essentially a strategic gamble by the two leaders,” he added.
Sullivan cited the Aukus submarine deal with Australia and the UK as well as the revival of the “Quad” – a security grouping of the US, Japan, Australia, and India, in claiming that the project was a part of Biden’s strategy to strengthen connections with friends and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
“This is just another important benchmark of a greater plan to strengthen every democratic nation in the Indo-Pacific.”
The year 2023 will “probably be the most crucial year in US-India diplomacy,” according to one US source, who also noted that India is “the key” to US aspirations in the region.
Because of its complicated relations with China, especially during the deadly border conflicts in the Galwan Valley in 2020, he claimed that India was aligning itself closer with the US. “Although the Indians don’t promote this, it had a similar effect to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor on their elites’ strategic thinking.”
Sullivan emphasized that the project underlined the influence that the unacceptable Chinese behavior was having on nations all around the world, but he observed that it did not reflect a fundamental change in India’s geopolitical perspective.
“Its economic practices, assertive military actions, attempts to control the supply chains of the future and to dominate the industries of the future, have had a profound effect on the thinking in Delhi,” he said.
Initiatives are taken by India and the US: –
An increasing strategic realignment, according to Brookings Institution India expert Tanvi Madan, was highlighted by the project, which she called a “major investment” in the relationship. However, she emphasized that while India had a history of “non-alignment” with the majority of nations, that remained less relevant for China.
India has been working on boosting its capacity for domestic technology due to concerns over China’s advantage in key industries. In areas where it lags behind Beijing, such as electric vehicles and telecoms, it is trying to establish a chip industry and advance these fields. In order to diversify their supply chains away from China, Indian officials want Apple, Samsung, and other international multinationals to invest more in their nation.
The ambitions of India align with the USA’s intention to intensify cooperation in order to compete with China and to provide like-minded democracies the opportunity to establish important technological standards.
As the US embarks on a mission to revitalize its domestic chip industry, Sullivan said the White House would collaborate with the US Congress to make it easier to attract science and technology expertise from India.
Another senior source stated that the US and India would request cooperation from their respective semiconductor associations in order to pinpoint potential areas for joint investment. In order to eliminate regulatory barriers, for instance, that restrict the sale of high-performance computing technology to India, he declared that the administration would function with Congress.
Many of the legacy [technology transfer] restrictions relating to India, according to the president and the White House, “made sense in their time but makes less sense in the year 2023,” Sullivan said.
The combined production of weapons will therefore concentrate on developing artillery systems, jet engines, and armored infantry vehicles. General Electric, according to Sullivan, has offered to construct engines with the US government.
A significant number of US and Indian chief executives and senior leaders convened to discuss ways to strengthen collaborative public-private partnerships. The businesses included Reliance Industries, Adani Defence & Aerospace, and ArcelorMittal from India as well as Micron, Lockheed Martin, and Applied Materials from the United States.
