NEW DELHI — Outgoing US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has described India as a major defense partner during his opening remarks Thursday at a meeting with his Indian counterpart.
The designation is unique to India, according to a joint statement from the two countries, and reiterates their efforts to further strengthen relations "to a level at par with that of the United States' closest allies and partners." This is the seventh time the two officials have met.
"It is essentially a Thanksgiving meeting," a top Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) official said. "Carter's visit is only a farewell trip, and there is no fresh announcements."
Thanking Carter, Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said: "The foundations of our defense relations have become closer and has been laid by you, and I appreciate your commitment for our strong bilateral relationship."
"It is no exaggeration that defense relations are a major driver in our bilateral relations," Parrikar added.
"My meetings with Mr. Parrikar have been the most with any defense minister," Carter said. "India-US defense partnership, I believe, will be the defining partnership of the 21st century."
Ashley J. Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the Indo-US defense relations as "the most intense they have ever been in the last two decades, and none of this would have happened without Ash Carter — he deserves the lion's share of the accolades for these breakthroughs."
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, agreed. "Much of the understanding and progress achieved in the area of defense trade and technology cooperation was driven by Ashton Carter," he said.
New Delhi is eagerly awaiting what the next US administration will bring, and officials here are unsure about the future of Indo-US defense ties under Donald Trump.
"Whether there will be changes — major or otherwise — remains to be seen," said Bharat Karnad, a research professor at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. "Because US relations with Pakistan are so much the metric, Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary spells trouble.
"Mattis knows [the Pakistani] Army and generals better than he understands India and will be thus disposed [toward Pakistan]."
The relationship between Pakistan and India has been marred by the regional dispute in Kashmir and cross-border clashes.
Trump's nomination of Mattis has been met at home with support from fellow Republicans but raised eyebrows with Democrats. Mattis, who retired in 2013, needs a waiver from lawmakers to step into the role because federal rules mandate a seven-year gap between military service and the top civilian military job.
However, Dhriva Jaishankar, a foreign policy fellow at the think tank Brookings India, said: "I doubt the next administration will roll back progress made in India-US defense ties. They could simply be a lower priority for a few years as a new team gets into place."
India will now wait to see if the Trump administration releases for purchase armed Predator UAVs that have already been promised by the outgoing Obama administration, an MoD official said.
India likely will also want a jet engine technology-sharing agreement from the US as another indicator that defense ties will remain strong under Trump's administration.
In the last decade, the US sold India weapons worth $15 billion, becoming one of the country's top weapon suppliers. However, defense ties between the two countries have been mainly focused on "buy and sell," the MoD official said, and India would like this to change to a "co-production of advanced weapons, as with Russia."
Since coming to power in mid-2014, the Narendra Modi government here warmed up to the Obama administration and signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), allowing US and Indian militaries to collaborate more closely and use each other's bases for repair and replenishment.
"Whether we make further gains will depend greatly on the policies of the incoming Trump administration. But this is a big unknown — I am hopeful we will go from strength to strength, but I cannot be confident until we know who the key officials at [the US] State and Defense [departments] would be," Tellis said.
Vivek Raghuvanshi is the India correspondent for Defense News.
