EVEN SETTING ASIDE THE CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC TIES...:

What role for emerging India as a U.S. ally? (Anand Giridharadas, February 7, 2007, International Herald Tribune)

This week, government officials and military-hardware makers from the United States will be looking for clues to India's strategic intentions as they attempt to break new ground. At an air show outside the technology hub of Bangalore, they are seeking to sell American-made warplanes to India, which has never before bought them. [...]

"To the extent the U.S. government is looking for clues, they come from military sales contracts and from the process leading up to them," said Teresita Schaffer, a former chief of the South Asia desk at the U.S. State Department and now an India scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The U.S. government does see military sales as an essential ingredient in a serious security relationship."

The Pentagon has authorized the largest-ever deployment of display aircraft to the subcontinent. India is expected to open a tender this year for 126 new fighter jets to modernize its fleet, and the Americans are hoping their new friendship with Delhi will give the F/A-18F Super Hornet, built by Boeing, and the F-16, built by Lockheed Martin, an edge over the Russian MIG warplanes that have long dominated the Indian Air Force fleet.

To counter Russia's historical advantage, Boeing has offered to produce the F/A-18F jointly with an Indian manufacturer. [...]

On paper, India seems a natural United States ally. As Cohen wrote in The Wall Street Journal this week, echoing a widely held view in Washington, India and the United States are "multiethnic and secular democracies" with "shared values, interests and objectives" and, he added, "ideal partners in exerting a positive influence in the 21st century."

Signs of new cooperation abound: Trade and investment are flourishing.

Military exercises between the United States and India are becoming more frequent. India is playing an important and little-noticed role in post- Taliban reconstruction in Afghanistan. And New Delhi, more than most other major capitals, is generally warm to the Bush administration's war on terror, given its own battles with Islamic extremists.

...just look at who India's enemies are.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 7, 2007 11:16 AM