Monday, November 29, 2004
Old friends, new relations
India and Russia have joint stakes in the new world order
Jasjit Singh
Russian President Vladimir Putin's forthcoming visit needs to be seen in the context of two indications of major changes.
First, there is increasing realisation across the world, especially in Western countries,that the locus of global power is shifting from West to East. While this would naturally have a long gestation period, its ramifications have been clear for many years now. Russia has the unique position of being part of both the West and the East, although the Yeltsin-Kozyrev combine with its unidirectional Atlanticist focus provided an interregnum, when Russia even refused to honour its contract to supply cryogenic technology to India for its peaceful space programme. Since then Russia and India have declared a "strategic partnership" institutionalised to take it beyond rhetoric into sustained policy. As two major powers of the East, Indo-Russian relations have profound significance not only for their own national interests but also for the future of Asia and the world.
Second, global geo-strategic imperatives and historical realities indicate that there is no issue of potential disagreement, leave alone tension, between the two countries. The worst case scenario in Indo-Russian relations probably is complacency bordering on neglect of that relationship, as happened in the early 1990s. We must be sensitive to the fact that times have changed and we cannot go back to the old Indo-Soviet relationship dominated more often than not by sentimentalism in India and misperceptions abroad. The nature of global geopolitics, mutual complementariness in trade, techno-economic cooperation, extensive convergence of national interests, etc, had provided the foundations of that relationship. Much of that remains. The landscape in which it has to be pursued has altered.
For example, both countries are seeking closer relations with the US, the sole superpower, on one side and China, the rising power, on the other. China, India and Russia have de facto formed a troika consultative group of foreign ministers, with regular annual meetings to exchange views on issues of common concern. While the three meet at the ARF, it is time to work for similar troika meetings between the US, Russia and India focusing initially on security in the Gulf region, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iraq, etc - issues of core concern to all three. This would help counter any speculation or tendency to form linear strategic "axis" with its inevitable risk of polarisation among major powers which would be adverse to our interests.
While the Soviet Union was our largest trading partner in the late 1980s, today bilateral trade with Russia is a meagre $2.2 billion - it was half that in 2001! But any long-term partnership, strategic or otherwise, between the two countries would have to be anchored in much stronger techno-economic and trade relationship. Fortunately, the joint council created by the Russian Chamber of Commerce and FICCI has renewed its activities after a hiatus of six years.
Energy is one component in that process. ONGC's investment of $1.7 billion in Sakhalin-I oil project in 2001 points to the potential of opportunities for Indian investments in energy exploitation and upgradation of Russian oil and gas infrastructure. (China, incidentally, has recently concluded a $12 billion investment in energy projects in Siberia in exchange for long-term assured access to energy.) At the same time, involvement of Russia (and China if it is willing) in multi-nation oil-gas pipeline from the Caspian region/Turkmenistan through Iran/Afghanistan and Pakistan to India would have long-term and short-term multiple benefits bringing a large region into a cooperative fold.
Future prospects for cooperation in nuclear energy may appear to be constrained by US-led denial regimes. But Russia would need to put its full weight behind instituting a special country-specific waiver to the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines that come in the way. Meanwhile cooperation in space would get a boost when the inter-governmental agreement on partnership in space is signed in coming days taking the ISRO-Rosaviakosmos agreement of last July forward. This partnership would also include launching of Russian satellites on Indian launchers and creation of a new generation of navigation satellites through the GLONASS system parallel to the American GPS system.
Collaborative ventures in defence are an obvious area of opportunity. In fact there is an urgency to do this in the area of weapons and equipment. About 80 per cent of Indian defence inventory is composed of Soviet-Russian origin arms. Advantages for both sides of procurement of low-cost fairly high technology systems on long-term credit payable in rupees, adjusted in trade in earlier periods, were obvious. But even in the 1980s it was clear that Gorbachev reforms would alter price structures in the USSR raising the cost of our defence. North Block is no longer hampered by balance of payments issues; and Russian weapons systems costs are inching closer to those from Europe.
We need to move forward from the import of weapon systems/licence production paradigm into which we have locked ourselves for more than three decades to joint projects ranging from design and development to joint manufacture, sale and product support. It is not clear if the large Su-30 licence production contract includes any buyback/export of components and subsystems like it has been done in the case of the BrahMos supersonic anti-ship missile where both sides have a 50 per cent stake. Such a strategy should have been initiated more than a decade ago. But further delay would only result in the window of opportunity closing. There is an obvious role here for the private sector in such joint defence industry projects, especially for subsystems and components. The CII would do well look closely at this issue and rejuvenate its defence committee to take advantage of the vast potential.