India and the United States are closing in on an agreement to share military logistics after 12 years of talks, officials said; a sign of strengthening defence ties between the countries as China becomes increasingly assertive.
The United States has emerged as India’s top arms source after years of dominance by Russia, and holds more joint exercises with it than any other country.
It is in talks with New Delhi to help build its largest aircraft carrier in the biggest military collaboration to date, a move that will bolster the Indian navy’s strength as China expands its reach in the Indian Ocean.
After years of foot-dragging by previous governments over fears that the logistics agreement would draw India into a binding commitment to support the United States in war, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has signalled a desire to move ahead with the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA).
This will allow the two militaries to use each other’s land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repair and rest, officials said.
The progress comes as the countries consider joint maritime patrols that a US official said could include the South China Sea, where China is locked in a territorial dispute with Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan among others.
Both sides, though, said there were no immediate plans for such patrols, which drew strong condemnation from Beijing.
An Indian government official said the main impediment to signing the LSA had been cleared, after Washington gave an assurance that New Delhi was not bound by it if the US went to war with a friendly country or undertook any other unilateral action that New Delhi did not support.
India’s previous government was worried the agreements would undermine India’s strategic autonomy and that it would draw it into an undeclared military alliance with the United States.
India has been alarmed by Chinese naval forays into the Indian Ocean and its involvement in maritime infrastructure on island nations that it traditionally considered its back yard.
It has moved to shore up naval forces and build defence ties with Japan and Vietnam, besides the United States.
“There is growing convergence between Obama’s Asia pivot and Modi’s Act East policy,” said Saroj Bishoyi, an expert on the proposed India-US collaboration at the government-funded Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi.
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