The Arrow deal: India, Israel and the US
M V Ramana
The Daily Times
Thursday, August 8, 2002
If
they are not busy threatening war, South Asia’s nuclear hawks seem
to busy themselves preparing for the next one, and the possibility
of greater destruction during that war. The latest in this regard is
India’s proposed purchase of the Israeli Arrow ballistic missile
defence system.
Since the Arrow is jointly developed by
Israel along with the United States, the US has to approve the sale.
The US is not of one voice in this regard. Opposing the sale
strongly is the State Department, whose spokespersons claim that
their primary concern is that such a sale would send a strong signal
to Russia, China and other weapons exporters at a time when the US
priority is to reduce arms proliferation. They also maintain that
the sale of Arrow may violate the 1987 Missile Technology Control
Regime (MTCR). However, since neither India nor Israel is party to
this regime, that would seem to be a non-issue. Israel also
maintains that since the system is “purely defensive” its transfer
would not breach the MTCR. Finally, senior State Department
officials are also quoted as saying that they have concerns about
the introduction of more missiles into South Asia since it could be
destabilising.
Supporting the sale is the Pentagon. US
military officials are said to favour the sale as a means of
boosting US military ties with India and rewarding New Delhi for
retreating from confrontation with Pakistan over Kashmir. Given the
Bush Administration’s great passion for missile defence, however
irrational and unworkable the idea might be, it is not surprising
that they would be somewhat favourable to the idea of an allied
state procuring a missile defence system.
And India has shown
itself to be a staunch ally of the Bush administration on a range of
military related issues, missile defence in particular. India was
the first to come out in strong support of the US National Missile
Defence (NMD) programme — within 6 hours of the Bush
administration’s announcement in May 2001 that it intended to press
on with the NMD programme.
Even within the State Department,
there is much hope for the future of India-Israel relations. Just
last month Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South
Asia, stated that the US has “a really dynamic military cooperation”
that is “part of a broader... all-encompassing relationship”. Given
this emerging love affair, it seems unlikely that the US would
insist too much on Israel not selling the Arrow system to India. The
sale would also fit into another area of common interest between
India and the US — discomfiting or containing China.
What are
Israel’s interests? The obvious one is the huge amounts of money
involved in this lucrative trade; contracts signed so far are
reportedly a few billion dollars. Over the past few years Israel has
emerged as the second largest arms supplier to India, next only to
Russia. However, as an Indian military official pointed out, “Russia
delivers the hardware — tanks, aircraft and ships — and Israel
provides the weapons systems, the radar, the electronic control
systems and other high-tech add-ons.” The Arrow system would be a
natural addition to this list.
There is also a deeper
ideological agreement between India under the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and Israel. The BJP and its allied groups have not always been
fans of Israel. The founding fathers of Hindutva — people like V. D.
Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar — had great admiration for Hitler’s
treatment of the Jews in Germany. However over time, Israel’s
display of military power, contempt for international opinion and
complete disregard for any notions of justice for the Palestinian
people found great favour with the Hindutva brigade. Zionists in
Israel too see similarities with Hindutva’s dislike of Islam and
Communism.
Israel has also displayed enthusiasm in
partnering India, and the US, in the so-called “war on terrorism”.
The response to “terrorist acts” that is advocated is what the US
did in Afghanistan. Or more extremely, Israel’s savage attacks on
the Occupied Territories. It is common to see votaries of Hindutva
propose that India follow this example in its dealings with
Pakistan, or at least the part of Kashmir administered by
Pakistan.
Military realities in South Asia, however, are
quite a bit different, especially given Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
It is in this context that missile defence needs to be seen. As
Vijay Prashad, Director of the International Studies Programme at
Trinity College, put it, “India’s eagerness for the missile defence,
then, is part of the desire of the Hindu Right to will away the 1998
Pakistani tests on the Chagai range.”
But just as military
realities are different, so are the realities of shooting down
incoming missiles. Despite spending billions of dollars, the US has
not been able to make a reliable missile defence system. The most
spectacular failure was that of the Patriot system fielded during
the Gulf War. Many would remember the sensational reports on TV that
showed Patriot missiles engaging Iraqi Scud missiles, with the
Pentagon claiming a nearly 100% success rating. Soon, however,
independent analysts Theodore Postol and George Lewis of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the evidence and
concluded that the Patriot had been an almost total
failure.
Ironically, the biggest source of problems for the
Patriot was that Iraqi scuds were primitive and unreliable and
didn’t perform the way Patriot designers expected them to. Though
the Arrow system is likely to be much more sophisticated than the
Patriot, it too should be relatively easy to defeat.
The
ones who are being taken for a ride in all of this are the taxpayers
of India. What they get for an enormous price tag is a system that
could be defeated through simple countermeasures, increases
tensions, destabilises the region and lowers security. If the
Pakistani defence establishment decides to follow suit and purchase
its own missile defence system, then the same fate would befall
Pakistani taxpayers as well.
M V Ramana is a physicist and
research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science
and Global Security. Some of his writings can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nuclear.html