The miscalculation that before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Moscow that the controversy over the Indo-US nuclear deal Would be settled has further unhinged India-Russia relations, comments Inder Malhotra

  Just as old enemies often make up — remember Henry Kissinger’s secret flight to Beijing in July 1971 — so old friends, too, can begin to drift apart sometimes. A telling case in point is the sudden strain in the relationship between India and Russia that have been legitimately proud of their ‘time-tested friendship’ dating back to the era of the late, unlamented Soviet era.
   Signs of the growing friction between New Delhi and Moscow have been in evidence for quite some time. For instance, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, on a visit to the Russian capital a couple of months ago was denied a meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, something that had never happened before. Defence Minister A. K. Antony could not even meet his own opposite number. The Russians’ ironic excuse was that their leaders were ‘too busy preparing’ for the impending arrival of the United States Secretaries of State and Defence, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates respectively. However, the underlying feelings burst into the open in an extraordinary manner in the first week of December.
   On the eve of Navy Day, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, publicly protested against the Russian demand that the price of the Russian aircraft carrier, Gorshkov, be hiked from $700 mn — fixed in 2001 when the contract for its purchase was signed — to $1.3 bn. Moscow also wants Delhi to agree to a three-year delay in the carrier’s delivery, which also the Navy Chief deplored, and advised the government to refuse to ‘renegotiate’ the Gorshkov deal. He left the purchase of multi-role Sukhoi-30 aircraft well alone, obviously because the air force is not his domain. Yet a similar problem exists also in relation to the warplanes. All those who had assumed that the admiral must have had the government’s nod for speaking out so sharply were startled the next day when the government remonstrated with the Naval Chief and declared that relations with a friendly country like Russia could not be determined by ‘the fate of a couple of defence contracts’. New Delhi is indeed anxious not to cause any offence to Russia that remains a major supplier of defence equipment to India. But this by itself is not enough. Tensions with Russia go far beyond Gorshkov.

Sukhoi 30 fighter jets aerial refuelling (top), Aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov

The Russians’ claim that they were forced to accept low prices when they were down and out is not entirely baseless. (Privately, over vodka, Russian naval officers have told their Indian counterparts: ‘You cannot get an aircraft carrier virtually free’.) But though pertinent this is a sideshow. The real reason for Russia’s tough stand is not financial and technical, even if these factors do matter, but political. President Putin has presided over Russia’s grand resurgence and enviable prosperity (in six years its GDP has soared from $ 300 billion to $ 1.3 trillion, thanks partly to the high oil and gas prices), and he has responded to America’s moves perceived as anti-Russian vehemently and confidently. The current nature of the US-Russia cold war can be best judged from Putin’s marathon interview to the American newsmagazine Time that has declared him its Man of the Year. Against this backdrop the Russian leader is piqued because he believes that India has ‘embraced the United States too tightly’. Interestingly, many Indians, especially those crusading against the Indo-US nuclear deal, would go along with him up to this point. But even some of them, to say nothing of the Indian foreign policy establishment, would baulk at one aspect of the Russian criticism of India. For, Russia has echoed, almost word for word, the sharp Chinese criticism of the ‘quartet of democracy’ — comprising India, Australia, Japan and the US — and especially of the joint naval exercises by the foursome in the Bay of Bengal in September. Historically, India and Russia (earlier the Soviet Union) have been scrupulously mindful of each other’s security interests both before the Sino-Soviet split and after it was resolved. But India finds it unacceptable that Russia should side entirely with China. That India remains only an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization also rankles in New Delhi. As it happens, at the time of writing, for the first time in 50 years, Indian and Chinese armies are engaged in joint exercises, and that, too, on Chinese soil.
   Apparently aware of all this, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sought to mend the relationship by undertaking an official visit to Moscow in November. Unfortunately, instead of improving things, the visit worsened them. In the first place, the sojourn was too short, lasting barely a day. Secondly, the extremely courteous Indian Prime Minister gently declined a banquet by the Russian premier, obviously unaware that this was a Moscow ploy to upgrade the profile and position of the Russian prime minister, now that this position is going to be occupied by Putin himself ‘under’ his successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev. Many are saying that Putin is ‘succeeding himself’.
   Thirdly, and most importantly, a rather limited nuclear deal with Russia — that bears no comparison with the Indo-American treaty on the subject — was not signed during the visit because of last-minute Indian reluctance. This intricate matter needs explaining. At Koodankulam in south India the Russians are already building two 1000-MW nuclear reactors under an agreement concluded in 1988. At the time the Americans had strongly objected to the deal on the grounds that it violated the latest guideline of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group to the effect that no reactor should be given to countries that had not signed the NPT or agreed to fullscope safeguards. Russia and India pointed out that the new prohibition came after the Indo-Russian agreement and could not be applied retrospectively. The US calmed down. But Newton’s third law took its course. China, using the same argument, had set up two reactors at Khushab and Chashma in Pakistan. Under the 1988 accord, India and Russia negotiated the establishment of two more reactors at Koodankulam. China and Pakistan retorted with an almost identical agreement on Khushab III and Khushab IV. In Pakistan’s case, it was China that refrained from signing the agreement at the last minute, reportedly under American persuasion, much to Islamabad’s dismay. In the case of Koodankulam, the Americans directed the same advice at India, adding that signing the agreement during the Moscow visit would have ‘adverse’ reaction in the US Congress over the nuclear deal that has yet to be accepted finally.
   It seems that the earlier inclination to sign the agreement with Russia during the Russian sojourn was based on the expectation that well before Manmohan Singh went there the dreary controversy over the wider nuclear deal with the US would be over, and the deal would have been signed, sealed and delivered. The calculation has gone wrong because of political discord within the ruling coalition and the BJP’s crass reversal of its earlier policies in relation to the US. Why was this simple fact not conveyed to Moscow in good time is one more addition to the many mysteries of Indian foreign policy.

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