Responsibility of Global Powers:  Putin Visit to India

By Ishaal Zehra

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is paying 22-hour visit to India which aiming at tightening the close arms and energy partnerships that Moscow and New Delhi have enjoyed since the Soviet Era. As per news Putin going to meet  his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to oversee the signing of more than $10 billion in deals, including a refurbished aircraft carrier, MiG-29 fighter jets and two nuclear reactors.

Some news channels including Bloomberg took this visit as an attempt by Putin to race up with U.S. in Arms and Nuclear Deals. In fact the premier’s visit can be espied as a probable notion to fend off the competition from the U.S. and Europe to supply arms and nuclear energy to India. The Kremlin is counting on Cold War-era ties to keep India as its largest arms customer and a future partner in the nuclear industry. India’s improved ties with the U.S., crowned by a landmark nuclear deal, have emboldened the world’s major growing economy to look further afield for weapons and energy sources.

“The competition to cooperate with India in defense and nuclear energy is stepping up,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor- in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. India has tripled its defense budget over the last decade as it looks beyond a traditional military rivalry with Pakistan to counter China’s rising power. And this desire of India has made the U.S., Israeli and European arms makers encroach on the market once dominated by the old Soviet Union.

With the changing global power scenario, the foreign policy of India kept on taking a very different hue and was used deliberately as a tool of promoting its own “national interest”. India never deter from actively engaging with both the former (Russia) and recent (US) major contesting global camps. India, once a major ally of Russia, now in recent years, has also taken care to balance the “strategic” friendship with close ties to the US.

Revising history, the strategic, diplomatic and economic ties between India and United States have blossomed only after New Delhi was quick to back Washington’s war on terror after the Sept. 11 attacks. It was only then when the Washington signed a sweeping nuclear pact with India to help New Delhi with its ambitious nuclear programme.

While moving closer to the US, the Indian elite are unlikely to surrender all the alternate options in tune with their burning ambitions to occupy a seat at the high table in the global asymmetric order.

It is pertinent to note that India is gaining advantage because of the secret war between US and Russia. It is said that during the he fight between two lions the fox will be the beneficiary and India is exactly going for the same.  America and Russia should behave as global superpowers instead supporting Irresponsible India by selling arms and transferring nuclear technology.