It’s an enormous change from 50 years of history.
Advertisement
A LEMOA agreement allows for the purchase by establishing a value for the purchase and the terms for payment, which could be replacement-in-kind or an equal-value exchange, Carter said.
“And here’s the gist of it”.
India and USA have already collaborated in the past on these like during the 2004 tsunami relief efforts and in 2015 for the Nepal natural disaster relief work. “And a very substantial advance over just a few months ago”, Carter said.
In June, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited USA and met President Barack Obama, the country had designated India as a “major defence partner”. He is on a three-day visit to the US.
Mr Parrikar’s United States visit this time has an interesting itinerary. “That’s certainly true with respect to terrorist acts perpetrated against Indian people, and also I should mention, the Indian military, which has happened as well”, Mr Carter said.
Mr Parrikar’s visit to Washington this week marks his sixth interaction with Mr Carter, who has made closer military ties with India a priority and also established a special unit within the Pentagon previous year for this.
“The first is the strategic handshake”.
“India and the United States have a shared interest in freedom of navigation and overflight and unimpeded commerce as part of rule-based order in [the] Indo-Pacific”, Parrikar said. However, the carefully written clauses of case by case permission and categorical denial that this is an agreement for sharing of bases meant Modi govt also tried to assuage concerns inside the country that India may be yanked into the global war vortex with US. This needs to be leveraged to incubate a USA style military-industrial complex in India that not only creates jobs and furthers self-sufficiency in defence procurement, but also makes India a defence exporter in future. Modi has made India a tremendous buyer of advanced weaponry.
“We made important progress on that technological partnership today, also”.
The Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) between the countries was expanded by setting up new joint working groups for naval and air systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, chemical and biological protection, and other applications. “That collaboration will surely bring further cooperation, co-development and co-production”, he added.
Advertisement
Washington has for always been seeking logistics support agreement with India as part of its efforts to deepen and widen security cooperation in the region in the light of China asserting its maritime claims in the South China Sea and beyond.
