New Delhi: As Barack Obama, the first US President to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade, watched Russian armaments roll down Rajpath during the parade, the US said that India has a “long-standing and legacy relationship with Russia and America’s increased cooperation with New Delhi is not an effort to “push anybody else out.”
US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the US President was not uncomfortable when Russia-made military equipment passed through during the parade. “In terms of the President’s view, I think what is important is not so much what is the particular float or military item that goes past the President in a parade; it is what is the system that is embraced by the country that the President is visiting,” he said.
The US is quickly moving towards surpassing Russia as a defence exporter to India, he added. “India will continue to have relations with Russia, but we believe that it is important for us to be representing democratic values. We are proud that we are increasing our cooperation with India in a lot of areas, but we are not doing that in an effort to push anybody else out of India... We are doing that because we believe it is in our interest and in India’s interest,” he said adding, “So that balance has shifted over the years. India obviously has a long-standing defence relationship with Russia, but our relationship is on the upswing.”
As Mr Obama watched the Indian Army’s Russian-origin battle-tanks roll down Rajpath and the Russian-origin Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft soaring in the sky, he must have been only too aware of India’s overwhelming dependence on Russian inventory but would have been equally glad to see the new American military transport and patrol aircraft operated by India including the C-130 J Super Hercules transport aircraft, the C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft and P-8i maritime patrol aircraft which India had acquired from the US in the past few years in deals worth billions of dollars.
The US is also keen to ink other deals with India estimated to be worth billio-ns of dollars, including the proposed sa-le of Apache attack helicopters, Chi-nook heavy-lift helicopters and the M-777 ultra-light howitzers. But the US wanted to move beyond a “buyer-seller” relationship with India towards being a genuine partner in India’s defence modernisation by co-developing defence products and this was reflected in the talks between Mr Obama and Mr Modi.
