At long last, the cookie has finally crumbled on the long awaited MMRCA race, and has left in its wake a rather bitter taste in many an American mouth. With news trickling in of the American duo-Lockheed Martin’ F-16 & Boeing’s Super Hornet- no longer being in the fray, the blame games in Washington have already started and can be only expected to get worse in the days ahead.From the picture that is emerging, it becomes clear that the Eurofighter Typhoon is currently the leading contender with most reliable reports marking it out as the favourite. However, as the curtain seemingly comes down on this long drawn saga, it’s time to ask ourselves the moot question: Have We Messed Up Big-Time?
It is certainly not my case that we should have awarded the contract to the Americans without due considerations to the technical merits of the aircraft on offer. However, as even an arm-chair analyst will tell you, with deals of the order of $ 11 billion plus, it is often the political and strategic aspects that carry the day, and from all accounts, India’s relationship with the US was meant to be one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century.
Let’s face it- whether or not you like the Americans, the fact is that in an emerging bi-polar world order, one where the Chinese are likely to be the second pole, it’s pretty clear which side we are going to be on. Unlike the Cold War era where we had a far more difficult choice to make between the Americans and the erstwhile USSR (and rightly went with the Russians), when it comes to a contest between our friends in Washington and the not so friendly comrades in Beijing, the latter are unlikely to get many votes in this country. Furthermore, Indo-US ties have already been on the downswing for a while now- the Americans have been sulking that in spite of having done all the heavy lifting over getting us the exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, it’s the French and the Russians who have benefited from India’s nuclear reactor orders thus far. At a time when we have been counting on the Obama administration to do our bidding on multiple fronts- UN Security Council seat, pressurizing Islamabad to crack down on terrorist groups operating from its soil to name just two- a stinging rebuff of this nature surely won’t help in moving things forward. Now, with the aircraft deal slipping away as well, the much vaunted strategic partnership, so carefully built up over the last one decade has taken a nose-dive. Let’s not also forget, with Israel being our second largest arms supplier, upsetting Washington could well put a spoke in the wheels of our ever expanding security ties with Tel Aviv, which usually makes sure to check with its time-tested ally before agreeing to any weapons supplies to a third party buyer.