A January 20 White House meeting between U.S. president George Bush and Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha helped put the official seal of approval on these ties. U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell reported after further talks the same day that Washington and New Delhi “will be moving in an aggressive way and promptly” to implement a pact signed the previous week by Bush and India’s prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. “There is no area of dialogue that we are not pursuing, and pursuing in a very profitable way,” Powell said.

The pact laid out increased cooperation on nuclear and space projects. Washington also pledged in the document to gradually open up exports of advanced technologies that have been kept on its “banned” list since 1998, when the Indian and Pakistani governments each tested several nuclear devices.

Reporting that scientists from the two countries would collaborate on developing a missile shield, the London-based Financial Times noted that “India was one of the first countries to welcome the Bush administration’s missile defense plans in 2001—in marked contrast with China.”

Such a shield would include satellite-based surveillance to provide early warning of a nuclear attack, and missiles to shoot down incoming warheads. If it were put in place, the shield would allow the Pentagon to fire from its own massive nuclear arsenal without fear of full-scale retaliation. It would effectively restore first-strike nuclear capacity to Washington—something it has not had since the Soviet Union developed defensive nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

Placing missile shield stations in India and Japan, whose government is also collaborating in the program, would minimize the effectiveness of China’s nuclear defenses.

Vajpayee said the pact showed that “the vision of the India-U.S. strategic partnership that President Bush and I share is now becoming a reality.”

According to the Financial Times, Bush said that the Indian government was “an important partner in the war on terrorism and in controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Bush described the “expanded cooperation” as “an important milestone in transforming the relationship between the United States and India.” Raja Mohan, described by the Financial Times reporter as an “Indian security analyst,” said that “in agreeing to enhanced technology cooperation, President Bush is giving de facto recognition of India’s nuclear status.”  
 
Joint military exercises
According to the Wall Street Journal, “joint naval and air force exercises are becoming regular practice.” In the past two years, the big-business daily reported, the two armed forces have together conducted naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, and their special forces have trained together in the Indian-administered area of Kashmir. Joint fighter-plane maneuvers are planned for February.

Over the same period, New Delhi purchased around $200 million worth of U.S.-manufactured arms. It is now putting together a $1 billion order of P3 Orion maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft.

At the same time, New Delhi is not part of the U.S.-made “coalition of the willing” because it did not contribute forces to the occupation of Iraq. Along with companies from Germany and France, Indian contractors are barred from bidding for major construction contracts in Iraq.

Washington began stepping up its efforts to expand economic and military ties with India in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. For much of the preceding decades, Moscow had maintained a substantial arms trade and close relations with New Delhi. The Indian government used those ties to gain some freedom of movement against Washington. At the same time, the government of India—the world’s second most populous country, and the most powerful semicolonial country in South Asia—served as a bulwark for imperialist interests against China.

U.S. president William Clinton visited India in March 2000. Eighteen months later, the Bush administration announced that it would lift most of the economic and military sanctions imposed on India after the 1998 nuclear tests.

In the same period, Washington stepped up pressure on the military regime of Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan to clamp down on the Taliban, al Qaeda, and similar forces that have used Pakistani territory as a base of operations. In January, the U.S. news media published “revelations” about alleged trade in missile and nuclear technology by previous governments in Islamabad with north Korea, Iran, and other customers. The January 4 New York Times claimed that accumulated information shows that Pakistan “has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators.”

U.S. government officials have said that the Musharraf regime continues to be an ally in their “war on terror.” Bush said January 1 that Musharraf has “been a stand-up guy when it comes to dealing with the terrorists. We are making progress against al Qaeda because of his cooperation.”

The capitalist rulers of Pakistan and India have been bitter rivals since the two countries were carved out of British colonial India in 1947—an effective divide-and-rule ploy against the independence movement by the departing imperialists. Their conflict over Kashmir, which lies on their northern border, has sparked two of their three wars and numerous clashes. The two nuclear-armed powers have been carrying out talks this year on the Kashmir issue.

While Washington continues to cultivate ties with the governments of both Pakistan and India, it is leaning more and more towards New Delhi. Spurred by moves to remove restrictions to foreign investment and other “reforms” that are hitting working people the hardest, India is undergoing some economic growth and industrialization, attracting increasing, although still modest, foreign investment. At the same time, India remains a largely rural country, with great disparities between city and countryside, as well as between regions, and a great degree of underdevelopment. It is home to more than a billion people—second only to China—214 million of whom face “chronic hunger,” according to the United Nations. Per capita income averages less than 2 percent that of the United States.  
 
 
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