US cautions Modi government against buying Russian S-400 missile defence system

WASHINGTON: India's re-elected government and its new foreign minister S Jaishankar will have tricky trade and defence strategy issues to navigate with the United States despite continued uptick in relations, following the

Trump administration

's give-no-quarter approach to ties with even its best allies and partners.


On top of the list is India's decision to go ahead with purchase of the

S-400 missile defence system

from Russia, a call a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday would have serious implications for ties between the two countries.

The official, who previewed ties with the returning dispensation in New Delhi is a broadly positive light, also said it is all but inevitable that India would lose access to preferential trade terms under the latter's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) programme that gives tariff breaks to less developed countries.

But it is India's purchase of S-400, Russia's most advanced long-range

surface-to-air missile

defence system, that Washington is trying to ward off for a variety of reasons. They range from whittling down New Delhi's dependence on Moscow and selling more of American arms, to fears that its own systems may be compromised or shown up if India locks into the Russian system.

Acknowledging that India may have been compelled to go in for the Russian platform because the US was not willing to share such hardware with it, the official offered a message from Washington: "Let's talk. We have systems that are effective. There are other platforms that are very effective ... We are now able to cooperate in ways that we could not before. We are now reaching agreements that we did not have before that allow us to consider sales that were incomprehensible only five years ago."

In fact, talks on this issue, among others, could take place as soon as early next week with the visit to New Delhi of assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs Clarke Cooper.

Although New Delhi has indicated that the American offer is too little, too late, and too vague, the official cautioned that "choices that are made now will establish the framework for the future," noting that the US has "ambitions for the broadest possible, deepest possible military relationship with India."

Disagreeing with the view in some quarters that India's buying of S-400 system from Russia might be mitigated by increasing military purchase from the US, the official said the deal would be significant "because of what it precludes, in terms of future high-tech cooperation."

"We don't commingle highest technology systems. There are threats posed by the purchase of an S-400. So that conversation you are seeing played out in Turkey right now," the official said, referring to the ongoing dialogue with Turkey, which is also buying the S-400.

Although there are no automatic waivers under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions (

CAATSA

) legislation, the official noted that there is a provision that allows for presidential determination, which effectively means the matter will end up on President Trump's Oval Office Desk, since New Delhi has said it is going ahead with the purchase given its security compulsions.

"Every case would have to be looked at individually. But I think the broader issue is where are India's military relations headed? With whom is it going to share the highest technology and that operating environment? Because certain choices preclude other choices," the official said, noting that "As we have discussions about combat aircraft sales and other advanced systems, the decisions that India makes with regard to S-400 will have an impact on those conversations."

India and Russia signed a $ 5 billion contract for the delivery of the S-400 system on October 5, 2018. The deliveries are expected to commence from October 2020 and conclude by April 2023.