India could be the ordnance factory to the US and NATO, in the ongoing World War III, and into World War IV, which is in the horizon in the next 5-7 years in the Indo-Pacific theatre.
New Delhi
Memo 1/of 2, re Biden-Modi summit next week:
America is in danger. It urgently needs an ordnance factory. Modi visit could seal landmark deal.
President Joe Biden will host a state visit for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week in Washington, DC. It is expected that good progress will be made on several fronts contributing to the continued trend of deepening and widening of US-India relations, and some deals will be signed that both leaders can take home as wins for their domestic audiences.
Dear Reader, your author will not go into any of the above. Rather, in this memo I zero down to the pain point that is the top worry of the US in the fast moving and dangerous world order of today. Then I describe how India can reduce this pain of America.
- India needs many things from the US. An understanding and trusting partner, trade and investments, defence weapons and technology transfer, myriad other. But the reality is that India is the junior partner in this relationship. Plainly speaking, India is dependent upon the “goodwill” and strategic calculus of the US.
- The US also needs much from India—to access and sell to the world’s largest market, including defence, to stop oil and weapons from Russia, to contribute more to the anti-China axis that the US is building, and access to the world’s largest market.
- Given the power-equation between the US and India, the needs of India will not move the needle in the US. It is only when America will face a severe pain point, danger to its own national security, and if India brings any solution to that problem, that the United States will make a grand move with India.
- Otherwise, India’s concerns, existential worries will get only sympathetic, empathetic response, and some deals by America, but nowhere close to a situation wherein the United States feels itself threatened and calculates that India could help it and will therefore act with urgency.
So, what is the biggest threat and pain for America, today? - The biggest challenge to America’s military power for the next 20 years, is no outside enemy, but its own industrial weaknesses. The US is today facing a severe shortfall in its ability to manufacture military weapons and munitions. It needs to re-stock many of its own supplies which have depleted to alarming levels due to the Ukraine war. It needs to keep supplies to Ukraine going. It needs to refill the inventory of many NATO countries because many of their American munitions have been sent to Ukraine. It needs to send weapons and munitions to stock up Taiwan. Plus, it needs to increase its own stocks to prepare for a conflict with China in next 5-7 years.
- On other hand, the defence manufacturing base of the US has shrunk in the last 30 years; production capacities are now limited to only a few very large defence contractors; production of many components has been outsourced globally, including to China; defence procurements by the Pentagon are caught in a maze of delays and bureaucratese; and a shortage of skilled professionals.
- Thus it is no secret that the United States is facing a severe crunch and threat in the 21st century of how to increase the production of its existing weapons and munitions, as well as how to produce the next generation of military, naval, and air-based systems of warfare based on critical and emerging technologies.
- Meanwhile, a variety of US government and outside think tanks, keep modelling US-China war scenarios in the next 5-10 years. All such gaming exercises come to one conclusion, that the US and NATO allies will have to expend very large volume of American weapons and munitions in any such war, and though causing immense damage to China, will also suffer unimaginable damage to vast amounts of US military assets and American interests.
It is this pain and need of the US for production of weapons and munitions to engage in the world wars of this decade that is nudging US decision makers to up their defence cooperation with India.
In the background of the above, your author argues that it is in America’s interest to imagine that India can be the ordnance factory to America. India could be the ordnance factory to the US and NATO, in the ongoing World War III which has started last year, and into World War IV, which is in the horizon in the next 5-7 years in the Indo-Pacific theatre.
The British built a robust base of ordnance factories in British India which aided supplies of munitions and bombs, during World War I, and then much more supplies in World War II. That is why next week, Modi could be well positioned to forcefully advocate that the US must make India as the ordnance factory of the US, in the 3rd and 4th world wars, in its own critical national interest.
The author is president of Imagindia Institute.