The South Asian regional politics cannot be separated from the influences of extra-regional powers because the protracted Pakistan-India conflict attracts great power politics towards the nuclearized subcontinent. The hostility between Islamabad and New Delhi provides sufficient space to great powers in the regional South Asian political order and permits the great powers to be involved in the strategic competition of the subcontinent’s two nuclear powers. The discussion on the role of extra-regional powers in South Asia’s regional politics revolves around the bilateral ties of Pakistan and India with the world beyond their domestic region. Thus, the emerging bilateralism between US and India has become a vibrant trend of South Asian regional politics, which propels both states to counterbalance the two-sided economic interaction between China and Pakistan. The economic alliance between Beijing and Islamabad under the broader framework of a mega economic corridor project has activated strategic closeness between Washington and New Delhi. Leading state officials from the US and India have decided to collaborate in various strategic initiatives for counterbalancing the rising economic cooperation between China and Pakistan. Indian quest for downgrading Islamabad in the regional and extra-regional affairs coupled with American objective of undermining China’s economic rise in the world politics have compelled the American and Indian leaders to sign various defence deals and security agreements under the umbrella of their bilateral strategic partnership.
The recent development in the Indo-US strategic partnership has resulted in the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) in bilateral ministerial dialogue. The signing of BECA during a 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue meeting between American and Indian officials is a milestone between both states’ strategic interaction. The American Secretary of State (Mike Pompeo) and Secretary of Defence (Mark T. Esper) in a meeting with their Indian counterparts finalized the agreement. It was decided to provide India with access to US satellites. The Indian Defence Minister (Rajnath Singh) and External Affairs Minister (Subrahmanyam Jaishankar) signed BECA in October 2020 which is designed to facilitate New Delhi in sharing sensitive information and intelligence data, enabling India to enhance its military capabilities against the territorially adjoining nations.
Before BECA, the American-Indian nexus resulted in three other strategic bilateral collaborations. In 2002, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the Logistic Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 along with Communication Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in 2018 were the landmark developments of Washington-New Delhi bilateralism. The recent (fourth) agreement attached the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to Indian intelligence agencies and enabled both states to augment their strategic relations. The sensitive information consisting of maps, charts and various formants of information containing geophysical and geodetic details having strategic significance can accessed by India. The agreement is intended to maintain a bilateral exchange of mainly sensitive classified data which could be useful for various strategic objectives such as enabling New Delhi improve its targeting and navigating capacities with US satellites’ help. Apart from satellite, sensitive information collected through different Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAVs), reconnaissance aircraft, and aerostats will further empower the Indian conventional forces. The mainstream geospatial information patterns would help Indian conventional forces increase their situational awareness for the planning of offensive strikes against the adversarial nations mainly located in its home region. The substantial improvement in monitoring and surveillance capabilities for designing conventional and nuclear strikes against the adversarial countries mainly located in its neighbourhood will further facilitate Indian armed forces to advance their accuracy of long-range navigation and missile targeting capabilities under an updated pattern of strategic interaction with the US.
The signing of BECA under the umbrella of highest-level bilateral dialogues between two countries for the enhancement of their mutual strategic values has significant impacts on the politics of South Asian region where Pakistan is a close US ally in its global counterterror campaign. Moreover, Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan to ensure peace and New Delhi’s hostility towards Islamabad on the issue of Kashmir are essential elements of the South Asian security environment. In South Asia’s regional security environment, India plays a gravitational role because of its regional hegemonic designs in the form of a multidimensional anti-neighbourhood policy. The quest for dominating the territorially adjoining nations has led New Delhi towards maintaining a robust strategic partnership with the extra-regional states in which the US stands above all. The bilateral framework of US-India strategic interaction has permitted New Delhi to empower its strategic muscles over South Asia’s territorial and maritime affairs. In this way, the multi-layered support of Washington to New Delhi in different security deals, arms trade agreements, defence contracts, and intelligence sharing cooperation has encouraged India in its home region. Without considering the question of peace in Afghanistan and Kashmir, USA has decided to encourage the Indian position in the nuclearized subcontinent without seriously estimating the post-BECA South Asian security environment.
No doubt, the signing of BECA is an important step in the list of US-Indian mutual geostrategic priorities, still it leaves negative impacts on the scope of peace and stability in South Asia. The two-sided collaboration will help the Indian government against its neighbours because the Indian leadership is determined to advance its anti-neighbourhood policy in this region. The strategic competition between India and Pakistan has already jeopardized the values of peace and stability in the nuclearized South Asian region, where the US’s role cannot be marginalized. A continuous presence of the US in the decades-long New Delhi-Islamabad rivalry imposes greater responsibility on Washington because the peace and stability in the nuclearized region can be ensured with the help of an impartial and balanced role of extra-regional powers. In response to the growing Chinese role in South Asia Washington has preferred to cultivate its close strategic partnership with New Delhi. No doubt, the maintenance of cooperative bilateral relations between the US and India is purely a matter of an inter-state interaction in the world but, its impact on India’s neighbouring states cannot be overlooked. Apart from understanding South Asia’s regional security environment, American officials need to comprehend the Indian role in its domestic region rationally. Therefore, the Indian desire for achieving regional hegemonic status through implementing its belligerent designs of foreign relations with the territorially adjoining nations should be considered seriously by the US authorities before designing any bilateral measure with India, because the strategic competition between Pakistan and India has been becoming a point of less concern for Washington in its broader South Asian policy. In this way, the signing of BECA is a significant development in the nuclearized subcontinent where the rival nuclear nations equipped with nuclear-armed capabilities are each other’s neighbours. In the presence of a nuclear competition between Islamabad and New Delhi, the US needs to estimate its impacts on its India-inclined South Asian policy more seriously than it does today.
