The Arrow deal: India, Israel and the US

M V Ramana

The Daily Times
Thursday, August 8, 2002

If they are not busy threatening war, South Asia’s nuclear hawks seem to busy themselves preparing for the next one, and the possibility of greater destruction during that war. The latest in this regard is India’s proposed purchase of the Israeli Arrow ballistic missile defence system.

Since the Arrow is jointly developed by Israel along with the United States, the US has to approve the sale. The US is not of one voice in this regard. Opposing the sale strongly is the State Department, whose spokespersons claim that their primary concern is that such a sale would send a strong signal to Russia, China and other weapons exporters at a time when the US priority is to reduce arms proliferation. They also maintain that the sale of Arrow may violate the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). However, since neither India nor Israel is party to this regime, that would seem to be a non-issue. Israel also maintains that since the system is “purely defensive” its transfer would not breach the MTCR. Finally, senior State Department officials are also quoted as saying that they have concerns about the introduction of more missiles into South Asia since it could be destabilising.

Supporting the sale is the Pentagon. US military officials are said to favour the sale as a means of boosting US military ties with India and rewarding New Delhi for retreating from confrontation with Pakistan over Kashmir. Given the Bush Administration’s great passion for missile defence, however irrational and unworkable the idea might be, it is not surprising that they would be somewhat favourable to the idea of an allied state procuring a missile defence system.

And India has shown itself to be a staunch ally of the Bush administration on a range of military related issues, missile defence in particular. India was the first to come out in strong support of the US National Missile Defence (NMD) programme — within 6 hours of the Bush administration’s announcement in May 2001 that it intended to press on with the NMD programme.

Even within the State Department, there is much hope for the future of India-Israel relations. Just last month Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, stated that the US has “a really dynamic military cooperation” that is “part of a broader… all-encompassing relationship”. Given this emerging love affair, it seems unlikely that the US would insist too much on Israel not selling the Arrow system to India. The sale would also fit into another area of common interest between India and the US — discomfiting or containing China.

What are Israel’s interests? The obvious one is the huge amounts of money involved in this lucrative trade; contracts signed so far are reportedly a few billion dollars. Over the past few years Israel has emerged as the second largest arms supplier to India, next only to Russia. However, as an Indian military official pointed out, “Russia delivers the hardware — tanks, aircraft and ships — and Israel provides the weapons systems, the radar, the electronic control systems and other high-tech add-ons.” The Arrow system would be a natural addition to this list.

There is also a deeper ideological agreement between India under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Israel. The BJP and its allied groups have not always been fans of Israel. The founding fathers of Hindutva — people like V. D. Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar — had great admiration for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in Germany. However over time, Israel’s display of military power, contempt for international opinion and complete disregard for any notions of justice for the Palestinian people found great favour with the Hindutva brigade. Zionists in Israel too see similarities with Hindutva’s dislike of Islam and Communism.

Israel has also displayed enthusiasm in partnering India, and the US, in the so-called “war on terrorism”. The response to “terrorist acts” that is advocated is what the US did in Afghanistan. Or more extremely, Israel’s savage attacks on the Occupied Territories. It is common to see votaries of Hindutva propose that India follow this example in its dealings with Pakistan, or at least the part of Kashmir administered by Pakistan.

Military realities in South Asia, however, are quite a bit different, especially given Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. It is in this context that missile defence needs to be seen. As Vijay Prashad, Director of the International Studies Programme at Trinity College, put it, “India’s eagerness for the missile defence, then, is part of the desire of the Hindu Right to will away the 1998 Pakistani tests on the Chagai range.”

But just as military realities are different, so are the realities of shooting down incoming missiles. Despite spending billions of dollars, the US has not been able to make a reliable missile defence system. The most spectacular failure was that of the Patriot system fielded during the Gulf War. Many would remember the sensational reports on TV that showed Patriot missiles engaging Iraqi Scud missiles, with the Pentagon claiming a nearly 100% success rating. Soon, however, independent analysts Theodore Postol and George Lewis of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined the evidence and concluded that the Patriot had been an almost total failure.

Ironically, the biggest source of problems for the Patriot was that Iraqi scuds were primitive and unreliable and didn’t perform the way Patriot designers expected them to. Though the Arrow system is likely to be much more sophisticated than the Patriot, it too should be relatively easy to defeat.

The ones who are being taken for a ride in all of this are the taxpayers of India. What they get for an enormous price tag is a system that could be defeated through simple countermeasures, increases tensions, destabilises the region and lowers security. If the Pakistani defence establishment decides to follow suit and purchase its own missile defence system, then the same fate would befall Pakistani taxpayers as well.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Some of his writings can be found at http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nuclear.html