'Defence cooperation bright spot in India US relationship'

Defence co-operation is a bright spot in the India-US relationship and the two countries have made remarkable strides in expanding bilateral defence trade, a former American diplomat has said.

"Recent months have seen some slowdown in the overall US-India relationship, principally due to trade and investment-related concerns. However, defence cooperation remains a bright spot.

"In fact, over the past year, defence cooperation has become a centrepiece of the US-India relationship," Karl F Inderfurth, the former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, said.

Currently, Inderfurth, is the Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies, an eminent American think-tank.

The 'Joint Declaration on Defence Cooperation' issued by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Singh in September reaffirmed this, as the US agreed to grant India the same privileges typically reserved for its closest allies with respect to defence trade, technology transfer and co-production and co-development, he said.

The US sales of military equipment to India have grown to around $9 billion today, with billions more expected in coming years, and India plans to spend about $100 billion over the next decade upgrading its mostly Soviet-era military hardware, Inderfurth said.

This remarkable turnabout in US-India defence cooperation did not occur without high-level attention on both sides, and a determination to address each other's respective interests, Inderfurth said.

Inderfurth attributed this turnaround in defence relationship to the outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter and India's National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon.

"My firm and long-held belief is that the US and India are destined to be strategic partners. As for us, the US and India, we are each big, complicated democracies.

We move slowly, but over the long run, we also move surely. And that, to me, is the trajectory for us and India in the defence area," Carter had said recently.