After a 14-hour all night flight from Delhi to Newark, New Jersey I am now back in the US. A short 6:00 am flight from Newark to Boston gave me a great view of the early morning sunrise out the window as the plane headed north along the Atlantic coast. After a short wait in Boston I boarded a bus for the two-hour ride to Portland, Maine (where I wrote this post). Then Mary Beth picks me up in Portland for the final 45-minute trip home to Bath.
When I arrived in Newark I checked my emails and found the photo above from Global Network board convener Dave Webb (also our GN web master) who took the picture on his way into Delhi International airport late on November 30. I had previously seen the Boeing billboard when we first arrived in Delhi to start the trip and talked about it throughout the speaking tour that followed the space conference in Visakhapatnam. The Boeing sponsored billboard well illustrates the kind of 'future' that the military industrial complex has in mind for the land of Gandhi.
It is obvious that Washington is quite thrilled to have signed India up as a key future junior military partner in their dangerously escalating program to encircle China. US weapons corporations are going to be selling India (the world's fastest growing economy) alot of weapons in the coming years.
It was announced just today that outgoing US Secretary of Endless War Ashton Carter would be visiting India next week on his final trip around the world. Slated to be in India on December 8, Carter would travel to Japan, Bahrain, Israel, Italy and Great Britain before returning to the US on December 16. This is the first time that an outgoing American War Secretary has included India in his itinerary for the final overseas trip.
Indian Express reports:
Ahead of his [Carter's] visit, informed sources said India has made maritime security a significant priority and in discussion with the US for sale of Predator drones from General Atomics.
The outgoing Obama administration is trying to concretize steps taken with India in the defence domain as they transition the efforts to the Trump administration, sources noted, adding that on Carter’s agenda include M777 and Predator Guardian for the Indian Navy.
India was also designated a “a major defence partner” when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the US and met President Barack Obama at the Oval Office this Summer.
The first opportunity for US Government to showcase this would be in the maritime domain surveillance area with the export of Predator Guardian, informed sources pointed out, adding that Obama and Carter are keen to establish a concrete legacy with India.
Vivek Lall, chief executive, US and International Strategic Development at General Atomics, are among the US leaders that have been advocating greater convergence between the US and India.
It is under his leadership that, India had acquired Boeing P8I aircraft in 2009 which would complement the Guardian aircraft for maritime security.
Noting that Obama and Modi have repeatedly stressed that cooperation in the Indian Ocean is key to both countries national security interests, it is anticipated that both sides will discuss the Avenger drones for the Indian Air Force.
These deals listed above are only scratching the surface of the growing US-India military alliance. The US is also currently inviting India to play a key role at the major Pentagon power projection hub inside the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
Other deals on space warfare technologies are also underway and the bottom line is that all of India's weapons buys from the US will be 'interoperable' with the Pentagon space warfare system which ensures that the US will remain in charge of the 'tip of the spear'. So essentially India is helping to pay for a major escalation of US military power in the region and Indian industrial elites will get a cut in the lucrative deals.
Obviously Russia (which is reducing its military budget by 30% this year due to declining oil profits and western economic sanctions) and China are worried about these advances as Washington dangles the tempting apple of being a high stakes military player in front of a power hungry right-wing government in Delhi.
Those that will pay the biggest price for these Indian military expenditures though are the poor inside of India who hoped that the massive development of their economy would trickle down to them. Other than increasingly polluted air and water I am not so sure the 25% of Indians who are poor will get much from this blossoming military alliance.
Bruce
'Concretize'. That's even more solid than finalizing with Lock-Tite, I take it. :)
ReplyDeleteMayhaps the Indian government should take a look at the US and other European Occupation governments did to their namesakes... And a whole lot of that was done with the at least temporary cooperation of tribes. Put in a more or less halfway point was when General Amherst and his loyal lapdog George Washington had a little wage agreement with Pontiac. Pontiac suggested strongly that he and his tribal army should actually be paid for their service and the Amherst-Washington (and Robert E Lee's grandfather) cartel disagreed and sold Pontiac and his crew smallpox blankets.
ReplyDeleteThere methods are somewhat more subtle now, but the U.S. helped Saddam run off King Faisal because Faisal was a key player in OPEC and as we all know the darker people aren't able to mind their own business so the US and Britain had to mind their business for them. A spectacular failure all around.
Strangely, Amherst political descendants used accusations that Saddam had modified smallpox and was keeping it as a secret. Must be really super-secret because the Brit-US coalition sure as hell never found it.
With all the shenanigans over the centuries including the US government helping the British to ride herd on the India Indians, one would expect somebody to notice and steer their country away from the beastly leadership cartel, rather than doing exactly what so many American Indians did, which was to believe liars.
One of my Lakota friends told me he was the dumbest Indian in history, and I consoled him with a snappy narrative of the person who went up to the Conquistadores and asked if they were friendly. Tejas in their language.
One of the true stories told in Texas history is the Tejas tribe, probably Karankawa, no longer exist as a tribe.
Just a cautionary note, and one may do with it what he believes right. I just see a pattern and paint it with words.