In January U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited India and later in the month Washington secured a deal to sell India 145 U.S. howitzers for $647 million.
"The Obama administration is trying to persuade New Delhi to buy American jet fighters instead [of Russian ones], a shift White House officials say would lead to closer military and political relations between India and the U.S. It would also be a bonanza for U.S. defense contractors, and [the White House] has dispatched senior officials such as Mr. Gates to New Delhi to deliver the message that Washington hopes India will choose American defense firms for major purchases in the years ahead."
The Wall Street Journal quoted Tom Captain, vice chairman and Global and U.S. Aerospace & Defense director at Deloitte headquarters in New York, as claiming "For 2010 and 2011, India could well be the most important market in the world for defense contractors looking to make foreign military sales," where Russian equipment accounts for about 70 percent of that currently in use.
Referring to India's plans to spend $10 billion for 126 multirole combat aircraft, Captain added: "That's the biggest deal in the world right now. If it goes to an American firm, that would be the final nail in the coffin in terms of India shifting its allegiance from Russia to the U.S." [7]
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen was in the Indian capital on July 22-23 and met with Defence Minister AK Antony, Air Chief Marshal Pradeep Vasant Naik and other military leaders. As a local news agency divulged, "Mullen's visit comes at a time when both sides are looking at expanding defence cooperation across a swathe of areas.
"The visit also coincides with intensified lobbying for the $10 billion contract for 126 fighters for the Indian Air Force (IAF)." [8]
The White House is negotiating new export control agreements with India to assist American arms firms to sell more high-technology weapons to the Asian nation.
At the top of the list of U.S. objectives in expanding military ties with India are replacing Russia as the country's main arms supplier and the concomitant supplanting of Russian political influence, further tightening an Asian NATO around China [9] and weakening the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [10], all to ensure unimpeded American presence and domination in Eurasia.
After the end of the Cold War and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, the Pentagon was given free rein to operate worldwide, including in parts of the planet hitherto inaccessible to U.S. troops and bases.
U.S. European Command, through the expansion of NATO membership and graduated partnership programs, has secured the Defense Department a prevalent role in almost all of Europe and the South Caucasus.
Central Command has extended its role from the Middle East to Central Asia and further into South Asia and the Indian Ocean.
On October 1, 2002 U.S. Northern Command was established to oversee North America from Mexico's southern border to the Arctic Ocean. Six years later U.S. Africa Command was launched to subordinate 53 nations on and off the coasts of the continent to American military and geopolitical strategy.
In the past decade the Pentagon has deployed troops, military equipment and ordnance - in some instances missiles - to new locations in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region, the Middle East including the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, Central and South Asia, Northeast Africa and South America.
The final frontier is Asia from China to Iran, with those parts of it not covered by Central Command assigned to U.S. Pacific Command, the largest overseas military structure in the world. Its area of responsibility takes in India, China and 60 percent of the population of the Earth.
In the 1990s so-called neoconservatives and realists alike from Paul Wolfowitz to Zbigniew Brzezinski triumphed in the emergence of the U.S. as the first, uncontested and only international superpower - what its current head of state Barack Obama called the world's sole military superpower in Oslo last December - and crafted plans to continue that unparalleled role into the indefinite future. What they agreed on was the need to guarantee that no other nation or group of nations rose to challenge American global supremacy, either on an international or a regional basis.
By regional was understood any part of the world. The most likely rivals would arise in Eurasia, the American geopoliticians warned. The ultimate nightmare for the imperial strategists was some version of what former Russian prime and foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov promoted as a strategic triangle of Russia, China and India.
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