A former Pentagon official says that the MQ-9 drone leasing arrangement was complicated, "but the [Trump] administration worked very hard to make that happen quickly, to provide India with additional sort of intelligence collection capability. And there were other things that were done that are classified.”
New Delhi: The Donald Trump administration ‘quickly’ provided a lot of support, some of it still classified, to the Narendra Modi government in 2020 when the ongoing border crisis with China began in Ladakh. This was revealed by a senior Trump administration official to a Japanese newspaper.
“During the Trump administration, quite a bit was done to support India during the border clash, including making available to India MQ-9 drones for surveillance purposes,” Christopher Johnstone, a former Pentagon official in charge of South and Southeast Asia in the Office of the US Secretary of Defence, told Nikkei Asia. The drone leasing arrangement was complicated, “but the administration worked very hard to make that happen quickly, to provide India with additional sort of intelligence collection capability. And there were other things that were done that are classified,” he told Nikkei.
Johnstone, who is currently a senior adviser and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was at the Pentagon handling India at the time.
He revealed that “there was a very explicit decision made inside [Pentagon] and at the White House to provide as much support as we could, based on what India wanted. Frankly, that helped to create something of a foundation under the relationship that also contributed to the Quad and the elevation of the relationship under President Biden.”
As per the former official, the real test for the Quad will come next year when India will be hosting the summit of the Quad leaders. “It will be India’s first time to host so they will have to develop an agenda and identify priorities and deliverables. It will be a test of the Quad’s durability and effectiveness, and India’s commitment,” warned Johnstone.
This year’s Quad summit is scheduled in Australia in May, following the G7 summit at Tokyo to allow the US president to travel easily. India has so far resisted militarisation of the Quad, keeping security-related issues away from its agenda.
Another former Trump administration official, Lisa Curtis, recently co-authored a report where she argued that the Modi government “would expect intelligence support and winter gear from the United States, but it also might request things like joint exercises, emergency senior-level military and defense consultations, and inclusion in Quad statements of the need to defend Indian border claims – all to enhance its deterrence vis-à-vis Beijing.”
Her report warned the American decision-makers that the Modi government “clearly wants to convey to its people that India alone can handle military operations competently and successfully, even in a wartime scenario. Additionally, India probably believes that joint statements with the United States that frame the border crisis through the lens of intensifying US- China competition would be provocative and unhelpful.”
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