NEW DELHI: Strategic autonomy cannot apply in times of conflict and India and the US must uphold principles when other countries go against the rules-based order or violate sovereign borders, US ambassador Eric Garcetti said on Thursday in a swipe against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia.
Garcetti’s remarks, made at a conclave focused on the India-US defence partnership, came against the backdrop of the White House and the US state department expressing concern about India’s relationship with Russia and hoping that New Delhi uses its long-standing ties with Moscow to urge President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Without referring to Modi’s trip to Moscow or the war in Ukraine, Garcetti was critical of the outcomes of the India-Russia Summit and the stand taken by the Indian side – that a solution cannot be found on the battlefield and New Delhi stands for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Garcetti also sought to compare Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s borders with the military standoff between India and China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
“I know…and I respect that India likes its strategic autonomy. But in times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy. We will, in crisis moments, need to know each other. I don’t care what title we put to it, but we will need to know that we are trusted friends, brothers and sisters, colleagues…,” Garcetti said at the event held at the United Service Institution of India, a defence think tank.
There was no immediate response from Indian officials to the US envoy’s comments.
Garcetti said the work being done by India and the US to jointly develop weapons, conduct joint military exercises and foster exchanges between their military leadership will allow them to be “a powerful ballast against the waves that will sweep over Asia and other parts of the world, and I think we all know that we’re interconnected in the world”.
In an apparent reference to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, he added, “No war is distant anymore and we must not just stand for peace, we must take concrete actions to make sure those who don’t play by peaceful rules, that their war machines cannot continue unabated.”
Garcetti sought to draw a comparison between the outcomes of the India-Russia Summit, which resulted in two joint statements and nine agreements, and the Indian prime minister’s visit to Washington last June.
“We can read leaders’ agreements, as we might have done this week…look through the ones that are kind of dressed up versus the ones that have to be edited down. I was told when we had the prime minister’s visit, that a state visit that has five to 10 deliverables is a very strong visit. At our peak, we had 173 separate deliverables, that the US and India were working on together,” he said.
Acknowledging New Delhi’s reliance on Moscow for spare parts for legacy Russian military hardware that makes up a large part of the arsenal of the Indian armed forces, Garcetti suggested India will have to choose between Russia and the US for long-term military requirements. The US, as a major supplier of defence equipment, had gone from “near zero in 2008 to approximately $25 billion in 2023”, he said.
“We understand there’s legacy equipment, you’ve got to be battle-ready, you need spare parts for that, but as you look at the future, we know where the best systems, the best weapons are coming from…As we have said, don’t look at this cynically,” he said.
Garcetti said several times during his speech that both India and the US shouldn’t take their relationship for granted because “while it is wide and it is deeper than it’s ever been, it is not yet deep enough”. He also sought to compare Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the situation on India’s northern border, noting that the world has “witnessed countries who ignore sovereign borders”.
He said, “I don’t have to remind India how important borders are…That when we stand on those principles and stand together…we can show that principles are the guiding light of peace in our world and together the world’s two largest democracies can enhance the security and the stability of our region.”
After Modi met Putin on the same day that a Russian missile strike hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, the prime minister raised the killing of “innocent children” at a meeting with the Russian president at the Kremlin and emphasised that a solution can’t be found on the battlefield.
However, the US has continued to express concerns about India’s relationship with Russia. US state department Matthew Miller said the American side raised these concerns with India even as Modi was visiting Russia, while a White House spokesperson said India’s long-standing relationship with Russia gives it the ability to urge Putin to end “his brutal and unprovoked war in Ukraine”.
People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that the US raised the visit with the Indian side both in Washington and New Delhi soon after media reports last month said Modi was expected to travel to Moscow. The US side was miffed as India hadn’t given any indication about the visit when US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited New Delhi last month, two of the people cited above said.
According to a Bloomberg report, US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell expressed concern about the visit in a phone call to foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra and said its timing was “particularly problematic for Washington”. The visit coincided with a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit that was attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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