India ups China in arms purchase

Siddharth Srivastava, New Delhi

India has emerged as the largest weapons buyer of the developing world, overtaking China in the process, a U.S. Congress study has said. Over the last four years, China has purchased more weapons than any other nation in the developing world, signing nearly US$10.5 billion in deals from 2001 to 2004. For the same years, India, ranked second with nearly $8 billion in arms purchases, and Egypt was third with $6.5 billion in deals.

But India surpassed China in total purchases in 2004, agreeing to buy $5.7 billion in arms. Saudi Arabia was second in signing arms deals last year with contracts valued nearly $3 billion and China was third in 2004, signing $2.2 billion in contracts for arms purchases.

Further, with $15.7 billion in orders, India edged out China, with $15.3 billion, to become the developing world's biggest weapons buyer for the eight-year period up to 2004, says the review by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The report says that developing nations are the leading purchasers of arms worldwide. The U.S. once again topped the trade with developing states with deals worth nearly $7 billion in 2004, or 31.6 percent of world-wide contracts, down from over 43 percent share in 2003. The U.S. is followed by Russia and Britain.

The total worldwide value of all agreements to sell arms last year was close to $37 billion, and nearly 59percent of the agreements were to sell weapons to developing nations. The overall figure has declined from about from about $42 billion in 2000.

However, the report said worldwide arms deliveries to developing nations rose from nearly $21 billion in 2003, to $22.5 billion last year. Agreements to sell weapons, meanwhile, shot up from over $15 billion to nearly $22 billion last year. China, Egypt and India were the heaviest buyers of the weapons.

Russia was second with close to $6 billion in arms deals to developing countries, up from nearly $4.5 billion in 2003. Russia's share of all developing world arms transfer agreements dipped to over 27 percent in 2004 from over 28 percent in 2003.

Russia remained the chief supplier to both India and China, but India has expanded its base, the report said. In 2004, for instance, it purchased Phalcon early warning defense system aircraft from Israel for $1.1 billion. Asia accounted for the bulk of Russia's arms-sale agreements in the period surveyed, rising to nearly 82 percent of its total deals worldwide from 2001 to 2004, the study showed. By contrast, only 26 percent of U.S. arms deals were in Asia during the same period.

Britain was third in arms transfer agreements to the developing world in 2004, signing contracts worth over $3 billion, while Israel ranked fourth, with deals worth over $1 billion. France followed with nearly $1 billion.

The annual study, which was delivered to Congress recently, is considered by experts to be the most detailed and complete compilation of facts and figures on global weapons sales available in the public domain.

With China and India emerging as the biggest weapons purchasers in the region, it is apparent that the exponential growth of business relations between the two countries has not been an effective deterrent against stockpiling of arms, as had been thought by some.

The Congress report illustrates how global arms-trade patterns have changed in the post-Cold War and post-Persian Gulf War years, Richard Grimmett, the study's author has written. "India's ongoing defense modernization program reflects its desire to become a significant political-military force in Asia," he said in an interview with a news agency. U.S. willingness to consider selling advanced military items to India suggests it may view India as a potential regional counterweight to growing Chinese military power, Grimmett added.

Indeed, the U.S. wants to engage India independently and move beyond the traditional hyphenation of U.S.-India-Pakistan relations. The U.S. is looking at India as a strategic partner to fend off China. This period is the first time in the history of India-U.S. relations that U.S. is looking towards India beyond the axis of cold war nations wherein India was seen to be allied closely with the former Soviet Union.

This point is further emphasized by the fact that the U.S. is strongly opposing the lifting of the arms embargo on China by the European Union (EU), especially in light of the rising tensions between Taiwan and China.

India has been courted by the U.S. in the last couple of years, with the country for the first time offering its complete range of weapon systems and platforms last year. India and U.S. recently signed a wide-ranging 10-year defense agreement titled the New Framework for the U.S.-India Defense Relationship. The agreement is extremely vast in scope, envisages a broad range of joint activities, including multinational operations, strengthening the two militaries to promote security and defeat terrorism, and deepening capacity to take on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The U.S. offer includes the much-touted Patriot anti-missile defense system that tackles aircraft and also tactical and Cruise missiles, C-130 stretched medium lift transport aircraft, P-3C Orion maritime surveillance planes and F-16 fighters.

Further, the business of arms deals is very competitive and the U.S. does not want to lose out. Russia remains India's biggest defense partner notching over $1.5 billion every year due to the deeply entrenched relations between the two countries that hark back to the 1960s. Israel has now overtaken France, UK and other countries to become the second largest defense supplier to India. The value of military arsenal works out to be close to $1 billion each year for the last three years.

It is estimated that arms purchases by India will be to the tune of $15 billion over the next few years that will include fighter jets, submarines, tanks and technological advancements.

The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist.