New Delhi: If the military tango between India and the US since 2002 were to be taken at face value, then the two countries are quite clearly having a strategic honeymoon.
Four rounds of Malabar series of naval exercises, some of them involving carrier battle groups for staging mock wars at sea, four rounds of air exercises, three of them related to combat and a series of Army-level engagements involving airborne special forces and the infantry.
The regular flow of high level visits by the military leadership like the current one by the US Army Chief General Peter Schoomaker, reinforces the picture of a military dalliance of a type New Delhi has not seen before. But is this new strategic partnership for real?
The exercises have not yet been focused on achieving politico-strategic objectives.
Which means that the two sides are rehearsing for war together but without a commitment to join forces in real life.
If required, the Indian and US militaries can wage war together, as allies.
But New Delhi and Washington do not seem to have the politico-strategic comfort levels yet to identify common adversaries.
Pakistan, for instance, is a subject where there's difference of perception.
“Clearly, India and the Us has very divergent politico-strategic perceptions about Pakistan as a state,” says a strategic affairs analyst,” Uday Bhaskar.
But there have been other areas, like Afghanistan, where there is a convergence of interests.
The ouster of the Taliban regime by US-led forces did serve Indian security interests.
But acknowledgement of common challenges like terrorism notwithstanding, the Indo-US military handshake is still far short of a bear hug.
"India and the US has different strategic cultures when it comes to the use of military force US has a penchant for the use of military force, for example Iraq,” says Bhaskar.
While there are obvious limitations to the joint use of military force, it's the area of defense trade, which promises to power a transformation in the relationship.
For a technology-hungry military, which does not have even one major US-built platform, this opens new doors.
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