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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the now defunct Warsaw Pact, the South East Asian Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization faithfully helped in this cause. It was customary to arm one of the two feuding neighbors and force the other to seek countermeasures.

This game was played to the hilt in South Asia. Pakistan was armed under the pretext of stopping the Soviets from reaching the Indian Ocean from 1954 to 1959, then again from 1972 to 1974 to replenish war material lost in the Bangladesh war. Huge amounts of war material were sent to Pakistan from 1980 to 1987 during the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. The clever Pakistanis commandeered some of the U.S. supplies destined for Afghanistan.

After a respite of a decade or so, arming Pakistan began all over again in 2001. This time the pretext was finding al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and defeating the Taliban. The value of all the war materials Pakistan has received since 1954 exceeds US$70 billion in today’s dollars. It was all free, thanks to the United States.

India responded in kind from 1954 onward, purchasing war supplies from Britain, France, Sweden, Israel and the Soviet Union at a cost that exceeded US$60 billion. The difference is that India had to pay for all of it. In addition, since 1959 China stepped up pressure on India’s northern border, hence more than half the war materials purchased were to defend the northern border.

The United States is the world’s largest arms exporter, with total sales of US$34 billion in 2008 – a figure 45 percent higher than the previous year. That means there is no recession in the arms trade industry.

India is not a major U.S. customer; very little has been sold by the United States to India except the well-trumpeted 1962 supplies of about $100 million authorized by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Forty years later, in 2002, the United States authorized the sale of 12 Raytheon weapon-locating radars, valued at under $200 million. Again in 2007, a rusting U.S. troop carrier was refurbished and sold to India.

On the whole, India would like to diversify its sources of sophisticated weaponry and buy advanced fighter jets, attack helicopters, advanced smart and cluster munitions, additional submarine rescue hardware, engines for its fighter project, network-centric warfare technology, information warfare technology and a lot of special-forces hardware. But none of these could be sold to India without a change in the political mindset.

After much internal debate, the new administration of U.S. President Barack Obama finally approved the sale of naval P-8i maritime surveillance planes to India. After a delay in 2008, the United States also approved the sale of six Lockheed Martin Super Hercules military transporters.

There is a large export license clearance backlog at the U.S. end. The country is having difficulty shifting its mindset away from the bygone Cold War era. Barring super secret weapons, India should be able to buy weapons to meet its triple threats – China, the Pakistani army and now Pakistani jihadist outfits.

Indian arms imports since 2005 have been at the rate of about US$5-$7 billion a year. The plan is to continue at this rate for the next five years. Hence India will import roughly $30 billion worth of advanced weaponry. The United States could have a piece of this action, especially at the high end.

But none of this will be forthcoming unless India goes along with U.S. demands. These are far beyond the usual requirement of any arms supplier that the recipient country neither resell nor share the technology with others. They include:

• End user monitoring agreement – This is a usual clause in all U.S. weapons exports to its allies and partners, but India is neither, hence it is having difficulty in agreeing to where these weapons end up. Also the yearly inspection clause is intrusive. U.S. internal laws are such that reselling U.S. weapons is nonnegotiable, but the rules on their usage and on annual inspections may be negotiated to a bit more lenient terms.

• Communication and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement – This governs the sharing of sensitive information between two nations. This too is nonnegotiable on the U.S. part. India will have to adhere to it.

• Logistics Supply Agreement – This agreement is of a sensitive nature. Its innocuous wording could have far-reaching impact on the very politically minded Indian politicians. It allows the U.S. and Indian militaries mutual support, berthing rights, refueling facilities, etc. To make it look fair it is an equal-value exchange, but it mostly favors the United States.

• U.S. Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency – This in fact is the operating arm of U.S. military sales. It notifies U.S. legislators of impeding military sales. It is the least of India’s concerns, but the problem is that politicians in the U.S. Congress can become very intrusive.

Truthfully, all of this is too much bureaucracy for any country to deal with. The White House may have to step in to curtail this bureaucratic mismanagement.

The sale of P-8i surveillance planes or Lockheed transporters or other military hardware is conditional upon satisfying these conditions. The worst impact of these conditions has not been felt yet by India, but it is coming. Recently a minor State Department official put a hold on technical assistance for an already supplied U.S. turbine engine for India’s stealth frigate. The stop order was rescinded a few days later, but it shows the power of U.S. bureaucracy.

Something similar happened in a big way in 1999, when the United States placed sanctions on all its dual-purpose supplies immediately after India’s nuclear test. Not only that, the United States impounded Indian property – its light combat aircraft that happened to be in the United States for wind tunnel tests. The aircraft was held for two years before being released. To add salt to the wound, a group of Indian scientists were barred from visiting the United States, although they were going there to attend an international conference.

All of this happened because the United States is very proud of its military technology. This they achieved by downgrading anything the Russians, Europeans or Indians made – although that may not be true, especially after the U.S. performance in eight years of war in Afghanistan and six years of war in Iraq is a guide. The missing elements are morale and determination.

In South Asia, U.S. weapons tangled with mostly British and Indian planes and tanks in the 1965 India-Pakistan war. U.S. weapons did not prove worthy of their name in that conflict. The Indians knocked down U.S.-made F-86 fighters and Patton Tanks with grit and determination. The same thing happened in 1971 when the Indians captured a huge cache of U.S.-supplied weapons to Pakistan in Bangladesh. These did not appear to be superior to Russian or Indian weapons.

The story of U.S. overconfidence still continues, although the country’s newest, most advanced 21st-century fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, has met three air accidents even before going into service. This fighter jet is turning out to be the U.S. equivalent of the Russian Mig-21, the “widow maker.”

Overall, U.S. weapons are as good as others. They have a marketing edge over others in that they have a wide variety available to suit many needs. However, the difficulty in buying U.S. weapons today is that there are too many bureaucratic delays in purchasing and sales.

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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud)