Foreign

China, Pakistan looking at LEMOA pact between US, India

August 30, 2016

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India and the US signed the LEMOA pact on Tuesday (today) that made them logistical allies against the superpower China currently making a bold power grab in the South China Sea.

Specifically, Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar signed the deal during a two-day visit to Washington. The deal is the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), a foundational agreement for India and the US. In this instance, the agreement provides for each to use the other globally for supplies, spare parts, services and refuelling. Effectively, US armed forces can operate out of Indian bases, and vice versa, on a simple basis.

For the US, this is one part of the much larger “pivot” to Asia intended by President Obama to meet a rising China. The US Navy plans to deploy 60 percent of its surface ships in the Indo-Pacific in the near future. Instead of having to build facilities virtually from the ground up, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has the benefit of simple arrangements for the tremendous Indian facilities.

For Prime Minister Modi, it is one further step, part of a much broader move for India away from its Cold War alliance with Russia, toward a new alliance with the US (and Japan and Australia) to protect the Indian Ocean and the seas of Southeast Asia, especially from China.

India remains on hostile terms with China from border disputes dating back to a war in the 1960s. And, the gigantic engines of their economies are, for the most part, rivals.

LEMOA is the key way-station on agreements still to come of military technology sharing of tremendous importance for India, again, primarily to help it stand up to the emerging superpower of China. One upcoming deal is the Communications and Information Security Memorandum Agreement (CISMOA). Another, the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence (BECA).

With prior pacts, through LEMOA, ultimately to CISMOA and BECA, India increasingly can either buy (and use), from the US or others or make itself, top-of-the-line technology for its air force and navy to stand up to China’s, particularly in the Indian Ocean. Modi has made India a tremendous buyer of advanced weaponry. The US is by far the world’s largest seller of weapons.

Courtesy: Forbes