Russia-India Cooperation
By Finishing a book manuscript, and so haven’t had much time for serious blogging recently. Nevertheless, would like to drag everyone’s attention to Dmitry Gorenburg’s excellent series on Russia’s military relationship with India. First part examines naval, second part ground and air, third part joint projects.
There’s a lot of interest here. From a strategic point of view, the Indo-Russian relationship suggests that there’s something wrong with geopolitical scenarios that don’t take balance-of-power considerations between the three Eurasian giants seriously; I’m not looking at any one in particular, of course, but… From a technical point of view, I think it’s interesting how dependent both China and India continue to be on updated Soviet technology. I think that Feng might have more to say on this, but there’s a fascinating contrast between India and China as customers of Russian military tech. India is a better international intellectual property citizen than China, and also lacks any serious security flashpoints with Russia. On the other hand, China seems to be interested in pushing beyond what Russian technology can offer, even if major questions about the quality of the product of the Chinese military-industrial complex remain.
Cross-posted at ID.