WASHINGTON: There is a “mismatch” between the Obama Administration’s intention to improve defense and strategic ties with India and America’s “arcane” export control regulations, a top US official has acknowledged, highlighting the need to remove “bureaucratic impediments”.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B Carter, who has been entrusted by his chief Leon Panetta with the task of working with India on removing these bureaucratic hurdles, said there are a number of things that the US needs to change in its export control regulations. There are some which the Indians need to change, he said.
He conceded that America’s current export control system is a major hindrance, and many a times frustrating, when it comes to increasing defense trade with India.
Responding to questions at the Politico Pro Defense Forum, Carter said that there is a real “mismatch” between the intention of the Obama Administration to improve its defense and strategic ties with India and America’s current export control regulations.
“You know, (the former Defense) Secretary (Robert) Gates used to say this, (the Defense) Secretary (Leon) Panetta does, Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton, it’s of tremendous frustration with how arcane the export control system is.
“Those problems are particularly acute when it comes to India because India and we were separate industrially and technologically for a long time, all during the Cold War,” Carter said.
“When you’re trying to match up how they do things and how we do things, there’s no history there. We have to create that history,” he said.
It is during his India trip this year, Panetta entrusted Carter with the task of working in removing the bureaucratic hurdles to increase defense trade between India and the US.
“So I went out a few weeks later, and there are a number of different aspects to it, some of the things that we need to change, many things I think that we need to change, and others are ones that India needs to change,” he said referring to his recent India visit.
“But I think our objective, the joint objective we have with the Indians is to make sure that only our strategic differences – and we’ll always have them, two great countries will – and not our bureaucratic impediments stand in the way of having this relationship be all it can be. That’s the kind of central idea. And down in the engine room make that happen, I’m determined to do that,” Carter said.-PTI
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