Two powerful u.s senators, mark warner of the democratic party and john Cornyn of the republican party, wrote to Biden on Tuesday, urging him to give India a national interest waiver under katsa for buying the s-400 from Russia since it is in America’s national security interest. Warner is chairman of the Senate. Permanent select committee on intelligence, and Cornyn is the senate minority whip for the GOP. Both the co-chairs of the Senate, India caucus the only country-specific caucus in the u.
Senate. The two senators said in their letter that while India has taken substantial measures to restrict its acquisitions of Russian military equipment, it has a long history of obtaining armaments from Russia, they wrote. Despite dropping sales, we share your worries over the acquisition and continuous Indian integration of Russian equipment. We would encourage your administration to continue emphasizing this issue to Indian authorities and engaging in constructive dialogue with them in order to continue pushing alternatives to acquire Russian weaponry. The provisions of katsa, which include penalties targeting Russia’s defense and intelligence industries, are an essential weapon for the US.
Administration in discouraging Russian military acquisitions across the world. The senators wrote in the letter that wavering for India is justified for a number of reasons. First, in recent years, Russian armament exports to India fell by 53 between 2016 and 2020 as compared to the previous five-year period. Second, lifting sanctions is necessary for national security. Imposing sanctions at this time might jeopardize expanding collaboration with India in many areas of bilateral relationship from vaccines to defense, cooperation, energy policy to technology exchange, they added.
The third reason they gave was that sanctions have the potential to encourage critics within India, who warned that the us will not be a consistent and reliable partner for cooperation, as well as to prevent the Indian government’s efforts and long-term strategy to reduce Russia purchases and reliance On Russian defense hardware, they suggested that the Biden administration should form a bilateral working group to examine measures to promote the security of u.s technology and to map a course ahead for developing tactics to improve u.s India, military cooperation.
