By Ajey Lele and Cherian Samuel
Visiting US Secretaries of Defense are rarely given to making speeches at New Delhi think tanks; the last such instance seems to have been a speech at the United Service Institution of India by then Defense Secretary William Perry in 1995. On 6 May 2012, the US Defense Secretary Mr. Leon E. Panetta addressed academics, security experts and media at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) at New Delhi. In his speech and the Q&A session that followed, Mr. Panetta dwelt at length on the US administration’s vision of US-India defence relations within the wider context of the developing strategic environment in Asia.
According to him, the defence relationship has done much for ensuring security and stability in the Asian region; various aspects of cooperation such as joint exercises and the defence dialogue have resulted in closer co-operation and co-ordination in areas ranging from fighting piracy and terrorism, to increased inter-operability between the two forces which would be crucial during natural disasters. With non-conventional threats becoming more the norm than the exception, the US Defense Secretary listed out what he described as “new and ever more complex threats” that the two countries were faced with, in particular, cybersecurity and space security.
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