WASHINGTON: Some two decades after Washington came down like a ton of brinks on India for its Shakti nuclear tests, the United States on Thursday expressed unprecedented understanding and support for New Delhi’s security concern while defending its recent space weapons test.

A hearing of the powerful US Senate Armed Services Committee on the proposal to establish a United States Space Force was the forum for lawmakers and defence officials to voice understanding of India’s compulsions in going in for an anti-satellite test while seeking to establish global space norms and protocol that would include New Delhi.

“What should the rules environment be, and what should we be doing to try to promote rules? India is an ally. We’re not talking about an adversary doing something. We’re talking about them testing some capacity, but then that creates challenges for all kinds of uses of space. How should we be solving problems like that?” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine asked at the hearing, opening the floor for the Pentagon to express its support for New Delhi.

“The first lesson from the Indian ASAT is just the simple question of why did they do that. And the answer should be, I think to all the committee looking at it, is that they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space,” responded US Strategic Command Commander General John E Hyten adding, “And therefore, they feel they have to have a capability to defend themselves in space.”

It was an unprecedented moment in US-India relations, where despite close ties, administrations spanning both Democrats and Republicans have been leery of any significant advance by New Delhi in the military technology realm.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests, the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright had castigated India saying it had “dug a hole” for itself by going overtly nuclear, leading her Indian counterpart Jaswant Singh to retort that "Culturally, Indians do not dig holes to bury themselves.”

That snarky exchange was a distant memory at Thursday’s amicable Senate discussion as American policymakers sought to understand New Delhi’s compulsions. Gen Hyten, in fact, echoed some of the arguments from New Delhi that India went into for a space weapons test because, as it happened with the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it did not want to be left out of any future global protocol or architecture on the subject.

Senator Kaine also drew a distinction between a similar Chinese test in 2007 which generated 100,000 pieces of debris, compared to the 400 from India’s test. NASA had initially termed India’s test and the debris it created as a "terrible, terrible thing" before it was told by the White House to reel back criticism and continue cooperation with India.

