The decision was neither unexpected nor unprecedented. Nearly seven years ago, in 2001, India purchased 310 T-90 MBTs from Russia. And that points to the first lesson: The T-90 is a very good tank. It has its problems, as Russian analysts acknowledge, but it is well-armored, can take a lot of punishment, has formidable hitting power and is extremely reliable in the grueling conditions of combat. Clearly, the Indian army is happy with the T-90s it already has, or it would not have bought a second, even larger number of them.

The second lesson is that India is gearing up for the possibility of major land war: It is not hard to see where, or potentially with whom. Russia has been India's main strategic ally since the mid-1960s, and after 40 years it remains so today. India's new strategic relationship with the United States therefore has certainly not turned it into the kind of close, decades loyal ally that Britain, Germany, Australia, Japan and Israel have all been.

Nevertheless, relations between India and the United States remain excellent and there are no direct areas of strategic conflict or tension between New Delhi and Washington. The two largest democracies in history -- and both English-speaking at that, have never been closer in their strategic relations.

Nor is China the intended target of India's formidable Main Battle Tank buildup. There certainly remain long-term strategic tensions between the two most populous nations on Earth, but they are focused on China.

Beijing has moved steadily to acquire naval and air bases in Myanmar, the Myanmar-ruled Andaman Islands, Pakistan, Mauritius and East Africa. The main purpose of these moves appears to be to project its limited range submarine and combat fighter air power to protect its vital oil supply lanes from the Persian Gulf through the Indian Ocean in its "string of pearls" strategy.

However, at the political level, Sino-Indian relations have been steadily warming for more than four years under both Hindu nationalist BJP-led and Congress-UPA-led coalition governments in New Delhi. Nor would so many tanks be directly relevant to an India-China conflict. China is not focusing on building up its armed forces or long-term infrastructure for them in Tibet. A repeat of the 1962 Himalayas war between India and China is not on the cards.

Where, then would Indian generals anticipate using so many tanks? The answer is clear, in case unstable, unpredictable Pakistan, India's traditional enemy to the west, collapsed in chaos and civil war, or fell into the hands of militant, extreme-Islamist elements who might trigger a war with their giant predominantly Hindu neighbor.

The Indian T-90 purchase therefore has profound implications for the balance of power in South Asia and it underlines the enormous dangers to regional and world peace that the collapse of the political system in Pakistan would cause.

The lessons of the T-90 deal, however, do not stop there.

Why Russia favors India over China)
There is much more to India's decision to buy 347 T-90 Main Battle Tanks from Russia than meets the eye. And far more to the Kremlin's decision to sell them to New Delhi, too.

First, as we have previously noted in these columns, despite India's growing strategic relationship with the United States, New Delhi's traditional primary alliance with Russia, now going back more than 40 years, has not weakened. On the contrary, defense and strategic ties between the two nations are at an unprecedented high.

Russia has been working hard to remove what has for many years been the biggest bottleneck and irritant in the strategic relationship, the very poor record in maintenance service and supply of electronic and spare parts that India experienced though the 1990s for its Russian-built aircraft, especially its Sukhoi interceptors.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been moving energetically in the last few months to restructure the Russian military-industrial complex, or defense contractor sector in more sweeping ways than the country has seen since the collapse of communism in order to try and eliminate these bottlenecks.

Indeed, Indian-Russian military-industrial cooperation has been growing remarkably in other key areas as well. The two countries have just agreed to jointly produce what will eventually likely be hundreds of supersonic, ground-hugging cruise missiles under their joint Brah-Mos development entity.

The strategic implications of this development are extraordinary. For while the T-90 Main Battle Tank is Russian, and not Indian-manufactured, and comparable in quality to the American Abrams M2 MBT, the projected Brah-Mos supersonic cruise missile would incorporate the latest Russian technology but be manufactured in India, and it would give India the capability to build cruise missiles that fly at up Mach 2.8 -- nearly three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour -- as fast as a speeding bullet. That is also more than three times as fast as the Tomahawk, the main cruise missile in the U.S. high-tech arsenal.

The Tomahawk is subsonic, and many analysts believe it is increasingly vulnerable to the most modern Russian anti-missile defense systems such as the Tor-M1, which Moscow has supplied to Iran, and the new S-400 Triumf, which was first deployed around Moscow last year.

But if the Brah-Mos supersonic cruise missile venture is sobering for the United States, it is infuriating for China. For although Russia and China are partners in leading the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, founded on June 15, 2001, to resist the spread of U.S. and democratic influence in Central Asia, Russia has steadfastly refused up to now to sell India a long shopping list of its most advanced weapons systems, including the T-90 MBTs it feels perfectly happy to sell to India.

India, after all, is farther away from Russia than China. Russia has never had a common border with India in its history and has never been threatened by invasion from India or South Asia. Russian civilization, however, was extinguished in the 13th century by waves of Mongol invaders from the Far East. Later, the Russian Czarist and Chinese Manchu empires came into conflict over control of vast regions of east northeast Asia as long ago as the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689.

Much more recently, there were bloody border clashes between the Soviet Union and China in 1969 that even led to very serious concerns in China that the Soviets might launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against them.

In the eyes of most Americans, democratic India is seen -- in fact correctly -- as a friend of the United States and China an ally of Russia's. Beijing is also seen, not without reason, as increasingly hostile or unpredictable towards U.S. interests, despite the enormous volume of trade and mutual dependence between the two great nations.

Yet Russia feels freer to sell or jointly develop its most sensitive and important weapons systems with India more than it does with China. This reveals that Russia's grand strategy for Asia is far broader and more complex than is generally appreciated.

(Next: Vladimir Putin, Arbiter of Asia)

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