India’s daily billions

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Admiral Fasih Bokhari, former CNS, Pakistan Navy, and Chairman of the country’s National Accountability Board, is set to release a report December 14 that’s expected to reveal that Rs 6-7 BILLION rupees are DAILY lost in corruption — bribes, payoffs, commissions, etc.  Supposedly astounded by this figure the Pak cabinet lost no time in rejecting the report. That’s not however going to make reality go away.

Now do the arithmetic: If India’s economy is eight times as large as Pakistan’s, and our politicians, bureaucrats and every agent of government –from the beat constable to the water-metre wallah – right up to cabinet ministers, and political party heads are no less larcenous, venal, corrupt, and having a hand in your pocket rifling for change, a simple extrapolation would mean Rs. 48-56 BILLION being lost to the economy EVERY DAY! (the fact that the Pakistani rupee is roughly only half as strong as its Indian counterpart  is of little account in indicating the scale of corruption.) It is the result of the minders of the state turning predators. The people of South Asia need the greatest good luck to survive the systems of misgovernance they have created!

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, South Asia | Leave a comment

Tu-22 M3M line for China, Admiral Joshi, General Bikram

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Holidaying from blogging for the month of December, except three things steamed me up, enough any way for me to write this.

1) A knowledgeable friend called to say China had bought off the entire production line of the  Tu-22M3M — the latest variant of of the ‘Backfire’ strategic bomber from Russia for $1.5 billion, just $500 million more, as he reminded me, than what India will be paying to acquire the Pilatus propeller-driven trainer aircraft from Switzerland. This little snippet for anybody who doubts that India is getting things strategically so horribly wrong!!

2) One can’t but admire CNS, Admiral DK Joshi, for standing his ground and not backing down when NSA Shivshankar Menon called him out on his forthright statement to the press that the navy had practised actions to thwart the Chinese Navy acting as if South China Sea was China’s sea and boarding Indian warships plying those waters on duty protecting Indian energy assets owned jointly with PetroVietnam, and that the navy would carry out those actions if bothered in any way.  This when NSA was playing the usual Indian sap talking of how such statements hurt “Chinese sensibilities”. Boo-hoo!! No doubt the Admiral was pressured to retract his statement or at least to say what he had said was distorted by the media — which he didn’t do but which was Menon’s position in Beijing that the Press had “misled” the Naval chief, as if Joshi is some babe-in-the-woods. MEA, followed up by wagging a school-marmish finger urging the military to show more restraint!  And the NSA and MEA are tasked to protect Indian national interest?!!!

3) In contrast to the CNS there was the army chied, General Bikram Singh, around the same time exulting about India-China relations being “absolutely perfect”. OH!!! May be the rest of us are missing out on a crazily unobvious development! It seems he was trying to compensate for Joshi’s straight talk with the normal mealy-mouthedness  expected of military-men. What’s with Bikram Singh? Was he punch-drunk when he said it? Or, distanced from reality? Or, most likely embellishing an MEA script given him to read? In the event, one wonders if Bikram Singh remains the Public Relations colonel at heart that he was during the Kargil border conflict?

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, India's China Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Military Acquisitions, South Asia | 30 Comments

Gujral, last of the wagah candle-lighters

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Inder Gujral’s demise removes the last of the stalwarts of the 70s-80s era. He was an accidental prime minister — being there at the right time, the right moment, for the concatenation of political forces to hoist him on to the gaddi. His ‘Gujral Doctrine’ was inspired more by sentiment — he was born in Gujerat, in northwestern Punjab, and hence was received in Pakistan always as a returning son — rather than by realpolitik. Realpolitik considerations, I have always argued, are better basis for strong relations with Pakistan. If you cut out sentimentaility, the picture is less clouded by personal experiences and emotional pull. The means Gujral suggested actually are the very things that can work — having asymmetrical trade and commercial relations with all neighbours including Pakistan will immediately give the states in the near-abroad a stake in India’s wellbeing and future, and vice-versa — as I have argued in all my books. But, vis a vis Pakistan there’s a need to address that country’s insecurity on its terms. This will essentially require denaturing the Indian army’s strike corps element by recomposing it as I have suggested in my writings the armoured and mechanized forces and the three strike corps establishment — and using the manpower and financial component thus freed up to raise, eventually, three offensive strike corps for the mountains against China, and by taking such measures as removing the liquid-fueled Prithvi missiles from their forward-deployed stance (which would neither compromise nor weaken Indian security, because India has the 700km Agni-1 to cover Pakistan). This is the hard kernel of rapprochement with Pakistan. Whether Gujral appreciated this military aspect or not, is unclear to me despite my having talked with him a number of times. It is, however, fair to say as a short-term PM of a ragtag coalition regime he lacked the political punch to implement such a military policy. Hence, his Doctrine was toothless and achieved little, as I rfemember writing at the time.

But as a person, he was delightful. Indeed, the first time I interacted with him in any meaningful way was in December 1982 when he, K. Subrahmanyam, and I were invited by the Pakistan Govt to partake of än event billed as the ‘First International Conference on Peace and Security in South Asia’ under the aegis of the then recently founded Institute for Strategic Studies, Islamabad,  run by Brigadier Noor Hussain.  Subbu was the ‘clever Tamil brahmin’ the mainly military and foreign office audience were wary of — their apprehension turning into anger as Subbu lampooned their pretensions as a ‘martial race’. I was the young, smart-alecky type invited, presumably, because of my views about how to deal with Pakistan that differed from that of the Indian establishment (which difference in views still persists). But it was Gujral who was the centre of attention, always surrounded, engulfed in waves of West Punjabi warmth, speaking thir lingo, joking, pumping hands, and backslapping his way through the two-day affair.  He was the last of the Wagah candle-lighters — in spirit, for sure — in the political class.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia | 13 Comments

More on Tipnis

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Sorry, should have mentioned in my previous post something specific that ACM Tipnis mentioned to elaborate on the correct procedure which he stressed.  He said the request to the IAF was communicated through Vice Chief of the Army Staff, who was officiating Chief with Malik on a foreign trip to Poland. Tipnis asked VCOAS to ‘sign off’ on the army request for AF intervention, the army Vice Chief demurred on the first occasion, and again the second time around they met. The hint here was that the VCOAS was in touch with Malik, still in Warsaw or where ever, but the army was sensitive about seen to be asking for IAF help, perhaps, because of the stand taken by the incompetent Kishen Pal, 15 Corps cmdr, who insisted his forces alone would be able to clear out the enemy encroachment, little realizing the extent, size and quality of Pakistani intrusion. This still doesn’t explain, leave alone excuse, Tipnis’ insistence on the procedural/bureaucratic correctness of wanting the army to sign off, etc.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Pakistan, Pakistan military | 2 Comments

Tipnis seeking exoneration

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Last Sunday (Nov 25) at a seminar called by the Centre for Security & Strategy in Chandigarh, was on the panel alongwith ACM(ret) Anil Tipnis, Gen. (ret) Ved Malik discussing China and how to deal with it. Except Tipnis used the occasion to correct the misperceptions of IAF’s role in Kargil in 1999 that, he believes, have marred both his and the Service’s reputation. The non-response by IAF when called on by the army for attack helicopter support has been the subject of much speculation, all redounding to the disbenefit of the air force’s unwillingness to go into action. I am not fully conversant with the details of the “rules of business” that the armed services are supposed to follow in a situation where one service finds itself in a jam — with the completely wrong assessment and inept handling of the situation by Lt Gen Kishen Pal, GOC 15 Corps once the intrusion was detected — by grazers, not the army field intelligence, and finds a sister service  reluctant to rush to its rescue. Tipnis made much of the fact that some parts of the Kargil report were blacked out, censored, before it was published — which he claimed was the crucial evidence the public didn’t get to see exonerating him of the charge of command failure or at least failure of nerve. He cited various rules, etc. but the thrust of his remarks was that as  IAF chief he needed an express directive/permission from the government to enter in support of army operations to evict the Pak Northern Light Infantry from the heights. Much of what Tipnis said and the way he said it was to goad the then army chief, Malik, to respond. The General refused to rise to Tipnis’ occasion because as Malik said to me, sotto voce, as the ACM was walking to the lectern — ”Oh, there he goes again” or exasperated words to that effect, which suggests such interaction had happened earlier. There was, of course, a distinct cold-correctness between Tipnis and Malik, reflecting the strained relations between them and their respective services during the Kargil crisis. It still leaves the main question unanawered — should Tipnis have not responded thus: Will asses the situation pronto and get back to you on what actions the IAF proposes to take to assist the army ops, rather than talk bureaucratese about directives, etc.?

Posted in Asian geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Pakistan, Pakistan military | 2 Comments

Nuclear warnings

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The Indian government rarely heeds warnings, does not prepare for the worst and when the storm hits, flaps about helplessly and reaches for straws to save itself. At the beginning of the 1990s, the Bill Clinton administration came to power in the US with nuclear non-proliferation on its mind and a one-point agenda of arm-twisting India to sign the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Prime Minister Narasimha Rao parried Washington’s non-proliferation thrusts the best he could and even ordered preparations for nuclear testing. He displayed a better grasp of the evolving strategic situation than the leading members of the strategic community, led by the late K. Subrahmanyam and his acolytes from the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Subrahmanyam and the IDSA group belonging to the school of minimum to non-existent deterrence instead of supporting the government’s inclination to resist, advised signing the CTBT. Recall that episode? We may be heading into an even bigger non-proliferation storm that is brewing in Washington and the government, once again, seems blissfully unaware of it.

A re-elected US President Barack Obama will now push his disarmament initiative unveiled at the 2010 Prague summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, which upended the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan doggedly promoted by the Congress Party. The progress on this front is likely to be measured in terms of whether India can be lassoed into the discredited 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) stable. Pressure could begin to build up on New Delhi innocuously enough with talks as follow-up to the nuclear summits that followed the Prague summit in Washington (2010) and Seoul (2012), which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attended.

The concept to contain the Indian nuclear deterrent have recently emanated from Western think tanks. The gambit is a semi-official monograph — Less is Better: Nuclear Restraint at Low Numbers authored by Malcolm Chalmers of Britain’s Royal United Service Institute (Rusi). It calls for formally “capping” the quality and quantity of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons at their 20 kiloton fission levels (validated in the 1998 tests) and their numbers well short of the 200 weapons/warheads mark that, Chalmers claims, will be reached by 2025. The idea is to get the two countries to sign the CTBT even if the US does not ratify it. India and Pakistan are also urged to announce “moratoria” on fissile material production without a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty anywhere on the horizon. It is next suggested that because any missile able to reach Europe poses a danger to it, such missiles need to be pre-empted. This will require India to not field missiles such as the advanced Agni-V, which bring almost all target sets within China and, incidentally, most of western Europe within their range. To follow this advice would require India to leave itself exposed and without a counter for the Chinese intermediate range ballistic missiles. This is necessary, Chalmers argues, because China would be unsettled by India’s Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology that will allow a single missile to carry many warheads which, combined with its ballistic missile defence, will pose a counterforce threat to Beijing, for which reason India is to be persuaded to eschew MIRV technology as well. Finally, the Rusi report declares that India and Pakistan “need to demonstrate” that they are “satisfied” nuclear weapons states, meaning, presumably, that India, at least, is content with its present half-baked deterrent that currently has no missiles with long range, no tested weapons beyond the 20 kiloton fission-type, and no MIRV.

The report permits India (and Pakistan) to undertake “system modernisation”, but they would have to forego “enhancements in their nuclear capabilities” — that is, no further testing, no MIRV, no Agni-V, no long-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The expected “concessions” in return for India and Pakistan accepting such “a package of restraint measures” is for the so-called NPT-recognised five nuclear weapon states (N-5) to show some  “transparency” regarding their arsenals. Oh, really? How about the N-5 first divesting themselves of all missiles beyond intermediate range (2,000 km), MIRV, ballistic missile defence, and warheads/weapons above the 20 kiloton fission-type? Why do such Western schemes presume that India would accept lesser nuclear security than they enjoy and, more specifically, why is Rusi confident that this extraordinarily skewed, nearly silly, proposal is something New Delhi may be prevailed upon to accept? Because, in light of the unequal nuclear deal with the US that the Manmohan Singh regime signed without much strategic forethought, the West believes the Indian government is so enfeebled of mind — assuming there is any mind at all animating the country’s policies — that New Delhi can be prodded and pushed, offered encouragement, flattery and blandishments into foregoing its nuclear security imperatives. That, essentially, Indians are saps! After all, which other country has so willingly disempowered itself so frequently? The Rusi report deserves a formal trashing by a junior official in government, lest New Delhi’s non-reaction be taken as room for the West to begin prompting India into nuclear nullity.

The other paper, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia”, is by George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote a stilted history of the Indian nuclear programme as viewed through anti-proliferation glasses. His paper insinuates a US role in obtaining “deterrence stability” between India and Pakistan. Deterrence stability is, of course, a good thing, but it is even better were Islamabad to show political will to zero out the danger to its nuclear arsenal by neutralising the Islamic militants rather than concede an intercession by a third party, such as America.

But New Delhi has a track record of running to Washington every time a Pakistan-assisted terrorist incident occurs in India. This has, in fact, now become a habit, a policy crutch for the Indian government to do nothing itself — the first best option. Rarely having fresh ideas of its own in a crisis, it eagerly accepts Washington’s offer to hold back Pakistan and compel it to make symbolic gestures of contrition. Such as the January 12, 2002, televised speech by the then Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, vowing to end terrorism emanating from Pakistan in the wake of the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament. The Rusi report is based on the assumption that India will buckle. Perkovich has a deterministic take on subconventional incidents inevitably leading to nuclear exchange.

Actually, the “dynamic” he refers to between the two countries, for reasons of organic affinity, results in India being rendered incapable of waging a war of annihilation against Pakistan. The shared kith and kinship ties of a “partitioned community”, common culture and background, and the fear of the “swing vote” wielded by Indian Muslims rule out anything other than “wars of manoeuvre” with Pakistan. For the same reasons, a nuclear exchange the West worries about is even more remote.

[ Published as “Beware! A nuclear storm brewing” in the ‘Asian Age’ Nov 22, 2012 at www.asianage.com/columnists/beware-nuclear-storm-brewing-489 ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Missiles, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US. | 1 Comment

Pantji, R.I.P.

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The announcement of KC Pant’s death has come as a shock to many of us who worked with him.

I came to know Pantji personally from the mid-1980s when he was Defence Minister. We engaged in discussions on defence matters. When he was appointed Chairman of the Tenth Finance Commission, India, in 1992, he asked me to join the Commission as Adviser on Defence Expenditure and specifically tasked me to deconstruct defence budgets of the previous 30 years with a view to ascertaining just what military capabilities were obtained for the vast amount of monies spent on the armed forces. It was tough getting any files/documents, all of them classified, from the MOD then run by NN Vohra, the Defence Secretary, and interminable correspondence ensued. Until I created a bit of shindig and, perhaps, with deference to Pantji, these documents were finally sent to me for my perusal and use in the study. But before I received these documents, I had already completed a provisional draft of my report, based entirely on public sources. It confirmed my suspicion that MOD had very little that really required classification. Pantji was taken aback by many of my conclusions backed as they were by empirical data and publicly-known facts and trends. He said as Defence Minister he was unaware of many things that I had highlighted. In any case, Pantji, despite my remonstrances, next did something controversial. Saying that because the Finance Commission had undertaken an analysis of the defence budget for the very first time in its existence and that as a former Defence Minister he was mindful of MOD sensitivities, he forwarded my draft to MOD — which is not a done thing, because like every other Ministry in the Central govt that approached the Commission for a larger slice of the pie, MOD too was a supplicant, and I didn’t see why it should be treated differently from the other ministries. But Pantji, of course, prevailed. I then pleaded with him to at least ensure that my report, because the draft was based on publicly-available information, be made a public document, alongwith the basic Finance Commission report. May be, with Mr Vohra’s prodding, my report was classified instead. This is a pity because the public would have benefitted from knowing just how the taxpayers’ money is spent and with what outcomes.

This report was the first in-depth analysis of defence expenditures of its kind, and the first by an ‘outsider’. Pantji’s confidence in me was a reward in itself. All the more significant because he was so mainstream, such a politically cautious and careful gentleman, who deliberated deeply, consulted widely, before coming to conclusions. The political high-point of his career came early, at the 1967 Durgapur session of the Congress Party where he led the charge for India’s nuclear weaponization. He battled vainly, it turned out to the detriment of the country, against the disarmament ideologues, such as Morarji Desai, who raised the ghost of the pacifist Mahatma, to quell the pro-bomb campaign. Think where India would have been had it tested even by 1970 — a bonafide member of the nuclear weapons club, tracing an entirely different trajectory than the onerous one it actually did.

No doubt impressed by Pantji’s hard strategic mindset coupled with his imperturbable and affable nature, and by his political lineage (Govind Ballabh Pant) and connections across the political spectrum the US State Department in the late Sixties and early Seventies marked him out as a future Indian Prime Minister. As an old Washington hand once told me, the only slight problem was with his last name (as the Americans pronouned it) — PANT!! More seriously, there was the dynastic principle that went against him in the Congress Party. He will be mourned and much missed. Pantji, Rest In Peace.

Posted in civil-military relations, disarmament, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons | 2 Comments

Dealing with transitions

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

It is a relatively rare occasion to have the timelines converge for transitions in governments in the two countries India’s foreign and military policies, for different reasons, revolve around. The relatively greater importance of the United States in the Indian scheme of things is reflected in Barack Obama’s re-election being greeted by at least the English language newspapers here with banner headlines, even as Xi Jinping’s ascension to China’s political apex has merited more subdued, inside-page coverage.

America is an open book, which doesn’t mean New Delhi reads it well. In its usual delusional take on developments there, the Ministry of External Affairs is often as wrong as the hyperventilating press. Most U.S. policies can be traced from their inception in some paper produced by a Washington Beltway think-tank fleshing out options. And there is never any doubt about just what the policies of a Democrat or Republican Party administration will be, or about the thinking behind them. And, contrary to the spin given here, no, the United States does not really give a damn about the democratic credentials of this country or its cultural diversity and the song and dance about such tertiary issues – America has enough problems managing its own ‘melting pot’ to celebrate multiculturalism elsewhere.

Where India is concerned, what the US worries about, in the main, are two things. The sheer infirmity of the Indian government’s strategic will counter-balanced by fairly robust growth in the mostly non-strategic military wherewithal. This requires a lot of hand-holding and massaging of the Indian ego with every passing American when, not talking of India as “a global responsible power”, a “swing state” or the “indispensable state”, extolling India as “a net provider of security” to countries in the extended Indian Ocean region and farther afield. Such flattery and blandishments are what is seen to work with an astonishingly non-strategic-minded Indian government. To realize India’s potentially large footprint, as pillar for the US policy of “Asia pivot”, needs American pushing and prompting.  The other thing that animates Washington is India’s vast market and its anxiety that it remain open to American imports even as President Obama targets “off-shoring” and warns local businesses against outsourcing to Bangalore (something the Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney never did). Misreading America can be costly, but nothing that cannot be swiftly corrected.

China, on the other hand, is a closed book and how a Xi, Li, or even a Deng reaches the top in that closed system is almost always mysterious except to those with “Chinese expertise”, which a former US Ambassador to China, Winston Lord, called, an oxymoron. Except, misreading Chinese policy by imputing benign intentions to Beijing, as is the Indian government’s wont, can get India quickly into a strategic jam. Because, unlike the United States, which is on the other side of the globe, China is right here – Kunming being closer to Kolkatta than Kolkatta is to Lucknow, what to speak of Delhi, and its military moves can immediately affect India’s security. How much at sea the strategic security minders of the state are, may be gleaned from recent utterances of the previous National Security Adviser. Speaking in Melbourne, M.K. Narayanan, a former Intelligence Bureau chief vaulted into the NSA’s post (for no good reason than his closeness to Sonia Gandhi), relieved himself of several nuggets.

India and China are “destined” by reasons of geography, civilization, culture, and a border dispute to be “rivals”, he said, apparently looking up a map for the first time. “What is …most disconcerting today”, he continued. “as China’s economic muscle expands – is increasing assertiveness on its part while dealing with disputes, whether on land or sea.” China has always been aggressive with respect to India even when it was a dirt-poor state, So its bellicosity is a revelation to only those who are wilfully blind to reality. Unsurprisingly, on his watch as National Security Adviser, his inattention to China developments harmed the country strategically. Indeed, military officers who were in the Strategic Forces Command recall Narayanan doing a Gowda – actually sleeping through briefings on the state of readiness of the country’s nuclear forces! The most conspicuously strategic thing Manmohan Singh has done was to pack Narayanan off to Kolkatta. This is to make the larger point of the sheer disinterest in nuclear security of Narayanan, of course, but also of others at the highest levels of the Indian government because of lack of understanding of even the basics of deterrence.

In an inferior position militarily, India naturally cannot do other than fall in line with whatever agenda Beijing decrees. Thus, India has been told that the resolution of the border dispute be put off, and to let trade take precedence. Except, New Delhi has always made clear that its priority is formal delineation of the border and the removal of this issue as possible trigger for hostilities. But, if China says no, India subsides every time, meekly accepting any Chinese timeline. Have the Indian interlocuters ever had the guts to, in turn, set a timetable for their Chinese counterparts: Resolve the border issue in, say, two years time period of intensive parleys, or New Delhi is prepared to set aside border talks for a generation? Of course not, and hence our problems.  Given the unsettled state of affairs in this country, the Chinese calculation obviously is that its hand can only get stronger with time.

The National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon is to betake himself to Beijing, to confer with Dai Bingguo, the chief border dispute negotiator, and do his salams to the new dispensation. In the new leadership, the hard ‘yin’ of President Xi Jinping and his backers in the Peoples Liberation Army is unlikely to be offset by the supposedly soft ‘yang’ of the reformist premier, Li Keiqang. This is a familiar Chinese internal power arrangement: a relative hardliner, Hu Jintao, yoked to a moderate, Wen Jiabao, where the former invariably prevails. What way will Xi go? A straw in the wind – the PLA is being enjoined to re-embrace Maozedong’s war fighting doctrines and principles.

[Published Nov 16, 2012 in the ‘New Indian Express’ at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article1341011.ece]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Ocean, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | Leave a comment

Army in doldrums

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

                         

After a rough-hewn career in the field, politics should be pursued by soldiers as an avocation, not a vocation that the workaday politicians have made it

The Army has been in the news for a few years now not always for the right reasons. The succession trauma that saw Gen. Bikram Singh replacing V.K. Singh will be stretched out some more with Lt. Gen. Ravi Dastane, deputy chief of the Integrated Defence Staff, deciding to take the matter of the elevation of Lt. Gen. Dalbir Singh Suhag as the Eastern Army commander to the Armed Forces Tribunal.

Like the V.K. Singh episode, this one too can be expected to land up in the Supreme Court docket. While V.K. Singh, for reasons unclear, was satisfied with the Supreme Court merely “restoring his honour” rather than pronouncing on the larger principle at stake and which he went to the court for — which was that whether or not for career management purposes records of serving officers with the Adjutant General’s Office are paramount. It truncated his tenure as Army Chief without establishing the principle. But the Lt. Gen. Suhag promotion has prompted Lt. Gen. Dastane, who may insist on the Supreme Court being specific about promotion rules and criteria.
Worse, with V.K. Singh on the cusp of entering “politics” full-time, an unnecessary debate has been spurred about the propriety of retired military men entering the soiled political arena. Some veterans — with a lifetime’s habit of staying away from politics — have harrumphed that this is a bad precedent to set. Some fairly ludicrous suggestions have been floated by media commentators, among these that he should give up his rank. India is a bona fide democracy, not a banana republic as a bumptious bottom-feeder from the Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi’s household had the temerity to call the country. The Indian Army, moreover, is a volunteer citizen force of enormous historical weight, not some rag-tag group that is anybody’s plaything. As a citizen military, moreover, the regret is not that V.K. Singh seeks entry into the political ranks, but rather that more generals and colonels and majors are not already in politics.

The country needs more citizens with a military background in Parliament, not fewer. And after a rough-hewn career in the field, politics should be pursued by soldiers as an avocation, not a vocation that the workaday politicians have made it. Indeed, the bulk of persons with a military background have fared well in Parliament and in state legislatures. People like Jaswant Singh, former major, Central India Horse, and a foreign minister displaying diplomatic verve and finesse during the BJP coalition government, and Maj. Gen. B.C. Khanduri (Retd), an Army engineer, who as chief minister hauled Uttarakhand out of the pits, are role models. Generals in democratic politics have been an honourable station since the age of Pericles, who commanded two campaigns against Sparta in the Peloponnesian Wars and was freely elected by the Athenian people to lead their government twice.
If the Army has had a hard time of it in terms of controversy attending on leadership transitions at the highest levels, it has not been lucky in terms of augmenting its capabilities either. Leave alone not getting an offensive mountain corps, the very concept was gutted by defence minister A.K. Antony, who is proving to be one of the great mishaps the military has run into. He has both conspicuously failed in his one-point agenda to remove the taint of corruption, and with his risk-averse attitude has actually compounded the problem with decisions being delayed, or, when taken, having been controversial. He started with zero aptitude — and not being a quick study on issues alien to him — has not graduated over the years in office beyond the kindergarten-level in terms of understanding national security-related issues. Nor has he developed an instinct for making correct decisions. Worse, he has introduced the give and take of politics into military choices by configuring a grand bargain that saw him approve a full-fledged combat aviation arm for the Army in the face of severe resistance from the Air Force and then, to placate Vayu Bhavan, mooted a “joint solution” that the Army has been enjoined to work out with IAF, entailing the formal burial of the offensive mountain corps concept, because of the IAF’s belief that it can unleash its aircraft for punitive strikes against the Chinese Army in Tibet, and that this is enough to deter the hard-headed men running the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

It puts one in mind of the joint air-land exercise put up by the 4th Infantry Division in Ambala in 1958 to over-awe the visiting Chinese military delegation headed by the PLA commander in Tibet. Screaming Hunter aircraft overhead in ground attack mode, dropped bombs, made repeated strafing runs and cleared the path for advancing infantry — all of which impressed the Chinese commander not a whit. “This is all very impressive,” the Chinese commander is reported as telling his Indian counterpart commanding the 4th Division, Maj. Gen. B.M. Kaul, “but, tell me, will you have the aircraft in a real war?” The PLA general got his answer three years later with the 7th Brigade of Kaul’s own 4th Division being decimated on the Namka Chu river at a time when Kaul himself was appointed commander of IV Corps created overnight for him by his distant uncle, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister’s complaisant defence minister V.K. Krishna Menon and an “obedient” Army Chief, Gen. Pran Nath Thapar. All this happened, it must be remembered, as the IAF remained inert throughout the war.

Going by his recollections of his career, the IAF Chief in 1962, Air Marshal A.M. Engineer, did not push for the Air Force to go into action. Maybe, like his more recent successors, he too subsided in his belief that air action is inherently escalatory. What’s the guarantee that IAF won’t again escape, doing nothing in another showdown in the Himalayas? And then, the Army bereft of any real offensive capability that would have won the PLA’s respect, will be compelled to merely defend. We know where that will get the Army — another ignominious end.

[Published November 9, 2012 as “Parliament needs more ex-Generals” in the ‘Asian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/parliament-needs-more-ex-generals-453 and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’.]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Politics | 3 Comments

Meaningless cabinet jiggle

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

It is not clear what the cabinet reshuffle that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or, as the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, at an election rally in Himachal Pradesh, wittily called him, Maun Mohan Singh, and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi have engineered is supposed to indicate. Is it supposed to denote the lame duck regime’s last ditch attempt to infuse new energy into its economic reforms? Or, were the droppings and inclusions as per separate and particularist agendas?

For instance, the removal of External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna from the cabinet seems like a bid to mollify the United States government which has been growingly upset about the nuclear deal leading to nothing — no huge payoffs for the Nuclear deal Manmohan Singh hankered for, in the form of contracts for low-enriched uranium reactors and revival of the dying US nuclear industry. Krishna had joined Defence Minister A.K. Antony and between them the two old-fashioned, pickled in pink, ideologues had stymied the PM’s efforts for closer ties, arguing that it is best to “keep America at arm’s length”. Especially irksome was Antony’s stonewalling of  moves to sign the Logistics Support Agreement, Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, which Krishna supported, that prevented higher levels of military and strategic cooperation.

Salman Khurshid replacing Krishna in the MEA is at once a wilful attempt at disregarding the revelations about the trust he runs with his wife, Louise, and an obvious choice to replace the mumbling-bumbling Krishna. At least, Khurshid is articulate and won’t be at a loss for words. His time, moreover, as Minister of State in MEA in Narasimha Rao’s cabinet, albeit with nothing much to do as a junior minister, nevertheless would have helped familiarize him to byways of the ministry that for too long has been running on policy inertia, not innovation. What new direction could he give the MEA? He can profitably impose a new workplace ethic and mindset on MEA officials requiring them to liaise with the armed forces, particularly the Integrated Defence Staff in the Defence Ministry.

MEA has to-date stuck to its untenable position that foreign policy being its exclusive domain, the military has no business intruding with draft strategy papers suggesting certain foreign policy changes. This is so out of tune with the real world and trends where the hard power of the state is appreciated as both ballast for a country’s foreign policy and providing its diplomacy multiplier effect, that India has paid a high price for the MEA mandarinate’s standoffishness. Being ignorant of the nuts and bolts of conventional and strategic military prowess and imperatives has meant, for instance, that the obvious counter-measure that should have been generated long ago by the Defence-MEA combine, in response to China’s egregious proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technologies to Pakistan, never materialized. India should have promptly transferred similar technology and complete systems to Vietnam and other countries of Southeast Asia in China’s soft under-belly. This was not done. One Foreign Secretary, K. Raghunath, deposing before the National Security Advisory Board in 1998, even called it “impracticable”. MEA’s over-respectful attitude to international norms at the cost of the national security interest in the context of our main adversary, China, behaving without restraint, is self-defeating. Correcting this aspect of his ministry should be Khurshid’s top priority. It will help if Mitt Romney is elected US President, because Republicans are more national security-minded and will want to ramp up military cooperation with India.

Then again, what’s one to make of the honest to goodness, Jaipal Reddy, being rewarded for his artful steamrolling of a private sector oil and gas major and prime beneficiary of crony capitalism by shunting him off to Science & Technology? Of course, S&T would gain hugely from his sagacious leadership, especially if he keeps in mind the seminal fact that technology innovations are best spawned by young entrepreneurs assisted by a facilitative system, not government-owned institutions breeding mediocrity. May be he should think in terms of seeding an Indian mittelstand – the small and medium-sized technology firms producing cutting edge products that are the pride of Germany. They keep Germany in the technological forefront, and which model France is trying to now emulate, discarding in the process its state-driven system that obviously has not been as productive. Of course, the version of the state-driven model in India has long been bankrupt and in desperate need of dismantling. Its replacement should be an Indianized version of the mittelstand that can mesh the tech-innovative genius of individuals, incentivizing them with financial support to seed small, high value, companies. He could set the Jaipal standard in the S&T sector.

Then there are Shashi Tharoor and his priceless spouse. They will provide entertainment value. Other than these changes, most of the remaining  movements in the cabinet involve the proverbial baba log – who constitute the Congress Party’s so-called “youth brigade”, and amount to little, especially as their putative leader Rahul Gandhi couldn’t be induced into joining government. These young men are where they are because of their families, not because they are mass leaders, even less because they have shown political and managerial talent. The Jyotiraditya Scindias, the Sachin Pilots, and others of that ilk have currency because of the unfortunate dynastic principle established by Jawaharlal Nehru, who set the precedent by installing Indira Gandhi as Congress Party president. Having become Prime Minister, she lost no time in cementing this succession procedure, giving the goonish Sanjay Gandhi the run of the Emergency regime and, thereafter, ensuring the rise of the more genteel Rajiv Gandhi, until now when the incubus of dynastic politics has infected the other parties as well.

These persons, it should be remembered, are products of the privileged environs of ‘Lutyen’s Delhi’, their families forming the nomenklatura and who have been indulged by the socialist nanny state founded by the Congress party. They view the perks and ministerial appointments as entitlements, as rewards for being born right. Not much can be expected from this self-serving lot.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ November 2, 2012, at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article1323362.ece ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, Geopolitics, India's China Policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | Leave a comment