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

Educating the Defence Minister

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

In the Westminster system of government, cabinet ministers are autonomous, virtually a law unto themselves, and serve at the pleasure of the prime minister. If the PM is a strong, elected, leader, the fear of rubbing him the wrong way and consequently being out of the cabinet or demoted is enough reason to induce discipline. If, on the other hand, India finds itself stuck in a condition for the last eight years of an unelected and unelectable person as Prime Minister then we have government turning into a farce if not circus as is the case these days.

With Manmohan Singh deriving his political legitimacy from his party chief, Sonia Gandhi, who in turn waits with trepidation for the designated dynast, Rahul Gandhi, to show signs of political acumen and toughness to justify her installing him in the hot seat, government has subsided to a big tent show with different rings and new acts introduced every now and then. There is Sonia Gandhi’s and, in the personalized politics of the day, Congress Party’s son–in-law Robert Vadra’s financial legerdemain hogging the limelight in one ring, Sharad Pawar’s Lavasa ‘hill station’ antics in the next, and Salman Khurshid’s miracles involving the disabled in the third ring, and the people cannot but be appalled with the brazen-ness of these schemes.

A political cipher of a PM, however, looks on as anarchy rules even in the cabinet, with ministers, depending on their interest, or lack thereof,  ideological bent and layman’s grasp of issues but mainly the political heft each carries, mostly marring the Ministries they are given charge of. Politicians leading ministries in the business of delivering government goodies and directly impacting the lives of people – ministries of health, agriculture, food, Public Distribution System, fertilizer, petroleum, coal, roads and highways, railways, etc., can apply their common sense and gut instincts to push programs they can proudly claim at the hustings as their own handiwork. Promoting their personal projects can, however, mean working against the PM’s national agenda, resulting in paralysis of government.

Then there’s Home Ministry, much prized by politicians, mainly because the appointee commands various coercive arms of the state – Intelligence Bureau, Central Bureau of Investigation, which can be marshalled to build dossiers on friends and foes alike, and that’s always helpful. It keeps Mulayam Singh and Mayawati in line and ensures Congress party’s extended stay in power. Then there are departments of government that are somewhat technical in nature – the several economic ministries and Defence, where basic instincts have to be backed by specialized knowledge.

It has been the misfortune of this country, starting with V.K. Krishna Menon in the late 1950s, to have strong-minded politicians as defence ministers who, like the proverbial tail, have mercilessly wagged the dog, sometimes reducing the Indian armed forces to a pitiful state. On the 50th anniversary of the 1962 war debacle, the press is full of Krishna Menon’s misdoings. Lucky, his successors were not shown up by the Chinese. We have had some strange Defence Ministers though and can recall the tenure of the redoubtable Yadav supremo, who was anything but mulayam in reducing the ministry to a translation bureau.

For the last eight years, the country has had the former Kerala Chief Minister, A.K. Antony, minding national defence. His resolve to clean up the military procurement process and rid the process of meddlesome middlemen spreading corruption, like bad water does dysentery, was ambitious. A man of probity, he was brought in to erase the Bofors taint off the Congress party. Ironically, he will be seen as having presided over defence scams (Augusta-Westland VIP helicopters, etc.) to complement other scams elsewhere in the UPA government. His policy of indiscriminate black-listing of vendor companies led to small players with good products – for example, Singapore Kinetics Ltd. with its light howitzer that in rigorous testing beat the competition — being ousted from the bidding process, and big players escaping the sieve altogether. Such as a supplier country that secures very large contracts, because it is seriously rumoured, it has perfected the art of channelling huge payoffs to the political apex – the same modus operandi used in Bofors, which clears deals. That’s the secret that other countries are cottoning on to. In the event, Antony seems more like the clueless chowkidar with single-barrelled gun by his side at the bank entrance to reassure customers, while robbers make off with the loot from an open vault accessed from an unlatched back door.

Worse, Antony seems to place his ideological antipathies above national security. His opposition to foreign bases has negatived any progress on formally accepting the Agalega North and South Islands offered by the Mauritius government which, if secured for the Indian Navy and air force, would immeasurably extend India’s strategic reach in the Indian Ocean. Still worse, is the defence minister repeating, the rhetorically high-sounding but, in practical military terms, inordinately foolish injunction to the armed forces to “defend every inch of Indian territory”. On October 18, it took the form of a declaration concerning the China border infrastructure, to wit, “We are now capable of defending every inch of our country”. Except in the lexicon of military-wise ignorant politicians, “every inch” quite literally means every inch, which in actual military operations amounts to a bad joke.

May be, the Army Chief General Bikram Singh can impart a half-hour tutorial to his Minister, gently informing him of the vagaries attending on the smallest military action. Antony can ask for a briefing from Revenue Intelligence, albeit belatedly, on how the commission-bribery system works, so his innocence, which in politics is a liability, doesn’t do his own standing more harm. Hopefully, it can set a precedent of the COAS educating the generalist civil servants as well, because the “every inch” rhetorical nonsense can backfire in crisis with the people expecting zero loss of ground in all hostilities, which as General J.N. Chaudhri, supposedly told Lal Bahadur Shastri when the PM first used that phrase during the 1965 War, he couldn’t guarantee.

]Published Oct 25, 2012 as “Defence Tutorial” in the ‘Asian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/defence-tutorial-725 and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/defence-tutorial ]

Posted in China, China military, civil-military relations, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Pakistan military | Leave a comment

Nuclear decisionmaking 1964-74 – discussion at IDSA

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

As part of the nuclear history project, an hour-long video of panel discussion at IDSA, Oct 10, 2012,  chaired by Inder Malhotra and involving Joseph Pilat of the Los Alamos lab, K. Santhanam, Vice Admiral (ret) KK Nayyar, and yours truly. Recently uloaded by IDSA. May be of interest. Accessible at http://idsa.in/video/PanelDiscussionIndiasnucleardecisionmaking196474

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, disarmament, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | 8 Comments

Republicans better for India

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

It matters to Indian national interest which person and party wins the presidential elections in the United States, not for the usual reasons of the this or that winner being more friendly to this country. But because, generally, Republicans are more hard-headed and strategically-oriented, clearer in their minds of what countries are more important in the larger geopolitical game underway at any given time. And, specifically, because Republican appointees to high posts in the Administration tend to be more Manichean in their outlook – cognizant of ideological adversaries who need to be checked, unlike Obama’s officials trying to ‘nuance’ their way out of trouble.

The fact that the George W Bush government saw the emergence of an aggressive China as a rival and assessed democratic India’s importance as a counterpoise in Asia was not dependent on the nuclear deal that many in the Manmohan Singh regime claim was decisive. Even without the deal, a convergence of interests indicated the direction in which the two countries would proceed. The nuclear deal was the sour cherry atop the cake that the improving bilateral relations could well have done without, as subsequent developments ha shown. Indeed, the foundations for good Indo-US relations were actually laid by Republican President Ronald Reagan in the Eighties. What is remembered by Indians, however, are the dark days of the Richard Nixon era, when the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise sailed into the Bay of Bengal with its load of nuclear weapons on an errand of gunboat diplomacy — prevent Indian forces from taking Dhaka in December 1971. It didn’t work but seeded distrust of the United States, and Republicans in particular. Nixon’s sidekick, Henry Kissinger, in promoting Mao’s China as counterweight to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, in fact, ended up seeding its unparalleled rise and growth.

For reasons not entirely clear, the Indian establishment prefers the Democratic Party with romanticized memories of the days when Kennedy’s ambassador in New Delhi, John Kenneth Galbraith, had easy access to Jawaharlal Nehru, offered sound but unsolicited economic advice to a socialist India struggling with the statist demons it had created, and  all the while displayed good humour.  But, it was during Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency that India lived ‘ship to mouth’ – relying on the gift of American PL 480 grain, which leverage was used ruthlessly to punish India for not supporting the American policy in Vietnam. But it was the denial in 1966 of the $980 million grant-in aid that Johnson had promised, which had the most devastating consequences. The nearly billion dollar aid was supposed to cushion India’s transition to a market economy. With that cushion pulled from underneath her, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi decided against going through with her economic reforms  liberalizing the Indian economy that Washington had been urging. Had Johnson not held back the funds, Mrs Gandhi not gone back on her decision to eliminate the license-permit raj in 1966, India would have had a ten year economic head-start and, who knows, might have been where China is today – on top of the world.

It is a curious take on history by Indians that President Bill Clinton is thought of as a great lover of India. Even the Indian government — which should know better, regards him thus, possibly to not embarrass the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady. Actually, Clinton began to appreciate India only after his plan for a concert of powers with China in the new millennium was rejected by Beijing, but not because Washington didn’t try hard enough. Recall how Clinton bent over backwards to please China, going to the extent of leaking to the New York Times Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s letter that spoke plainly about the growing Chinese nuclear arsenal as the reason for India’s 1998 tests and  weaponization. It breached confidence and showed enormous bad faith.

The Democratic Party in the US has been in the forefront of pushing nonproliferation and, should he win a second term, Barack Obama is likely to make the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) his primary foreign policy goal at the very least to buttress his credentials as a campaigner for a nuclear weapons-free world for which he prematurely won the Nobel Prize for Peace. It is another matter that CTBT is peripheral to the central issue of the United States and Russia reducing their respective weapons/warheads stockpiles. Moreover, most of the extreme non-proliferationists in Washington are associated with the Democratic Party and part of the Obama Administration — persons such as Robert J. Einhorn, Special Adviser in the State Department, an inveterate India-baiter, and Ellen Tauscher who, before assuming charge as Assistant Secretary of State, vowed to bring countries like India into the Non-Proliferation Treaty net.

The reason why the Obama Administration will pursue CTBT is because it diverts attention from drawing down America’s strategic inventory and presents an avenue for easy success. After all, the manner in which the Manmohan Singh government was persuaded to indefinitely extend the “voluntary moratorium” wouldn’t have escaped Washington’s attention. A bit more push here, a lot more pressure there, and the US State Department may be forgiven for believing it will have the outgoing Congress coalition regime drag India into the NPT basket.

Obama’s “Ásia pivot” — an extension of the George W Bush policy — conceptualized to deal with China’s aggressive maritime strategy hiked India’s importance as strategic partner. The worst the Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been accused of in foreign policy terms is that 17 of his 24 advisers were part of the last Republican Administration, and that these are neo-conservatives who with their strident views will precipitate matters especially where China and the Middle East are concerned. Iran could complicate Indian relations with Washington. But with a Romney Administration targeting China and the economic, political, and military confrontations between them heating up, the net beneficiary would be India. Why is that bad?

[Published October 19, 2012 in the ‘New Indian Express’ at http://newindianexpress.com/article1305812.ecd ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | 2 Comments

Revisting 1962, with ifs and buts

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Many years ago, Air Marshal B.D. Jayal (Retd), former Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, South Western Air Command, one of the most thoughtful airmen around, recalled how he and his mates of 1 Squadron sat in their transonic Mystere IVA fighter-bombers lined up on the Tezpur airfield in Assam, their frustration mounting by the minute, awaiting the order to take off against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that never came. Jayal’s experience came to mind when reading Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne’s comment on the 50th anniversary of the 1962 war that but for the non-use of Indian Air Force (IAF) India might not have lost. It is an arguable thesis.
Had the IAF been ordered into action, the advance of PLA across the Thag La Ridge would have been hindered but not halted. Indian planes would have fought unopposed in the air, leaving the pilots to concentrate on releasing the on-board ordnance at the right moment in their dives, but only until the Chinese interceptors and bombers arrived on the scene. Air intelligence passed on by the British to the Indian government had indicated no active Chinese air activity in Tibet, and indeed very few serviceable air strips — no more than three or four on the entire plateau. But the IAF aircraft would have had to contend, especially in the East, with steep mountainsides, and the bomb drops very likely would have missed their targets, most of the time. It wouldn’t have helped that the targets were mainly infantry columns, foot soldiers making up the “rifle and millet corps” comprising the PLA at the time. For reasons of terrain, the IAF aircraft might have been more effective in the West in the Aksai Chin, where the relatively gentler mountain topography would have permitted sustained strafing runs to negate swamping PLA infantry tactics.

The outcome of the war, in other words, may not have been very different even with the IAF in full cry. But this assumes Mao Zedong, who had invested his personal political capital in “teaching India a lesson”, would have desisted from deploying the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) once it became clear that affording the IAF a free run could cost him success. In that situation, the IAF would have had to deal with the more numerous Chinese MiG-15s as against the fewer, but more advanced, Hawker Hunter and the Mysteres — MiG-17 equivalent — in its own employ. One cannot be too sure how that face-off would have turned out, considering the Chinese Air Force had greater, and more recent, operational experience of flying against the US Air Force and carrier-borne US Navy aircraft in the Korean War (1950-53).

This to say that the result of using the IAF might not have been all that clear-cut as Browne suggests, even with the other advantage Indian pilots had of taking to the air, fully fuelled and loaded, unlike their Chinese rivals who, because of the thin air of the Tibet plateau would have compromised on ammunition (for on-board 23mm canons on MiG-15s) and quantum of fuel. The only way India could have secured a distinct tactical advantage is, if in the first hours of the Chinese invasion, New Delhi had sanctioned IAF bombing runs on the PLA staging areas in Tibet with the Canberra medium-bombers, 70-80 of which aircraft were in the Indian inventory by then. That would have had a devastating effect of taking out pre-positioned stores for the planned invasion. It would have demoralised the PLA troops going into battle but also, most definitely, have brought the PLAAF in and the region would have witnessed a major air war. The IAF Canberra medium-bombers would have outshone the Chinese Illyushin-48s, and the Indian Hawker Hunters — one of the finest fighter aircraft of its generation — and Mysteres might have had the better of the Chinese MiG-15s, the first of the swept-wing fighters that had given the American F-86 Sabres a run for their money in Korea. But one cannot be certain. It is an interesting scenario to game to determine the “what might have-beens”.

Even better, though, would be to game the exact situation, but update the gaming parameters by incorporating the latest aircraft in the two air forces and the rival border infrastructures. The question in 1962, however, as in all conflicts the Indian military has been involved in since, remains the same — the infirm political will of the Indian government. On the Chinese side was Mao, a stalwart military leader of repute and resolve. On this side was Jawaharlal Nehru with, and this is not widely known, a keen military sense — his take on the Indian Army progress or the lack thereof during the 1947-48 Kashmir operations are incisive, but non-existent will. He was collaterally unnerved by the prospect of Indian air action broadening the war, perhaps, inviting retaliatory Chinese bombing raids on Calcutta, which the then chief minister of West Bengal, B.C. Roy, warned would lead to the end of the Congress Party rule in that state come the next state elections.

Update the scenario and we have Hu Jintao in China — not as bloody-minded as Mao for sure but no shrinking violet either when it comes to using force.  Political commissar, Hu, dealt ruthlessly with the helpless Tibetans in their benighted country under Chinese military occupation since 1949. And in New Delhi, we have Manmohan Singh who, as a senior official in the National Security Council secretariat told me, believes it is good for the country to possess hard power — latest guns, ships and combat aircraft — but not to use it. If conventional military capability, too, is to be reduced to the same unusable deterrent status as India’s nuclear weapons, then it will face the same dilemma — what happens if it fails to deter? The conventional military, fortunately, can be fielded; it just needs a bit of prime ministerial spine. Indian nuclear armaments, in contrast, have no such fallback position what with over-zealous adherence to the “no first use” principle and Indian government officials and military Chiefs of Staff iterating the self-defeating view that these are not weapons for war fighting, reducing what little credibility they have.

[Published Oct 11, 2012 in the ‘Asian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/revisiting-1962-ifs-and-buts-599 and the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/revisiting-1962-ifs-and-buts ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons | 27 Comments

Leave security to experts

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Brajesh Mishra’s death last week triggered fulsome and well deserved eulogies from his Foreign Service colleagues and persons who had worked with him during the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government, 1998-2004. There is no question but that he was the steel in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s spine and, to mix metaphors some more, the drive-shaft propelling policies. Without him, Vajpayee would have easily lapsed into his natural, easy-going, mushiness where foreign and national security policies are concerned. As both Principal Private Secretary (PPS) and National Security Adviser (NSA) to the PM he wielded the main levers of government. But it was his personal closeness to Vajpayee which ensured that everybody up and down the vast Indian government apparatus knew that when he spoke it was a Prime Ministerial decision or directive.

But Brajesh was curiously defensive, even sensitive, about his personal relationship with Vajpayee, perhaps, because it owed less to his equation with him or his own accomplishments than to the gratitude the BJP leader felt he owed Brajesh’s father, Dwarka Prasad Mishra, one-time Congress Party Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. When I once asked him about it, Brajesh brusquely diverted me from the subject. What I suspect is the truth is this: Vajpayee once contested the Lok Sabha seat from Gwalior and, as a friend, D.P. Mishra ensured he had no worthwhile Congress opponent in the general elections. When later, Mishra pater fell out with Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee invited him to join the BJP, but professing loyalty to the Congress Party, he declined. It was around the time that Vajpayee became the Minister for External Affairs in the Janata government post-Emergency, and sent Brajesh on a prize posting as Permanent Representative to the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1979. And, once he became PM, Vajpayee appointed Brajesh PPS-cum-NSA, again as IOU to the son for his father’s political benefaction. It is another matter altogether that Brajesh proved an effective vizier.

Many of the things done by the BJP government are wrongly attributed to him. For instance, the decision to conduct nuclear tests and to weaponize was not remotely Brajesh’s, but mandated by the BJP election manifesto. The priority the issue was accorded was the party’s as well, with a mighty assist from his predecessor P.V. Narasimha Rao egging Vajpayee on. However, Mishra efficiently coordinated the efforts of the various arms of the government to realize such goals. But, the strategic payoffs from the breakthrough Shakti tests, in terms of rocketing India, thermonuclear weapons-wise, into the rank of strategically impregnable nations, never accrued. This was because of the astonishingly strange and perverse decision announced by Vajpayee in his suo moto Statement in Parliament on May 28, 1998 imposing a “voluntary test moratorium”.

It was an especially egregious decision as the fact that something had gone wrong was known almost immediately after the S-1 test on May 11, meaning the decisive weapon, which the Vajpayee government was all set to ballyhoo, had achieved only a small thermonuclear burn. However, the need to keep up pretences led to declarations by such as R. Chidambaram, then chairman of the atomic energy commission, that the hydrogen device delivered exactly the yield it was supposed to. Supportive statements by the then head of DRDO, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who as a rocket engineer, had no business pronouncing on matters he had no expert insights into, compelled the field testing team in Pokhran, which was processing telemetry data and collecting site-evidence at the time as prelude to analyzing the under-performance of the Hydrogen Bomb design, to fall in line. It eventuated in Brajesh approving and Vajpayee announcing the fateful moratorium decision This was precisely the wrong decision when more open-ended testing was required to obtain a credible thermonuclear arsenal as was advocated by other equally reputable stalwarts of the Nuclear programme. At this point things become a little murky. Brajesh should have compelled Chidambaram to face P.K. Iyengar, A.N. Prasad, and others who had expressed doubts about the fusion test and sought new tests, but he didn’t. Indeed, he flatly denied he had anything to do with the moratorium decision, telling me that Vajpayee made such decisions as he felt strongly about without consulting him. (This is all there in my 2008 book Índia’s Nuclear Policy).

The problem is this: On all really controversial decisions by the BJP government, Brajesh put the onus on the Prime Minister. Brajesh also held he had nothing to do with the rhetorically useful but impracticable principles such as “No First Use” Vajpayee announced in Parliament, and constrained the National Security Advisory Board group drafting the nuclear doctrine. Had Mishra been more familiar with nuclear weapons development and strategic deterrence history and literature, decisions such as this and to publicize the draft-doctrine wouldn’t have been made.

These developments emphasized the late K. Subrahmanyam’s advocacy for separating the posts of NSA and PPS, and filling the former with persons with proven expertise in strategic military matters. The irony is that had Subrahmanyam been made NSA, his decisions would have coincided with Brajesh’s (as the former’s writings before and after the 1998 tests indicated)! Subrahmanyam’s case though is still valid because it is better for an NSA with a thorough grounding in the strategic military field to arrive at decisions the generalist Brajesh did via a generalist’s partial knowledge. His inability to muster any technically elaborate explanations for any of his nuclear deterrence-related decisions, was passed off as part of his gruff nature. Brajesh was, however, right in reining in the over-enthusiasm attending on the opening to the United States affected by the Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott “strategic dialogue”.

The issue Subrahmanyam didn’t raise is the monopolization of the NSA post since then by retired Foreign Secretaries who invariably end up, at a minimum, micro-managing the Ministry of External Affairs, as many of their successors would honestly attest, but otherwise are unable to push military and defence decisions because they don’t know enough and in any depth and detail to carry conviction with the others with hands on the wheel.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’ on Saturday, Oct 6, 2012, at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/article287359.ece ]

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, DRDO, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West, US. | 1 Comment