U.S. Wrong on India’s Iran Policy

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The nuclear deal was supposed to be emblematic of a burgeoning strategic relationship between India and the United States. After some forty or so years of frosty relations, the beginning of the 21st Century saw leaders in Washington and Delhi touting a grand strategic partnership. To realize this, the George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh administrations courted great political risk in taking on the entrenched mindsets opposed to the nuclear agreement.

In Washington, opposition from the non-proliferation community nearly sank the deal during negotiations. In Delhi, the signing of the deal was so controversial it almost brought down the Congress Party’s coalition government in the 2008 vote in parliament. An upside to the tortuous negotiations was supposedly the empathy and understanding Indian and U.S. diplomats developed for the political constraints the other side operates under.

The Indian policy establishment and strategic community were therefore taken aback when Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state and the chief American negotiator on the nuclear deal, slammed India for its Iran policy in The Diplomat. Having reaffirmed India’s “immense strategic importance to the United States” in the Boston Globe a mere 10 days prior, Burns now argued that Delhi’s unwillingness to support U.S.-led sanctions amounted to a failure “to meet its obvious potential to lead globally,” thereby equating, in a spurious sort of way, India’s leadership ambitions with toeing the American line. Despite recognizing some of India’s votes against Iran at the U.N., Ambassador Burns went further in accusing India of “actively impeding the construction of the strategic relationship it says it wants with the United States.”

In actuality, it’s Washington’s unbending attitude towards accommodating India’s vital interests in Iran that potentially threatens the Indo-U.S. bilateral relationship. Burns and others U.S. critics of India’s Iran policy are, in effect, forcing Indo-U.S. relations back into a version of the old, inappropriate, and eminently discardable, “If you are not with us, you are against us” policy mold. By framing the issue in dichotomous terms, critics in Washington ignore the economic and domestic context in which India’s Iran policy is made.

In downplaying Delhi’s economic interests in Iran, Burns dismisses the fact that India gets 12 percent of its oil from Iran as a “weak defense” of its policy, because Delhi has had many years to find new suppliers. This ignores the fact that many of India’s government-owned refineries are geared to processing Iranian crude. If India were to switch to other sources, this would require a substantial upfront investment to retrofit its refineries to process other types of crude. Already facing a budget shortfall that is equal to 5.6 percent of GDP, the Singh administration is in no mood to incur these costs.

Moreover, it’s not at all clear that India could procure enough oil from other sources to make up for its loss of Iranian crude. Many suggest Saudi Arabia as both willing and able to make up the gap. But Riyadh’s spare capacity has come under severe strain after a decade of global supply interruptions elsewhere, and the rapid increase in demand caused by rising powers like India and China. Meanwhile, Saudi oil production is already at historically unprecedented levels, and it was unable to supplement the loss of Libya’s rather insignificant oil exports last summer, forcing Western nations to tap into their strategic reserves. Furthermore, both the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration see Riyadh’s spare capacity continuing to diminish throughout 2012.

In addition, if India stopped buying Iranian oil, there’s little reason to believe China would follow suit. Beijing is yet to pay a price for being, as Bruce Loudon pointed out in The Australian early this month, “the constant contrarian on the global scene.” Washington has demonstrated time and time again that it has no leverage worth the name vis-a-vis Beijing. Although China has recently been cutting back on its purchase of Iranian oil, it continues to be a major customer. Beijing would possibly increase the amount of Iranian crude it uses were Iran to further reduce prices after India announced its exit from the market. Thus, Tehran will only be slightly discomforted by the sanctions. India, meanwhile, would have surrendered much.

Oil isn’t India’s only economic interest in Iran. In the wake of an official Indian delegation’s visit to Tehran, the Associated Chambers of Commerce announced that two-way trade reached $13.7 billion in 2010-2011 and will likely increase to $30 billion by 2015. In response to China’s infrastructure projects in Central Asia  progressing at breakneck speed, India has fast-forwarded its plans for a “north-south corridor” linking the Iranian port of Chabahar on the North Arabian Sea with a railway line to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia via Hajigak, a mineral-rich area in Afghanistan where an Indian consortium has secured mining concessions. In parallel, India is helping build a highway connecting Chabahar to Milak and Zaranj, which has a road link to Dilaram in Afghanistan, a 213 kilometer stretch constructed by the Indian Border Roads Organization. The Chabahar port has been enlarged with Indian assistance and is now capable of annually handling 6 million tons of cargo and will serve as the entrepot for Indian business. This route has a strategic element too; namely, India uses it as a conduit to sustain ties with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and to firm up goodwill with the Afghan people generally and the Hamid Karzai regime in particular. In the past year, for instance, India has shipped over 100,000 metric tons of food grain to Kabul from Chabahar. More significantly, Chabahar allows India to outflank the Chinese presence in the Pakistani port of Gwadar, 72 kms to the east.

There’s an important domestic political rationale to India’s Iran policy, which the self-consciously “secular” Indian government is loath to admit. India’s Shi’a population is the second largest in the world after only Iran itself. In contrast to Sunni Islam in the subcontinent, which has evolved around local seminaries with distinct schools of thought, India’s Shi’a community maintains strong links with their Iranian counterparts.  This is especially true among the clergy who closely monitor theological developments and pronouncements emanating from the Iranian religious center in Qom. The Iranian government has carefully cultivated these cultural ties with the Indian Shi’a religious institutions, politicians, and intelligentsia, and translates them into political clout to deter any Indian government from prosecuting unfavorable policies towards it. This is democracy at work, something Washington can surely appreciate.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy pivot to the Asia-Pacific and India is meant to contain China, a goal that is served by India’s strong and growing relations with Iran. As India and the United States discovered in Burma, leaving a vacuum for China to fill is an act of high strategic folly. India is unwilling to repeat that mistake in Iran.

Israel and Iran will thrash out their problems in their own way and it makes no sense to hold the Indo-U.S. partnership hostage to that situation, even less, to Iran’s proliferation status. By creating friction over Indo-Iranian ties, America is in danger of achieving the smaller, regional, objective at the expense of the larger, overarching, strategic goal.

[published in  ‘The Diplomat’, March 19, 2012 at http://the-diplomat.com/2012/03/19/u-s-wrong-on-india%e2%80%99s-iran-policy/2/?all=true]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Tediously Needling Kissinger

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

At the gala dinner at the India Today Conclave yesterday evening, poor Henry Kissinger was badgered and needled about, what else, Pakistan by the MC/host MJ Akbar. It was more the latter’s insecurities as an Indian Muslim trying to prove his patriotism than Dr K’s slightly bemused responses, that was in evidence. Kissinger did not reveal or say anything new even though Akbar kept asking him about his  “deal” with Indira Gandhi in 1971, and K kept repeating his stock stuff. The fact that Kissinger said that dismantling West Pakistan was seen as not being in the US interest at the time, is no great revelation. It’s featured in his writings, even though Akbar made much of it saying this was being said for the first time.  Kissinger said Pakistan was the only channel to China  THIS IS PATENTLY UNTRUE. THE US NEVER NEEDED THE PAKISTAN CHANNEL TO CHINA. FROM THE 1960s THERE WAS THE COMMUNICATION CHANNEL THROUGH WARSAW, POLAND.  Yes, Pakistan proved a convenience — it was easier to scoot off secretly to Beijing  from Islamabad, than from Warsaw in 1971.

But at the Conclave, Kissinger’s interaction with, and especially Akbar’s amateurish provocations, were tedious in the extreme, even grating on the ear and nerve.

It is simply amazing how much time we spend with Pakistan on our minds.

What the audience should have been attentive to was Kissinger’s repeated assertions that the US-China relations will be the paramount consideration for Washington. The implication was that the US would rather cut a deal with Beijing than “partner” any country in “containing” China — a fact I have been stressing in my writings, and at every fora.

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 2 Comments

The defence budget and getting military priorities right

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The existing year-to-year defence budgeting scheme means that the armed services cannot be sure their capital acquisitions plans will be funded as per their preferred time-frame. This is because the government commits itself financially, but only notionally, to the entire programme, with no guarantee that any particular hardware purchase will be funded in regular annual tranches. This last does not always happen because the defence budget is subject to the availability of resources, the relative weightage accorded defence compared, say, to food subsidies and MNREGS, and the individual Service’s expenditure priorities. Thus, in the annual budget to be announced tomorrow by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji, the defence spend may result in the acquisition cycle of many weapons systems being, willy-nilly, stretched, as in the past, over a longer period of time.

The year-to-year budgeting is, however, only part of the trouble.  The far bigger, more serious, problem is the helter-skelter military acquisitions plans that the Defence Acquisitions Council usually approves, and is the result as much of individual service-oriented planning processes as the current Service chiefs’ pet projects that get inserted as priority buy for no rhyme or reason other than as the Chief of Staff’s prerogative. But this sort of thing illustrates the desperate need for an institutional mechanism for inter se prioritisation both within each Service and between the Services’ requirements. What occurs at present is the Chief who has the defence minister’s ear or is in thick with the Defence Secretary ends up with his Service’s top requirements getting the push, especially in meetings the defence minister invariably has with the finance minister in the last days before the Union budget is finalized. This, of course, is a ridiculous way for the defence ministry of a would-be great power to function, but that’s the operating norm, not a rational procedure. The absence of joint acquisitions planning leads to a mindless kind of military modernization predicated on haphazard purchases of virtually whatever armament comes to hand and is a damning indictment particularly of army and air force, the navy being a bit better in this respect. It is good reason why India is not taken seriously as a military power.

It is not as if the Indian government is unaware of the problems. The Chief of Defence Staff organization would have eased such problems, but that’s nowhere on the horizon. The existing tri-Service Integrated Defence Staff, because it is reduced to acting as secretariat for the Chiefs of Staff Committee, is denied an independent joint-Service  acquisitions planning role and, in any case, is not devoid of individual Service pulls.  The outcomes of this fairly anarchic state of affairs were outlined by me, as adviser, defence expenditure, in the classified report to the (Tenth) Finance Commission chaired by former Defence Minister K.C. Pant, and accepted in toto by, the Narasimha Rao government in January 1995. It argued for re-working the expenditure priorities of the Services, for a mechanism for inter se prioritisation, and for shifting the military focus from Pakistan to China. The report recommended a corresponding diversion of resources from fighting assets with an exclusive Pakistan-front utility to forces deployable against China, including a sizeable offensive mountain warfare-capability, and  greatly augmented sea control and sea denial strength.

But no government has bitten the bullet and implemented the Finance Commission recommendations for restructuring the military forces. It would have required, in the main, the reorganizing of the vast armoured and mechanized formations that eat up a disproportionate amount of the defence monies in such a way as to retain a corps plus several independent armoured brigades to deal with any Pakistan contingency, but otherwise transferring the skilled personnel and establishment to offense-capable Mountain Divisions. Equipped with light howitzers, light tanks, lightly armoured Infantry Combat Vehicles, and integral heli-lift, and able to debouch from the “Demchok Triangle” in the Aksai China area and the northern Sikkim plains, these forces would take the fight into Tibet. Quite apart from rendering the army more relevant for wars of the future and give it a genuinely offensive sheen, it would have created novel options to deal with the Peoples Liberation Army. Instead, the army is stuck with the four new Mountain Divisions it got sanctioned, which will inevitably end up on the pre-positioned line behind the Line of Actual Control. Indeed, according to a commander of one of these new Divisions, his troops are doing picket duty, guarding a road well behind the border! For all the brave talk of an offensive Mountain Corps amounts to nought. If the Indian Army lacks the foresight and drive to reconfigure itself, the air force persists in its fighter folly, securing hideously expensive and newer combat planes, at a time when drones are becoming the future.

The generalist bureaucrats, manning the Defence Ministry, alas, simply do not have the knowledge base and the skill sets to think up innovative solutions for force transformation and, understandably, prefer making safe decisions on the basis of precedent which last doesn’t require any expertise or application of mind. In turn, they compel defence ministers, who rely on them for advice, to stay with the status quo, tethering the Services to the orders-of-battle of yester-years. The country, of course, ends up being the loser and paying the price in war.

The government is apparently reconciled to deficits in the air and land forces capabilities. Something called the offsetting strategy (propagated in the quasi-official document ‘Nonalignment 2.0’) entails responding in the maritime sphere to any aggressive Chinese action across LAC. So a Chinese attack on Tawang, for instance, will be countered by sinking Chinese merchant marine or even a warship or two in the Indian Ocean. In that case, the country should be prepared to lose all the territory China has claimed, this time without any prospect of its return as happened in 1962, which is  politically unacceptable. The offsetting strategy makes as much sense as the army’s fighting a reactive war on Chinese terms, and IAF signing on for the MMRCA and the fifth generation Su-50 PAK/FA fighter.

Posted in 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, Military Acquisitions | 1 Comment

Chinese ASBM validation by Indian team, but huge Questions utility-wise

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile system has been touted as the great “game changer” mainly by commentators outside China. There’s however some confusion about the status of this ASBM system. PACOM CINC Admiral Willard in December 2010 stated that it was operational. But the Pentagon has held back from even confirming this.  There’s for good reasons huge question marks hanging around it. Except now a high-powered team from NIAS (National Institute for Advanced Studies) – the Ramanna-founded outfit under the aegis of DRDO and led by a rocket propellant expert Rajaram Nagappa yesterday briefed a gathering of mostly Navy and DRDO types. The team, after doing fine work of gleaning DF-21D missile characteristics  from published photographs and using data on the Chinese Yaogon constellation of satellites and the accompanying OTH radar that will facilitate the targeting of US  Carrier Strike Groups, ran a simulation exercise and, in essence, validated the workability of the ASBM system. The DF-21D is expected to fly a ballistic course for most of its flight path, but change to boost-glide to target, in its terminal phase.  It was suggested by VADM (ret) Ravi Ganesh, former head of the ATV (SSBN) program, introducing the NIAS study that the conventional warhead on the missile was meant to prevent a retaliatory escalation by  the US forces to the nuclear stage and thus lengthen the nuclear fuze. As a panelist along with RADM (ret) Raja Menon, discussing the strategic ramifications of the Chinese ASBM, in the afternoon, I brought up that old problem — how is the targeted country to know the missile is conventional and not N-warheaded, and will it wait around for the missile to impact, meaning take out the Carrier, before mounting retaliation? Absent new and novel technology able to distinguish the type of warhead on an incoming missile, the reaction to any launch of a ballistic missile, including ASBM, by an adversary state and so detected, will, in the first instance,  result in an immediate counter-launch of an N-missile.

The  trouble here, I pointed out, is that the US has actually muddied the waters by equipping its Ohio-class SSBNs with conventional ICBMs in its strategy of “global strike”, which does not make any sense whatsoever. But neither does the Chinese ASBM, except as a means of creating turmoil in the US Navy, and unsettling America’ senior armed service — a psychological ploy to unhinge the enemy!!  This last is something China is phenomenally good at doing. There’s no reason, as Raja Menon said that the OTH cannot be turned Bay of Bengal-wards, and the Yaogon satellites re-oriented. In which case, I wondered if the original plan for a small carrier/AD ship at 28,000 tons, wouldn’t have served Indian interests better? The carrier now being built at Kochi is getting onto 45,000 tons plus.

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Chappell on dot

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Greg Chappell was an obvious failure as  cricket coach to the indian team. But he seems to have read Indian nature and character perfectly well.  Honestly, did he not speak the truth? His take on Indians rings true as much  for those on the cricket greens as for the rest of us off it. And it throws a harsh light  on the strategic mindset of the country, Indian govt, and of the Indian military. Chappell essentially said Indians had no fighting spirit, no sense of individual responsibility for the collective outcome, that we are too selfish and self-centered to put a larger cause above us, and that we are basically motivated by the the promise of petty, monetary, gain. And then he thrust his dagger into the Indian solar plexus. The British, he said, had beaten down the Indians so much, every last bit of initiative and self-respect had been squeezed out of them.  Hey, he is not wrong.

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Timing a pre-emptive strike

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

In January 1988, I published a piece in the Sunday Observer entitled “Knocking out Kahuta” which gained some notoriety. Pakistan was, at that time, still short of crossing the nuclear weapons threshold and the “window of opportunity”, I argued, would remain open for only another six months or less. At the time of Operation Brasstacks in Spring 1987, Islamabad had succeeded in spreading disinformation, courtesy the infamous interview arranged for Kuldip Nayyar with Dr. A.Q. Khan, that Pakistan already possessed an atomic device. That piece was written with no confidence whatsoever that the Indian government would act pre-emptively to take out the uranium centrifuges at Kahuta.

After all, it had by then on three previous occasions permitted strike options, urged by Israel, to peter out, including one in 1982 related to me personally by the former Israeli Military Intelligence chief, Major General Aharon Yaariv, when I was in Israel in 1983 during the Lebanon war. While advocating prompt pre-emption, I had ended the article with a strong warning that if that opportunity lapsed, India should forever hold its peace with Pakistan because it would, to use the phrase currently employed by the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak vis-a-vis Iran, enter the “zone of immunity”.

The Israeli government is, of course, nothing like its Indian counterpart — a bunch of perennially indecisive, finger-twiddling, risk-averse types. Israelis are, by nature and the fact of their country’s small margin of safety, inclined to nip a threat in the bud today than have it grow into an insurmountable problem tomorrow. No country keeps better tabs on its adversaries than Israel does on Iran. And Tel Aviv will order an attack — very likely combining Special Forces actions of sabotage followed by precision aerial bombardment — before Iran crosses the Israeli-designated redline, whether or not the United States concurs with such action.

However much Israel would like Washington to get on board, there’s a point beyond which it will not wait, notwithstanding the Obama administration’s belief, shared by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran is still some years away from an actual weapons capability, and that precipitate actions would immeasurably worsen the situation all round. Considering its own incessant bluster, Iran will feel compelled to respond with long range missile strikes, and terrorist acts and rocket attacks by Hezbollah from Syria and southern Lebanon — contingencies Israel is already preparing for with underway civil defence measures. The melee could quickly escalate into a drag out fight engulfing the entire region, with Tehran targeting other than Israel, Saudi-supported Sunni-ruled Shia-majority states, such as Bahrain, and the US Fifth Fleet based there, with its so-called Qods Special Forces unit.

But the tipping point in this argument is that there is a lot more at stake for Israel than there is for the United States on the other side of the globe.Except there’s a critical void in the Israeli capability that only the US government can fill, namely, a sufficiently powerful conventional weapon able to burrow deep under the earth before detonating, which is required to incapacitate the secret weapons facility at Fordow built inside the  mountains in northwestern Iran. The US has what Israel does not — a strategic bomber deliverable 30,000-pound “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) able to slice some 200 feet into the earth before exploding.A newspaper report about the MOP, sourced to American intelligence, also talks about the vulnerability of the Fordow complex to multiple attacks on tunnel entrances, blast-proof doors, power and water systems, etc., as a means of collapsing the tunnels and disrupting the centrifuges. Such press reports along with President Barack Obama’s interview to the Atlantic monthly, are meant to warn Tehran and communicate the resolve to Tel Aviv that Washington will ensure Iran never obtains nuclear weapons. The US government plainly hopes this will persuade Israel against acting pre-emptively.

Stories of Iranian vulnerability may be psychological warfare tactics and American bluff. But David Ignatius, the Washington Post reporter considered close to US intelligence agencies, in a reply to his own question — “When is a bluff not a bluff?”, lays much store by certain assertions by Obama in the interview, like “I’m not saying this is something we’d like to solve. I’m saying this is something we have to solve.” It is unlikely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have felt reassured. Recall that, notwithstanding its strong non-proliferation rhetoric and public stance, the US was complicit in Pakistan’s nuclear weaponisation facilitated by China’s direct transfer of nuclear weapons material, technologies and expertise in the late 1970s, by providing it continuous political cover and protection against Non-Proliferation Treaty sanctions. During that period the US, it turned out, needed Zia ul-Haq regime’s help in its campaign to undermine the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan.

It was only after the Soviet withdrawal in 1988 that President George Bush (senior) suddenly discovered Pakistan had proliferated and he could no longer certify its non-nuclear weapon status as mandated by the Pressler Amendment to the US Foreign Aid Act, whence US assistance was terminated. At the time Israeli Prime Minister  Menachem Begin, ordered the attack in June 1981 on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in its pre-commissioning phase, there were officials within the Reagan Administration counselling restraint. Begin had justified the operation, saying “We chose this moment…because later may be too late.” Unlike India, which is complacent about national security, has no sense of urgency, and is always ready to believe anyone and anything just to avoid a fight — as evidence: the country’s tail-between-its-legs attitude with China, Tel Aviv is unlikely to pay much heed to, or be swayed by, what America wants, if it thinks Iran is on the point of tripping the wire and gaining nuclear immunity. Like all great powers, the United States is in the business of furthering its own national interest. Though they might be close friends of America, Israel and India, have to look out for themselves, something Tel Aviv understands better than Delhi.

[Published in the New Indian Express on March 9, 2012,  at

http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/timing-a-preemptive-strike/370806.html%5D

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

LSE report: platform for Ramachandra Guha’s whole-hearted nonsense

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

These are dispiriting times. So soon after the release of that “India as punching bag” foreign policy agenda contained in the quasi-official ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ (NA 2.0) comes an even more enervating collection of opinion-pieces put together by the London Scool of Economics called “Ïndia: The Next Super Power?” at http://www2.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/SR010.aspx.

Leading off is the popular historian, Ramachandra Guha, who writes history that is low on original research but rendered in  easy writing style that goes down easy with lay readers.  Here he makes the case that having far too many  problems of social inequity and economic disparity to tackle — and he is especially exercised about the Naxalites and the internal security problems they pose, India should not be distracted by the pursuit of super power status.  Again, this is not a terribly new or novel theme that Guha is mining for the first time. Rather, it is an old argument of “sequencing” — whether or not India should prioritise economic and social development before becoming a military power of consequence (which, in turn, would lead to the country’s ascending to the great or super power ranks) — and is as old as independent India. By emphasizing development in the first 60 years of its independent existence, India has neither obtained social equity, nor lessened economic inequalities. All that our founding fathers — and Nehru in particular — have managed to do is erect a Leviathan socialist state apparatus that discourages individual initiative and enterprise, and has set itself up as distributor of wealth and opportunity. The result is a near non-functioning state unable to govern, leave alone deliver govt services, and armies of apparatchiks manning the state machinery — the babus — who, like termites, are consuming the natl resources and eating away at the superstrcuture of the nation. In other words, Guha and his ilk can wait for ever but the poor are unlikely to get their due. So, how does it make sense for the country to continue to just wait and see nothing happen?

Had Guha’s prescription been accepted by Elizabeth I of England, that country would still be in the throes of state mandated wealth redistribution, rather than actually doing what she did — fund the great expansion of the Royal Navy that her father Henry VIII had founded, authorise pirates like Francis Drake to accost Spanish ships carrying bullion from the New World to Europe, on the high seas, and by these means augment the royal treasury, and generally seek to take on adversary countries. She set England firmly on the course of Pax Britannica.

Or consider Bismarck. Had he been overly concerned about freeing the serfs in Pomerania, say, instead of waging small wars against Austria and France in the 1870s and unifying the Germanies, there wouldn’t have emerged the greater Germany from the kernel of the Prussian state that shook and reshaped Europe of the mid- to late 19th century. And so on.

Indeed, like NA 2.0, Guha exults in the idea of India as example, which of course no other people in their right mind would follow. But he is a harmless enough historian if left to himself. Except in a Delhi where reading books is anathema and  knowledge is book-jacket deep, Guha’s kind of writing is taken seriously. Any wonder, why India isn’t going anywhere fast?

The other articles — having flitted through them, support Guha’s thesis in one form or another — though I confess I didn’t have the patience to read them start to finish.  Not surpisingly the LSE editor who has, presumably, put this collection together, Nicholas Kitchen, seems to commend Guha’s main theme. Any why not — hard for the Brits to conceive that in six short decades India has gone from a crown colony and basketcase to being lauded as possible super power, which last status will not be realized if the country swallows Dr Guha’s medicine.

P.S.: saw the piece by Rehman on the military aspects: Glad to see the points I have been making, such as about the need for India to acquire expeditionary capability, being repeated here. May be with more people writing this way, there will be a critical mass generated for the Indian govt and military to get going.

Posted in civil-military relations, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security | 2 Comments

Roadmap for Second-rate Power Status for India: Response to Quasi-official foreign policy document– ‘Nonalignment 2.0’

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The title, the membership of the group comprising persons with Nehru-vian liberal/neo-liberal bent of mind (Nandan Nilekani, Shyam Saran; four academics – Sunil Khilnani, Pratap Mehta, Rajiv Kumar, Srinath Raghvan; a newspaper editor, S Varadarajan; and a token military-man, retired Lt Gen Prakash Menon), and administrative support rendered this project by the National Defence College, suggest its official provenance. Considering, moreover, that its public release on February 28 at the rundown, loss-making, govt property, Ashoka Hotel, in New Delhi, featured the entire constellation of NSAs (minus the late Mani Dixit) – Brajesh Mishra, M.K. Narayanan, and Shiv Shankar Menon, alongside  former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, and one is compelled to take this document somewhat seriously.

In a nutshell, ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ (available at www.cprindia.org/sites/default/files/Nonalignment%202.0_1.pdf is an exercise to force the present into a conceptual policy straitjacket from the past. While it is ostensibly future-minded, its utility as a foreign and military policy roadmap and “tool box” (a term used repeatedly in the report) is limited, being essentially a wordy rationale for whatever it is the Congress Party coalition regime headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying to do in the external and national security realms since 2004.

While there is little that is original in this report, by reiterating certain foreign and military policy ideas that have been aired in public space over the last 20 years by me  in my various books and writings since the early 1980s — ideas such as forging sporting and other links between the militaries, exchanging observers at military exercises, military educational exchanges, etc. with Pakistan(p.14), turning military focus and effort from Pakistan to China, etc. (pp. 33,35), it is helping to mainstream them, which is good.

But the deficiencies in the Report are too many and too obvious to ignore particularly because they come bundled in a policy package that indicates a  debilitating world-view and mindset. If its recommendations are realized, it will end in India remaining a second-rate power. What follows is a short critique of selective themes and ideas in the report that struck me as grievously hurting the Indian national interest.

1)    The basic flaw is up-front and centre, and underlies much of the argumentation in the document. It claims that “the fundamental source of India’s power in the world is going to be the power of its example” – high-paced growth coupled with a “robust” democratic system (p.1). That may have been so in the 1950s when much of Asia and Africa had no models to emulate. But in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, the Indian political system, ironically, is lauded more in the United States and the West, than sought out as a developmental model by the Third World. Poor countries these days are impressed by ends more than means, by outcomes rather than system or process and, therefore, find the extraordinarily-rapid but generally orderly progress by a China, more tempting.  The notion the document propagates that it is in the world’s interest to ensure India’s success is a remarkably introverted world-view, and then to go ahead and suggest that this supposed hankering by the world for India’s success should be used by India as “leverage” (p.4) is to dive through the rabbit hole and into an imagined Wonderland.  India’s democratic pretensions cannot be stretched that far.

2)    The acme of soft power, according to this document, is Indian democracy  and liberal Indian traditions and values — the underlying theme of this report (pp. 2-4). But the Indian democratic system and society are still a work in progress, which fact curtails its impact on foreign audiences. In any case, to believe that Indian democratic norms and processes can be used as policy fulcrum in the harsh world of international relations, is to misrepresent Joseph Nye Jr’s original concept of soft power. When Nye wrote of soft power for a mainly American audience, he presumed US’ base of very hard power on which soft power of the state rests. Indeed, he argued that by relying mainly on its hard power without tempering it with intelligent use of soft power, America had experienced foreign policy failures. The obverse of this, that overly to stress soft power and its uses and minimizing the value and impact of hard power is equally injurious to the national interest, especially of a rising India, did not occur to the drafters, leading to a fatal weakness in the report. It is a weakness compounded, moreover, by the authors’ implicitly endowing this soft power with moral superiority – the sort of thing that in Nehru’s days set people’s teeth on edge in Western capitals and multilateral fora alike, and even now is a patent policy liability.

3)    Nonalignment is, of course, the principal idea the Report self-consciously wraps itself around. Except in a world dominated by the US and China, adhering to this concept, the report avers, will require “skilful management” by India, of unstable “complicated coalitions and opportunities, especially” – and hear this! – “ïf it can leverage into the international domain some of the domestically acquired skills in coalition management and complex negotiation” (p.3).  Seriously? Recruiting renowned bahubalis (strong arm experts) from the badlands of western Uttar Pradesh, fresh from exertions in the latest elections, on MEA teams negotiating climate norms, EU free trade agreement, and entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, will no doubt be a diplomatic innovation. But it may be frowned upon by the effete Americans and Europeans. [I know, I know, but such is the rich seam of absurdity running through this Report, a talented satirist could do it more justice.]

4)   In terms of practical advice, the report reaffirms the passive-defensive “do nothing, provoke nobody” policy Manmohan Singh regime has been flogging all these years. Thus, it talks about developing “a repertoire of instruments” to deflect attempts at coercion, then turns around to propose that “we do not appear threatening to our many friends and well-wishers.” (p.4) This is a hint that India, for instance, will not develop, at least, not in Manmohan Singh’s watch, an inter-continental ballistic missile, whose design is in and only awaits Delhi’s green signal to get into prototype testing followed by full production, lest it upset the United States. To be consistent, it extends such an understanding to China as well. After suggesting that India concede superiority to PLA on the LAC but build-up maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean (p.7) — which the Chinese Navy is already in a position to out-muscle, it counsels  “avoiding relationships that go beyond conveying a certain threat threshold in Chinese perceptions” (p.8, 26). In other words, India is supposed to forsake meaningful strategic partnerships with third countries, such as the US, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, et al, disadvantaging China because it might anger Beijing,  even as the Chinese proceed with implementing their wei qi encirclement strategies (Kissinger elucidates in his book “Ön China”). India is being asked peacefully to acquiesce in a correlation of forces favouring China and in coming Chinese-shaped regional and world orders. Can anything more fatalistic and defeatist be conceived as policy prescription?

5)    The document states that instead of behaving like other great powers which use multilateral organizations and forums to advance their singular interests, India, exceptionally, should strengthen their legitimacy (p.28). Of course, every country, including signatories to the CTBT, NPT, Doha Round, Climate summits, international laws, et al would be extremely happy with India, praise it to the skies, gain it goodwill, were it to undertake to abide by all their injunctions and resolutions, no questions asked and without preconditions. This is the way, the reports says, “to shape global norms” (p.30). Ah so. Then again, isn’t that what distinguishes weak powers with little leverage? Further, the authors wag a finger at powerful states inclined towards intervention using “universal norms and values” as “fig leaf for the pursuit of great power interests.” (p.31) Wonder what they would say were the situation in the Maldives to turn really bad for India, necessitating an Indian military intervention to restore a friendlier regime and ensure Indian interests endure in that island nation?

6)    If the above themes and ideas were not problematic enough, the section on hard power has a few doozies, reflecting a passing acquaintance with the relevant literature, lack of understanding of military and strategic realities by the authors, albeit all of them proverbial generalists ready to pronounce on any and every thing, and their uncertain grasp of limited war, escalation, and nuclear deterrence.  Briefly, the authors push something they call an “äsymetric strategy” against China. It requires India to favour building up chiefly the country’s maritime forces and the air force to counter China’s supposed superiority along the disputed border – Line of Actual Control. Worse, it recommends the same kind of penny-packeting of forces along the border and occupation of Chinese forward posts in retaliation for small land-grabs by the PLA in what is called a “strategy of quid pro quo” (p, 35). But this is “forward strategy” circa 1962 by another name, and we know how that ended. In the face of a major Chinese offensive, the report recommends going majorly maritime in retaliation. Meaning, they take Tawang, and the Indian Navy sinks a few Chinese merchant ships in the oil SLOCs. This is supposed to put the fear of god into the Chinese PLA? I reckon Beijing will happily exchange a fleet of ships with India for Tawang, which if forcefully taken will not be returned, unlike in the 1962 War. Other two prongs of this asymmetric strategy is to train Arunachal Pradeshis to wage guerrilla war behind Chinese lines, and building up transport and telecommunications infrastructure –which is mostly now missing – along the disputed border. This three-pronged plan is half-baked and amateurish. A far more effective strategy that I have been fleshing out over the last two decades – first contained in my classified report to the 10th Finance Commission, India, when I served as its adviser on defence expenditure is for India, on a priority basis, to raise 9-13 Mountain Divisions able exclusively prosecute offensive warfare across the border in Tibet. These forces have to be equipped with light armour, light howitzers, integral heli-lift and base transport for operations out of the Demchok Triangle and along the northern Sikkim plains. Taking the fight to PLA is what is going to give PLA pause for thought, not some rinky-dink operations to take a post here and a machinegun nest there. And this report which, predictably, says nothing about it, India should begin mobilizing the Tibetan exile community, train its youth in guerrilla actions deep inside Tibet, and generally be the Fifth Column aiding and abetting Indian offensive efforts in war by destroying PLA logistics hubs, the Qinghai-Lhasa and the Lhasa-Xigatze railway lines, etc. . Nor will it help to have only 2 plus 2 Mountain Divisions raised and under raising. These are too few to do other than beef up the defensive posture, which last is precisely what this Report suggests the Indian army restrict itself to doing (pp. 34-35), forgetting the lesson from the 1987 Somdurongchu skirmish, that general offensive-mindedness fetches better military results and a positive political fallout (remember Dengxiaoping’s “long handshake with prime minister Rajiv Gandhi!) than the defensive, stay-put, strategy the Indian govt, the Indian army, and the authors of this report subscribe to.

7)   Versus Pakistan, the Report junks the strategy of capturing territory. Bye, bye, Cold Start! This is fine, it is a theatre of minor wars. But it does not go on to assert — as I have argued in my writings —  that the personnel-heavy three strike corps establishments be thinned out to fill the 9-13 Mountain offensive Divisions. It instead advises an “ingress” denial strategy, because it fears anything emore forceful will eventuate in Pakistani escalation to the nuclear level (p.34). This is nonsense. Will not repeat here the arguments made at great length and in great detail in my books – ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’ and ‘Nuclear Weapons and Indian Strategy” now in its 2nd edition, as to why Pakistan simply cannot afford to escalate to a nuclear exchange no matter what the Indian provocation. But suffice to state just one fact: the improbably skewed exchange ratio – the loss of two Indian cities for the definite extinction of all of Pakistan.

8)    Other than this there’s no mention anywhere else in this report of anything nuclear, certainly not in the strategy dealing with China. If one has to adopt a purely defensive strategy, and even as backup for an offensive strategy, why not, as I have been suggesting, place Atomic Demolition Munitions in mountain passes through which the aggressor Chinese units will likely pass and fairly forward of the present defensive pre-positioned line. The triggering of only one such device will halt the advance of all PLA units everywhere. With a large enough Chinese force allowed in before the ADM brings down the mountain sides burying most of them, the surviving troops and units can be eliminated in detail. China will have to seriously consider if nuclear escalating will help them, considering these ADMs will be going off on Indian territory after the Chinese are well inside it. This is the sort of hard options the Indian government and armed forces better begin preparing for, instead of the default option of kowtowing to the Chinese and bullying Pakistan that the Indian govt and military is habituated to realizing.

At the release function on Feb 28th evening Vajypayee’s NSA, Brajesh Mishra had had about enough with all the moral posturing in the report and by some of the writers at the podium – all the hoo-ha about Indian values as the soft power lever to get India great power status. His somewhat meandering speech ended by his destroying the central pillar of this report. Mishra’s dismissal was devastating:  “What values?” he said. “We have no values.”

Posted in 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 Ocean, Indian Politics, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 7 Comments

To tackle piracy, go on offensive

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Large navies with great deal of capital invested in them these days prepare not for great fleet battles but for the infinitely less taxing anti-piracy operations. When this role is devolved by governments to shipping Companies who, in turn, pass on the authority to privately-owned vessels guarded by naval commandos, what you get is the incident off the Kerala coast. A couple of Italian Navy master sergeants on-board Enrica Lexie took pot-shots, it would seem, against  medium range, slightly mobile, targets bobbing on water they identified as pirates. The crucial question to ask is whether this identification was made instantaneously or with deliberation, and on what basis, before the shooting started? Or, was the labelling of those killed as pirates done, ex-post facto, as it afforded a convenient rationale and cover for the extra-legal killings once the Italian ship captain realized his men had fouled up and he had a problem on his hands?

If the Lexie was within the 12-mile Indian territorial limits, then the claim of eliminating persons perceived as pirates packs no credibility whatsoever and is ipso facto untenable. If, on the other hand, the Italian vessel was in international waters – the farther out the better for it, then the claim would surely require evidence of provocation offered by the fishermen or of some actions taken by them that could be interpreted, however remotely, by the Lexie crew as not just suspicious but actually threatening. But whatever the extenuating circumstances, the conclusion cannot be avoided that this was a case of, what may be called, recreational shooting indulged in by a couple of bored non-commissioned officers of the Italian Navy with itchy fingers, cocked rifles, perhaps, with telescopic sights, or sub-machine guns, which can easily be determined by the wounds on the dead fishermen, and inadequate knowledge of the ramifications of gun-slinging. Moreover, common sense should have suggested to the Lexie commander and his gunmen that so close to the tip of India was too far for the pirates to venture. Do the Italians really think they can sell the shooting as action to pre-empt a forcible takeover of the ship? To Italy, all of Arabian Sea is piracy-zone; it is so designated by many other countries as well. In the event, the Italian naval guards were primed to expect that Keralites and Somalis are  same.

That said, this incident reveals the larger truth that, fed up with the menace, many countries are dealing with suspected pirates with extreme prejudice. Not so long ago, Russians captured some pirates, shackled them to their “mother ship”, and then proceeded to blow up the boat. This episode was filmed and uploaded on U-tube, there to serve as warning and deterrent to Somalis to keep off Russian merchant vessels. It has worked. There have been no cases reported since of Russian ship hijackings off the Gulf of Aden and proximal waters. By last count, some 750 sailors of different nationalities and scores of ships are prisoners of the numerous pirate combines holed up on the Somali coast. Of these, some half a dozen merchant ships and nearly 100 crew members comprise the Indian complement.

The US government has chosen commando raids to rescue American hostages, most recently on January 25 this year when SEALs attacked the Somali base at Harardheere, killing all nine of the Somalis involved and freeing a US aid worker. This followed the Special Forces action in April 2009 when the Maersk Alabama and its crew were freed from the clutches of Somali sea brigands. Indeed, forcefully taking out the pirates seems to be an effective mode for the navies of the world to adopt, a ready solution for the scourge of piracy. Indian Navy ships on anti-piracy patrols, each with a couple of marine commandos on board are, however, restrained by the Indian government from taking any offensive action. Pirates are captured and dutifully handed over to non-existent Somali authorities, ensuring their return to the same work in next to no time, there being no government worth the name in that country. This much was clear at the recent London Conference that ended February 23. The President of the transitional Somali government, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, and master of only the municipality of the capital city of Mogadishu, courtesy the African Union peace-keeping force in town, confessed he was “scared”. Actually, the real problem are the powerful transnational mafia financing the pirate network and facilitating their nefarious activities. This mafia passes on authoritative information such as names of ships, the course they’ll take, value of cargo, and extent of insurance cover.

Ships under Indian flag are viewed as easy targets because the Indian ship owners ultimately pay up and because there is no danger from on-board sharpshooters, or from Indian Marine Commando suddenly dropping in on the scene to spoil their game, the Indian government, as usual, in its do-nothing mode, is relying on the UN Contact Group on Piracy to alight on a, presumably, “responsible” solution. In the mean time, more Indian ships and sailors will pass into Somali captivity, even as, for obvious reasons, US and Russian carriers are left well enough alone.

Were the commanders of Indian naval ships authorized to take out pirates on the high seas and to destroy pirate strongholds along the Somali coast or, alternatively, Indian merchantmen were permitted to carry if not small detachments of armed Indian Navy personnel doing guard duty, then armed private guards, the incidence of piracy against Indian vessels would reduce markedly. If, further, the Navy’s Marine Commandos were now and again tasked to free Somali-held Indian ships, it would fuel fear and uncertainty among the pirate fraternity. But imposing a new risk calculus on the pirates requires the Indian government to think and act aggressively in the national interest, something the Manmohan Singh regime avoids doing. It forswears use of force except, apparently, in the dead of night against unarmed people sleeping peacefully at Delhi’s Ramlila ground!

[Published on Thursday, March 1 in the ‘Ásian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/tackle-piracy-go-offensive-508 and in the ‘Deccan Chronicle’ at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/tackle-piracy-go-offensive]

 

Posted in civil-military relations, Great Power imperatives, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Special Forces | 3 Comments

Air Marshal on joyride or after flying bounty

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

A frontline Mirage 2000 combat aircraft piloted by Air Marshal Anil Chopra,  head of   Personnel  at Air HQrs and Commodore Commandant,  of the oldest, most pampered, unit of IAF — No. 1 Squadron, Gwalior, went down yesterday.  “Snag in the engine”was trotted out as the reason for the mishap. This is hard to believe considering the Mirage facilities — air-conditioned hangars with surroundings that many Mirage pilots boast are more antiseptic than most hospitals in India — are top-rated. What may be really to blame are two factors: (1) Air Mshl Chopra was earning his “flying bounty” — an allowance even long-in-the-tooth senior officers, who have long since specialised in flying desks, draw with all the attendant risks — meaning, you are simply no longer young with the necessary quick silver reflexes to handle a fly-by-wire fighter, and hence endanger self and co-pilot, and are in danger of totaling the plane, which last happened — a writeoff. But the lure of the bounty by logging the mandatory minimum hours in the air is too much for these gentlemen to resist. And/or (2) as Commodoe-Commandant and retiring soon, a last flight or two to re-experience the highs of combat aircraft flying.

Could the CO, No. 1 Squadron, have not permitted Air Mshl Chopra to fly. In theory, yes, but he would have been aware that, as head of Personnel, Chopra could have sidelined his career were he so inclined. In the circumstances, why risk alienating a man also CC of the Squadron? The net result is the loss of an aircraft worth over $200 million (replacement value at minimum) to the national exchecquer . Can a national fighting asset be so cavalierly treated by senior IAF officers intent on joy rides (if the bounty notion is discounted for the nonce)? Indeed, should such advanced aircraft, which can go into a maneuver with a slight twitch of the pilot’s hand, be permitted to be flown other than by the young officers in their professional flying prime? It’s time IAF strictly followed a protocol and penalized senior officers for asserting the prerogatives of seniority and violating strictures against flying, and start by making an example of Air Marshal Chopra.

Posted in Indian Air Force | 2 Comments