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

Smugglers funding Jaitapur N-protest?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The Kudankulam nuclear complex is stuck at the pre-commissioning stage because of the protest around those parts organized by NGOs whom Manmohan Singh has identified as being funded by cash-rich American NGOs with the agenda of torpedoing the PM’s ambitious nuclear electricity generation plan.  Unused to the people derailing a govt program, Moscow is upset that GOI has so far chosen to do nothing other than prevaricate. But at a workshop today, a senior DAE official on the sidelines, offered the view that Uday Kumar, the agitation leader, has a dubious background, but that the plant opening will not be delayed beyond a couple of months. With the squeezing of the Indian NGOs by linking them, correctly, with Western NGOs the protestors will  apparently soon be cleared out. The critical factor will be CM Jayalaltha’s reaction. Tamil Nadu has peak demand power deficit that KK-1 and KK-2 can meet. But equally, her political interests are better served by further needling the coalition setup at th centre.

Investigation of the N-protestors has other than in Kudankulum, also revealed, this official informed me, that in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, the protest ostensibly led by local fisherfolk, is being funded by smugglers from the Konkan area who use the proximal coast as landing ground for their contraband they bring in from Dubai and elsewhere because they fear they will be compelled to move out of the area altogether. The complicating factor for the Congress  party in Delhi is that this protest is piggybacking on the political fight between the Maharashtra Nav Nirmnan Sena of Raj Thackeray and the local Congress party Maharashtra State minister, Rane.  The trouble with all this is the manifest weakness of the central govt and the desire of the PM to make the proverbial omelette w/o breaking eggs. Well, good luck!

Posted in India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Nuclear Policy & Strategy | 1 Comment

Fighting terror the Babu-way

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

It is an unequal fight. On one side are the terrorists of various ideological hues from the small numbers of raging Islamist extremists stalking the cities to the equally angry and committed Maoists controlling parts of the countryside. They are lean, mean, intent, and able to create mayhem at will in a country where order breaks down at the slightest hint of trouble and who seem to have ready access to explosive materials and arms and ammunition.

On the other side, ostensibly protecting the country and people are fat and flabby but proliferating state and central police, para-military and intelligence outfits who are invariably surprised by any new terrorist action no matter how often these incidents have occurred in the past. In contrast the innumerable police and intelligence organizations, tasked to know what the terrorists are up to, and to pre-empt them if they can and fight them if they must, are each led by serried ranks of babus, specialising mostly in fighting each other to a standstill,  which means in time-critical situations, decisions do not get made and actions are not ordered. What ensues is unflagging counter-terrorism rhetoric of politicians even as any attempt at institutionalizing coordinated intelligence collection and anti-terrorist actions rarely gets off the ground. The terrorists in India must feel lucky in the opponents they face.

It has been over three years since 26/11 but the layered system of maritime security is still mostly on paper. The navy is stretched by the overarching responsibility for preventing ingress by terrorists, the Coast Guard is squeezed by the navy and even more by the multiple but substantively nonexistent state police agencies and assets ashore and in the brown water tier of coastal defence. It seems anti-terrorism is another excuse for babus to make money, as the controversy over the acquisition by Maharashtra government of defective body armour reveals. So, whenever the Pakistani Lashkars feel up to mounting another Mumbai operation, the odds are the jihadi teams will move in on their targets unmolested.

More important than the actual fighting units – deficient as they are in many respects — is intelligence-gathering, which role the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) was originally meant to augment and streamline. Having cleared the bureaucratic hurdles erected by other organizations in the intelligence business, the NCTC now finds itself caught in the federal structuralist trap that the Home Ministry did not have the wit or the wisdom to see it was stepping into by not getting the assent of state governments. That’s the minimum that should have been done considering the Constitution, notwithstanding Article 73, principally accords states the responsibility for the “law and order” function. In mulling the division of labour, the Constituent Assembly, influenced by the realism and rootedness of Sardar Vallabhhai Patel, reasonably decided that being nearer to the ground and more familiar with local conditions than the remote central regime, state governments should be charged with maintaining law and order in their jurisdictions.

NCTC, however, grew beyond its core idea as an intelligence coordination unit and, doubtless prompted by Home Minister C. Chidambaram, benefited from bureaucratic aggrandizement. Along the way, it acquired the coercive police role of arrest and seizure of property as well. Not content with being merely an intelligence czar, the ambitious Mr. Chidambaram, has sought by means of an enlarged NCTC to become, the internal security overlord at the expense of the Constitutionally-empowered state governments. But before NCTC’s role inflation, the usual turf battles between competing intelligence agencies — Intelligence Bureau, Research & Analysis Wing, Central Bureau of Investigation, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, etc. that had held up realization of NCTC for some two odd years, obtained.  The “White Paper” drafted by the Home Ministry to dilate on the concept did endless rounds and was amended at every turn. The result was the last version had few similarities with the first one, and the NCTC’s supposed responsibilities had grown in tandem with the disagreements over its expanding brief and turf. Pushed by Chidambaram, Intelligence Bureau (IB) won out and was, not surprisingly, designated the nodal agency. This has happened concurrent with IB’s other pyrrhic victory — success in denying the National Technical Research Organization, the institution expressly created in the wake of the 1999 Kargil fiasco, and equipped with the requisite electronic scanning, tapping, and processing capability and skilled manpower, being denied legal sanction to undertake comprehensive electronic surveillance on its own.  Central Board of Direct Taxes, Narcotics Control Board, among six or seven other agencies are, however, so authorized. Go figure! It reinforces the notion that the Indian system is the country’s best facilitator of terrorism.

Little wonder NCTC has spurred resistance to it and not just by state governments ruled by opposition parties. With Omar Abdullah in Kashmir joining Mamata Banneji in West Bengal and the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham party making common cause with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha, in opposing NCTC, the game is tilted decisively against it. What is noteworthy is that the protesting states – Gujarat, Odisha, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, have land or maritime borders to police, and/or are engaged in tackling Maoists.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurances mean for nothing considering the near zero influence he has in his own government, especially with his senior cabinet colleagues. Further, because IB is virtually the handmaiden of the Home Minister, the opposition-ruled states have particularly to fear the misuse of the IB dominated-NCTC by Chidambaram and the ruling Congress Party at the Centre with a long record of manipulating central agencies, to settle scores, subvert law and order within their bailiwicks. The incumbent state governments could be tarred with either not doing enough to contain the terrorist threat or doing too much with the ensuing leaks to the media, about weak state governments or of biased state police running amuck, becoming grist for politics in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. In the event, NCTC minus states’ approval seems destined for the dust heap.

[Published as “Äs Babus fight terror” in the ‘New Indian Express’ Feb 24, 2012 at http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/as-babus-fight-terror/366405.html ]

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Dominoes falling to China

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Does India ever do anything on its 0wn initiative, proactively to protect its interests? Apparently not. Because almost every time you see India doing something in the extended neighborhood, it is in response to counteract what China has done. Take the latest little coup in the Maldives. MEA woke up only after realizing that Beijing had a large and growing diplomatic presence in Male, and that the transfer of power — in part the handiwork of Pakistani militant Islamic groups radicalizing powerful sections of that country’s society, had actually facilitated a Chinese naval presence with offer of R&R (rest and replenishment) rights for its naval ships in the Indian Ocean on the atoll and thereby insinuating itself into the Maldivan security calculus in the anti-piracy role, etc. that Delhi reared up, sending its Joint Secretary (West) to quiet the situation down and obtain from the present ruling dispensation the promise of elections that will give an India-friendly Mohammad Nasheed an opportunity to return to power. A similar  reaction-to-Chinese moves justification has been offered by the Manmohan Singh government for building the border roads infrastructure, the proposed railways connecting border provinces with the Indian mainland, and its attempts to recover lost ground in Myanmar. For the supposedly big power in the region, this is ridiculous. Either India goes aggressively proactive, or Delhi can wait on the sideline — as it is used to doing — and rue the loss of previously India-friendly regimes and pro-India assets in the near-abroad as these fall, like tipped Dominoes, into Beijing’s lap.

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Ocean | Leave a comment

Steep Challenge

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

That the Iran-Israel fight has been brought to India’s shores by whosoever wanted to spring a surprise on the Israelis  is a tragedy.

The open attack on the Israeli embassy official in highly-policed Lutyens Delhi may be the harbinger of the Israeli conflict with Iran, and the Islamic world generally, extending to Indian cities. Whether this is a like Iranian response to the plastique-killings of a couple of its nuclear scientists on Tehran streets in recent years is not germane to India’s diplomatic predicament. India is in no position to alienate Iran, even less, Israel.

Navigating around the shoals of Israeli national security sensitivities and Iran’s desire for retribution is a grave challenge for this country. The ministry of external affairs, which for years now has maintained a heads-down, low-key posture, determined to give offence to nobody, finds itself shoved rudely on to the centrestage, having to tackle a delicate problem created by two friends of India irreconcilably at odds with each other. It is true that in the absence of prior information about this strike, the Indian authorities could have done nothing to prevent it. Being an open, free-wheeling democratic country there’s no way that tabs can be kept on every foreigner entering India or, alternatively, maintain surveillance on intelligence agencies operating from friendly country embassies in Delhi. Nor could local collaborators cultivated by these foreign agencies over time have been pre-emptively collared. Much as external affairs minister S.M. Krishna averred that India would not like to get “sucked” into third party squabbles, there may be no easy way of escaping such a denouement, in the main because of what the two countries believe is at stake. Israel, for all its chutzpah and “two eyes for an eye” attitude, is an incredibly small country — at 22,578 square kms in size, it is 11,438 sq kms smaller than the Union Territory of Delhi. Its margin for safety being infinitesimally small, it brooks no error in assessing and anticipating threats and, once identified, in eliminating them. This is a habit of mind defined by geography and quite unlike subcontinent-sized India’s attitude to physical security of the state which is lax to the point of exasperation. Thus, to apply Indian standards of security to Israel would be to leave it exposed to extinction — which, incidentally, is what the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in high dudgeon, periodically promises. Tel Aviv, however, believes it cannot risk assuming that this is just rousing rhetoric. In fact, time and again the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, acting on the principle of zeroing out all risks to the state, has systematically killed all those threatening Israel in any way. Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyeh was assassinated in 2008, and leading scientists and engineers working on any long-range mass destruction weapons programmes in adversary states, have regularly been bumped off, even as the Israeli Air Force has bombed plutonium reactors (Osirak outside Baghdad in 1982, Syrian reactor under construction last year), and sabotaged the Iranian uranium centrifuges with the stuxnet computer virus. Earlier, in March 1990, the extraordinarily-gifted Canadian designer of rockets and long-range artillery, Gerald Bull, who was helping Saddam Hussein build an improbably powerful 150-metre-long gun (350 mm calibre, one metre bore) that could hit Israel or, fired vertically, place a projectile/satellite in space (“Project Babylon”) and also a multi-stage rocket cobbled together from Soviet Scud short-range missile parts, was killed in Brussels with shots to the head. The Iranian efforts targeting Israel are evidently not as sophisticated, considering that an Israeli embassy accounts official was car-bombed in retaliation for the fatal attacks on its prized nuclear scientists. Whatever the real intent of its nuclear programme, Iran is on the cusp of attaining weapons status. On a conducted tour of some of its nuclear facilities, along with a few other Indian visitors a couple of years back, a senior scientist at the heavy water production plant in Arak when asked by me about Iran’s nuclear intentions, casually replied: “We are following the Indian model”! My own take is that the Iranian nuclear impulses are civilisational in nature. As legatees of the great Persian empires of Darius and Xerxes, Iranians feel they cannot be denied security sufficiency. It is not a justification that washes with the Israelis, however. The Israel-Iran tussle played out this week on Indian territory, in effect, leaves Delhi up a creek. India can no more do without Iranian oil (meeting some 16 per cent of the country’s energy needs) and, potentially, gas via the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, and land access to Afghanistan and Central Asia afforded through the Chabahar port. Neither can it afford to have Israel turn off the high-technology spigot and get the influential Jewish lobby in the US all upset. The latter, after all, helped India set up US-India Political Action Committee, a counterpart institution in Washington to the legendary America-Israel Political Action Committee as a means of shaping America’s South Asian policy. That this fight has been brought to India’s shores by whosoever wanted to spring a surprise on the Israelis, is a tragedy. If Mossad is determined covertly to take out the perpetrators and Indian collaborators, if any, there really is not much Delhi can do, but it will ramp up an unending action-reaction sequence of escalating violence that India simply cannot tolerate. But because two friendly states are involved, India’s best bet may be to urge Tel Aviv to restrict its fight with Iran to their region and to share the names of any Iranian nationals and Indian or other country accomplices that the Israeli intelligence may have with the Delhi Police so they can be apprehended and punished as per Indian laws. That should assuage the Israelis who, hopefully, are not unaware of the serious dilemma confronting the Indian government. Tehran should be requested to refrain from any provocative actions in India against third country citizens, and given assurances that similar representations have been made to Tel Aviv. It is imperative that India enlarge its own internal security intelligence focus, establish a special cell to monitor suspected persons, organisations and developments related to the Israel-Iran conflict, and publicly proclaim a policy that makes it clear that this country will not be made the site for a clash of strictly West Asian interests.

[Published with the title “Tricky waters” on Feb 16, 2012 in ‘The Asian Age’ at www.asianage.com/columnists/tricky-waters-986 and in ‘The Deccan Chronicle’ at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/tricky-waters ]

Posted in India's strategic thinking and policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Internal Security | 1 Comment

Iranian Nuclear TV imagery and meaning

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

Indian TV channels are carrying television coverage of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspecting certain nuclear installations publicly revealed for the first time. But the careful coverage was limited to showing uranium centrifuges — which the Iranian TV commentator claimed were “4th generation”, and a pool to store spent fuel from a  boiling water type LEU reactor, run on indigeneously-produced fuel rods, able to output, it was repeatedly stressed, isotopes for medical use, especially for radiotherapy to cure “850,000” cancer patients in the country. All this is very well. But it is plutonium that is really relevant for weapons making and, in this respect, there was a “no show” of any related facilities, such as pu reprocesing, pu heavy water moderated reactors, etc. By stressing peaceful N-uses, Tehran is trying to rally international support against a  preemptive strike, and may have prevented such an attack  for the nonce, any way by Israel assisted by US sensors and terminal guidance paraphernalia. It has bought Iran some time. Even so, this time element may be crucial, because there’s no doubt Iran, which has been on the cusp for several years, has about reached the weapons threshold. I remember what a senior scientist at the heavy water plant in Arak told me when I was taken around that installation, along with a few other Indian visitors a couple of years back on a conducted tour.  In response to my question about Iran’s N-intentions, he replied: “We are following the Indian model”!

Posted in indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia | 2 Comments