India must learn to assert

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

What’s with us as cricket team, as people, as government, as country? An objective take would be that we are a bunch of losers. Passivity, defensive-mindedness, meekness, and timidity are qualities that historically have characterised India and Indians, with the turgid myth-mix of spirituality and tradition of non-violence adding to this awful image. A series of recent incidents and events highlight the cost and consequences to India and Indians of such attributes that are also, unsurprisingly, reflected in the country’s stance vis-a-vis our main adversary, China.

Anuj Bidve was murdered as an initiation rite by a punk in Manchester. That Bidve was killed is less the issue than the fact that he was chosen as the target. But, Indian students and immigrants in the West are not infrequently teased, mugged, verbally assaulted, physically humiliated, have turbans yanked off their heads on the street as much as at airports, robbed at gunpoint and, occasionally, shot to death. The real reason for such attacks is the telltale diffidence, willingness to take abuse and slink away rather than stand their ground that marks Indians out as easy prey. It is no coincidence that the last time there were race riots in the United Kingdom, in August 2011, it was only when South Asians counter-attacked that swarms of marauding white and black gangs in Southall, Hackney, and other Indian enclaves, melted away. Acting helpless or reacting helplessly to provocation only begets more violence and victimisation.

Speaking of victims — is there a more hapless lot of highly-paid, non-performing, dolts than the Indian cricket team who were mangled in Melbourne and smashed in Sydney? It has been said again and again but is worth repeating: It is not the loss but the manner of their losing that hurts. Australians played as if their life depended on it, their intensity reflected in a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. Their coddled Indian counterparts took the field with a lax outlook and when the situation turned dire, responded with a virtual ‘take us prisoners’ plea, giving up quite literally at the first sign of trouble. But attacks on Indians residing in foreign countries and the fate of puffed-up cricketers without the stomach for a fight have a lot in common with India’s foreign and military policy, which should come as no surprise.

Consider the latest turn of events regarding China. Beijing is on the back foot, wary of the situation going awry. US President Barack Obama has reoriented American military strategy to ‘pivot’ on East Asia. Major regional maritime powers — Japan, and Australia, are joining the US, the littoral states in South East Asia, and Vietnam and Indonesia in the South China Sea, to curtail the Chinese strategic space. This is the time, one would have thought, for New Delhi to join in cornering Beijing, not pandering to it. But, as usual, New Delhi genuflected. The Annual Defence Dialogue (ADD) was kept on track by the Indian government by accepting Chinese dictation on the constitution of the Indian military delegation. The Ministry of External Affairs’ justification for this backsliding even featured Chinese diplomatic lexicon. The dropping of Group Captain Mohonto Panging, operations head of the Sukhoi-30 squadron in Tezpur, the MEA explained, was the “mature” thing to do, thereby echoing the phrase — “show maturity” that Chinese spokespersons often use when advising India not to react to Chinese provocation. The defence ministry, after initially calling off the whole, meaningless, exercise, relented under pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office. If Beijing is allowed to establish substantial diplomatic precedent by not allowing Arunachalis into China because it claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of ‘southern Tibet’, then progressively the Indian title over that province will weaken and, in time, the fact that New Delhi accommodated Beijing will be cited by the latter as evidence of India conceding an enlarged China. This is the old Chinese imperial habit. Any act of friendliness by kingdoms in South East Asia led to the emperors of Qing and Ming dynasties, for example, to treat them as tributary states.

That Beijing acts superior is less the problem than India acting its vassal. How else to explain that every time Beijing sneezes, Delhi gets the shivers? Beating up Tibetans peacefully demanding freedom for their homeland outside the Chinese embassy in a supposedly democratic India, and weeding out ‘undesirables’ from lists of China-bound military Indian delegations on Beijing’s say-so, is bad symbolism, especially as China puts so much store by it. Pleasing Beijing for any reason is unlikely to advance any of India’s goals, least of all bring an early closure to the interminable border talks currently involving national security adviser Shiv Shankar Menon and Chinese state councillor Dai Bingguo. But, this last, is not the priority; rather, according to Menon, it is “deepening communications”, “managing differences”, “building commonalities” and otherwise keeping the peaceful “process” of interaction alive. If strengthening of process is all that’s at stake then what’s on offer is more tunnel, not light at the end of it. In the event, vital national interests will be better served if India squarely joined all willing partners to strategically discomfit China as much as possible, and by any and all means, all the while mouthing self-serving platitudes and pieties that are the essence of Chinese diplomatese.

China is feeling the heat, and India should increase pressure on it. ADD is history, but it should lead to the MEA following a strictly reciprocal visa system. Hereafter, any Chinese Communist Party official or PLA officer who has served in Tibet should be barred from visiting India under any pretext. It will require New Delhi formally to take a stand which is implicit in its traditional position, namely, that Chinese ‘sovereignty’ over Tibet is untenable as long as Tibet is neither genuinely ‘autonomous’ nor vacated of the large and lethal PLA occupation forces stationed there. This will meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s basic conditions. But it will require New Delhi to show guts, and there’s the rub. One cannot remember the last time the Indian government stood up for India.

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express” on January 13, 2012; available at http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/india-must-learn-to-assert/352707.html]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics | 2 Comments

Looking West, as far as Israel

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The Indian Minister for External Affairs, S. M. Krishna, is visiting Israel starting January 9. The good thing is that such visits these days occasion no public teeth-gnashing by leaders of political parties that promote themselves as protectors of Indian Muslims and their interests. In an earlier time, any public interaction with Israel would have elicited howls of protest – the easy way of  garnering political support on the cheap by conflating the issue of Palestinian rights and Arab grievances against Israel with the amor propre’ of Indian Muslims. There is now recognition that Indian Muslim voters are no fools and it is counter-productive to demonize Israel, which since its founding in 1948 has enjoyed a tight but subterranean relationship with India and, in the short span of twenty years since the bilateral ties came out of the closet, has emerged as the foremost supplier of advanced military technology and, verily, the western pillar of India’s security architecture (with Japan as the eastern pillar), if only Delhi has the geopolitical wit and the strategic wisdom to see it that way.

The trouble is the Indian government is still chary about being viewed as too close to Israel for reasons that were not sustainable in the past and make even less sense now. One would have thought that with appeasement politics given a burial by Maulana Jamil Ilyas, head of the All India Organization of Imams and Mosques representing some half-million imams, who when visiting Israel in February 2007 to participate in an inter-faith dialogue, praised the Israeli government for allowing sharia to be practiced by Muslims of that country, Delhi would be less reticent about acknowledging Israel’s growing significance in India’s national security scheme of things.  And yet the Israeli ambassador until a few months back, Mark Sofer, good naturedly complained throughout his tenure that India treated Israel as a married man does his mistress – intimate and confiding in closed quarters but kept at arm’s length in public.

If the details were to be out about the quality and extent of Indo-Israeli cooperation and collaboration in defence, space, and anti-terrorism spheres, it would astonish most people. Suffice to say, for instance, that the reason Soviet vintage military hardware in the Indian order-of-battle -– combat aircraft, tanks, and seaborne weapons platforms, is still reasonably in-date, technology wise, is because these have been retrofitted and upgraded with advanced Israeli avionics, missiles, radar, night vision equipment, fire control systems, etc. Israel is assisting DRDO to produce – in the face of American opposition — a first-rate AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar to mount on the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft or any other fighter-bomber in the IAF inventory – the sort of radar for air-to-ground strikes that is missing in the Eurofighter shortlisted in the MMRCA sweepstakes. In like vein, the Indian Navy has helped Israeli submarines, for example, to conduct test-firings of cruise and ballistic missiles in the Indian Ocean and the two navies have together worked on complex sea denial maneuvers. And Israel is involved in ISRO projects to configure micro-satellites – its specialty — for relatively short duration, low-earth orbit, missions. Referring to the potential for technology and other cooperation, Major General (ret) Amos Gilad, Director of political-security affairs at the Israeli Defence Ministry, exclaimed “The sky is the limit!” when I met him, as I did many other senior Israeli government ministers and officials, in Tel Aviv during a trip to Israel undertaken last summer at the invitation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The thing is, the Israeli government picked up an idea I had originally pitched a decade ago to Uzi Landau, the then Israeli Minister of the Interior when he was in Delhi. I had proposed that for Israel to develop enduring links with India, it had to go beyond being a mere peddler of military wares and begin investing in Indian defence industry. I had suggested that, given India’s comparative advantage in low cost labour, Israel should transfer most of its production lines for traditional conventional military goods, from small arms and ammo, tanks and artillery, to naval fast attack craft, to jointly owned Companies in India to service the needs of both the Indian and Israeli armed forces, and to export to third countries, and that India could reciprocate by channeling huge funds into extreme high-end, high-value, military research and development and production programmes, such as the “Iron Dome” missile defence system, integrated all-arms network-centric systems for tactical and strategic warfare, space-based “killer” satellites, and fourth and fifth-generation thermonuclear weapons. Such a cross-invested Indo-Israeli defence industrial combine, I argued, will be profitable and a world-beater. Apparently convinced, Tel Aviv has been willing to make a start but the Indian government, predictably, is dithering, unsure about meeting Israeli requests for equity in such joint ventures beyond the officially permitted 26% level. Dr V.K. Saraswat, Science Adviser to Defence Minister, told me the Indian government fears that allowing a foreign country to own controlling shares will make for a “subservient” Indian defence industry. But were the defence industrial links to evolve along lines indicated above, what would result is mutual dependence. Why is that bad?

However that issue is settled, there is something else Delhi should capitalize on: the recently discovered potential reserves in Israel’s Mediterranean offshore of 1,300 billion cubic metres of gas. Minister Krishna should secure Israel’s approval for an ONGC Videsh project of a pipeline to carry this gas to a convenient point for offtaking by the Indian power sector and industry, and canvas, moreover, for the Israeli sovereign fund being mooted to handle the revenues earned from its gas find to invest in the Indian energy sector, especially in solar technology where Israel is leader.

The visiting Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz indicated that India  ranks next only to the United States in policy importance. The question is whether the Indian government will show foresight in investing politically in Israel, get the Indo-Israeli defence industrial complex off the ground, and benefit from Israel’s offshore gas, or whether it will once again miss a strategic opportunity.

[Published in ‘Ásian Age’ and ‘Deccan Chronicle’, January 5, 2012, available at www.asianage.com/columnists/looking-west-far-israel-580 ]

Posted in Defence Industry, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons | 4 Comments

Passive-Defeatist Attitude, true on the cricket field as in foreign & military policy sphere

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The sad and humilating spectacle of Dhoni and his team of losers being bent and beaten by a near new, relatively inexperienced, Australian cricket team  in Melbourne was par for the course. Our “heroes” complemented the Aussies’ “take no prisoner” attitude, with their very own trademark “take us prisoner” response. And the Captain’s explanation was that an Indian team rarely ever starts a test series well, never mind that the batting debacle happened after India was in a winning position right up to the start of the Indian 2nd inning. Alas, the passive-defeatist cricketing  persona also fits the country’s foreign and military policy as well — not really surprised are you? Contextualize cricket and state policy with the heralded statement of the Duke of Wellington (formerly, Colonel Arthur Wellesley, of 44th Madras Foot in Madras Presidency whose, Governor-General was Lord Morningside, Wellesley’s brother!) that “Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”    Consider the Indian government’s stance regarding China — all Beijing has to do is sneeze for Delhi to get the shivers  and for the MEA to make excuses on China’s behalf. So while the Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo, who is engaged in resolving the border dispute with India, tells Islamabad that Pakistan is its “ïron core” friend — a phrase used by the Chinese for its most trustworthy allies, the Dr Manmohan Singh-led regime walks on eggshells, fearful that even talking of military cooperation with the visiting Australian Defence Minister Steve Smith, will anger China, and so is reluctant to parlay with Canberra on the issue! 

Posted in India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Padma Awards Farce

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The late P.K. Iyengar, former chairman of the atomic energy commission, head of the theoretical group at BARC and father of the implosion-triggered fission device tested in May 1974 — incidentally, still the only proven weapon in the country’s nuclear arsenal, and responsible, moreover, for seminal work in the field of neutron scattering done in partnership with the Physics Nobel Prize Winner B.N. Brockhouse, was awarded the Padma Bhushan.  Scan the list of Padma Bhushan awardees in recent years to go no further back in time, and one discovers all kinds of people of dubious merit being similarly rewarded, including a number of media-persons. Can it reasonably be contended that any of these worthies have touched the heights even in their own field that Dr. Iyengar reached in his, let alone served the national interest, or contributed to a national cause, in any critical way? No doubt, standards have plunged since 1975 when Dr. Iyengar was so recognized. Even so, the Padma awards, prima facie, are beginning to resemble patronage gongs that well-placed political leaders or governments-of-the-day choose to hand out liberally to those who have, by whatever means, been helpful, which aspect will be borne out again when another awards list is announced  come Republic Day. This is travesty that is fast becoming a farce with the clamour, not so much among the people at-large, as in the ruling party circles beset by political troubles, for conferring Bharat Ratna on Sachin Tendulkar – a cause the Sports Minister Ajay Maken has also taken up.

That politicians are enthused by the “Ratna for Sachin” campaign is not surprising, geared as they are to riding whatever “feel good” wave presents itself. It is, moreover, a populist gesture and costs the government nothing compared to the expensive giveaways (such as the Rs one lakh crore free food scheme) and similar entitlement programs that will push the country into a downward deficit spiral and rob the Indian economy of what little buoyancy it has so far been able to muster despite the absence of second generation economic reforms Prime Minister Manmohan Singh keeps promising.  It is anticipated that the prospective elevation of the celebrated “Tondulkar” will generate some slight goodwill if not real electoral dividend. But it will open up a can of worms.

For one thing, the question will arise whether Sachin is a good citizen. Whatever his achievements on the cricket field, he has been handsomely compensated for it with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertisement revenues and generous player contracts. Nobody grudges him these avenues of personal pecuniary gain. But his basic instincts seem to be that of a spoilt and greedy person wanting more, grabbing more, not from the Corporate world which hires him to peddle their wares, which is excusable, but from the State exchequer, which is always under financial duress, in part because less than five percent of the population pays income tax and the rest inventively avoid paying their legitimate dues. It is not known if Sachin pays all the taxes on his vast income that he is supposed to, but recall that some years back he moved heaven and earth to get out of paying customs duty on an imported Ferrari sports car gifted to him. He succeeded in having friends in high places persuade the tax authorities to zero out the tax demand. The same Ferrari he later sold, apparently pocketing the sale price-qua-profit without any qualms. What does that say about Sachin Tendulkar, the man, except that he is a petty tax shirker and far from model citizen. Even if this were the only kink in his record, it would be enough to disqualify him from receiving any consideration, let alone the Bharat Ratna. After all, the least one can expect from a person conferred the country’s highest civilian award is that he is civic-minded enough to adhere to the same rules his fellow-countrymen do.

The other thing Sachin’s Ratna will do is open the door wide for a horde of other sportsmen claimants. Already, the other major sports bodies, not to be out-shone by BCCI, are preparing lists of every Indian hockey player, wrestler, boxer, shooter, sprinter, swimmer, and kabbadi player, living or dead, who ever donned India colours with some distinction, to join Sachin in the pantheon of the nation’s greats, and who is to say they don’t deserve this honour any less than Sachin does? Now notables of the film, light music, and television worlds are stirring, making the case that they consistently provide far more joy and upliftment for the sagging and demoralised masses than do all the sportsmen with their episodic successes put together. Cricket and sports generally are ultimately only entertainment, not rocket science. Spectators spending a day watching Sachin bat perhaps draw as much, if not more, satisfaction from spending three hours in darkened cinema halls seeing Shahrukh Khan sing and dance and over-act. For the nation, this sort of activity while adding to its “soft power” is worth little in substantive terms, and certainly is no criterion for Bharat Ratna which, in theory, at least, goes to the rarest of the rare persons for the same reasons that a Second Lieutenant Arun Khetrapal posthumously wins the coveted Param Vir Chakra for conspicuous gallantry in war, not some run-of-the-mill soldier catching a stray bullet on the battlefield and even less a ketchup colonel. Sportsmen and entertainers do wonderful things and laurels come their way in the form of awards meant for their specialist achievements, such as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna and the Dadasaheb Phalke award. Sachin has won that, been there, and it may be best to leave him and his ilk from the sports arena, to get on with their lives undisturbed by any brouhaha about whether their public recognition needs further embellishment.

Much of public life in India is already so debased that dragging the Bharat Ratna award down may be considered no big thing but it will amount to an egregious assault on the nation’s good sense and perspective.

[Published in the New Indian Express on Friday, December 30, 2011; available at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/article312711.ece

Posted in Indian Politics | 4 Comments

A few fatal flaws

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

When does a flawed system of government become a threat to the security of the state and the wellbeing of the people? This is a question that must now concern all citizens witnessing the country’s dangerous decline in certain salient aspects, even as those at the helm, far from taking corrective measures such as the Lokpal Bill with teeth, are worsening the situation.

The Constitution Review Commission headed by former Chief Justice M.N.Venkatcheliah, established in February 2000, to suggest amendments to the Constitution in light of five decades of experience, submitted its report to the NDA Government two years later. Among other things, it recommended the scrapping of the “first past the post” election system — the source of the biggest ills afflicting the country, including the proliferation of regional and caste-based parties, and perpetual political indiscipline and instability at the centre and in the states. The near anarchy that eventuates as a result can be obviated by a system of a runoff between the two highest vote-getters. The need to secure 50 percent plus one vote, will compel all parties to moderate their election planks and messages to attract majority of voters and, once in government, to eschew policies favouring their vote-bloc, and prevent the kind of absolute paralysis we see in UPA-II today.

Were the Constitution to be rectified in the above manner, the problem of a bureaucratically stifled state would still remain. It is the root cause of rampant corruption, maladministration, opacity in government, and viscousy decision-making processes. Bureaucrats actually make policies and Ministers are content with this arrangement so long as they are alerted to the possibility of loot. In this respect, the bureaucrats — as diviners of incomprehensible rules and regulations and as guardians, moreover, of the discretionary power – are the prime facilitators, mentors to politicians intent on diverting public monies into private bank accounts here and abroad, and in writing up vendor contracts with inbuilt channels to siphon off government funds. The best evidence for this are the thousands of lakhs of crores of rupees routinely allocated to infrastructure development and meeting the social welfare needs of the people: Do the people at the grassroots remotely enjoy the scale of benefits worth this much expenditure, and where exactly is the quality infrastructure promised by the humungous levels of public investment in it over the years?

A system manned by those single-mindedly keyed to self-aggrandizement, specialises in protecting its own through institutional means. So, the Central Bureau of Investigation, controlled by the government, is tasked with investigating ministers and government officials and, in the era of slim and unstable majorities, to keep troublesome coalition partners in check with threat of unleashing corruption cases. How convenient is that? It is too great a risk to put an independent Lokpal in-charge of such an agency, leave alone permit it genuine autonomy. The Central Board of Direct Taxes, for the same reasons, shields the more egregiously erring officers of the Indian Revenue Service, known for its extortionist ways. The Administrative Tribunal, on its part, safeguards the interests of even jailbirds, recently restoring the pension of the convicted child molester, the former Director-General of Police, Haryana, SPS Rathore. There’s greater sensitivity where political heavyweights are involved. Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal is prepared to sacrifice the Constitutional Right of Freedom of Speech just so Sonia Gandhi is not called names on the internet, and Manmohan Singh is convinced of P. Chidambaram’s innocence in the case of the Delhi hotelier because, he said, the Home Minister claimed so. Using this standard there will be no wrong doers and, hence, no need for judges, judicial process, and jails. Corrupt judges are not hauled up as their peers render verdict. Unaccountable government, legislature and judiciary are the hallmarks of an authoritarian state, and also, it turns out, of Indian democracy.

The extraordinarily venal and inefficient Soviet-style leviathan state is the most enduring legacy of socialism, and a millstone around the Indian people’s neck. Hoping to fast-forward economic development, Jawaharlal Nehru oversaw the growth and spread of the public sector in the economic sphere until now when, cancer-like, it threatens the private sector-fuelled economic progress – the last best bet for the country to realize its promise and potential. Meanwhile, the government run enterprises — the Ashoka Hotel chain, Air India, etc., staffed by a mind-bogglingly inefficient labour force, are a massive financial drain and, compared with their commercial competitors, an embarrassment. The pillars-cum-beneficiaries of the extant system, moreover, seem in no doubt about the business they are in. When a lowly municipal office peon in Indore is apprehended for unaccounted wealth to the tune of Rs 10 crores, and a clerk is caught with Rs 40 crores worth of property, imagine the opportunities for limitless plunder available to higher ups in the hierarchy. The occasional senior bureaucrat or politician, such as former telecommunications minister, A. Raja, found with his hand in the cookie jar of contracts worth thousands of millions of dollars could well plead, as Lord Clive of Plassey did at Westminster, that he was “amazed” at his own “modesty” considering that “the wealth of Hindoostan” lay for his taking.

The most damaging consequence of the statist ideology, however, is that it has reinforced the debilitating habit of mind of the Indian people, something the British colonial overlords, for obvious reasons, reinforced – looking to, and relying on, the state as mai-baap to provide them sustenance. With the Nanny state as provider of food and employer of first and last resort, the politics of competitive populism and quotas, on the one hand and of identity politics and patronage, on the other hand, reign. It has reduced even the proud Jat community, for instance, to seeking “backward caste” status.

When a system promises so much to so many but is essentially geared to serving the politician and the state functionary, what eventuates is a government that can easily be commandeered by a few beholden to crony capitalists, foreign interests, and extra-territorial powers. There is no graver threat to national security.

[Published in Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle on Dec 22, 2011 and available at www.asianage.com/columnists/few-fatal-flaws-932 and at www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/bharat-karnad/few-fatal-flaws ]

Posted in Indian Politics, Internal Security | 1 Comment

Playing hardball with China

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once again pooh-poohed the threat from China, this time on Dec 14 in Parliament which undercuts the raison détre  for the India-Japan-United States strategic discussion. Originally planned for mid-October, it was postponed at the eleventh hour because, predictably, the Indian Government felt queasy about angering China.  An alternative explanation is that, in order to multiply Beijing’s apprehensions, this trialogue was deliberately slated for December 19 to serve as curtain raiser for the state visit by the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. It suggests a Machiavellian or, more appropriately, Chanakyan move of a kind Manmohan Singh has, by and large, foresworn. Last year, it may be recalled, the former Japanese premier, Shinzo Abe, had pleaded with the Indian government not to feel “shy” about cooperating with Japan and the United States to prevent a “strategic void” from developing in Asia that, he feared, China would fill.

It is, alas, not so much shyness as the prospect of militarily having to tangle with China that buckles the knees of Indian political leaders and our military brass, who alike have been accustomed to the huffing and puffing against Pakistan that passes for this country’s security posture, but which is plainly inadequate to meet the real security challenges posed by the no-nonsense Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force. It is a forlorn hope that even at this late date, the Indian Government and Armed Services will begin seriously to reprioritise defence expenditures and capabilities to enable India to “act east” rather than merely “look east” as it has done for the last twenty years.

At the heart of the Japanese and American importuning, and also of the Indian wariness, is the recognition that China may be impossible to handle by any one country alone, but major states working together can prevent Chinese hegemony in Asia-Pacific. Except, the “panda huggers” running Delhi’s China policy are, for dubious reasons, convinced that tippy-toeing around the trialogue would fetch better returns. This is to assume that the strategically ruthless Chinese policymakers will not capitalize on Indian weakness and, worse, it is to believe that India has less at stake in this tripartite military engagement than Japan or the United States. Such thinking indicates a disconnect from reality, considering that the threat to India’s energy interests — ONGC Videsh Ltd partnering OilVietnam in exploring and developing oil fields in the South China Sea falling within Vietnam’s territorial claim line, is immediate. While the Chinese Navy feels it is in no position yet to take on the might of its US and the Japanese counterparts, it feels confident of giving the Indian Navy a drubbing. This much can be gleaned from an authoritative commentary published by Xinhua news agency which talked of dealing harshly with an “ambitious” but “immature” India should it dare cross, what it called, “an insurmountable red line”. The red line, presumably, refers to the expansive Chinese claims in the South China Sea, and the implied punitive action to the capabilities of the powerful South Seas Fleet assembled on Hainan Island. This development, moreover, is in the context of President Hu Jintao’s recent exhortation to the Chinese naval commanders to be ready for war.

With the Indian Navy apparently doubting its own capacity to tackle China, a trilateral arrangement is obviously in India’s interest. MEA can make peaceful noises even as the country generally follows a two-pronged strategy of the kind Beijing has specialised in. Simultaneously talking peace and taking every possible action to strategically discomfit and politically and militarily to neutralize China, makes sense. Dissuading and deterring China is best accomplished by firming up a bloc of nations bothered by China’s rise. As far back as January 2000, NDA defence minister, George Fernandes, talked of a strong India as a “very solid agent” to ensure “that the sea lanes [in the South China Sea] are not disturbed and that conflict situations are contained”. Given the UPA government’s “appease first” tendency, this commitment has not gained momentum. China has since grown too powerful and joining up with Japan and the US will afford this country a measure of safety and policy latitude. Japan is the trump card. Beijing respects America’s military muscle but is hugely disconcerted by the emergence of an assertive Japan, one that in the future could be nuclear-armed. After all, Japan by its own reckoning is ä “para-nuclear state” — its vast holdings of fissile material being easily convertible, as Ichiro Ozawa, president of the Liberal Party, reminded everybody in 2002, into “thousands of nuclear warheads”. It is an eventuality to chill the hearts of even the most bellicose PLA Generals marinated in tales of excesses, such as the Nanjing massacre, by Imperial Japanese forces during the Second World War. It is a visceral Chinese fear of Japan that India needs to psychologically unsettle Beijing. To this end, playing up the prospective collaboration with Japan in nuclear, space, and military high technology fields, and engaging in more frequent military exercises with the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, helps.

It is time to play hardball because that is what China does. Delhi so far has neither shown the foresight nor the stomach for it. Nevertheless, India has triggered concern in Beijing by its initiative in consolidating the Buddhist nations and peoples at the Global Buddhist Conference against Tibet’s oppression. Delhi should now ramp up its security ties with Taiwan by immediately rescheduling a visit by Dong Kuo-yu, Adviser to the Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou that was planned for mid-October but abruptly cancelled by MEA, arm Vietnam and Indonesia with the Brahmos cruise missile that can later be replaced by the nuclear warheaded version, and begin diplomatically to equate “genuine autonomy” for Tibet with Chinese claims on Arunachal Pradesh. The collective security scheme with Japan and the US, that Australia is keen to be part of, will, moreover, reassure ASEAN and firm up an Asian consensus that a China, strategically and militarily subdued by whatever means, is the best bet for long term peace, security, and stability in the continent.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’, Friday, December 16, 2011 at www.newsbuzz.com]

 

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, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

A Big Deal

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The eventually twenty-two billion dollar (not ten billion dollar, as has been reported) deal for the Medium-range Multi-Role Combat Aircraft could become a Bofors-like political liability for the ruling Congress Party, if it fails to get it right. Inordinate amounts of political capital and financial resources, will be invested in it, and the Indian taxpayer has a right to expect that the numerous contracts will be unlike any contracts signed by the Indian government in the past. Enough Indian money has been spent without any enduring benefits for India, for the people to be wary of the Defence Ministry’s Price Negotiation Committee (PNC) that will be talking soon with the vendors of the shortlisted aircraft – Rafale and Eurofighter. The PNCs constituted for earlier deals emptied the treasury but settled meagrely for only licensed manufacture of planes. This sort of deal will be unacceptable hereon. Especially because the high stakes for Dassault and EADS means India can ask for anything and get it.

The trouble is the status quo serves the interests of all concerned very well. The ruling Party at the centre – Congress Party, owing to its long years in power, has signed most of the major military acquisitions deals to-date — and its leaders, invariably gain from commissions reportedly channelled their way. The Indian Air Force, which has scrupulously shied away from developing in-house aircraft design and development skills and competences, values only imported aircraft because, the Service brass claim, these are top-of-the-line and reliable. Consequently, it has gone out of its way to stymie indigenous aircraft development programmes. It deliberately killed the Marut-HF-24 Mark II – successor to the Mark I version, widely hailed as aerodynamically the best combat aircraft of its time. Created by Kurt Tank, the great German designer of Focke-Wulfe warplanes for the Luftwaffe in the Second World War and hired by Jawaharlal Nehru, the HF-24 programme, had it been nursed to maturity, would have resulted in a flourishing aircraft industry in the country by the 1970s. Learning nothing from that episode, the IAF today is delaying the series production of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft. This is so, notwithstanding the fact that, avionics-wise, the LCA is at the 4.5 generation level, more capable than any fighter aircraft currently in the IAF inventory. Supposed to gain from technology transferred to it, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. is, like the country, a classic under-achiever. Restricting itself to “production engineering”, HAL capability has calcified at the Meccano-type skill sets-level. Meccano was a toy assembly kit available up until the Sixties for seven to ten year olds who, following simple instructions, could screw this part on to that one and come up with a crane or some such thing! Meccano no more made the child an engineer than license manufacturing makes HAL an aircraft design and development Company. But, dog in manger-like, it is permitted to veto technology being transferred by foreign suppliers to private sector Companies that are in far better position speedily to absorb and utilize the advanced technologies, something HAL is manifestly incapable of doing. With all the players in the game eager to retain the present arrangement, it is little wonder that India gets shafted every time. The onus is on Defence Minister A.K. Antony to ensure that this doesn’t happen ever again and to instruct the PNC accordingly.

The criteria to judge if the MMRCA deal serves the national interest will be, firstly, whether Indian industry obtains, without hitch, source codes (millions of lines of software) for every aspect of the aircraft as also comprehensive flight control laws. Secondly, the contract ensures that, as a result of the deal, India is hoisted into the cutting edge technology ranks and seeds a globally competitive aerospace industry in the country. And, lastly, India secures access to critical technology outside the combat aircraft field. Contracts will have to be so written as to index large payments against the meeting of technology transfer benchmarks, such as the full and timely delivery of the codes and the laws, and the entrenching of advanced technologies in the country.

By way of offsets, both Dassault peddling Rafale and EADS the Eurofighter, have promised to set up R&D centres here. Their research agendas will have to be competitively fixed, systems of oversight established, and the extent of Indian contributions to the ongoing production and service support of Rafale/Eurofighter for global sales and to any future manned and unmanned aircraft projects, pre-determined. Dassault and EADS are both willing to part with single crystal blade turbine technology (which allows the aircraft engine to generate more power at higher temperatures), but collaboration in developing the follow-on ceramic turbine blade technology for even more enhanced aircraft engine performance, will have to be insisted upon. Manned fighter aircraft, as this analyst has repeatedly stressed, are becoming obsolete. In order to firm up future air warfare options, direct Indian involvement in the advanced Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles being developed by Dassault in its Neuron project and EADS in its Barracuda programme is a price both vendors would happily pay to engage India in other high-technology ventures the French Company and the European consortium are exploring.

Rafale seems to have an edge, owing to its Active Electronically Scanned Array radar for air-to-air missions, whereas EADS has it only as prototype. This is fortuitous in a way because France can, as an inalienable part of the MMRCA deal, be persuaded to allow Indian nuclear weapons designers access to its Megajoule inertial confinement nuclear fusion facility near Bordeaux, to help rectify the thermonuclear weapon design that proved a dud on testing in 1998, and to work on other fusion weapons configurations.  This will not obviate the need for physical tests in the future, but inspire some confidence in the Indian strategic nuclear arsenal in the interim. Such access is a must and it can be extracted, howsoever painfully, from Paris now when it is really desperate to keep a combat aircraft design and development capability alive in France. It is an opportunity not to be missed.

[Published in my ‘Security Wise’ column in ‘Asian Age’ and in ‘Deccan Chronicle’, Thursday, Nov 8, 2011 and available at www.asianage.com/columnists/big-deal ]

Posted in Defence Industry, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Military Acquisitions, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Relations with the US & West | 4 Comments

Japanese slow-burn on China, even the US

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

In a small group interaction at the USI this afternoon with a Japanese team led by retired Lieutenant General Noboru Yamaguchi, former head of Training and Doctrine-development Command of the Japanese Self-Defence Forces, and presently Director, Center for National Security & Crisis Management, National Defense University of Japan, the Japanese team surprised us with an unvarnished take on the US and China and the kind of apprehesions the latter generates among the Japanese. Among other things, General Yamaguchi, for example, said that the US swings between extremes on China — “panda hugger” to “dragon slayer” and one “cannot put too much weight on US’current policy” whichever it is. Regarding China, he said Japan “does not trust” Beijing’s nuclear ‘No first use’ promises, and that “good economic relations” alone “cannot guarantee peace”. And that countries like India and Japan should work together  to “ïnfluence” China into moderating its policy. One of the ways of moderating Chinese assertiveness, the General said, was military cooperation and, curiously, referred in this respect to the use during the Second World War by the Imperial Japanese Forces of “land-based air” to sink two Royal Navy warships near South China Sea!

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

Faint Hearts and Pre-emptive Kowtow

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

For a brief moment it seemed the Indian Government had sprouted a spine, shown strategic imagination, when it became known that the Ministry of External Affairs had cancelled the forthcoming border talks with China. One had hoped that this was because Premier Wen Jiabao had registered one slight too many at the East Asia Summit in Bali for even the insult-proof Manmohan Singh to stomach. But the truth emerged and it was familiar stuff. Far from telling the Chinese where to get off, the MEA, it turned out, was its usual self — all shaky hands, buckling knees, and apologetic, backpedalling furiously to keep the border talks and the Annual Defence Dialogue scheduled for December 8-9 on track, in the wake of the storm in the Chinese teacup created by the all-world Buddhist Meet in Delhi. This conclave was an inspired Intelligence project, surprisingly approved by MEA, to light a fire under the Tibet issue, mobilize the Buddhist peoples and nations of the world against China and its sustained attempts to extinguish Tibetan-Lamaist religious traditions and culture, and to publicize Chinese efforts at violently suppressing the Tibetan people.

The trouble is the Indian Government is easily spooked by China, enough any way to get it to do a preemptive kowtow, which is what happened. In the real world though, it is China that is facing a difficult situation, with most countries on its periphery pushing back, and relying on overlapping strategic partnerships and treaty alliances with regional powerhouses, like India if only it can muster the wit and the will to act the part, and outside great powers, such as the United States, to restrict Beijing’s ambition and expansive policies. Delhi is ambivalent — building up military muscle but also continuing with its traditional approach that is full of fear and so risk-averse, it has made an art form of faint-heartedness and back-flips. Earlier this year, Delhi negatived a strategic “trialogue” with the United States and Japan so as not to upset Beijing. The annual Malabar exercise with the US Navy with Australian naval ships also participating sent shivers of apprehension down Delhi’s back because it feared an adverse Chinese reaction. There is, it seems, not a thing India can do or has in mind to do in the military and foreign policy spheres that China cannot veto. This is willfully to dance to Beijing’s tune.

The question to ask is what is India getting out of the border talks? Nothing has transpired to date as a result of the interminable rounds of talks, earlier in the Joint Working Group and, in the past three years or so, between the National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and the Chinese representative Dai Bingguo. So it’s absence is no great loss. And why, pray, the hullaballoo regarding the Defence Dialogue? Can anything remotely substantive be expected from a “dialogue” involving the Indian Defence Secretary, Shashikant Sharma, a generalist civil servant, and a Chinese combat pilot and PLA Deputy Chief of General Staff, General Ma Xiaotian? What will they talk about? There’s always the weather. I mean, shouldn’t this be a conversation between like military officers, Ma going up against, say, the Head of Integrated Defence Staff, presently, Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha? This would make more sense if the intention, for instance, is to discuss, in some technical depth, ways to maintain peace on the border and to alight on rules of engagement on the high seas and in the air.

Our over-eagerness to jaw-jaw is counterproductive. It is clear from its negotiating strategy that Beijing believes it is advantageous to keep the border issue stoked by hostile actions in the field and by enlarging its claims (Tawang as “southern Tibet”), and leverage Delhi’s desire for closure on the border issue to extract terms adverse to Indian interests. Indian impatience is Beijing’s asset. In the event, it would be advisable if Delhi turned the tables by adopting Chinese negotiating principles and strategy: Postpone talks and official interaction of any kind with Beijing at the slightest hint or even suspicion of provocation, behave as if any delays in resolving the border dispute will only benefit India, and, most importantly, re-frame India’s position on Tibet.

Delhi should point out that India’s acceptance of Chinese “sovereignty” has always been conditional on the Tibet Region enjoying genuine autonomy, and because that is manifestly not the case, there is no Indian obligation to accept China’s presence in Tibet as other than illegitimate, leave alone negotiate the India-Tibet border with it. This is not hair-splitting – though splitting hairs is the stuff of diplomacy, but a legally-maintainable position. For too long, Beijing has been given a free pass, courtesy an Indian Government wearing a defeatist attitude on its sleeve. In any major war, the Indian military believes that the three Services can more than adequately take care of business. But such confident military posturing cannot piggyback on a political policy reeking of appeasement. Whatever logic has so far animated Indian policy, it has not nudged China a centimeter toward conciliation. If anything, it has made Beijing more obstreperous and inclined to deliberately show India down.

India has been a punching bag for China. Should it remain one in the future as well?  Delhi cannot allow Beijing to sustain various insurrectionary Movements in the North-East without responding in kind. Clandestine training, arming, and assisting highly motivated young Tibetans from the exile community to wage a “liberation war”, would be an apt riposte. It will, moreover, be in line with the setting up in India of the International Buddhist Confederation to pressure China in Asia and at the United Nations. A tit-for-tat policy will also require India to nuclear missile arm Vietnam, as a belated counter to Beijing’s equipping Pakistan with nuclear weapons and missiles. It will compel the Chinese leadership to rethink the not inconsiderable wages of belligerence and induce more respect for India. To be immobilized by one’s fears or, worse, by one’s supposed weaknesses, is a policy liability that cannot easily be overcome. Whence India’s “Tibet card”, “Vietnam card”, and all the other cards, remain un-played.

[Published as “A Tit for Tat with China” in the ‘New Indian Express’, Dec 2, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/A-tit-for-tat-with-china/339104.html ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West | Leave a comment

GOI’s noodle spine

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

At the recent USI National Security Seminar, Nov 17-18, on ‘Peace & Stability in Asia-Pacific Region: Assessment of the Security Architecture’, retired Taiwanese Major General Liu Kuang-Chung informed me that a visit to Delhi scheduled for end-October by Dong Kuo-Yu, Adviser to Taiwan President Ma, was cancelled virtually at the last minute, perhaps for fear of  adverse Beijing reaction. Another  example of the Indian government’s noodle-spined approach to China. 

Posted in India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy | 1 Comment