Expeditionary future

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The closely packed state visits by three heads of governments in South Asia and the extended region – Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam, and Thein Sein of Myanmar signified something the Manmohan Singh government did not think through, and the Indian Armed Services may not have bargained for. India has made a military commitment requiring insertion of Indian boots on the ground, IAF planes in foreign airspace, and naval presence afloat and ashore in distant waters. The agreements signed with these three countries will, at once, increase manifold India’s involvement and  profile in the arc “Central South Asia” (as Karzai called it)-South China Sea by way of the Irrawaddy, thereby establishing India as the “go to” option for regional countries feeling insecure and facing an uncertain future.

These countries, it is clear, want to leverage India’s friendly heft for their own purposes. By forging security links with India, Karzai means to derail Pakistan’s plans for “strategic depth” at Afghanistan’s expense and deter it from meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, courtesy the Afghan Taliban and Jalaluddin Haqqani’s Waziri tribal group controlled by the ISI. Vietnam means to exploit the oil and gas-rich seabed of South China Sea claimed by several countries and principally disputed with China, which has made an expansive claim based, it says, on “history”, not international maritime law and encompassing the contested Spratly and Paracel Island chains and the oil and gas fields. With the powerful Chinese South Seas Fleet berthed at Sanya on Hainan Island at the northern end of South China Sea, Vietnam feels exposed and threatened, and sees an India with an energy stake in Vietnam’s offshore oil as an effective counterpoise to China. Likewise, the Thein Sein regime in Yangon,  having discovered that China’s  economic stranglehold on the country doesn’t serve Myanmar’s national interests is seeking the counter-balancing involvement of India in its national life. After all the well-being of Afghanistan, Vietnam and Myanmar is central to Indian security.

In each instance, the visiting head of state has felt encouraged and reassured because of the promise, such as the one publicly made by the External Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna to Karzai that Delhi will, at all times, “be guided” by the beneficiary state in how and when Indian material support and assistance is used by the recipient state, which is the right attitude for Delhi to adopt. This will require Delhi to be prepared to militarily deliver should Kabul, Hanoi, and Yangon demand a more direct Indian role in stiffening up their defensive military stance vis a vis China or, as in  Afghanistan’s case, require deployment of regular Indian military units , which may be more imminent than the Indian government has so far let on.

The new India-Afghanistan security cooperation accord and changes in US tactics of targeting the Taliban-Haqqanis with drones in cities like Miran Shah where the militants have taken refuge undeterred by concerns about collateral damage, will make Pakistani ISI all the more determined to make life difficult for India. Terrorist attacks will be marshalled against Indian diplomatic presence and Indian PSUs and private sector Companies building roads, constructing Parliament House in Kabul, involved in other development works, and entering the mineral and oil extraction sectors, with Afghan reserves of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium valued in excess of $1 trillion. A point will soon be reached when the ITBP or Industrial Security Force units posted there will prove inadequate for protecting the enhanced Indian economic interests in Afghanistan, and the deployment of Indian armed forces will become imperative. The army can muster a Division-sized force at relatively short notice. In early 2003, it may be recalled, an infantry Division (ex-Lucknow) all but embarked on the defence of Kirkuk in Iraq at President George W Bush’s request.  Equally, the Indian Air Force can, with few hiccups, station half a dozen of its strike aircraft at Bagram base outside Kabul, for contingent use.

The copious references to the “strategic partnership” in the Indo-Vietnamese Joint Statement and its playing up of India’s role in developing that country’s South China Sea oil deposits, in effect, defines the Indian navy’s prospective roles in upholding the principle, as Defence Minister, A.K. Antony stated of free passage in the oceanic highway, but also in safeguarding India’s oil assets in South China Sea. Hanoi has apparently concluded that according Indian navy the rights to use the port of Nha Trang on Vietnam’s South China Sea coastline, will help firm up its claim over the disputed sea territory. But, to make the right sort of impression India will have to have at least a naval flotilla presence out of Nha Trang, with ships in it rotating from their home bases in the Andaman Command, the Western Fleet in Mumbai, and the Eastern Fleet in Vishakapatnam. South China Sea will provide the Indian navy what it has never had – a challenging milieu to project power it has so far mostly talked about. It will also afford it the occasion and opportunity to blood its officers and men in tough situations when crises and live fire engagements could happen at any time. The analogue of this is the Indian army’s continuous involvement in counter-insurgency campaigns since 1947 in the North-East and Jammu & Kashmir, which has resulted in its being blooded and tested in action, and emerging as amongst the sharpest, most effective and battle-ready land forces anywhere.

Military leaders actually have to play catch-up because the government has already transitioned into an expeditionary policy mode with Antony recently informing the naval brass that the navy’s “mandate” is to be “net security provider for island nations in the Indian Ocean region.” Drawing Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Myanmar inside the Indian security perimeter is a mere extension of that mandate. Of course, tackling China and limiting its influence will be a difficult task, but one that will be the making of the Indian military as a meaningful force for peace and stability in 21st Century Asia.

[Published as “India must show muscle”, lead op-ed page article, ‘The New Indian Express’, Oct 21, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/India-must-show-muscle/325427.html ]

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, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | Leave a comment

Myanmar-India

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

India has finally woken, a bit late in the day, to Chinese advances in Myanmar. Like, in many other areas, the Indian govt rushes into a stance prompted by “political correctness” — in this case of human rights violations and the incarceration of Aung san su kyi, before realizing that the costs India has had to pay for thus alienating the military junta in Yangbon were too heavy to bear in terms of the expanded Chinese role and presence in that country — something simply unacceptable from India’s strategic and regional perspectives. Hopefully, we can recover lost ground by cashing in on the traditional enmity with China and begin taking the first substantive steps to elbowing out the Chinese from that country.

Posted in India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 3 Comments

Indian armed forces have China Syndrome

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Over the years, the Indian Armed Services have become more and more like the Indian government – cautious, defensive, incremental in thought and action, and risk-averse when it comes to China, an adversary that’s, perhaps, better endowed, if not more competent in fighting wars. Willingness to tangle with an equal or superior foe is the measure by which would-be great powers are judged; it is also a reasonable criterion for the citizenry to gauge whether the country, in fact, has secured military value and muscle for the vast monies expended on national defence. Except, as soon as China heaves into view our military leadership, much like the Indian government, freezes up, its reluctance reflecting less the actual correlation of forces than a deep down conviction that it cannot cope. This Establishment attitude is everywhere, reflected most recently in former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra on a weekend television show saying point blank that India should do nothing by way of riling China until it is economically in a position to offer resistance, which is a recipe essentially to do nothing.

The Army Chief, General V.K. Singh, has talked forthrightly of Chinese violations of the disputed border but, like his predecessors, done precious little to rid the army of its Pakistan fixation and transform it into a land force capable of taking the fight to the Chinese on the Tibetan plateau. To crow about two Mountain Divisions and additional two Divisions under raising as meaningful offensive warfare capability in the Himalayas, is misleading, as these constitute a force that is neither large enough, nor potent enough, to do more than beef up the defensive line 40-50 miles behind the Line of Actual Control, which pre-positioning ends up ceding this wide belt of border land to China before the hostilities even begin. The Indian Air Force, likewise, is air defence minded in the eastern theatre, despite its having the largest complement of Tezpur and Chabua-based Su-30MKI, arguably the best combat and strike aircraft flying bar the F-22 Raptor, that can, if offensively deployed, keep the Chinese PLA on tenterhooks.

But whatever the army and air force dispositions, the navy is at the sharp end of imminent military confrontations, which are bound increasingly to determine the nature of the Sino-Indian strategic equilibrium obtaining in the future. But the Indian Navy seems to be in no frame of mind proactively to protect national interests in the South China Sea, or anywhere else that Chinese ships may venture. This much may be gleaned from the op-ed piece by retired Admiral Arun Prakash (“Where are our ships bound?”, Indian Express, Oct 1, 2011). Astonishingly, Prakash blames ONGC Videsh Ltd and MEA for  trying to precipitate a confrontation in the South China Sea which, the former naval Chief deems too distant for Delhi to “take a stand on principle or adopt an assertive posture vis a vis China” particularly in the absence of “a viable trans-national capability”. His reference is to the mid-July challenge by a suspected Chinese naval vessel to the amphibious assault ship INS Airavat steaming north from Nha Trang to Haiphong that went unreported until, possibly Hanoi, mindful of the fact that an aggressive China has the effect of leaving the Indian government and the Armed Services in a tizzy, sought to test Delhi’s resolve to help protect India’s energy stake in the South China Sea and Vietnam’s “territorial integrity”, by leaking the news of this non-incident to the international press. The Indian Government and MEA’s instincts to run away from a fight with China were forestalled by the then impending, and now underway, state visit of the Vietnamese President, Truong Tan Sang, resulting in surprisingly strong statements supportive of Vietnamese interests by the External Affairs Minister, S.M. Krishna.

The more troubling thing is Admiral Prakash’s implied contention that the Navy, in effect, ought to be allowed to choose its fights. That’s not how it works. Wars are imposed by situation and circumstance or triggered by sustained violation of sovereignty or chance trampling of national interests. The military, navy included, better damn well be prepared for any contingency at all times. There is no excuse for trying to escape a fight by pleading logistical void and absence of wherewithal. Because then the question will be asked: What exactly has the navy, which ballyhoos its strategic mindset as much as it does its blue water capability build-up, been preparing for?

The military’s unwillingness to tangle with China, the only consequential foe India faces, is rooted in a host of reasons, among them the fact that the country is still to get a Service Chief of Staff who calls a spade a shovel, and shakes up the national security establishment by ruthlessly restructuring his Service with the Chinese threat primarily in mind, thereby seeding an operational reorientation of the Indian military as a whole north and eastward – something desperately required if it means to be relevant in the unfolding geostrategics of the extended region and Asia. Dealing with China demands finesse and forcefulness. So far what has been on view is the former, as configured by the ingloriously ambivalent MEA and a little known body of appeasers comprising the ‘China Study Group’. Too much nuance and too little counter-force has resulted in China gaining massive psychological and political advantage, further encouraging it to do as it pleases.

Whatever the Indian military’s level of eagerness or the lack of it to go toe-to-toe with China, it may be prudent to arm on priority basis a bold and plucky Vietnam, that has repeatedly shown it takes no guff from anybody, with everything Hanoi desires, including the nuclearised Brahmos supersonic cruise missile. If we lack the stomach for a fight let’s at least equip a country that does have the guts to take on China. It will keep a worried Chinese South Seas Fleet tied to its Sanya base on Hainan Island because, sure as hell, it won’t be the Indian Navy, which shies away from stressful encounters east of Malacca.

[Published in ‘Ásian Age’ at  www.asianage.com/columnists/indian-armed-forces-have-china-syndrome-410, and ‘Deccan Chronicle’ on Oct 13, 2011]

 

 

 

 

 

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, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 1 Comment

Buying out of trouble

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

A quick Quiz: what’s common about India’s North-East, Kashmir, and Afghanistan? It’s money. The Indian government’s attitude to any insurgency-infected state and, indeed, its solution to ending rebellion and bring distant communities within the Indian fold, is essentially to tempt the “freedom fighters” into getting hooked on easy money. It is a successful strategy. For the guerillas, it is better by far to forego traipsing around in the jungle, hunted like vermin by security forces and no knowing when a bullet gets you. Moreover, after a few years living as outlaws, when the romance has worn off, and the fatigue of living meagrely off the land, of being always on the run, sets in, the insurrectionists give up the ghost, make peace with the Indian state, decide to enter the political process, parley their hard-earned reputation as underground leaders into votes, get elected chief minister, and lo and behold! discover they never had it so good – the state treasury at their disposal to use it for the good of the people or, if they are so inclined, to siphon off the monies into personal accounts. This is preferable to running extortion rackets – the norm of the North-Eastern insurgent groups Ask Lalthanhawla, head of the Manipur Liberation Front and later Chief Minister of Manipur.

Lalthahawla’s example has proved irresistible. Leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom, for instance, too have come in from the cold, and those of other separatist outfits, such as the Isak Swu-Thuingaleng Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, are in the line for rapprochement with the Indian government. What they seek is a face-saving way to re-enter normal life and join the political mainstream.

Kashmir is the oldest of these boondoggles. Political life in that state, as the US Ambassador reported to the State Department, is “as dirty as the Dal Lake” with every “political family” and religio-political group in sight, such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s and Yaseen Mallik’s, prospering by being on the take, and benefitting one way or another from access to public funds. (Thank you, Wikileaks!) There’s something homey, democratically comforting, and richly comic, about the Indian tax-payer, good naturedly or otherwise, subsidising the lifestyles of Kashmiri politicians and separatists alike.

This modus operandi of the Indian state to buy and retain the loyalty of often times cantankerous outlier peoples is, at one level, a mark of political genius. After all, this is how India, a hugely heterogeneous, composite state, cements its nationhood. Except, the lure of easy money to fuel the local politics and sustain the separatist cause become damn good reasons for the beneficiaries to do whatever is necessary to ensure the enormously gainful status quo never ends. Thus, Mallik, Ali Shah Geelani (charged with “money laundering”), and the Mirwaiz, the MGM of Kashmir, for example, dutifully meet visiting Pakistani dignitaries in Delhi, make pro-independence noises, and generally keep the kettle on the boil even as the more mainline parties such as the ruling Abdullahs’ National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party of Mehbooba Mufti talk of reviving the 1953 Constitution. Their potential for mischief is the leverage.

Afghanistan has posed much the same problems to the United States in over a decade of hard fighting and negotiating. When the outgoing Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral “Mike” Mullen lashed out at Pakistan, saying the Haqqani shura was the “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, he was expressing Washington’s frustration with its inability to sift the “good” Taliban from the “bad” Taliban – the measure of goodness determined by which sections among the followers of Mullah Omar and the Haqqani Waziri tribal network are buyable and pliable and, once bought, will stay bought.  Had such amenable Taliban been found – and it was not for want of trying these many years — Washington’s justification for military withdrawal would have seemed more credible. Instead, the departing American military units will carry the taint of defeat and, worse, confirm the widely held belief in the world, that while America jauntily jumps into “bushfire” wars without much prior thought, it lacks the will and the stomach to see the fight to a successful end. It is a bad reputation to lug around, as it will end up costing the United States allies and partners it seeks the next time, as a self-appointed international policeman, it despatches expeditionary forces to fight terrorism, impose democracy, enforce peace and order, or to obtain stability in distant parts of the globe.

In this imbroglio, Pakistan is worst affected. The US has about given up on it, but Beijing is not eager to replace Washington and won’t pick up the yellow man’s burden and become the principal benefactor, patron, and strategic ally of Pakistan as this may exhaust the Chinese treasury before the returns roll in; in other words, that such involvement is simply not worth the dubious honour of being counted as Pakistan’s “all weather friend”. So that country is left by its supposed well-wishers to twist slowly in the wind. But you’d never know of Pakistan’s predicament after hearing their Ministers and Generals talk. The effervescent Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is a revelation. Good looks combined with a keen mind, the gift of eloquence, and an imperturbable nature meant that, whilst recently in America, she used television not just to press home the Pakistani view but to turn the tables on the US. After reminding interviewers that the Taliban are a CIA creation, she rounded on American intelligence. If it is, in fact, as good as its reputation, how come, she asked tartly, the Haqqani-sourced suicide bombers were not apprehended during their longish journey from the badlands of North Waziristan to Kabul, where they struck the US embassy? The head of ISI, Lieutenant General Shuja Ahmed Pasha, on his part, warned of dire consequences if the US dared to attack Pakistan. What tremendous display of brio and offense-mindedness, and that too from a losing position!

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express’, Oct 7, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/Buying-out-of-trouble/320732.html

]

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Posted on October 13, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Curious, how Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang talked of piracy, etc as shared threats — that is the text, but did not mention China as the common danger — which is the sub-text!

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Endless delusion

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Come the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in autumn and there’s India, predictably making the same old pitch for a permanent seat in the Security Council as part of “comprehensive reform” of the UN. As in the past, this year too efforts of the G-4 (Group of Four – India, Brazil, Japan and Germany) to obtain permanent membership,  have tanked.  This despite a desperate need for re-organizing the UN to facilitate  graceful stepping-down of legacy great powers, Britain and France, and their replacement by new powers in the offing, among them India.

The G-4 aspirants alas have their separate detractors. Brazil is challenged by Argentina and Japan is vetoed by China. And then there’s India, whose candidature is at once the most credible and the least likely to fructify.  This anomalous situation is because India has all along approached the United Nations as a supplicant, one afflicted, moreover, with the entitlement syndrome. It is not clear on what basis India feels entitled to secure a permanent seat, considering its policy reach is confined to South Asia, it has botched the job of pacifying its neighbours, and hasn’t done anything of note in the international arena since leading the charge on de-colonisation in the 1950s.

The criteria of great powers shared by the five permanent members – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China – are, firstly, that they full-fledged nuclear weapons states with diverse nuclear and thermonuclear armaments of verified yields and reliable performance that can reach any point on earth. Secondly, they are managers of the global order, using coercive diplomacy, failing which deploying military forces to maintain regional balance and global stability. A third factor is that these  states are also the main pillars of the international system of trade and commerce. And finally, there’s a decisive quality to their foreign-military policies that is missing from India’s thinking – their belief in the efficacy of hard power.

Preparing to beat up on small countries, such as Pakistan, has actually hurt India’s reputation. If a country cannot distinguish the strategically consequential China threat from small time danger on its western flank, can it be relied on to make reasonable judgements on issues of war and peace that Security Council permanent members are called upon to do? Worse, India’s Pakistan fixation has permitted China, as an “all weather friend”, to intrude into South Asian affairs and shrink India’s natural sphere of influence. With India’s preening posture against Pakistan turning into a “tail between legs” attitude once China enters the scene, India’s image in the world has taken a hit. Pakistan may not have a veto but its patron, China, does and to date Beijing has exercised it cleverly. The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently asked India to disengage from the G-4 effort as it involves Japan. Of course, should Delhi be foolish enough to follow the Chinese advice, Beijing will next stop India’s entry on the pretext of the unresolved Kashmir dispute. The hard-headed men leading China are not the self-abnegating kind and repeat the mistake made in the 1950s when, rather than grabbing Chiangkaishek-led Taiwan’s seat in the Security Council offered to India by the United States, Jawaharlal Nehru pleaded for China to be seated instead! In the event, India is in a losing position no matter what Delhi does. The obvious strategy of blunting Pakistan’s fear by reorienting the Indian military China-wards as a first step to co-opting Islamabad, has not occurred to the Indian government.

To revive India’s international leadership role, the Manmohan Singh regime once again dusted off the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for time-bound nuclear disarmament, which has about as much chance in the real world as a spit ball’s in hell.  But it is in line with the Congress Party government’s mindless strategy of keeping the Indian thermonuclear deterrent unproven, unreliable, and thus permanently on par with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons inventory. Furthermore, the Manmohan Singh regime alienated its strongest backers – the United States, by neither expending political capital to realise a substantive strategic partnership nor coming up with an alternative scheme, and Israel, the source of most of the Indian military’s advanced technology edge, by joining in the call for a sovereign Palestinian state instead of leaving it to the two sides to thrash it out in negotiations, in the manner Delhi would prefer the Kashmir issue to be settled. The result was President Barack Obama rejected a meeting with Manmohan Singh in New York, and Israel is hurt.

To be recognised as a great power, India will have to do what other great powers have done throughout history: Think big, act big, take risks, and  back up its diplomacy with force but only against an equal or bigger country, aggressively consolidate and extend Indian military influence into China’s backyard in the South China Sea and, landwards, in Central Asia, and secure the core wherewithal of hard power, namely, a versatile high-yield thermonuclear arsenal, which will require further testing, and Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles, in the face of American and Chinese pressure. Get the big stick first, talk softly later. An in-your-face attitude is more likely to get India an invitation to join the high table in the UN and elsewhere, than being agreeable. To believe India will attain great power by lesser means is to be delusional. Unfortunately, there is no dearth of deluded persons in Delhi who believe India’s “exceptionalism” is enough.

[published in ‘Asian Age’& ‘Deccan Chronicle’ on Sept 29, 2011, at www.asianage.com/columnists/endless-delusion-899 ]

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

Buying out of trouble

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

A quick Quiz: what’s common about India’s North-East, Kashmir, and Afghanistan? It’s money. The Indian government’s attitude to any insurgency-infected state and, indeed, its solution to ending rebellion and bring distant communities within the Indian fold, is essentially to tempt the “freedom fighters” into getting hooked on easy money. It is a successful strategy. For the guerillas, it is better by far to forego traipsing around in the jungle, hunted like vermin by security forces and no knowing when a bullet gets you. Moreover, after a few years living as outlaws, when the romance has worn off, and the fatigue of living meagrely off the land, of being always on the run, sets in, the insurrectionists give up the ghost, make peace with the Indian state, decide to enter the political process, parley their hard-earned reputation as underground leaders into votes, get elected chief minister, and lo and behold! discover they never had it so good – the state treasury at their disposal to use it for the good of the people or, if they are so inclined, to siphon off the monies into personal accounts. This is preferable to running extortion rackets – the norm of the North-Eastern insurgent groups Ask Lalthanhawla, head of the Manipur Liberation Front and later Chief Minister of Manipur.

     Lalthahawla’s example has proved irresistible. Leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom, for instance, too have come in from the cold, and those of other separatist outfits, such as the Isak Swu-Thuingaleng Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, are in the line for rapprochement with the Indian government. What they seek is a face-saving way to re-enter normal life and join the political mainstream.

     Kashmir is the oldest of these boondoggles. Political life in that state, as the US Ambassador reported to the State Department, is “as dirty as the Dal Lake” with every “political family” and religio-political group in sight, such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s and Yaseen Mallik’s, prospering by being on the take, and benefitting one way or another from access to public funds. (Thank you, Wikileaks!) There’s something homey, democratically comforting, and richly comic, about the Indian tax-payer, good naturedly or otherwise, subsidising the lifestyles of Kashmiri politicians and separatists alike.

     This modus operandi of the Indian state to buy and retain the loyalty of often times cantankerous outlier peoples is, at one level, a mark of political genius. After all, this is how India, a hugely heterogeneous, composite state, cements its nationhood. Except, the lure of easy money to fuel the local politics and sustain the separatist cause become damn good reasons for the beneficiaries to do whatever is necessary to ensure the enormously gainful status quo never ends. Thus, Mallik, Ali Shah Geelani (charged with “money laundering”), and the Mirwaiz, the MGM of Kashmir, for example, dutifully meet visiting Pakistani dignitaries in Delhi, make pro-independence noises, and generally keep the kettle on the boil even as the more mainline parties such as the ruling Abdullahs’ National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party of Mehbooba Mufti talk of reviving the 1953 Constitution. Their potential for mischief is the leverage.

      Afghanistan has posed much the same problems to the United States in over a decade of hard fighting and negotiating. When the outgoing Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral “Mike” Mullen lashed out at Pakistan, saying the Haqqani shura was the “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, he was expressing Washington’s frustration with its inability to sift the “good” Taliban from the “bad” Taliban – the measure of goodness determined by which sections among the followers of Mullah Omar and the Haqqani Waziri tribal network are buyable and pliable and, once bought, will stay bought.  Had such amenable Taliban been found – and it was not for want of trying these many years — Washington’s justification for military withdrawal would have seemed more credible. Instead, the departing American military units will carry the taint of defeat and, worse, confirm the widely held belief in the world, that while America jauntily jumps into “bushfire” wars without much prior thought, it lacks the will and the stomach to see the fight to a successful end. It is a bad reputation to lug around, as it will end up costing the United States allies and partners it seeks the next time, as a self-appointed international policeman, it despatches expeditionary forces to fight terrorism, impose democracy, enforce peace and order, or to obtain stability in distant parts of the globe.

     In this imbroglio, Pakistan is worst affected. The US has about given up on it, but Beijing is not eager to replace Washington and won’t pick up the yellow man’s burden and become the principal benefactor, patron, and strategic ally of Pakistan as this may exhaust the Chinese treasury before the returns roll in; in other words, that such involvement is simply not worth the dubious honour of being counted as Pakistan’s “all weather friend”. So that country is left by its supposed well-wishers to twist slowly in the wind. But you’d never know of Pakistan’s predicament after hearing their Ministers and Generals talk. The effervescent Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is a revelation. Good looks combined with a keen mind, the gift of eloquence, and an imperturbable nature meant that, whilst recently in America, she used television not just to press home the Pakistani view but to turn the tables on the US. After reminding interviewers that the Taliban are a CIA creation, she rounded on American intelligence. If it is, in fact, as good as its reputation, how come, she asked tartly, the Haqqani-sourced suicide bombers were not apprehended during their longish journey from the badlands of North Waziristan to Kabul, where they struck the US embassy? The head of ISI, Lieutenant General Shuja Ahmed Pasha, on his part, warned of dire consequences if the US dared to attack Pakistan. What tremendous display of brio and offense-mindedness, and that too from a losing position!  

[published in ‘New Indian Express’, Oct 7, 2011]

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Posted on October 6, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Heard Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the ORF lecture yesterday. Spoke well. He identified the region Afghanistan is in, correctly, as “Central South Asia”.  The strategic partnership he has inked with India, it’s clear, is leverage he means to use to extract concessions from Pakistan, a country he called Afghanistan’s “twin brother”. This treaty, at once, affords Pakistan opportunity and poses it danger. With Afghanistan relying on India not just for training all its security — military, police, and intelligence — forces, but also for arms and ammunition and, possibly in the future, more high value military hardware, Islamabad faces the prospect of an “Indianised” Afghan armed forces to its west. This is the stick. The carrot to get the Pak army generals to push the Afghan Taliban towards a negotiated settlement with Kabul is to play on their fear that the Karzai regime will move even more India-ward.

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India’s first line of defence

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

Nations establish moral ascendency over other nations only by victory in war. Shrugging off the possibility of American nuclear attack, China crossed the Yalu River in October 1950 and almost brought the United States led-forces in Korea to their knees, rubbed India’s nose in the dust in 1962, and in 1969 militarily stiff-armed the Soviet Union on the Ussuri River. Elsewhere in Asia there is Vietnam, a much smaller but a truly extraordinary military power with an unmatched record of serially beating up on intruders and interventionists. It bloodied China every time it ventured south over two thousand years of its history. In more recent times, Vietnam ended France’s imperial pretensions at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, kicked the Americans out and in 1979, even as its regular Divisions were held in reserve, its militia of  hastily armed and trained villagers in the border provinces proved more than adequate to kill 25,000 and injure another 75,000 out of an invading force of 100,000 Peoples Liberation Army troops Chairman Deng Xiaoping had ordered into action to teach Vietnam “a lesson”, much as Maozedong had launched his “self-defence counter-attack” against India.

Except, it was the Chinese who were taught a brutal lesson in offensive guerrilla resistance and faced humiliation they cannot easily forget. The thrashing China received at the hands of the Vietnamese 32 years ago has resulted in respect Beijing shows Hanoi that Delhi can only dream of. Thus, in the latest clash last month in the South China Sea over the disputed Spratly island chain, after Chinese ships cut the cables of a PetroVietnam oil exploration vessel, Vietnam responded with strong words backed by naval live fire drills. Fearing the situation was sliding into loss of face, this time on sea, the Chinese quickly asked for talks.

But Vietnam is no brash belligerent ready to take on the next bully on the block. While prepared to fight any comer in defence of its territory and interests, it is mindful of its military weaknesses where China is concerned, one of which is its seaward flank fronting on Hainan Island complete with the Sanya nuclear submarine base, hosting the most versatile of China’s three fleets — the South Sea Fleet. During the 1979 Chinese invasion, Vietnam faced possible Chinese naval attacks which Beijing was deterred from mounting because the Soviet Union, then at loggerheads with China, sent in four warships into the South China Sea. Vietnam has ever since viewed a meaty presence of an out-of-area friendly naval power in waters offshore as an insurance to ward of the dangers from the Chinese Navy.  Russia today, much reduced, cannot perform that role, and the United States is unreliable. Hanoi’s hopes, therefore, rest on the Indian government mustering the strategic will to fill the void. A Vietnamese military delegation headed by its Naval Chief, Vice Admiral Ngyuyen Van Hien, visiting Delhi a fortnight back, explored ways of developing mutual confidence and trust. For a start, they sought training for its crews – that the Russians had previously trained obviously not to the Vietnam Navy’s satisfaction, for the Kilo-class submarines Vietnam is acquiring from Moscow. Should China act up, a strong Vietnamese submarine arm will be a meaningful counter to Chinese warships mucking about offensively around the Spratlys.

The more significant thing was Van Hien’s offer of the port of Nha Trang on the South China Sea for Indian Navy’s use. Nha Trang shares virtually the same longitude as the Sanya base on Hainan but, Latitude-wise, is located a few degrees south. An Indian naval flotilla voyaging frequently between the Andamans and Nha Trang, and sustained by a basing and provisioning arrangement on the Central Vietnamese coast, will amount to a near permanent Indian presence in the South China Sea, signalling Indian intent and forward positioning that can screw up the Chinese naval and strategic calculus, and push Beijing planners, for once, onto the back foot. At a minimum, it will be an analogue of the sizeable Chinese para-military (Peoples Armed Police) presence in the Gilgit and Baltistan regions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And, it will aggravate China’s offshore situation already roiled by the US Navy’s continued loitering in this area contested, other than Vietnam and China, by Malaysia and Brunei.

As always, however, there’s a glitch. Even though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon are reportedly for an Indian naval presence in the Vietnamese seas and want India to be a staunch strategic partner of Vietnam, the until recently Defence Secretary, Pradeep Kumar, was pressing the brakes. Fuelling the innate over-caution of his minister, A.K. Antony, he argued that such a stance would needlessly “provoke” the Chinese and, therefore, is avoidable. It is remarkable characteristic of the dysfunctional Indian system that despite the PM’s and the NSA’s support for this initiative, a Defence Ministry bureaucrat can so easily gum up the works. Hopefully Kumar, the latest in a long line of military ignoramuses and strategically inaction-minded Defence Secretaries, will be succeeded by someone a bit more on the ball.

Tit-for-tat is something Beijing appreciates better than the apologetic do-nothing tone of statements on China usually emanating from the Ministry of External Affairs and the generalist Defence Ministry civil servants. The Indian government should long ago have responded to the nuclear missile-arming of Pakistan by China by equipping Vietnam with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles and the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, as I have been advocating the past 15 years. The fact that the Indian government has not done this and, indeed, not accorded top priority to militarily advantaging Vietnam in every possible way, indicates the essential infirmity in India‘s strategic thinking. China has used Pakistan to try and contain India to the subcontinent. Time India returned the compliment and cooperated with Vietnam, which does not shrink from a fight, to contain China to its immediate waters. To act on the basis that Vietnam constitutes India’s first line of defence is long overdue. It will ensure, among other things, that the bulked-up Chinese Navy can be bottled up well east of the Malacca Straits.

[Published as “Good morning, ‘Nam” in ‘The Asian Age’& ‘The Deccan Chronicle”, July 7, 2011 at www.asianage.com/columnists/good-morning-nam–604 ]

Posted in Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 1 Comment

People’s visceral antipathy

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Bharat Karnad

The everyday experience of the average citizen is that he faces the “pay up the bribe or wait forever/face-the-music” situations at every turn. In this milieu of an exasperated and beaten citizenry, it is surprising that an Anna Hazare has taken so long to emerge. In any event, the common man’s visceral antipathy towards the petty government officials conflated with the mega-scandals engineered by those in the highest echelons of government he hears about, is powering the Jan Lokpal Movement. Aiming to end the entrenched system of  extortion, commission-mongering, and plunder of public monies, and the nexus between rent-seeking politicians and armies of facilitator officials, it has drawn the masses – and not just the middle class – who have cottoned on to Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption cause, at a minimum, to vent their anger, frustration, and disgust.

The Jan Lokpal Movement has gained traction, it must be noted, despite considerable criticism by, among others, certain Dalit intellectuals who have damned it as an upper caste phenomenon, presumably because they believe Dalits neither face corruption nor suffer its impact, and the two Roys — Arundhati, the “Cadillac Communist” who, true to her mischievous tendencies, has sniffed out a conspiracy involving the RSS and the corporates she claims is propelling this Movement, and the other, Aruna, whose alternative draft Bill is proving a god send for a beleaguered Manmohan Singh government, which is clutching at straws to save face and deny Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill a free run in Parliament.

If the Dalit critics and Arundhati are too outré to merit serious attention, the third, Establishment, view represented by Aruna Roy and seconded by eminent lawyers and newspaper editors, is offering a contest. Anna Hazare’s demand that his draft bypass “parliamentary due process” and be sent directly to Parliament for debate amounts, this view maintains, to making laws on the street.  But parliamentary convention does not bar side-stepping the Standing Committee of Parliament in extraordinary circumstances. The problem for the government is that the size of the crowds rallying round the Anna banner, as a measure of the public support for the Jan Lokpal Bill, is only increasing and, worse, fasting is telling on Anna Hazare’s health. In this context, the government responded not with conciliatory measures but brinksmanship. While agreeing to have the Standing Committee of Parliament consider the Jan Lokpal draft, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear he wouldn’t fast-track its passage through to parliamentary discussion around the August 30 deadline announced by Anna Hazare. Clearly, the government hoped that Team Anna’s resolve to stay put will erode for fear of Anna’s health status plummeting before insurmountable public pressure compels the government and Parliament to acquiesce in a stronger Lokpal Bill than the Congress party would prefer. This is a dangerous political game Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his advisers have embarked upon. His government will pay dearly for it should things go wrong, as they well might.

It is apparent the Establishment, for obvious reasons, is loath to accept a powerful Lokpal institution, notwithstanding the quite astounding economic benefits that could accrue to the country from a corruption free system. According to a detailed calculation by Ashish Puntambekar, Project Designer of the (private sector venture) Indian Education Megaproject, the windfall to the country from a transparent investment regime will triple Foreign Direct Investment to $ 75 billion by 2016 and “catalyze” $1.7 trillion in infrastructure funding. This, in turn, will have an investment multiplier effect on the Indian economy of $5.1 trillion by 2025, resulting in a three-fold increase in the  national Gross Domestic Product to $4.5 trillion within 15 years. One would have imagined that an economist Prime Minister trumpeting the need for 9% growth and fully aware of the stupendous economic gains from it, would lead the charge on obtaining an unsparing and comprehensively cleansing-capable Lokpal Bill. Instead, Manmohan Singh seems determined to de-fang Hazare’s draft by insisting it run the gauntlet of the Standing Committee, where it will be subjected to the tender ministrations of its members, among them paragons of incorruptibility such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh.

That the nominated Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, more a party apparatchik than economist,  wants a weak and pliable Lokpal and will do whatever is necessary to get one, points to the extraordinarily huge stake in terms of pelf and patronage the Congress party in particular and the political class in general have relied on to consolidate their hold on power.  Whence its own weak Bill crafted by Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram based on the principle that bureaucrats are answerable only to the government. Thus, the lower bureaucracy that the people most come in contact with on a daily basis, for example, is out of its ambit. Other designed weaknesses in this Bill ensure that for the Bribe-takers Inc at local, state and central government levels, it is business-as-usual.

An altogether different principle is the foundational premise for the Right to Public Service Act 2011 promulgated by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar – a piece of legislation based on a similar law earlier implemented by the Bharatiya Janata party government in Madhya Pradesh. These innovative anti-corruption laws expressly make government servants accountable to the people and hold them responsible for non-delivery or delayed delivery of designated government services, a principle encompassed in Team Anna demand for a people’s charter from each central government Ministry. Is it just coincidence that the main opposition National Democratic Alliance governments in both these states have alighted on such novel schemes to curb corruption even as Congress party governments at the centre and in various states seem bereft of bright ideas?

Whatever the immediate prospects of Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill, the fact is the Indian people have reached the limits of tolerance for corruption, and a genuinely independent and powerful Lokpal exclusively controlling the Central Vigilance Commission and the graft investigation cell of the Central Bureau of Investigation, cannot long be postponed. But there’s one aspect of Anna Hazare’s agenda that’s troubling.  Buoyed by the unexpectedly large and sustained  country-wide public  support for his campaign, he has talked of extending his fight against corruption to also reforming the agricultural and tribal land acquisition norms he claims exclusively benefit industrialists, and righting the educational system he avers is short-changing children, etc. While corruption is a universal affliction prompting mass activism, the other issues have limited general appeal and, if conjoined to his successful anti-corruption actions, may end up running the former into the ground and blunting the latter.

[Published in ‘The New Indian Express’, Aug 26, 2011, at http://expressbuzz/op-ed/opinion/people’s-visceral-antipathy/307600.html

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