Security Wise

Why China is doing what it is doing and Delhi is doing little

Posted on May 25, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

[An Indian soldier stopping a PLA soldier — a mobile pic hurriedly snapped]

The Press reported that on Saturday May 23 the Army Chief, MM Naravane, briefed Defence Minister Rajnath Singh about the state of affairs in the Ladakh sector of the Line of Actual Control he visited in the days previous. That the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat attended this briefing suggests the situation is more worrisome than the army has let on.

Indeed in a short interview carried by Indian Express May 14, (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/army-chief-mm-naravane-downplays-india-china-border-skirmishes-in-ladakh-and-sikkim/) Naravane was complacent, pooh-poohing the violently intrusive tack the PLA has taken in asserting China’s territorial rights to the detriment of India’s claims. “All such incidents are managed by established mechanisms where-in local formations from both sides resolve issues mutually as per established protocols and strategic guidelines given by the PM after the Wuhan and Mallaparam summits,” he averred. He clarified, helpfully, that such confrontations arise due to the unresolved “differing perceptions of the alignment of boundaries”. To tamp down on speculation regarding the potential for such incidents to snowball into active hostilities, he added that the Chinese aggression in the Pangong Lake region of eastern Ladakh and on the Sikkim border in the Naku La section (on May 5-6) are not “co-related nor do they have any connection with other global or local activities”. In other words, that these were one-off incidences with no connecting policy skin and that the Indian media would do well not to play them up.

However, on May 13 newspapers had reported serious injuries to a Colonel and a Major in the Pangong Tso environs because they were clubbed by the intruding Chinese troops with a new version of a medieval weapon — nail-studded wooden batons — that were being swung freely and with intention to do harm. In short, it was not latest in the series of mildly frictive pushing and shoving matches (as at Dok La in 2017) that have to-date typified Sino-Indian border interactions.

Apparently, General Naravane and the Modi government do not consider the use against senior Indian field officers of long nail-studded wooden clubs by Chinese troops an escalation nor perceive such incidents to be other than of little account because their public statements seem to be drafted by the worst of the panda-huggers in the Ministry of External Affairs. The best possible spin on this is that Army HQrs have imbibed a bit too much of the Wuhan and Mallapuram spirits brewed up by Modi than is good for India’s security, thereby indicating that they cannot be relied upon to call a spade a shovel where China and LAC are concerned, let alone to respond heftily in kind. Not for the forward deployed Indian units then the retaliatory joys of cracking open a few senior Chinese officers’ heads with a policy of ambush and hammer.

A weak-kneed Indian government has long been suspected as infecting the Indian military with its preference for shambolic gestures instead. So, two Su-30s were dispatched from the Leh air base to patrol the skies around the Pangong Lake located at 5,000 metre altitude to do what good is anyone’s guess. Because a Sino-Indian agreement to peacefully manage the LAC bars combat aircraft from flying within 10 kms of it. If an aerial gesture had to be made, why did the PMO (which has to clear any and every proactive measure or meaningful action and reaction on the 3,800 km-long China border) not deploy an armed helicopter or two for low-level flying the PLA troops could see to deter them from physically belabouring Indian soldiers in the cruel manner they did? Helicopters are permitted by the same accord to fly within one kilometre of LAC. In any case, the minimum response to such PLA atrocities should have seen Naravane decree that, along with normal infantry weapons, every Indian soldier be armed with a heavily weighted baseball-type bat with sharp protruding metal spikes he can pull out and smash PLA troopers’ faces with with at the first hint of trouble at close quarters. This, of course, hasn’t happened.

Indeed, Indian army brass have taken great care to mention that these border ruckuses also involve Indian troops, thereby in effect equating Indian soldiers guarding the peace on LAC and the Chinese troops disrupting it, perhaps, because they expect the Indian jawans to stand still while getting whacked in their faces. In fact, the over-conciliatory tone adopted by Naravane with subdued action in train may now be the military’s norm. This even when PLA troops seem at liberty, when not wielding their 5.8 mm QBZ-95 assault rifle, to clobber Indian soldiers with metal spiked clubs. The Indian political and military leadership alike take comfort, ironically, from the short duration of these faceoffs, little realizing that such PLA actions can, when not meant to intimidate, instantly lead to unanticipated but planned follow-up actions. Absent the sort of dense military use infrastructure buildup on the Chinese side of LAC and beyond into Indian territory, the Indian forces, will find such moves hard to resist.

Ponder, for the nonce, the PLA’s modus operandi. The Pangong Lake terrain features 8 hilly features, referred to as “fingers”. The western side of the lakefront is claimed by India, with Delhi stating that the LAC, running alongside these fingers, “co-terminates” with Finger 8. China, on the other hand, asserts its rights to almost all of the lake barring the 45 km lakefront held by India. By Delhi’s reckoning, Finger 2 lies wholly within Indian territory, except PLA built a 5 km motorable road in this area in 1998 when the Indian army was busy evicting the Pakistan army’s Northern Light Infantry from its redoubts in the Kargil heights, and which road the Chinese have patrolled with light vehicles ever since. There’s similar construction, for instance, in the Finger 4 area. In other words, even as China has constructed such roads, the Indian army and government contend that no such infrastructure has come up! The better, presumably, to deny that any violation of the LAC has taken place at all!

Does this not mean that anytime the PLA aggressively stakes its interest in a piece of contested territory, Indian army and government all but readily concede it? So, the likely future is for a slow territorial aggrandizement by China — an exercise in which the Indian army and government are and will, in equal parts, be complicit and for which they are culpable.

That leads us to the issue of why it is that Beijing decided to stir up trouble in the first place along the entire LAC, including the Central Sector, with armed interventions even in and around Barahoti, which until now was considered “settled” border, meaning about which neither side had any problems? There are two sets of reasons — one military-political, the other internal.

“It has come to our attention that some political forces in the US are taking China-US relations hostage and pushing our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War,” declared Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi last evening at a press conference in Beijing. The possibility of a Cold War of the kind that brought down the Soviet Union in the early-’90s and which the Xi Jinping regime believes Trump’s America can unleash, is very much on Zhongnanhai’s mind. The vilification campaign against China as the locus genesis of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the closing off of America to Chinese travelers and most exports, and the sanctioning of Chinese high-tech companies (Huawei, et al) is perceived by Trump as only the opening shot in this war. The undertaking by the World Health Organization to examine the coronavirus spread and to assign responsibility for it, will provide Washington with the ammunition to begin orchestrating a much wider, more telling, international political criticism and effort to quarantine and globally sideline China by cutting off its revenue stream, market access, and strategic reach.

In just the first two months of 2020 China’s exports, according to the South China Morning Post, dropped by 17.2% with that country for the first time since 2009 experiencing a trade deficit of US$7.09 billion, compared to the surplus of US$41.45 billion over the same period last year. This could be a prelude to a plummeting of the Chinese economy, a process that could accelerate should Beijing reject the demands by disparate countries of sub-Saharan Africa and even states like Pakistan to write off infrastructure projects-related debt totaling hundreds of billions of dollars that have have so far been racked up. In that case China stands to lose both goodwill and markets and still be saddled with unserviced debt that Beijing can do nothing about short of wiping it off its slate at heavy cost to itself.

Along with a downward spiraling economy, there’s the military angle. The US Navy has increased its freedom of navigation patrols through the waters of the South China Sea at a time when Vietnam and Malaysia at the two ends of the Southeast Asian littoral, far from backing down, are actively protecting their maritime assets and brown water and blue water territories. And as if to worsen the situation from the optics as well as the substantive ends, Taiwan has resoundingly re-elected Tsai Ing-Wen to, in effect, sound a death knell for the “one country, two systems” conceit Beijing has nursed all these years. “We hope that this election result”, said President Tsai, “can give the Chinese government an accurate message: the Taiwanese people reject ‘one country two systems’. We value our democratic lifestyle, and we defend our sovereignty.” Complicating the situation some more for China, Tsai has promised help to Hong Kong. Taiwan will, she said in a Facebook post, “even more proactively perfect and forge ahead with relevant support work, and provide Hong Kong’s people with necessary assistance”. In the last four months, there has been a 150% increase in immigrants to Taiwan from Hong Kong.

The murmurings inside PLA circles about forcefully stopping the Independent Taiwan wagon in its tracks, now that it might pick up speed, by invading that fortified island-nation is mired in serious doubts about whether the Chinese military, despite the out-sized growth in its capabilities, can pull it off. Worse, the relative pimple of a problem — Hong Kong, is proving nettlesome; its people long used to democratic rights and freedoms are resisting Beijing’s attempts at curbing them. It prompted Beijing to simply end that erstwhile British colony’s status as an entity separate from China — no pretense here about two systems, etc. The President for life, Xi Jinping, suddenly finds his dilemma to be like the proverbial frog’s in the warming bowl of water — unable to jump out because China still benefits all round from propping up the current international system, but facing far too many challenges to do nothing.

With the welcoming world order China exploited since Dengxiaoping’s time in the late 1970s collapsing around it, and Taipei and the Hong Kong people throwing down the gauntlet, Xi no doubt feels uneasy and, therefore, senses he has to do something. More so because internally there are sections within his support base in the PLA and the Communist Party which are inclined to blame Xi, in the instance of Taiwan and Hong Kong, for doing nothing and doing something a little late respectively, and on the other hand, for needlessly goading America into action by disregarding Deng’s aphorism about “hiding your strength, biding your time” by openly flexing China’s military and technological muscles guaranteed, even without an impulsively bellicose Trump in the White House, to get the US all riled up and ready to get at China’s throat.

So, PLA felt compelled to let off steam safely and a calculating Beijing to allow it, but against whom? Hong Kong is in the bag — small change, Taiwan cannot be invaded, Japan cannot be run out of the Senkaku Islands, Russia cannot be pushed around, Vietnam cannot be browbeaten, and taking on the US is surely to end China’s dream run. That leaves the usual target — the weak-willed, strategically dim-witted, India to pick on. But this too is a balancing act. Beijing has to calibrate the hostilities in a way so as to not precipitate a war and lose a huge market that grows more precious by the loss of markets elsewhere, but nevertheless to show up a big India and America’s friend as a country without a fight in it, and to hold out this non-confrontation as an episode for other Asian states watching the show to learn from.

In the circumstances, what should a self-respecting India do, assuming such an avatar emerges by magic?

Well, Delhi can follow what I have been advocating over the last 20-odd years. In no particular order (1) ask Beijing to shut the f…k up on Kashmir, and take to wagging an admonishing finger at Beijing on every forum now that it has tethered the freedom loving Hong Kongese to the Chinese Communist totalitarian yoke; (2) publicly initiate negotiations with Taipei to upgrade the extant trade and consular relations into a full fledged diplomatic relationship with the sovereign state of Taiwan, and use Taiwan’s manifest superiority in high-technology to upgrade India’s manufacturing base, and industrial and military wherewithal — a perfect riposte to Beijing’s recently raking up the Sikkim status issue; the “virtual participation” in President Tsai’s investiture ceremony by BJP MPs Meenakshi Lekhi and Rahul Kaswan ought to be a precursor event; (3) officially bury China’s spurious “one country, two systems” policy by withdrawing support for it with respect to Taiwan, Hong Kong and also Tibet, the last on the legally sound basis, I have long advocated, of Tibet not being genuinely “autonomous” in any way and hence no part of China as Delhi had originally recognized it, thereafter India should spearhead a worldwide “free Tibet” Movement; (4) openly support the Uyghur cause and use the OIC to mobilize the Islamic opposition to China’s systematic denigration of the native Muslims there and for turning Xinjiang into a vast prison camp for the natives; (5) cutoff imports of all goods from China, and having done that negotiate small incremental increases in access to the Indian market in return for strict reciprocity in trade and commerce combined with a heavily punitive regime to prevent small and big time traders within India from transacting any goods from China, and the formalization of LAC as formal border; (6) as current chairman presiding over WHO, use the underway scrutiny of China on the Covid-19 issue to skewer China and pillory it as an opaque and irresponsible state not worthy of respect from the international community; (7) for God’s sake, use the precedent of China’s secretly transferring nuclear weapons and missile technologies to Pakistan to pay back Beijing in the same coin, even if 40 years too late, by onpassing the very same technologies, or better still, the nuclear warheaded Brahmos cruise missile, to any state on China’s periphery desiring the ultimate means of militarily keeping Beijing quiet. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, are you listening?!, and (8) by way of meta-strategic arrangements, minimize China’s global salience by weaponizing BRICS by excising China from it and getting Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa (BRIS) into a loose and informal security coalition; and to complement it by sewing up a similar coalition to India’s east — the ‘Mod Quad’ — the Quadrilateral of India, Japan, Australia, and a group of rich and capable Southeast Asian countries minus the unreliable United States. It is an organic security scheme that will permanently box in China politically, militarily and economically with a marginal, extra-territorial, role for the US should it want one.

What India will actually do owing to a long habit of slavish thinking and a self-abnegatory mindset is this: It will continue doing what it is doing — trying simultaneously to curry favour with both Beijing and Washington — a high theme of the late K. Subrahmanyam’s supposedly superlative thinking Modi subscribes to and is now bureaucratically furthered by his son, S. Jaishankar as MEA minister. It is a policy previous governments, for reasons that are incomprehensible, have been entranced by and which Modi feels will serve him as well. But he does not see, as Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh did not in their time at the helm, about what will, in fact, transpire. In attempting to be too clever by half, India will end up getting sucker-punched by both. But to be laid low thus requires India to be a sucker, and that is what India has time and again proven to be. And a sucker, as WC Fields reminded us, never gets an even break.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, Brazil, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Islamic countries, Japan, Latin America, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Taiwan, Technology transfer, Tibet, United States, US., Vietnam | 34 Comments

Uncertain outcomes from Sitharaman’s latest Defence industrial reform announcements

Posted on May 16, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

Broadsword: DRDO looks beyond HAL for Tejas production

[Tejas assembly line]

The announcement by Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman that there would be a “ban” on imports of armaments was music to my ears and meant that something I have long been advocating had finally come to pass. This was so until she qualified her remark by adding that the Defence Ministry would produce a negative list of weapons systems whose imports are barred and that there’d be deadlines for each of these items from when this ban will come into effect. So an escape hatch has been left open for the armed services to continue sourcing their high-value hardware/software requirements and keeping them out of this list. Should the Services fail to convince the defence ministry on this, they will no doubt endeavour to extend the deadlines so that most of the arms import transactions in the pipeline come in under the wire.

The point is not that reasons cannot be adduced for this or that military product to not be on this list. But rather that such a course of action will be used by the armed services habituated to “buying foreign” to persist with this habit. As a result, even a modicum of self-sufficiency will be hard to achieve. Because it is certain the Services HQrs will fight tooth and nail to ensure that their main weapons platforms — main battle tanks, combat aircraft, diesel submarines, helicopters and ballistic missile defence systems and the like, inclusive of their associated electronics, and systems and sub-systems, remain outside the negative list. It could, in effect, leave the country still forking out enormous amounts of hard currency to foreign suppliers even as the process to make India self-reliant stays unachieved.

One can only fervently hope that the Modi government will be rude and ruthless in first enlarging the list of defence items that cannot anymore be bought from foreign vendors and, simultaneously, nullifying or at least drastically pruning the underway deals.

Given the capabilities especially in the private sector — navy’s Project 75i cannot, in the context of nuclear submarine building wherewithal in-country, be permitted to import other than the design and certain highly specialized technologies, such as mast optronics from competing submarine builders (Rubin Bureau of Russia or DCN of France or ThyssenKrupp Marine of Germany); there’s absolutely no need for importing self-propelled and towed artillery, or tanks when there’s the Arjun MBT to refine and design-wise down-scale to obtain a 30-ton light tank for Tibetan plateau use prospectively by the offensive mountain corps; and even less point to flying in foreign combat aircraft to fill the IAF’s MMRCA fleet when there are Tejas derivatives, such as the AMCA to fast forward. For sure, there’s need for foreign assistance in re-working the Kaveri jet engine and there’ll be no dearth of companies competing for India’s custom. But that doesn’t mean the country has to buy a combat aircraft with it. Which is to say that the procurement principle the defence ministry should follow is to buy the specific technology India is deficient in, not the whole damned weapons system package that gets us nothing and in the bargain loses us our purse!

Moreover, with the private sector leading the charge the country is primed to realize inside of 5-7 years Prime Minister Modi’s goal of ‘atm nirbharta’ in weaponry if he is serious about it. But this will require the Indian military and government, as I keep iterating, to trust in Indian talent and invest in Indian programmes to deliver the most sophisticated military goods.

The danger to attaining the above goal is in Sitharaman’s announcement of the other defence industry-related reform, namely, the raising of FDI limit to 74%. The expectation apparently is that foreign arms manufacturers allowed to set up shop freely and with no prior authorization, will jump at the opportunity. Not so fast, Speedy! There would be no problem and such ventures would be welcome if foreign defence companies set up their arms production plants here, and benefit from labour cost advantages, using India as a manufacturing hub mainly for exports. They may be induced to do that only if GOI also allows them guaranteed sales in India. This could lead to foreign vendors setting up factories to dump a whole bunch of obsolete or fast obsolescing weapons/platforms by assembling them here for the Indian armed services, thereby pushing off into the indefinite future the possibility of the Indian military becoming technologically in-date and consequential.

Thus, Lockheed, for instance, which has already tied up with Tata to produce in India the F-21 (the vintage F-16 by another numeric) will come in fast and try and seal a deal with the IAF. From the Washington end Trump can be relied on to do the pushing which our main man, Modi, is unlikely to resist, he being only too eager to please Trump at every turn. (Refer the PM’s expressing his gratitude yesterday to Trump for his promise to send, unbidden, some excess ventilators the US has no use for possibly because these Chinese-produced items have been found to be defective!)

But there are larger issues here that remained unaddressed by Sitharaman. 70% equity and controlling shares is all very well, but before foreign Original Equipment Manufacturers take up the offer, won’t they insist, as regards labour, on hire and fire practices prevailing in the West and elsewhere so they don’t ever get stuck with a low productivity workforce they can’t be rid off? And won’t these foreign firms also insist on ‘one window’ clearance for all permits, local level up, so they aren’t mired in red tape nor compelled to function at the sufferance of defence production babus as Indian companies are forced to do? And further, will the potential investors not demand that the land acquisition be simplified and facilitated which will need the centre and the state governments to be on the same page? The Finance Minister said nothing about any of these things. Result: There’ll be some uptick in foreign interest but no rush into India from foreign quarters, unless they too get the sort of consideration that Lockheed is banking on.

Revamping the land and labour laws, rules and regulations, is a prerequisite for the country becoming a workshop to the world. The Modi regime has done next to nothing in the last 6 years in these respects, other than floating the ‘Make in India’ rhetoric, but still wants India to become a manufacturing station servicing global needs. So much for building a house roof down!

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 37 Comments

An “atm nirbhar” (self-sufficient) India, great! In armaments too, Mr Prime Minister? – Augmented

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi at the DefExpo 2020]

Whether by coincidence or design, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two most recent speeches — first on the National Panchayat Day and the second, the TV address yesterday which, incidentally, was the third one on the coronavirus crisis and the first in terms of promising a comprehensive economic package, had a common theme. It was self-reliance. “The global contagion has …taught us”, he said April 24, “a very important lesson; that we have to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. It has taught us that we should not look for solutions outside the country” and added that the fact that “we should not depend on others for fulfilling our needs is centuries old…”

Sure, he then veered off, as the occasion demanded, into suggesting that villages should become self-sufficient in their needs raising, in the process, the Luddite nightmare that Mahatma Gandhi — who had strange ideas and did even stranger things — had conjured up when he talked of India as a collection of “village republics”!!

In the address last evening there was considerable confusion — which is increasingly the hallmark of the PM’s public utterances. His khichdi speech mixed self-reliance with global welfare and with India making a place for itself in “the global supply chain” before turning 180 degrees and urging the strengthening of “the local supply chain” and the Indian people needing to trust and buy Indian products as a first step towards making them “global brands”. Modi concluded by saying that “Self-reliance leads to happiness, satisfaction and empowerment” and how “Our responsibility to make the 21st century, the century of India will be fulfilled by the pledge of self-reliant India.” He ended with an exhortation: “Now we have to move forward with a new resolve and determination. When ethics are filled with duty, the culmination of diligence, the capital of skills, then who can stop India from becoming self-reliant?”

Who, indeed? Unless it is the government itself.

Coroniavirus vaccine is fine. Supply-chain aspirations are good. It is a pity though Modi did not in his speeches once touch on the one sphere, that of armaments where India absolutely has to become self-reliant to maintain its sovereignty which has been sliced away over the last 60-odd years due to the military’s relentless hardware buys from abroad for which the politicians, bureaucrats, DPSUs and Ordnance factories and the armed services’ brass are almost equally to blame. It is a vicious circle any of the numerous PMs in power could have broken, but did not.

So, Indian politicians’ blathering on and on about self- reliance is a bit rich and counter-pointed most glaringly in the country’s almost total, abject and shameful dependence on foreign armaments. This last, moreover, is at the cost of indigenous effort, talent, and capability richly available if the government only looks for it outside the waste and corruption-ridden defence public sector units (DPSUs) and Ordnance factories. To put these latter wretched, money guzzling, government-owned defence ministry-run agencies, maintaining whose health at whatever cost is the defence production department’s sole remit, in-charge of the task to achieve arms self-sufficiency is to take the axe to national interest. It is to put a partially blind man at the steering wheel of a bus and expect he will take us to the destination, when the surprise will be if India gets to the gate without mishap.

After almost surrendering the telecommunications future to the PLA outfit, Huawei, and China, the government, prompted by organizations such as SITARA (Science, Indigenous Technology & Advanced Research Accelerator), is finally permitting Indian private sector high-tech achievers to enter the field of 5G and potentially even 6G systems. SITARA is headed by an unusual former Indian diplomat, Smita Pushottam; unusual because the Indian Foreign Service usually breeds foreign arms lovers. Similar telecom sector type thrust will have to be given by the Modi regime in defence, aerospace, and electronics sectors generally, lest national security continue to be willfully compromised. There is more than critical mass of Indian companies with skills and competences in these fields to free the country from the “commissions and considerations in kind”- racket within the portals of government that lubricates the present procurement system.

The danger though is that Modi, who is his own and only adviser, will decide to buy antiquated fighters (F-16-F-21) and such and compel Indian industry to produce this trash item just so his ‘Make in India’ programme is not seen as an out and out fiasco.

The only consolation is the treasury will be emptied out with 10% of the GDP or Rs 20 lakh crore ($260 billion) staked by Modi to revive a moribund economy, with industrial output down by 16.7% and sliding downwards, and an annual growth rate estimated at best to be no more than 1%-2% this year and at the worst decline to negative growth in this fiscal.

In the event, now may be the time, if he is really serious about self-reliance, for Modi to announce an end to all purchase of armaments, and aerospace systems and sub-systems, and high-value electronics components, as I have been advocating, and for his government to stop dilly-dallying [detailed in my 2015 book Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)] and put up the money for establishing a high value microchip fabrication facility to drive the technology sector. It will mean, by way of a beginning, the long overdue dismantling of the extant procurement processes and systems in the defence ministry and the departments of Space and of Electronics.

We may do well to recall as a cautionary tale the country’s sorry condition in the electronics field being the result of the historic blunder committed by the late MGK Menon-led electronics commission in the 1970s, which advised the Indian government to concentrate on developing software capability while ignoring development in-country of computer hardware capability. It allowed companies like TCS, Infosys, et al to grow and prosper, of course, and all to the good, but did not help India become comprehensively independent in high-technology. Whence the awful state the country is in with Huawei and China lording over us in the telecom sphere, as does every half-way industrialized state supplying India where armaments are concerned.

In the defence arena the indigenous capabilities that produced the Tejas LCA, the nuclear-powered submarine, and the Arjun MBT as the principal technology programmes can be enabled to seed design-to-delivery projects for future advanced manned and unmanned combat aircraft, conventional diesel submarines, and various infantry combat vehicles, including a light tank derivative (for Tibetan plateau use) for the mountain corps, for instance. This is the time for Modi to take such disruptive measures and bring the armed services forcefully in line and ensure the success of his government’s “atm nirbharta” policy.

But, as I conclude in my latest book — ‘Staggering Forward’ Modi may not be the leader to take hard decisions to realize technological autonomy because, among other reasons, he is too besotted by the US and the West to not sustain the entrenched import culture inside the government which benefits them, his rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Cyber & Space, Decision-making, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, society, South Asia, space & cyber, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 42 Comments

Pakistan’s diplomatic counter-offensive

Posted on May 9, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

India has feasted diplomatically on Pakistan’s complicity in terrorist acts over the past two decades. There was a credible enough case made for the UN Financial Assistance Task Force (FATF) to put Pakistan on its sanctions’ ‘grey list’ owing to Islamabad’s well-known role in mobilising Islamist militants from West Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to replicate the Taliban success in Afghanistan in Jammu and Kashmir.

The troubles began for Pakistan with the 9/11 strike in 2001, propelling to the forefront terrorism and Islamic extremists as existential threats to international order. Islamabad’s use of jihadis began to draw censure and, in the wake of the 26/11 seaborne attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists in 2008, sealed that country’s standing as a sponsor of terrorism, legitimating India’s retaliatory actions. For Pakistan, the political and economic costs began to outweigh the politico-military gains from using terrorism to wage asymmetric warfare. Once the pariah status took hold, foreign countries became wary of dealing with Pakistan, a Pakistani passport became a liability, foreign direct investment dried up, its economy plummeted, exacerbating, in the process, societal faultlines. Even the Gulf countries, hitherto staunch supporters, began to distance themselves.

This allowed Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pitch India as a partner of choice for these states, consolidate its position as supplier of cheap labour and safe destination for Arab petro-dollar investment. The warming of ties also permitted these Arab states to leaven their autocratic reputation by associating with a democratic India. The muted response of the United Arab Emirates to the abrogation of Article 370 and Saudi Arabia’s agreeing with Delhi that it was an “internal matter” crowned India’s West Asia policy, handing PM Modi his only real foreign policy success.

And then the corona pandemic struck. For the first time, Islamabad saw a clear way to not only blunt India’s charge of fostering terrorism but to push Delhi on the back foot. This they did by conflating the actions of local authorities to corral attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat meet in Delhi as potential COVID-19 spreaders with three unconnected issues—alleged human rights abuses in J&K, ill treatment of Muslims under the BJP dispensations in Uttar Pradesh and other states, and the Citizenship Amendment Act, which triggered nationwide protests and was described by Islamabad as a “pogrom” against Muslims.

It was this storm of supposedly anti-Muslim measures that burst on the Indian government, something Islamabad gleefully capitalised on and Islamic countries could not ignore. Pakistan, in any case, was working since August last year to erode the support for India in the Islamic bloc. In February-end this year, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) urged India to end violence against Muslims, and Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan asked Delhi “to stop the massacre” of Muslims, a phrase repeated by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamanei, on March 5. Following the April 28 release of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report recommending that the state department designate India as a country of ‘particular concern’, Kuwait condemned the “violence” against Indian Muslims, an emboldened Gulf Cooperation Council may follow suit, and Arab activists are using social media to excoriate the Indian government for fuelling “Islamophobia”.

India is in a pickle, its policy of equipoise between Sunni Gulf states as source of energy and remittances (worth $80 billion annually) and Shia Iran as pivot, and its plan for a south-north road and rail grid out of Chabahar port affording access to Afghanistan and Central Asia while helping the Indian Navy outflank its Chinese counterpart in Gwadar collapsing under the weight of the growing disillusionment of Islamic countries with India. This may also hurt Indian strategic interests in Southeast Asia, especially in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia. With Al Qaeda and the Islamic State weakening and terrorism off centre-stage, international relations are returning to their old moorings where human rights matter. Which is why Pakistan now has “organised cruelties against Indian Muslims” to bludgeon India with every time Delhi cries “terrorism”.

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This piece published as ‘Up Front’ column in India Today, issue dated May 18, 2020, at https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-front/story/20200518-pakistan-s-diplomatic-counter-offensive-1676132-2020-05-09

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, guerilla warfare, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Terrorism, UN, United States, US., West Asia | 27 Comments

Embraer available, will India grab it? Nah!

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

Embraer ERJ-145 series - program supplier guide

[ERJ-145 — one of Embraer Company’s bestselling medium haul passenger aircraft]

Twitter has been justifiably agog with the news of Dr RK Tyagi, former Chairman, HAL, writing to minister for civil aviation Hardip Puri, urging him quickly to get the Indian government to bid for control of the Embraer Company of Brazil for as little as $5 billion, Boeing having withdrawn from its 80% stake in it worth $4.2 billion. This Brazilian firm specializes, among other things, in producing various bestselling passenger aircraft (such as 30-110 passenger carrying E2 and ERJ-145 series of single engine, single aisle, transporters) which can also converted to maritime reconnaissance, aerial early warning, cargo, and VVIP flight missions. In fact there are already a number of these aircraft flying in India. Just to provide perspective: India has failed to manufacture any such plane despite a number of underway projects over the past 30 years to design and produce them. Acquiring Embraer will thus vault India into the front ranks of aircraft producers.

In his letter dated 27th April 2020 to Puri, Tyagi mentions that the projected demand by 2035 in India for these types of aircraft is between 350 to 500. So it makes ample economic sense to grab Embraer at this time, and act fast to do so before “other other players, potentially China, enter the scene and pitch for the Embraer stake”. He adds that “Apart from the possibility for phased manufacturing in India, there is also the potential to attract OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) of aircraft engines, wheels and braking and landing gears, avionics, etc to set up MRO (Maintenance and Repair Organizations)/manufacturing in India since the scale and size of the business are potentially sustainable. It will also add to indigenous design and engineering skills.”

Tyagi recommends that (1) “the extant opportunity be [expeditiously] seized”, (2) “An interim Expression of Interest” be “communicated to the Government of Brazil to bid time”, and (3) “India actively considers acquiring a 51% stake into Embraer either through a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) created by equity participation by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited acting alone or in partnership with the private sector.” Private sector participation by such Indian firms as L&T and/or Mahindra, or Godrej Aerospace makes ample sense in terms of spreading the risk and distributing the benefits, such as transfer of technology and skills, of this acquisition. Indeed, Indian twitterites have been besides themselves enumerating the immense possibilities of such a deal. Such as producing the Tejas LCA in Embraer production facilities to sell in the promising Latin American market.

In case, his acquisition idea finds favour with the Modi government, Tyagi suggests constituting “a small team of policy/industry experts”, and ends his letter with a warning: “This may be once in a lifetime opportunity for us” and hence, by implication, not to be missed. It is copied to defence minister Rajnath Singh, PK Mishra, principal private secretary to the PM, and Amitabh Kant, ceo, Niti Ayog.

What are the chances this proposal for securing controlling shares in Embraer will be entertained by the Modi government, and these four notables — Messrs Puri, Singh, Mishra and Kant will succeed in speedily getting the Prime Minister’s and, more important, Finance Ministry’s approval and release of the necessary funds, and that in the meantime MEA is tasked to discuss the topic to the Bolsonaro government in Brazil and prepare the politico-economic ground for such Indian investment, and to seek his help in keeping out other potential bidders, especially China? President Jair Bolsonaro, after all, was wined, dined and feted as the chief guest at the Republic Day parade this year and will have warm memories of his Delhi sojourn and, if properly approached, would be receptive.

One wishes though that the Modi regime had by now articulated a strategic vision such as the one proposed in my ‘Staggering Forward’ book of a smaller geostrategic grouping of BRIS (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) derived from the purely trade and economically oriented BRICS. An Indian majority stake in Embraer would fit nicely in a BRIS schemata. Any which way, this deal justified by the Indian government, the right touch may be provided by Modi broaching this topic directly and personally to Bolsonaro in a phone call, leaving their respective government functionaries to work out the details.

So what’s the proverbial fly in the ointment? Well, Puri, a former diplomat, Mishra and Kant are all civil servants used to working in a certain leisurely bureaucratic style and pondering procedural hurdles at length, rather than getting on with it and showing some urgency in cutting through the red tape. The mind boggles at the potential of this transaction and how Embraer in the Indian fold would turbocharge Modi’s so far idling ‘Make in India’ policy and programme, generate huge employment, and keep the immense Indian wealth that has to-date been frittered away in arms imports, within the country.

Is all this enough for these durbans (gatekeepers) to Modi to get their political master to act without losing time? And if adequately briefed, will Modi have the foresight to pilot the Embraer company acquisition through the bureaucratic thicket that is the Government of India? Time will soon tell or, as is more likely, when newspapers report that China has already grabbed Embraer even as Delhi is still at the starting gate mulling over the matter!

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Latin America, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, society, South Asia, Technology transfer, Weapons | 32 Comments

From the source of wonky ideas, another one!

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

[Trump and Angela Merkl in smooch mode; Modi looks on]

With every passing oped of his, it becomes more difficult to take Ram Madhav, General Secretary of the ruling BJP and sometime RSS pracharak, seriously. The upside, however, is these pieces provide no end of amusement. One can see just how desperate Madhav is to impress Narendra Modi with his flattery and supposed profundity (as reflected in quotes from here and there). His articles are a baffling mix of disjointedness and incoherence, spiked with random mentions of people, bits of history, and recent developments. Taken together they make no sense. For instance, his latest — “India can collaborate with the US and Germany to mould a new world order” [https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/coronavirus-global-lockdown-exit-strategy-ram-madhav-6385391/].

In this piece may be found references to Trump, Modi’s “democratic activism” — whatever that is (because there is no explanation), coronavirus, Niall Ferguson, Hitler, nationalism, ultra-nationalism, World War Two, Mao, Dengxiaoping, China, modern day Germany, and God knows what else, arrayed almost in bullet-points with no connecting tissue and constituting a melange that does not support his conclusion, which is that “In the unfolding new world order, India, along with countries like America and Germany, can play a pivotal role in building a world based on ‘human-centric development cooperation’ as suggested by Modi. It is time for a new Atlantic Charter: Environment, healthcare, technology and democratic liberalism can be its foundations.”

For a geopolitical grouping to amount to much, it has to be underpinned by geographic logic and power balancing imperatives. Consider any strategy or alliance for tactical or strategic reasons, for short-term gain or for the long haul, and one discovers two factors at work — geographic considerations and the desire to balance power against the dominant or would-be dominant state. Both these factors aligning is when a coalition or geopolitical strategy achieves success. 16th Century onwards, Britain practiced its ‘continental strategy’ of preventing any single continental power from attaining dominance. In pursuit of this strategy, Britain enforced a naval blockade of Napoleonic France in 1804, responding to which Napoleon enforced a ban in 1806 on European powers trading with Britain. Otto von Bismarck, who forcibly amalgamated the Germanic states in Central Europe into a single powerful entity, created an alliance system crowned by the 1882 ‘Triple Alliance’ featuring Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy to isolate chief rival, France. Imperial Russia, France, and Britain building on the 1894 Franco-Russian accord forged the 1904 ‘Triple Entente’ to hem in an ambitious Germany. Britain and Japan turned treaty allies in the first 2 decades of the 20th Century ostensibly to fight off Imperial Russia in Asia but in actuality to protect their colonial interests in China and Korea. In the throes of revolution, Russia signed the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the German-led bloc of Central European powers to stabilize its borders. Some 20 years later, in August 1939, a month before the onset of the Second World war, Germany and Soviet Russia signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov accord to carve up Poland. Post-1945, the so-called “Atlantic Charter” (that Madhav bungs in for no good reason in his piece) resulted in NATO, reacting to which the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact consolidating, in the process, the US and Soviet spheres of influence in Europe. To firm up Communist solidarity and the control of the bulk of the Eurasian landmass, the Soviet Union closed in with Mao’s China to present a solid front to the West generally, and to the US and its allies in the Pacific specifically.

By what geopolitical or geostrategic metric and in what conceivable way does a grouping in the present day of a receding America, a much reduced Central European state, Germany, with no great independent military capability to speak of, and India, a country that has over time relentlessly marginalized itself to a point where it does not even pull its weight in its own backyard, leave alone assert itself as the primary rimland power in Asia, in a position to shape the world order as envisaged by Madhav? There’s, moreover, obvious natural affinity of race, culture, religion, etc., between the US and Germany, an affinity in no way shared by either of these countries with India.

Just how much of an interloper India is in a US-European concert is depicted starkly in the pic above where Modi and, by extension, India stand forlornly, watching the American and German leaders whoop it up even though German Chancellor Angela Merkl can barely conceal her contempt for Trump and thinks the US an unreliable ally, and Trump has labelled Merkl’s policies “insane” and has threatened to withdraw military support for Germany. There is nevertheless much there in the long term, Trump notwithstanding, for a new Atlantic Charter. But how can India expect to muscle in on this US-European partnership, considering there’s almost no serious overlap in the strategic interests of the US and Germany on the one hand and India on the other hand, unless one counts as common interest a peaceful global security milieu and a liberal trade regime which everybody craves, including the arch-global disruptor of the current order, China?

So the question of these three states getting together to construct a new international system does not arise. Also because there’s the inconvenient fact of what it is the three countries bring to the table. The US comes in with unmatched military and economic power, Germany pitches in as the European economic behemoth able to swing the European Union behind it. In comparison, Modi and India can boast of little more than the former’s flatulent ‘vishwa guru’ conceit (that Madhav predictably waxes on). Delhi, with a failing Indian economy and constricted strategic vision and policies and, therefore, limited military clout, cannot even get its immediate neighbours to support it.

In the circumstances, pray, what can India contribute to ‘human-centric development cooperation’? The US and Germany, having achieved by their own effort high living standards, have excelled in human centric development; in comparison India has stumbled through 70-odd years of socialist development that Modi in his time in office has done nothing institutionally to correct, other than ring in cosmetic changes in the functioning of a still corrupt, inefficient, wasteful, and ineffective apparatus of government that persists from socialist times but produces very little governance. So, does Madhav’s “human-centric development cooperation” not seem like a plea for alms, an artful dressing up of the beggar’s bowl?

Wanting to capitalize on the imagery involving the PM, on Modi’s flying around hither and thither, visiting every country under the sun, and conferring with the high and mighty in international meets — the sort of activity the corona pandemic has shut down, Madhav conjures up, if only for the sake of op-eds, alliances out of thin air, fueled by nothing more, it’d appear, than passing whimsy! Damn good reason to deny him the role he apparently seeks for himself as some sort of intellectual vanguard, God forbid, for the PMO and the BJP government, unless Modi wants to further trivialize himself and India in the eyes of hardened professionals crafting foreign policies elsewhere in the world.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Japan, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Northeast Asia, Russia, russian military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Western militaries | 11 Comments

What the Indian military should be doing in COVID times

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

[Indonesian Navy officers at the jetty in Surabaya to welcome INS Rana, Nov 2018]

Hard for one’s admiration for China’s single-minded drive to at all times advance its strategic interests come rain or shine or the corona virus, to not grow by leaps and bounds. Nothing diverts Beijing and the Chinese military in particular from flexing its muscle, asserting its rights and claims, and seeking to frighten the local opposition to get out of its way in a region it intends to dominate absolutely. Even as that country is fighting the COVID menace successfully — and why not? It created the corona bio-weapon, lost control over it, regained it, mounted an integrated scientific effort to tame it and will likely be the first to patent a vaccine and make oodles of money out of its sales worldwide — the PLA Navy did not forget its mission.

Two new “districts” were announced by Beijing a few days back to administer several rocky outcroppings that are being fashioned into man-made islands with dredged up sand, etc. in the disputed but appropriately named Mischief Reef area which Beijing claims in its entirety. Around the same time and a little to the west, a Chinese survey ship accompanied by an armed Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessel contested a Malaysian ship drilling for valuable seabed minerals within Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Simultaneously, a large Vietnamese boat fishing offshore was rammed by a CCG corvette. But, last week when three US warships (America with a F-35B complement onboard, missile cruiser Bunker Hill, and missile destroyer Barry) in an expeditionary task group (detached from the carrier task force headed by the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which lies anchored mid-Pacific in Guam owing to a coronavirus infected crew) turned up in the South China Sea in what is described as “security and stability operations”. And it exercised with an Australian warship (HMAS Parmatta), prompting Beijing sanctimoniously to urge the US and Australia to please “not disturb the peace” in the region! That’s chutzpah for you!

Beijing has turned such acts of brazen territorial annexation mixed with a wagging of fingers at out-of-area powers daring to register their presence, into high statecraft. These Chinese actions are carried out so smoothly and with an attitude of such utmost conviction and routine-ness, hardly any one notices they are irregular, illegal and contrary to international norms and leave the poor littoral states with nothing to do than protest in vain.

So the militaries of the countries that matter in the Indo-Pacific are not doing nothing, haven’t locked down themselves into inactivity. What about the Indian armed forces though, what are they up to?

The army, admirably, has done well in the anti-COVID-19 fight, putting up all manner of facilities for sequestering corona-infected people, making available its medical staff, etc. As the senior and the largest of the uniformed services, the army, however, has serious problems as regards its personnel. Training courses have been cancelled, the transfers of officers postponed, and to minimize the exposure to the C-virus annual leave-taking has been delayed. Officers nominated to attend the Staff College at Wellington and various higher command courses — stepping stones to promotion, etc. but unable now to do so will be hugely affected, their upward progress and the process suddenly disrupted. The Military Secretary in Army HQrs tasked with the career management of officers will, perhaps, for the first time in the army’s history earn his keep, as he struggles to come up with metrics for promotion that are fair and, importantly, are seen to be fair. The new scheme may end up inadvertently victimizing a few officers or even an entire cohort with the push from below, from the next year’s batch of officers in training courses and so on. This to say, the promotion ladder will become steeper still for these unfortunates.

Then there’s the other problem with the stand-still arrangement in place. Can officers, JCOs, NCOs and jawans in presently forward-based units be kept in place beyond the usual 2-year rotational stints, and can the lower ranks be denied home leave, and with what effect on their morale and the fighting quality of the unit? Further, the army will need to compulsorily isolate everyone returning to forward units from leave for 14-days. This will mean that at any given time all the forward units will be under-strength in terms of the personnel on leave and those held in the wards prior to re-induction and hence unable to serve on the frontline.

Nevertheless, to show it is no slouch at fingering Pakistan — the only and the easiest way it seems to get into the good books of the Narendra Modi government, the army has been busy keeping the western border live, or that’s what Pakistani newspapers report. No period has been as busy as the present, complains Pak army’s DG, ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) to its Press in terms of Indian artillery firings, small cross-LoC ops, sniper shootings, etc. The front with China, on the other hand, is ho-hum peaceable with all parties, including China and PLA having a stake in keeping things quiet on the LAC in the north and northeast. This last suits the Indian army well because it lacks the wherewithal, other than for defensive actions including, presumably, pushing-shoving matches a’la Dok La 2017. No chance here of cross-LAC artillery duels, snipers picking off targets of opportunity, and small team incursions to beat up on straying, unsuspecting PLA soldiers.

The Indian Air Force strives hard to offer no provocation to China. Even so there’s the occasional news report of an Indian MiG-29 or Su-30 going down with no clue as to why the fighter plane did so, or what happened. It is always possible with sorties out of Tezpur and other satellite fields launched to familiarize Indian pilots with the mountainous terrain and to get them to operate in some comfort that PLA rockets, guns, missiles slaved to surveillance, tracking and targeting radars have struck Indian combat aircraft. Not, mind you, that IAF has ever acted on this premise and suspicion and responded accordingly. All its vim and venom seems reserved for the western front.

The Indian Navy has reported several cases of corona-hit naval personnel. Social distancing and other measures while being practiced ashore are impractical in the confined spaces of surface combatants and, more so, submarines. COVID apart, the navy can’t lose sight of its operational tasks. At any given time, there is at least one flotilla sailing in the blue water. The trouble is most such short Indian naval deployments are off Aden and in the Gulf region generally, with the seas east of the Malacca, Lumbok and Sunda Straits, by comparison, being ignored even though it is there the navy can do the most strategic good. All the political rhetoric of meeting the Chinese threat head on, preferably collectively, and MILAN and bilateral exercises, such as the November 2018 Op Samudra Shakti with the Indonesian Navy off Surabaya notwithstanding, Indian flotillas showing flag in the South China Sea are a relative rarity. Sure, an exercise was conducted in May 2018 with Vietnam and, under a new cooperation scheme, another a year later in April 2019 in Cam Ranh Bay. But one hopes COVID isn’t the excuse for not having a third such exercise very soon this year.

Mutual unfamiliarity may require more time for preparation and planning of joint exercises. But this fact alone reveals that neither the Indian government nor the Indian Navy have acted with any sense of urgency in investing in close relations, besides the Vietnam and Singapore navies, with the Southeast Asian littoral navies, and linking up with them at the institutional level. In fact, the underway training programmes with Vietnam, such as joint exercises, training submarine crews and inducting the supersonic Brahmos cruise missiles, could be the template for intense naval cooperation with the other Southeast Asian states as well. These could be supplemented by the Malabar exercises (with US, Japanese navies) in the area and joint “sail throughs” in the South China Sea by warships from several countries. Indian, Japanese, American and Philippine ships did this in May 2019.

Brahmos, I have long argued, is the patented Chinese warship killer and the decisive weapon that uniquely will have a power multiplier effect for India when dispersed to friendly Southeast Asian countries in China’s backyard. Because then the entire South China Sea will be become hazardous for China’s most powerful South Sea Fleet as well as its so-called ‘secret’ fleet meant for the Indian Ocean, both headquartered in the Sanya naval base on Hainan Island. This requires the Indian government and naval brass to prioritize, as I have been pleading with the highest in the land for the last 25 years or so, to expeditiously equip all of the littoral and island nation navies with the Brahmos. Indeed, Brahmos-armed Indonesian, Philippine, Malaysian surface combatants and shore batteries along with their Vietnamese counterparts could, between them, compel the much touted Hainan-based fleets to stay locked up in Sanya and, in case they ventured into deeper waters, to carve ’em up.

The value of the Brahmos with Southeast Asian nations is a strategic prong Delhi for incomprehensible reasons has been unconscionably slow to appreciate. The other two prongs are megaton yield thermonuclear forces (discussed at length in my books) and the regularization of the Indian naval presence in the South China Sea with a flotilla formally and permanently deployed in-area with ships and crews rotated out of basing arrangements in Singapore, Cam Ranh Bay, Subic Bay (Philippines) and Sabang (Indonesia) as part of the new geostrategic grouping — the “Modified Quadrilateral” or “Mod Quad” of India, Japan, group of Southeast Asian states, and Australia that India should put together (detailed in my latest book — Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition). Having Indian warships on South China Sea station showing the flag 24/7 365 days, and sporting the fighting attitude that Admiral DK Joshi, when he was CNS, hinted at when he declared that any attempt by the Chinese Navy to do anything untoward will be met with force, will alone convince Beijing not to trifle with India.

Moreover, only with the above described three-pronged trishul in hand will India and Modi’s “Mamallapuram spirit” (ex-his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in December 2019) acquire potency. The rest is so much gas that Delhi usually vents and is of little account.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Japan, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, society, Special Forces, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 36 Comments

Ram Madhav makes a laughingstock of Modi and his foreign policy

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

Ram Madhav heckled at TANA meet — [Reading his master’s latest twitter message?]

Slow news week and month to-date (and months to follow?) are inescapable with the world under corona lock down conditions. There’s need for some laughs or at least diversion from what one’s doing — re-reading classics (Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War) and watching television shows one didn’t find time for (6-part BBC series from the Nineties of John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with the incomparable Alec Guinness playing George Smiley, the counter-intelligence MI5 head ferreting out a longtime Russian spy in the British secret service). It means transiting from the sublime to the ridiculous. Let’s do so any way and deal with the latest instance of foreign policy-related tripping by Ram Madhav, RSS pracharak and General Secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Like his earlier literary efforts, this too is unfailingly sophomoric.

In an op/ed published today (https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/covid-19-and-the-contours-of-a-new-world-order-analysis/story-DUqursm0t8sunJl1gaBJmO.html), Madhav grandly pronounces the end of US’ current “America first” type of nationalism — and by extension the ‘India first’ kind of thinking that Prime Minister Narendra Modi once swore by, and the rise of a “more integrationist” “post-Covid-19” world. As evidence, he refers to America turning to China, India and South Korea for hydoxychloroquine and medical equipment (masks, ventilators, etc.). It is a simpletonish take on international developments that mistakes powerful countries making decisions to serve their national purpose of the moment, such as obtaining from abroad this or that item unavailable or in short supply at home, for a geopolitical trend. It certainly does not make for a growingly interdependent world for God’s sake! To top it, Madhav thinks that a country with a nationalist approach and looking to advance its national interests is also, ipso facto, “isolationist”! Really?

Undeterred by the prospect of seeming deranged and rendering the PM’s endeavours grandiose, he likens Modi facing the corona crisis, his so far failed attempts at rejuvenating the economy, and his over-modest initiative to involve other South Asian states in mustering a collective response to this disease to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s confronting the Great Depression of the 1930s, beating Hitler and, after the Second World War, building the international system anew! How such an Indian effort, even if eventually successful, that stumbled at the first (Kashmir) hurdle, can be equated with the US and Allies defeating the Axis powers and building post War “global institutions”, etc. may boggle the mind of some of us but does not faze Madhav any because he next calls on Modi “to don the Rooseveltian mantle and take the lead” in shaping a new post-covid order!

Madhav raises Modi’s sights still higher in the next paragraph, urging him to look farther back in history and reprise for, what he plainly believes is an expectant world, US President Woodrow Wilson’s role in the First World War and realize the ideals he voiced of “liberal internationalism, democracy, non-intervention, collective security and humanitarian cooperation” to which, he says, Modi “has shown his commitment”. If these were the Sixties one would be tempted, using the idiom of those days, to wonder “what it is that he [Madhav] is smoking!”

The fact is there are no common contextual factors from that era for Modi to work his new Wilsonian magic with. Further, Madhav may do well to heed the fate that befell Wilson’s pet project — the League of Nations, the precursor of the equally hapless United Nations of our day: It ended in a shambles, beginning with his own legislature (the US Congress) rejecting America’s membership in it, and even more Wilson’s guiding principle: “Open covenants openly arrived at”. Because, quite simply, that’s not how the international system of sovereign states worked then or works now, a 100 years later. Ethics and morality are distinguished mainly by their absence in practice, if not in rhetoric, and the meanest, narrowest, interpretation of the national interest is all that drives foreign policies.

Madhav’s oped suggests his reading is limited to newspapers and periodicals, that he picks up on names — Joseph Nye, Yuval Harari, and Parag Khanna — in intellectual fashion, and whom he quotes by way of inaptly constructing the case he does. But because he seems fascinated by it and lest he again draw any serious parallels, may be, he should bone up on the history of Wilsonian idealism at the core of which was protecting and advancing the US national interest.

By way of fundamentals, to believe that India and Modi today are in the same position as the US and Wilson were in 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles when the US became the predominant global power, or America and Roosevelt (and Harry Truman) were in 1945 when the US consolidated its numero uno status, is beyond silliness and to make a laughingstock of India and Modi. Feeding a leader’s ambition is one thing, fueling his megalomania is something else altogether. Modi, by all indications may get his ego regularly massaged by Madhav, foreign minister S. Jaishankar and their ilk. But the PM, one hopes, is more of a realist than he lets on, or these servitors around him, believe. But what if the latter have read Modi right?

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, MEA/foreign policy, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, UN, United States, US. | 11 Comments

Next Corona steps: Modi’s options

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

[Delhi under lock down]

The 3-week country lock down Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced will have run its course by April 15. He is having a teleconference today with the chief ministers of all the states to decide on follow-up measures. The governments of Punjab and Odisha have already jumped the gun. Influenced by the experience of other countries and driven by a sense of abundant caution, Amarinder Singh and Naveen Patnaik have decreed that their states will continue to be locked down until the month end. This is a reasonable first step that the PM too will, in all likelihood, announce whenever next he addresses the nation. Especially because an ICMR study has concluded that India would have had some 8.2 lakh COVID-19 positive cases by April 15 had it not been for the nationwide lockdown. (Curiously, per a news report, the Health Ministry denies there is any such study!)

India is still in the early stage of the pandemic in most part because of the lack of diagnostic testing on an adequately large scale. Hence, a representative sample is not available with the government to build a contagion spread model on, to draw an India-specific COVID curve with, and otherwise to alight on a set of preventive actions to flatten it. India’s response to-date has been typically hybrid, taking a little from here, a bit from there, which is fine. But what are these other models?

South Korea has been the most successful and now touts the manner in which it has dealt with the COVID-19 crisis as its principal means of soft power. It mapped and tracked the movement of the disease through its human carriers, was absolutely transparent about its methods, persuaded its people to observe strict norms of personal and public conduct, activated wide-area surveillance, and speedily tested a very large number of people. What aspect of the South Korean model is beyond India’s ken? Why, the discipline of the people, of course! Unless there are police vans roaming around enforcing the curfew, as is the case in Delhi, warning people to stay indoors, or else, the success the country has so far had would be missing. But it also means a somewhat oppressive milieu and, willy-nilly, suspension of individual freedoms. This last is precisely what’s held against the Chinese model.

The authoritarian system in China simply closed off the danger areas, lopped off what little freedom the people enjoyed, and imposed a compulsory screening, identification, isolation and treatment system nation-wide. Even if the Indian government has no democratic qualms, it cannot emulate this model because it simply does not have the policing wherewithal or the harshly punitive but disciplined system of collective order, and zero capability of the kind China has routinized to track through a mobile apps the movement of almost all of its people remotely exposed to the virus. The British model first tried out and then quickly discarded was based on the Darwinian principle of letting the most susceptible and vulnerable, particularly the aged, to succumb to the virus and die in order to conserve resources to keep alive a younger demographic. This is grisly and for obvious reasons a non-starter. In Israel, borders have been closed to people from any country identified as with the virus. A variation of this is already current in India except, even after the lock down announcement, airlines flying in from all over disgorged passengers with a sieve-like testing regime manned by the predictably inefficient health staffers at airports. So the afflicted as well as the asymptomatic carriers were allowed to fan out all over the country to ensure the disease reached pandemic proportions.

What next? Because Modi seems to take his cues from America, this may be of interest. The reputable periodical ‘The Scientific American’ reported about a recent American Enterprise Institute (a think tank) study that offers a four-phase “road map to reopening.” The first phase involves, it says, “slowing the spread of new infections with physical distancing measures, such as closing schools and having people work from home. In the second step, individual states can reopen when they have the capacity to identify, test and isolate most people with COVID-19 and their close contacts—but some distancing will still be required. In the third, remaining restrictions can be lifted when an effective therapy or vaccine becomes available or when data show widespread immunity. The final stage, after the current pandemic is over, will be to invest heavily in research and health care to prepare for the next one.”

Using the metrics in this report, India is clearly in the first phase. It is also perfectly plain that the non-BJP-ruled states are marching to the beat of their own drum and, as in the case of Punjab and Odisha extending the lockdown, are ahead of the Central government. Apparently, what we are witnessing here is what’s happening in the US where the state and local governments are doing what they think is best for the people under their jurisdictions. Except in Washington a completely impulsive and wayward President, Donald Trump, is needlessly mucking up things with his ill-informed takes on the disease and its spread. Here a more deliberate Modi is advancing by small steps.

Considering that the state governments are closer to the ground reality which may differ hugely from state to state in this vast country, may be what Modi should do is leave it to the political dispensations in the states to decide how they want exactly to proceed in terms of timelines and programmatic details as long as generally a standardized protocol (that all agree on) for phased elimination of COVID-19 is followed.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Israel, Northeast Asia, SAARC, society, South Asia, United States, US. | 1 Comment

Modi once again under Trump’s gun, this time re: corona medicine

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Bharat Karnad

Trump's 'scandalous harangues' are an impeachable offense - The ...

[Trump: Do it!]

On April 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revealed on twitter that he “Had an extensive telephone conversation with President @realDonaldTrump. We had a good discussion, and agreed to deploy the full strength of the India-US partnership to fight COVID-19.” The PM apparently considers it a matter of great honour to be conferring with the American head of state on almost anything, and loses no time in letting this be publicly known. The reason Trump had called was to ask Modi to expeditiously release for export to the United States hydroxychloroquine that the Indian government may have stocked up on. In response, the PM reportedly told Trump that his government will consider his request but first examine the consequences of releasing this drug for sale to the US.

Trump is convinced this anti-malaria drug has a future as an anti-corona medicine. He has also to remedy a situation that may see his political goose being cooked because he had initially dismissed the C-virus as a scare conjured up by the Liberal establishment opposed to him. His medical advisers, however, are unanimous in warning that this chemical compound is unproven as solution for COVID-19, and that it is highly toxic when not used under strictest supervision. Whether Americans, despite being adequately warned, ingest this drug as a prophylactic on the basis of their President’s advice and die in vast numbers, is US’ concern. What India has to worry about is whether Delhi will ship off this medicine to the US, leaving India high and dry if hydroxychloroquine is discovered, on the off-chance, to actually be a panacea for the corona crisis. With respect to corona, India is still at the low end of the COVID-19 curve largely because of a near complete lack of specialized mass testing. For all any one knows, the corona may have already afflicted five or ten times as many Indians as the 4,000 patients under care. Five lakh testing kits are only this week arriving, ironically, from China. Even so, in the context of the 1.3 billion population, the disease, it may be fair to conclude, is still in its nascent phase with herd-contagion and spread in the country still to take-off and when it does infections may peak in the next two months or so. Thus, prudence suggests Modi should be cautious, not go overboard in emptying out the country’s stock of hydroxychloroquine for America’s benefit.

Except the option of not sending supplies of this drug to the US is now denied Modi who, in any case, has shown himself to be a little too fearful of alienating the US and otherwise too eager to please Washington. This tendency is what the US and Trump have to-date exploited. Two days after his conversation with Modi, Trump disclosed to the Press just what transpired in that phone call to the Indian leader. It turns out that far from pleading with Modi, Trump had demanded India forthwith sell to the US its holdings of the anti-malarial drug, or face punitive action. “I spoke to [Modi] Sunday morning, called him, and I said, we’d appreciate you allowing our supply to come out”, said Trump. “If [Modi] doesn’t allow it to come out. That would be OK. But of course, there may be retaliation. Why wouldn’t there be?” And retaliation, he hinted, would be that old staple — tightening the screws in the ongoing bilateral trade deal negotiations.

Consider Trump’s proprietorial reference to “allowing our supply to come out”. Does this mean that the US government through its embassy and/or via American pharma companies, their subsidiaries or middlemen agencies have already bought off a lot of India’s hydroxychloroquine stockpile, and having done so are only awaiting the Modi government’s approval for air-freighting it to America? Whether or not this quinine-containing drug is the answer for COVID-19, India will need it, besides malaria, to treat ailments like rheumatoid arthritis, etc. and so keeping a biggish stock of it to meet domestic need makes sense. In any case, it is India’s sovereign right, by way of husbanding its own resources to tackle a pandemic to negate any commercial contracts that spirit away important drugs from the country. The question is will Modi exercise this right, or succumb to American pressure?

Meanwhile, because of America’s marked dependence on China for pharmaceutical and medical products Beijing has Washington over the barrel. Indeed, as a March 4 commentary in Xinhua,the official Chinese news agency, put it, China can send the U.S. to “the hell of the novel coronavirus pandemic” by banning exports of all medical supplies.

It is not just Trump, but US’ attitude vis a vis India generally, that is really at issue here. I have been warning (in my numerous books and in writings over the past two decades) about Washington seeking to imprint US interests and concerns on India’s policies, starting in the new Century with the 2008 civilian nuclear deal and, in the Modi era, with the foundational accords (LEMOA, COMCASA, BECA) that have transformed India into a subsidiary ally. It is a goal successive Indian governments (under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, Modi) have helped Washington realize. These regimes have acted on the flawed premise that an aspiring India can ride to great power status, as I keep harping, by kowtowing to extant great powers — US and China, in the main. It has only earned India kicks up its backside, but Delhi has not been disabused of this view. Then again, if our leaders display no self-respect, it is hardly to be wondered that India will continue to be treated with utter contempt which, incidentally is now reserved, as many West European states find, exclusively for America’s allies and friends.

The worm is, however, turning in Europe at least. Emmanuel Macron in France is leading the charge on shaping an autonomous European identity, policies and even a European military freed from the impedimenta of treaty ties to the US. Germany, the economic giant of Europe under Angela Merkl too has finally decided that enough is enough. The apparent breaking point has been reached with the Trump Administration “confiscating” 200,000 Thailand-made masks ordered by Germany, and arm twisting a German pharma research company reportedly on the cusp of a corona vaccine breakthrough to surrender exclusive rights to it to US companies. It moved the German Home Minister, Andreas Geisel, to equate such actions with “piracy” and to add that “This is no way to to treat transatlantic partners. Even in times of global crisis, we shouldn’t resort to the tactics of the Wild West.”

With treaty allies like Germany being treated with such insensitivity, India can expect only worse. But the Indian government doesn’t get it, perhaps, because Modi (like his predecessors in office) instead of being driven by ‘India First’ imperatives, is casting about, as always, for a safety line from the US which, however, works and has always worked solely on the ‘America First’ principle.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | 7 Comments

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