Time for Disruptive Foreign and National Security Policies

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Bharat Karnad
Image result for pics of Indian naval ships on maneuver

[INS Vikramaditya]

This is the full version of the shortened paper posted earlier in the day. All the Papers by CPR faculty are to be compiled in a booklet — ‘Policy Challenges 2018-2024: The Key Policy Questions for the New Government and Possible Pathways’ and to be published soon as a booklet.

This particular paper can be accessed at https://cprindia.org/time-disruptive-foreign-and-national-security-policies

———-

Several mega-trends are visible in international affairs on the cusp of the third decade of the 21st century. After a trillion dollars spent on the 18-year old war with the Taliban in Afghanistan following a similar amount expended in Iraq and Syria, the US is drained of its wealth, stamina and will for military confrontations of any kind. A reactive and retreating America under President Donald Trump, besides generating unprecedented levels of uncertainty and anxiety, has accentuated the conditions of unusual flux in the international system. Second, with the old certainties gone, traditional alliances (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), trading regimes (Trans-Pacific Partnership), schemes of regional peace (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), and technology and supplier cartels (Missile Technology Control Regime, Nuclear Suppliers Group, et al.) are all alike in disarray; their concerns are now matters of contestation with China staking claim to the pole position vacated by the US. And finally, these developments are compelling major countries to try to protect themselves the best they can by handling things on their own, in coalition with other similarly encumbered nations, and by exploring new security/military cooperation agreements. There is particular urgency in Asia to blunt China’s hegemonic ambitions and preclude its domination from taking root.

State of Play

Unfortunately India finds itself on the wrong side of these trends in the main. This is because it has, in the new millennium, accelerated its efforts to join the very same nonproliferation regimes and cartels that had victimized it all along. Worse, by sidling up to the US and virtually outsourcing its strategic security to Washington, India’s historical role as prime balancer in the international balance-of-power set-up – courtesy its hoary policies of nonalignment and its latter-day avatar, strategic autonomy – has been imperiled. This is at a time when doubts about the US commitment to other countries’ security have increased along with the apprehensions of allies and friends. With security made a transactional commodity by the Trump administration, treaty alliances have been weakened, unsettling West European and Far Eastern states traditionally close to the US.i India’s trend-bucking policy, in the event, will only cement the growing perceptions of the country as unable to perceive its own best interests and to act on them. Its downgrade, as a result of its more recent strategies, to the status of a subordinate state and subsidiary ‘strategic partner’ of the US means that India will have restricted strategic choices. Its foreign and military policies will therefore lose the freedom and latitude for diplomatic manoeuvre that they have always enjoyed.

Thus, the 2008 civilian nuclear deal, for all practical purposes, signed away India’s sovereign right to resume underground testing and froze its nuclear arsenal at the sub-thermonuclear technology level (as the 1998 fusion test was a dud). Agreeing to the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement – the so-called ‘foundational accords’ – will, respectively, permit the US to stage its military forces out of Indian bases and embroil India in its wars in the extended region, and (ii) to penetrate the most secret Indian communications grid, including the nuclear command and control network.

The Indian government’s eagerness to cement the partnership is astonishing considering the trust deficit evident in a long history of duplicitous US behaviour and policies.ii By clinging to a feckless and demanding US, India’s profile as a fiercely independent state has taken a beating, distanced the country from old friends such as Russia (which is pivotal to balancing China and the US) and Iran (central to India’s geostrategic concerns in the Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia), lost the nation its diplomatic elan, and has seriously hurt vital national interests.

Placating China is the other imprudent theme that Indian foreign policy has latched on to. It has mollycoddled its most dangerous adversary and comprehensively capable rival in Asia with giveaways – such as non-use of the Tibet and Taiwan cards, refraining from nuclear missile-arming states on China’s periphery as a tit-for-tat measure for Beijing’s missile-arming of Pakistan, giving the Chinese manufacturing sector unhindered access to the Indian market through a massively unfair and unbalanced bilateral trade regime, etc. On the other hand, it has treated Pakistan, a weak flanking country, as a full-bore security threat when, realistically, it is only a military nuisance. This strategy is at the core of India’s external troubles. It has practically incentivized Beijing to desist from peaceful resolution of the border dispute. It has also undermined India’s credibility and credentials as ‘security provider’ to and strategic partner of a host of Asian littoral and offshore states fearful of an ambitious and aggressive China, as well as complicated the country’s attempts at obtaining a tier of friendly nations around it as buffer.

A topsy-turvy threat perception has also meant a lopsided Indian military geared to handle Pakistan but incapable of defending well against China, even less of taking the fight to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on land, air and distant seas; it is also laughably unprepared for future warfare featuring cyber pre-emption, remotely controlled armed drone swarms, robotic weapons systems managed by Artificial Intelligence, space-based weapons platforms, and clean micro-thermonuclear bombs. In the context, moreover, of a recessive foreign policy and a military that seems unable to wean itself away from imported armaments, it is almost as if the Indian government and armed services have given up on national security. This bewildering state of affairs is in urgent need of drastic overhaul and repair.

Geopolitical Vision and Strategy

Strong nations in the modern era have transitioned into great powers not only through expansive national visions, but also, more significantly, by pursuing policies disruptive of the prevailing order and multilateral regimes they had no hand in creating. India in the 21st century, on the other hand, seems content with the existing international system, measuring its foreign policy success in terms of entry gained or denied in congeries of international power (UN Security Council) and trade and technology cartels (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, etc.). In other words, it covets a place at the high table on terms set by other countries. It is not a mistake made by China or the US (or, to go back in history, Elizabethan England, Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union and now Vladimir Putin’s Russia). The Indian government is hampered by its mistaken belief that upholding the current regional and international correlation of forces and mechanisms of order, and stressing its soft ‘civilizational’ power, will make the country great.

India with its many infirmities is in no position to undertake system disruption by itself.iii For India to rise as the premier Asian challenger to China and as the other economic-political-military power node in the continent in the shortest possible time – which should be the legitimate national aim and vision –it requires a subtle but telling approach. It needs a double-pronged strategy. One prong should stress absolutely reciprocal positions and policies. Thus, Beijing’s insistence on ‘One China, two systems’ should be met with a ‘One India’ concept. Similarly, the non-acceptance by Beijing of all of Jammu and Kashmir (including the Pakistan-occupied portion) as inalienably Indian territory should lead to formal recognition of and relations with Taiwan; it should also spark off New Delhi’s world-wide advocacy of a free Tibet and a free East Turkestan, and of campaigns against ‘cultural genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Tibet and Xinjiang.iv And China’s nuclear missile arming of Pakistan should, even if belatedly, trigger India’s transferring strategic missiles to the states on the Chinese periphery, so that China too thereafter suffers permanent geostrategic disadvantage.

Hamstringing China should also involve meta-measures to carve out separate, loose and specifically anti-China security coalitions from the two important groups India is part of. BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) is an entity dominated economically and trade-wise by China. This is something that arouses wariness in the other three countries, which can be mobilized to form a smaller, informal, security-cooperation-minded coalition, BRIS (Brazil-Russia-India-South Africa). It will assist in hedging Beijing’s military options and affect China’s economic expansiveness. Likewise, the US’s importance to international security has to be whittled away. The Quadrilateral (US-Japan-India-Australia) proposed by Japan’s Shinzo Abe to contain China in the Indo-Pacific is problematic owing to the centrality accorded to the capricious US. India could propose a different set-up – a modified Quadrilateral or ‘Mod Quad’ with India, Japan, Australia and the leading littoral and offshore states of South East Asia (Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore) disputing China’s claims in the South China Sea; a cooperative Taiwan could be accorded ‘observer’ status. This would at once define the strategic geopolitical face-off between ‘rimland Asia’ and a hegemonic ‘heartland’ China, and reduce the uncertainty attending on America’s security role (given that the US and China, owing to their close economic and trading links, are inseparable). Mod Quad will clarify the strategic calculi of member states, while encouraging the US to contribute militarily to the extent it wants to at any time but as an outside party.v

BRIS and Mod Quad are extremely practicable geopolitical solutions to share the cost, divide the danger, and generate synergy from the wide-spectrum capabilities, singly and together, of the member states in these two collectives. At the same time, they would stretch China’s military resources and minimize the uncertainty and confusion attending on any US participation. These new arrangements adhere to the time-tested principle of vision shaping strategy but geography driving it, which makes for cohesion and sense of purpose. BRIS and Mod Quad will enable their member states to be less inhibited in cooperating with each other to deal with the overarching security threat posed by China, but without the intimidating presence of the US (which, typically, pursues its own particular interests). They will instill in the Indian government’s external outlook an outcomes-oriented, competitive bent. It may result, for instance, in getting the east-west Ganga-Mekong connectivity project – as a rival to China’s north-south Belt & Road Initiative – off the ground.vi

But BRIS and Mod Quad leave Pakistan out of the reckoning. Pakistan is strong enough to be a spoiler and, in cahoots with China, pose a substantial problem. More than 70 years of tension and conflict with India haven’t helped. For a lasting solution it is essential to break up the Pakistan-China nexus. The military palliative for terrorist provocations – air and land strikes – will only drive Islamabad deeper into China’s camp. A Kashmir solution roughly along the lines negotiated with General Pervez Musharraf in 2007 that Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Pakistan will accept, is a reasonable end state to work towards.vii But India can lubricate such an offer with policies to co-opt Pakistan (along with India’s other subcontinental neighbours) economically, by means of trade on concessional terms, and easy credit and access to the Indian market for manufactures and produce. This will obtain the goal of unitary economic space in the subcontinent and lay the foundations for a pacified South Asia – the first step in India’s long overdue achievement of great power. Such actions should, however, be preceded by several unilateral and risk-averse military initiatives (outlined later) to establish India’s peaceful bonafides and to denature the Indian threat that Pakistan perceives. Simultaneously, prioritizing strategic and expeditionary military capabilities against China and for distant operations jointly with friendly states in the Indian Ocean Region and in Southeast Asia will secure India’s extended security perimeter.

National Security Policy Priorities

Lack of money has never been the hitch. Rather, the problem has been and continues to be the misuse of financial resources by the three armed services with their faulty expenditure priorities. Intent on equipping and sustaining inappropriate force structures geared to the lesser threat, they have squandered the colonial legacy of expeditionary and ‘out of area operations’. Consequently, they have shrunk greatly in stature even as they have increased in size.viii Persisting with thinking of Pakistan as the main threat long after it credibly ceased to be one post the 1971 war has resulted in an Indian military able to fight only short-range, short-duration, small and inconclusive wars. Indeed, so geared to territorial defence and tactical warfare are the Indian armed services that they have paid scant attention to strategic objectives and to the means of realizing them. The political leadership, for its part, has shown marked lack of interest, failure to articulate a national vision, and inability to outline a game plan and strategy in this respect. It has chosen the easy way of relying on the armed services professionally to do the right thing by proffering the right advice – which they haven’t.

Breaking the Pakistan-China nexus is an imperative. It requires the Indian government to first seed a conducive political milieu by making certain safe unilateral military moves. What the Pakistan Army most fears is India’s three Strike Corps; if this ‘threat’ is denatured, a milieu with enormous peaceful potential can be created. Considering the nuclear overhang and zero probability of the Indian government ever ordering a war of annihilation – which is the only time when these armoured and mechanized formations will fight full tilt – three corps are way in excess of need. They can be reconstituted and the resources shifted to form a single composite corps adequate for any conceivable Pakistan contingency. The rest of the heavily armoured units can be converted to airborne cavalry, and to light tanks with engines optimized for high-altitude conditions; three offensive mountain corps can thereby be equipped to take the fight to the PLA on the Tibetan Plateau. The nuclear backdrop can likewise be changed for the better by India removing its short-range nuclear missiles from forward deployment on the western border and perhaps even getting rid of them altogether, because hinterland-based missiles can reach Pakistani targets with ease. These two moves made without demanding matching responses will cost India little in terms of security, establish a modicum of trust, persuade Pakistan of India’s goodwill, and confirm China as the Indian military’s primary concern. It will hasten normalcy in bilateral relations.

Tackling China at a time when it is widening the gap with India in all respects necessitates India using the playbook the Chinese successfully used against the US – Pakistan against India, and North Korea against America – when facing an adversary with a marked conventional military edge. It means resorting to Nuclear First Use (NFU) and deploying weapons to make this stance credible. Emplacing atomic demolition munitions in Himalayan passes to deter PLA units ingressing in strength across the disputed border is one tripwire. Another is to declare that any forceful Chinese military action that crosses a certain undefined threshold may automatically trigger the firing of canisterised medium- and long-range Agni missiles, now capable of launch-on-launch and launch-on warning. Additionally, the large numbers of Chinese missiles positioned in Tibet should be seen as the third nuclear tripwire. As there is no technology to reliably detect and determine the nature of incoming warheads, any missile PLA fires will reasonably have to be assumed to be nuclear-warheaded. Such a hair-trigger posture leaning towards action will create precisely the kind of uncertainty about the Indian reaction and response that will bolster its deterrent stance.ix

Exorbitantly priced aircraft carriers are unaffordable and, in the age of hypersonic and supersonic missiles, a military liability. The Indian naval budget should instead prioritize nuclear-powered ballistic missile-firing and attack submarines, and a surface fleet of multipurpose frigates. The Indian Air Force needs to radically cut the diversity of combat aircraft in its inventory, rationalize its force structure and streamline its logistics set-up. This will be facilitated by limiting the fleet to just two types of fighter planes and a strategic bomber. The multi-role Su-30MKI upgraded to ‘super Sukhoi’ configuration in the strike and air superiority role and progressively enhanced versions of the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft for air defence, the follow-on Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft for longer reach and bigger punch, will suffice. The lease-buying of 1-2 squadrons of Tu-160M2 ‘Blackjack’ strategic bomber from Russia as the manned, recallable, vector will make the country’s nuclear triad more versatile.

Politically, the most difficult policy decision for the government will be to resume nuclear testing. In the wake of the failed fusion device tested in 1998 (S-1 test), this is absolutely necessary to obtain proven thermonuclear weapons of different power-to-yield ratios. India has got by with a suspect thermonuclear arsenal for 20 years. It is time India’s strategic deterrent acquired credibility.

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i An unreliable US, in fact, so concerns its NATO allies that the French defence minister Florence Parly in Washington asked a little plaintively, ‘What Europeans are worried about is this: Will the U.S. commitment [to NATO] be perennial? Should we assume that it will go on as was the case in the past 70 years?’ See ‘French defense chief questions US commitment to NATO’, AFP, RadioFreeEurope, Radio Liberty, 18 March 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/french-defense-chief-questions-us-commitment-to-….

ii Bharat Karnad, Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015), 187-219.

iii For a detailed analysis of its various infirmities that preclude India’s becoming a great power anytime soon, see Karnad, Why India Is Not a Great Power (Yet).

iv China sees itself as the main protector of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Visiting Islamabad during the Pulwama crisis, the foreign minister Wang Yi declared: ‘No matter how things change in the world and the region, China will firmly support Pakistan upholding its independence and territorial integrity and dignity.’ See Sutirtho Patranobis, ‘China firmly with Pakistan, says Beijing as Islamabad raises Kashmir in top talks’, Hindustan Times, 19 March 2019, https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/china-firmly-with-pakistan-says-beijing-as-islamabad-raises-kashmir-in-top-talks/story-5qM8HPgUQkl7ZwPCQEfh3O.html.

v Bharat Karnad, ‘India’s Weak Geopolitics and What To Do About It’, in Bharat Karnad, ed., Future Imperilled: India’s Security in the 1990s and Beyond (New Delhi: Viking, 1994), 19-20.

vi Bharat Karnad, Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition (New Delhi: Penguin-Viking, 2018), ch. 4.

vii Imtiaz Ahmad, ‘2-3 solutions available to Kashmir issues, says Pak PM Imran Khan’, Hindustan Times, 4 December 2018, https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/2-3-solutions-available-to-kashmir-issues-says-pak-pm-imran-khan/story-AOHvnIYCspm1mOqHp74K6I.html.

viii Karnad, Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet), ch. 5.

 ix Bharat Karnad, ‘Shifting the Nuclear Security Focus to China’, in Lieutenant General A.K. Singh and Lieutenant General B.S. Nagal, eds., India’s Military Strategy in the 21st Century (New Delhi: Centre for Land Warfare Studies and KW Publishers, 2019); Karnad, Staggering Forward, 344-349.

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What the Modi government should do in the foreign policy field

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Bharat Karnad
[Trouble?]

Instead of disruptive foreign and national security policies, India seems content with the existing world order. It covets a place at the high-table but on terms set by other countries.

International affairs is witnessing several megatrends, but India is yet to respond actively. And it won’t do anymore.

A reactive and retreating America under President Donald Trump has accentuated the conditions of unusual flux in the international system. With the old certainties gone, traditional alliances (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), trading regimes (Trans-Pacific Partnership), schemes of regional peace (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), and technology and supplier cartels (Missile Technology Control Regime, Nuclear Suppliers Group, et al) are all alike in disarray, their concerns now are matters of contestation with China staking claim to the pole position vacated by the US.

There’s a particular urgency in Asia to blunt China’s hegemonic ambitions and preclude its domination from taking root.

State of play
Unfortunately, India finds itself on the wrong side of these trends because it has accelerated its efforts to join these very same non-proliferation regimes and cartels that had victimised it all along.

Worse, by sidling up to the US and virtually outsourcing its strategic security to Washington, India’s historical role as a prime balancer in the international balance-of-power system, courtesy its hoary policies of nonalignment and strategic autonomy, has been imperilled.

So, the 2008 civilian nuclear deal, for all practical purposes, signed away India’s sovereign right to resume underground testing, and froze its nuclear arsenal at the sub-thermonuclear technology level (1998 fusion test was a dud). Agreeing to the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement – the so-called “foundational accords” will, respectively, permit America to stage its military forces out of Indian bases and embroil the country in its wars in the extended region, and to penetrate the most secret Indian communications grid, including the nuclear command and control network.

By clinging to a feckless and demanding US, India’s profile as a fiercely independent state has taken a beating, distanced the country from old friends, such as Russia, which is pivotal to balancing China and US, and Iran – central to India’s geostrategic concerns in the Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Placating China is the other imprudent theme that Indian foreign policy has cottoned on to. Mollycoddling the country’s most dangerous adversary in Asia with giveaways while treating Pakistan, a weak flanking country, as a full-bore security threat when it is only a military nuisance, is at the core of India’s external troubles.

A topsy-turvy threat perception has also meant a lopsided Indian military geared to handle Pakistan but incapable of defending against China.

It is almost as if the Indian government and armed services have given up on national security. This bewildering state of affairs is in urgent need of drastic overhaul and repair.

Geopolitical vision & strategy
Strong nations in the modern era have transitioned into great powers by pursuing policies disrespectful and disruptive of the prevailing order and multilateral regimes they had no hand in creating.

India, on the other hand, seems content with measuring its foreign policy success in terms of entry gained or denied in congeries of international power (UN Security Council) and trade and technology cartels (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, etc.).

The Indian government is hampered by its mistaken belief that stressing its soft “civilisational” power will make the country great.

India with its many infirmities is in no position to undertake system disruption by itself. Rather, for India to rise as the premier Asian challenger to China and as the other economic-political-military power node in the continent in the shortest possible time needs a double-pronged strategy.

One prong should stress absolutely reciprocal positions and policies. Beijing’s insistence on ‘One China, two systems’ should be met with ‘One India’ concept, and acceptance by Beijing of all Jammu & Kashmir (including the Pakistan-occupied portion) as inalienably Indian territory. And, China’s nuclear missile arming of Pakistan should, even if belatedly, trigger India’s transferring strategic missiles to the states on the Chinese periphery so that China too, thereafter, suffers permanent geostrategic disadvantage.

Second, hamstringing China should also involve meta-measures to carve out separate, loose and specifically anti-China security coalitions from the two important existing groups India is part of – BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) and the Quad (India-Japan-Australia-US). BRICS can be mobilised to form a smaller, informal, security-cooperation BRIS (Brazil,-Russia-India-South Africa). Likewise, a modified Quadrilateral or ‘Mod Quad’ with India, Japan, Australia, and a group of leading Southeast Asian states, including Vietnam and Singapore to replace the US, would reduce the uncertainty of America’s security role given that the US and China owing to their close economic and trading links are inseparable.

BRIS and Mod Quad will enable their member states to be less inhibited in cooperating with each other to deal with the overarching security threat posed by China, but without the intimidating presence of the US.

But BRIS and Mod Quad leave Pakistan out of the reckoning. Pakistan is strong enough to be a spoiler and, in cahoots with China, pose a substantial problem. A lasting solution is essential to break up the Pakistan-China nexus.

A Kashmir solution roughly along the lines negotiated with General Parvez Musharraf in 2007 that Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Pakistan will accept, is a reasonable end-state to work towards. But lubricating such an offer with policies economically to co-opt Pakistan, along with India’s other subcontinental neighbours, will help it obtain the goal of unitary economic space in the subcontinent and lay the foundations for a pacified South Asia.

National security policy priorities
Lack of money has never been the hitch. Rather, the problem has been and is the continued misuse of financial resources by India’s three-armed services with faulty expenditure priorities.

Intent on equipping and sustaining inappropriate force structures geared to the lesser threat, they have squandered their colonial legacy of expeditionary and “out of area operations” and, consequently, shrunk greatly in stature even as they have increased in size.

Seeing Pakistan as a threat long after it credibly ceased to be one post-1971 War, has resulted in an Indian military able to fight only short-range, short-duration, small and inconclusive wars.

The political leadership, for its part, has chosen the easy way of relying on the armed services professionally to do the right thing by proffering the right advice, which they haven’t.

Breaking the Pakistan-China nexus requires a conducive political milieu making certain safe unilateral military moves. What the Pakistan Army most fears are India’s three Strike Corps, which “threat” if denatured can obtain a milieu with enormous peaceful potential. The nuclear backdrop can likewise be changed for the better by India removing its short-range nuclear missiles from forward deployment on the western border and, perhaps, even getting rid of them altogether, because hinterland-based missiles can reach Pakistani targets with ease. These two moves will cost India little in terms of security and persuade Pakistan of India’s goodwill and China as the Indian military’s primary concern.

Tackling China at a time when it is widening the gap with India in all respects necessitates India using the playbook the Chinese successfully used against the US, Pakistan against India, and North Korea against America, when facing an adversary with a marked conventional military edge. It means resorting to Nuclear First Use (NFU) and deploying weapons to make this stance credible.

Politically, the most difficult policy decision for the Modi government will, however, be to resume nuclear testing. This is absolutely necessary to obtain tested and proven thermonuclear weapons of different power-to-yield ratios. India has got by with a suspect thermonuclear arsenal for 20 years. It is time India’s strategic deterrent acquired credibility.

Published in ThePrint.in June 6, 2019 at https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-problem-is-its-policy-to-pamper-china-while-treating-weak-pak-as-full-blown-threat/246337/
This is a shortened version of a Paper; the fuller version will be put up soon on the Centre for Policy Research website and published as part of a compilation of Papers by CPR faculty on various issues by the month end. It is meant to set the public policy agenda and to offer policy guidelines for the 2nd Modi government. A longer version of this piece is available on the CPR website at http://www.cprindia.org.

Posted in Afghanistan | 2 Comments

Jaishankar in cabinet, next, F-16 in IAF

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of S. Jaishankar foreign secretary

Whether or not Narendra Modi delivers on any other election promise, one goal he will realize, with S. Jaiskankar, the former Foreign Secretary and virtually Washington’s Man in Delhi in the Union cabinet, is to, in fact, make India a full-fledged American “ally” — a label used by US President Donald Trump just yesterday. “Ally” is a loaded word but if India warrants this designation it is in no small part because of Jaishankar’s successful endeavours over the years, in connivance with soft-headed political leaders, to rob this country of its policy latitude and freedom of action, reduce it, in the process, to America’s subsidiary ally as apprehended in my last two books — ‘Why India is Not a great Power (Yet)’ [2015], and ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ [2018].

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar comes straight into the cabinet from his job with the Tata Group where he looked after its foreign interests, mostly trying to force the US defence major Lockheed Martin’s F-16/F-21 India project down the Indian Air Force’s throat.  That  Modi thinks highly of him there’s no doubt. That he was instrumental in nudging Modi into getting the Indian foreign policy to tilt far more towards the United States than the PM was originally inclined to do, is also not a secret in Delhi corridors nor that he has been assisted by a whole bunch of Indian-origin Washington thinktankers, like Ashley Tellis at Carnegie, who frequently visits Delhi and meets with the PM.

Indeed, Modi was so keen that Jaishankar keep pushing the American line from the outside, that he generously waived the “cooling off” period required of civil servants and senior military officials on their superannuation before taking up private sector jobs. There is delicious irony here. It was Jaishankar as FS who in 2015 or thereabouts warned the retired former naval chief,  Admiral Nirmal Verma, against taking up the job of lecturer at the US Naval Academy, Newport, Rhode Island, immediately after ending his stint as High Commissioner to Canada. The “cooling off” period is there to ensure national secrets are not compromised. Verma paid no heed and now performs duties that small time outside lecturers pull at the Academy!

When Jaishankar moved directly from MEA to Tatas (as he did from Tatas into the cabinet), he used his past connections to push the case with the PM for Tata-built F-16s for the Indian Air Force.  Lockheed Martin chose Tatas to license-manufacture the frightfully old, Museum-ready, F-16 combat aircraft, designed in the late 1960s, for IAF service in the 3rd decade of the 21st Century. And Ratan Tata, in turn, selected Jaishankar to get the F-16 contract through the Modi government. Now that he is the external affairs minister one can expect that among his first orders of business, will be to fast-forward the F-16/F-21 license production agreement for  Tatas to implement.

Jaishankar is being suitably pumped up for the task, hailed by the Indian media as the foreign policy brain trust for the PM and a strategic avatar of his venerable father, K. Subrahmanyam. News 18 called him “one of the mightiest brains on strategic affairs in the country” which, if true, will be entirely in the service of a foreign country. More such puff pieces can be expected in the media in the days to come, In any case, his being credited with the “mightiest [strategic] brains” is problematic considering, that like his father, he has not published a single book — very different from compiling op-ed articles into books as Subrahmanyam did, which is easy. But unlike his father, who had a deep intellect, was well read and had schooled himself in the arcana of nuclear deterrence while in service, the son in this regard is, well, not so much.

Jaishankar’s progress has interested me from the time I first came in contact with him in Washington, where he was political counselor in the Indian embassy in the early- to mid- 1980s. Like all JNU leftist types, he was, I could see, smitten by America. Washington, in turn, marked him out as a person who would be useful and whose career needed to be suitably nursed and pushed with well placed tactical successes to help grow his reputation in Delhi as someone who could get things done vis a vis the American government. It helped  him climb the ladder in the Foreign office. This and the fact that his father– an old IAS hand with considerable influence in government — planned his career and managed his rise by importuning foreign ministers of the day to place him in select MEA and foreign posts.

Meanwhile, the American hand propelling Jaishankar’s career trajectory upwards didn’t hurt. A minor peak was reached when he was appointed Joint Secretary (Americas) during Manmohan Singh’s time. In this capacity he negotiated the one-sided and ruinous civilian nuclear cooperation treaty with the US courtesy which India, in effect, signed away its freedom to resume nuclear testing and become a thermonuclear military power of note. This was the sort of payoff Washington was looking for when it first identified him as a comer who would be useful in advancing US interests in Delhi — the “long view” strategic thing the US government, aided by its Delhi embassy, has always done. His record was buttressed during his time as ambassador to the US in which post he won Modi’s heart by mobilizing the BJP-leaning NRI crowd culminating in the intoxicating event for Modi — the massive Madison Garden do. The bigger payoff to the US came when he was ensconced as Foreign Secretary by Modi. Jaishankar doubled down on benefiting the US by pushing the PM to accept the “foundational accords” — LEMOA, CISMOA and the soon-to come BECA that a strategically limited visioned Modi was not averse to. Incidentally, MEA worked on these agreements  with  the initial negotiating drafts provided by Washington for each of these treaties. May be this was to ease MEA-GOI’s and Jaishankar’s work-load! In reality, these accords will result in the outsourcing of India’s strategic security without in any way shoring up India’s defences. It is a defeatist policy based on the mistaken belief that India cannot tackle China by itself, which is simply not the case.

Starting with Brajesh Mishra as Vajpayee’s NSA and ending with the Modi-Jaishankar duo, India’s slide into the US camp has been a guided affair. What’s new is that Modi felt his NSA, Ajit Doval, couldn’t hack it and cut him off from policies and decisions pertaining to foreign and military affairs, his role all but zeroed out with Jaishankar formally outranking him. This the PM arranged, perhaps, also with a view to taking down Doval a peg or two. It may be noted that Modi denied one of Doval’s sons a BJP ticket to contest the general elections from a hill state.

Jaishankar’s attraction to Modi owes much to the latter’s conviction that an “aspirational and assertive” India requires to canoodle with America to find its place in the world, when exactly the opposite is true and would fetch the country far greater leverage and improve its international standing as a strategically autonomous entity that’s not to be trifled with. Modi expects Jaishankar to leverage the country’s strengths except, given his track record, he will very likely lever India right into Washington’s lap.

The PM is apparently also impressed by Jaishankar’s formulation of a China policy based on the principle that “differences” need not become “disputes”. This is fine but ignores the basic fact of China being a geopolitical, ideological, economic and military rival of India in Asia, and unless differences are indeed treated as disputes, China will walk away with the prize. I mean, all the renewed bhai-bhai stuff has got India what? Absolutely zilch, nothing, except demands to strengthen the status quo exclusively benefiting China!

With Jaishankar in place, the US-supportive policy “eco-system” in Delhi detailed in my latest book ‘Staggering Forward’ and led by the Delhi chapters of Carnegie and Brookings, will become even more active. This is a circle Jaishankar is connected with via immediate family links. His every move will be cheered by Indian media columnists and commentators from Delhi to Singapore, and this eco-system, generally, will continue oxygenating the thinking by retired and serving diplomats, senior civil servants and military officers, and provide them platforms to voice opinions about making Indo-US relations the central pillar of this country’s foreign policy. This entire caboodle constitute the Trojan Horse that is already at the centre of government, and helping root in the socio-political milieu a mindless hankering for all things American and this at a time when US’ unreliability as partner is manifest.

In this context what happens to protecting and furthering India’s vital national interests, which are at huge variance to US interests in the Indo-Pacific and in the nuclear security, advanced technology and other realms? This is apparently nobody’s concern. National interests are, in fact, now orphaned as Modi-Jaishankar get into their stride. And contrary, realist and uncompromizing and uncomprizable nationalist views, however substantively argued, will get short shrift.

But, hey, India and IAF will have the F-16/21 good enough, alas, only to play at war not actually to fight wars with!

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Petty with Pakistan, pally with Xi

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of Imran and modi together

(A younger Imran Khan meeting with the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi)

This evening the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, Ajay Bisaria, will be holding an Iftar party to end the fasting religiously mandated during the month of Ramzan. Pakistani guests — mostly members of the political and social elite, who will venture to attend can expect to be manhandled and harassed by the Pakistani police and intel agencies mounting guard at the gates of the Indian embassy located at Ramna 5, Diplomatic Enclave. They can expect to be questioned harshly, their car trunks to be searched, their identities ascertained, the invitation cards scrutinized, and the information recorded with much raising of eyebrows and officious expressions of  displeasure. It will be in exact retaliation for Indian spooks and liveried constables examining invitations from the Pakistan High Commission on Shantipath in Delhi to Indian well-wishers as if they were live bombs, and generally acting silly, during the Pakistan Day celebrations on March 24 and to an Iftar party thrown earlier this week .

Add to it the news report that RAW and like agencies have raised some doubts about  Moin ul Haque, the erstwhile Pak ambassador in France designated by prime minister Imran Khan as the High Commissioner-designate in Delhi to replace Sohail Mahmood who has taken over as Foreign Secretary. Now what could possibly have stirred the Indian intel types into action, considering Haque’s career record is fairly straightforward with nary a hint anywhere of any links to ISI, etc.? Such doubts, it is said, may lead to the second  Modi government rejecting Haque as ambassador, though this is highly unlikely because if consorting with ISI becomes the standard than no senior Indian diplomat will be acceptable to Islamabad as all of them, during their careers will have interacted closely with RAW staffers in Indian embassies abroad and hence with RAW in the foreign postings they would have pulled. It is a dangerous path to go down because soon enough the High Commissions in Islamabad and Delhi will be operating without High Commissioners! So, no, that won’t happen and Haque will present his credentials to President Kovind.

Then again, all these things are part of the ongoing drama the Indian government is enacting to, in whatever ways, justify not inviting the Pakistan PM to partake of the ceremony installing Narendra Modi as prime minister the second time around by stressing Modi’s supposed eagerness for his ‘Look East’ policy pivoting on the Bay of Bengal concert of nations (BIMSTEC), which actually is going nowhere, fast. Imran’s situation is unlike his predecessor Nawaz Sharif whose presence at Modi’s swearing-in in 2014 was the high point of that event, not least because of the bonhomie and good cheer it generated all round, leading to Modi parachuting down on Lahore and Sharif’s daughter’s wedding at the Sharif family’s princely compound in Raiwind, while returning home from Kabul. Sure, Sharif disappointed, was unable to control the army and its covert warfare  sword arm, Inter-Services Intelligence, from loosing terrorists on the IAF base, Pathankot, and otherwise quickly dissipating whatever goodwill he had managed to accrue with Modi. Wary of again being taken for a ride — as Modi, perhaps, sees it, he has chosen not to have Imran over or to have anything to do with the Pak PM beyond the congratulatory phone call he received from the ex-cricketer, despite Imran bidding for a meeting and a resumption of dialogue-ing even if through the back channel. During the Manmohan Singh era, this channel was ably manned by Ambassador Satinder Lambah.

Lambah, it may be recalled, had in 2007 negotiated with the military regime of General Parvez Mushharaf  a final Kashmir deal — one that Imran not too long ago indirectly referred to as the solution he’d happily accept based on the principle that borders cannot be redrawn.   The barebones of the deal were spelled out by Lambah in 2015. ( https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/almost-had-kashmir-deal-with-pakistan-ex-pm-s-envoy-lambah/story-7L6fUH2J9ngCEmTCZngoLJ.html    )

In return for Pakistan giving up the option of plebiscite under UN aegis, India would reduce its army presence in tandem with the reduction in cross-border terrorist activity, with the Indian para-mils remaining in J&K. Crucially, he had got the Pakistan Army on board and supporting this deal “We had an assurance from the military government of that time (under President Musharraf)”, Lambah said. “The negotiators from Pakistan could not have been finalised it if the establishment had not been on board,” This solution was on even in the aftermath of the 26/11 seaborne terrorist strike on Mumbai in 2008. Lambah calls it a “win-win for Pakistan, India and the people of Jammu and Kashmir” and believes it can be the basis for all governments, including the present one led by Narendra Modi. “It was not negotiated keeping an individual or party in mind. Everyone has their own style. Pursuit of peace with Pakistan and a discussion on Kashmir has been undertaken by different prime ministers and I have no doubt that future governments will follow the same path” he added.

But, of course, by then the Congress party government had got cold feet. And there the solution for peace in Kashmir stands, in a state of petrified animation, awaiting only a breath of life from Modi which, alas, is not forthcoming. Modi is like the cat that having landed on a hot tin roof once thinks all tinny things are hot and traipses cagily on or around them. And, in any case, Pulwama was a god-sent, wasn’t it in terms of his Balakot decision and the general election result?

Then there’s Xi and China, and Modi seems all agog with hosting the Chinese supremo in his constituency. So we will all espy Modi and Xi boating down the Ganga past the Varanasi ghats. In preparation, the former is walking the extra mile to please Beijing, removing any and all traces of his government’s past camaraderie with the free Tibet cause and and an equally free, strong and resilient Taiwan. Neither Lobsang Sangay, head of the Tibetan government in exile, nor the ambassador of Taiwan in Delhi masquerading for China’s benefit as the Trade Representative, who were invited to Modi’s first swearing in, have been sent invitations for the event this evening. And Huawei remains free to sell its 5G telecom gear, etc in this country, affording Beijing a free path to penetrating India’s most secret communications networks, precisely the reason that the US and a host of European countries have stopped Huawei from selling its wares in their markets.

The Question is: How far will Modi go to be pally with Xi and subserve China’s national interest at the cost of India’s national interest? Will  all the glad handing and hugs and embraces, and fawning in Varanasi fetch Modi and India anything? What has the “Wuhan spirit” got India so far — nothing other than Beijing removing its technical hold on the UN labelling Masood Azhar a “global terrorist” as if that means anything and will deter the ISI and Masood from carrying on with where they last left off. Will the promise of warm relations with China persuade Xi to dilute its military nexus with Pakistan? No. Will it convince Xi to hammer out a more equitable trade schemata? No. Will Xi decide to let  India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group? No. Oh, but he may agree to import more mangoes and meat from India! And, Modi will no doubt go ga-ga over these small concessions, seeing in them signs of  having tamed China. Xi will be licking his lips in anticipation of putting a lot over an eager to please and gullible Modi. These then are the sort of things Modi is banking on to make a success of his foreign policy which aims,  he declared post-election victory, for India to be recognized as “Vishwa Guru” by 2020. How so? is anybody’s guess.

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Tarzan of the subcontinental jungle

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of modi after 2018 election successes

The first statements by any elected leader returned with a huge majority are a fairly good indication of what’s to come.  By this reckoning the country can expect, as the previous post noted, a more populist swing towards social welfare-ism without any compensatory trade-offs in terms of off-loading — privatizing if you will — all socialist-era white elephants in the industrial and services spheres, all of whom are loss-making. So Air India will continue to fly to far corners with deplorable service standards, the railways will hobble along, the defence PSUs will keep producing stuff the military doesn’t want and ordnance factories will output shells that split the barrels of artillery guns, this even as the telecommunications prospects of the country have brightened with private companies allowed to enter the field marginalizing the public sector telecom entities. But it is lessons from which experience — that privatizing government owned units will fill the treasury and improve the economy — that the Modi government will studiously ignore.

In fact, a BJP leader is quoted with respect to Modi’s flagship political venture — ‘Make in India’ as saying that it will be an employment generator. It doesn’t apparently matter what’s manufactured within the country as long as it provides jobs. This is manifestly the wrong way, I have long argued, to go about the business because it will lead to more and more international companies dumping their obsolete production jigs and assembly lines in India to output completely useless goods and hardware marketable in no other country in the world. Like the F-21 fighter — a strange attempt by the US defence major Lockheed Martin to resurrect, nomenclature-wise at least, its old Northrop-Grumman F-20 Tigershark built as a “low cost fighter aircraft” for the Third World India of President Jimmy Carter’s time, except instead of the then newly designed Tigershark, the old and weary F-16 is being led out of the stable dressed up suitably for a brain-dead Indian government to go gaga over and the Indian Air Force, which knows better, to accept this wretched warplane that the home-grown Tejas can run circles around. This when Tejas can spearhead the country’s intent to rely on armaments it designs itself and to make India an arms exporter of note. Except, a Defence Ministry note to be put up soon to Modi reportedly places these same malfunctioning DPSUs and Ordnance factories in the lead for increasing arms exports. Well, Good Luck! And also, good-bye to achieving genuine arms self-sufficiency.

Consider the first effusions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepping into his second term in office. Most striking of all were the terms in which he congratulated the PMO — his personal secretariat which pretty much runs the entire show because it does very little thinking and merely takes cues from the boss — and headed by babus he has long worked with, won’t contradict him, and trusts implicitly. The PMO’s success, Modi said, was because it strove not for “effectiveness” but “efficiency”! With this as metric one can see why he prizes bureaucrats able efficiently to carry out his orders and realize his instructions than domain experts able to think up more effective solutions for the myriad problems facing the country. And why his second stint in government will be as bereft of expertise, and grand new but risky ideas emanating from the top — because his own strength lies only in effective and efficient politicking. And why the same plodding policies will be pursued that promise only incremental gains (which by 2024 and the time of the next general elections will be totted up as huge benefits for the people).

This deficiency will be particularly evident in the foreign and national security areas where staying with the policies of his first term which, in turn, were a continuation of the themes from the Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh eras, will not only ill-serve the country but ensure India flounders among the also-rans. In keeping with a shrunken view of India’s place in the world, Modi’s initial words were equally galling. India he declared has “national ambitions” and “regional aspirations” which suggests, correctly, that during this Prime Minister’s time in office, India can say good-bye to any role that will have global impact or even result in a consequential impression in Asia, and that it will reduce its sights to South Asia and to playing the “Dada” on the block whom Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and perhaps Myanmar, defer to. With Modi’s willingness. moreover, to play footsie with the transaction-minded US President Donald Trump, gone too are the big plans for consolidating relations with Iran and enlarging India’s footprint in Afghanistan and Central Asia ex-Chabahar. But Washington’s potential objections to upsetting the status quo will also mean that the one thing Modi can do with the majority he will soon have in both Houses of Parliament to amend the Constitution by removing Articles 35A and 370 that endow Jammu & Kashmir with special status within the Union, he will refrain from doing. This will guarantee that the Kashmir issue remains on the boil and the entry point for diplomatic intervention by extra-territorial powers, namely, the US, China, UK, et al to the detriment of India’s sovereignty, security and national interest.

Then again, Delhi’s condescending, big brother, attitude will likely obtain a Pakistan, Nepal, etc that will prefer to be tributaries of Beijing than kowtow to Delhi. None of this really bothers  Modi, who seems content to play second fiddle to an aggressively expansionist China in Asia and the Indian Ocean basin and to the entirely unreliable US in the ‘Indo-Pacific’. This while Modi is being jollied along by Washington and West European capitals with warm hospitality shown him in return for capital purchases (mostly antiquated military hardware)  from their countries. Meanwhile, the short-sighted idiots in GHQ, Rawalpindi, will happily keep  providing the periodic excuses of terrorist acts for Modi to mount “surgical” strikes, Balakote-type “attack” sorties, and to thump his chest. (Who is to say the Pulwama episode which set up the Balakote operation didn’t swing the elections for Modi and  the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party?) So the PM’s restricted ambition for India is apparently for it to be the Tarzan of the subcontinental jungle!

 

 

 

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Don’t expect anything very different from Modi in his 2nd term

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of modi electioneering

Narendra Modi has been returned to power with a bang by the people. Despite a record of tepid success in the domestic and economic spheres at home and timidity abroad, except when it comes to Pakistan where he has roared like a lion mainly because he faced a mouse, the Indian voters apparently selected him as the default option. This was a wise thing to do considering the opposition that when not promising chaos and family-driven corruption, complacently relied on the caste arithmetic to hoist them into power only to discover that the negatives attending on the likes of Mayawati,  Mamata, Rahul-Priyanka Gandhi, and Akhilesh Yadav far outweighed in the mind of the electorate any real good they said they’d deliver.

However, the thing in the prime minister’s victory speech about Indian politics, besides contending that the election results had written finis to the caste-based and dynastic dynamic,  would hereafter be propelled by two concerns — the fairly high proportion of society that is still poor and by measures to alleviate  their condition, may be the harbinger of more populist policies and giveaway schemes that don’t and can’t pay for themselves. In other words, the new Modi government may actually strengthen and reinforce the nanny-state tendencies of the “socialist” state bequeathed the country by the Nehru-Gandhi’s, where the principle of lifting oneself up by one’s own bootstraps embodied in the ongoing programme of disbursing small loans to the youth to start their own small businesses, is discarded. It will confront Modi with the impossible task of finding gainful “white collar” employment for tens of millions of ill-educated, unemployable, youth (many of them flashing 90% plus marks in school-leaving exams) when accommodating them in government jobs will mean expanding the government and its role in the lives of the citizenry — which’d be the reverse of his 2014 promise of “minimum government, maximum governance”, or is this trashed as well?

In this scenario, radical departures of policy in any realm seem unlikely. Thus, land and labour reforms — the two hurdles that economic liberalization drive of the Manmohan Singh and the successor Modi regimes have stumbled on, will remain unaddressed. Consequently, the rapid growth of industry and the manufacturing sector dependent on the easy availability of land and mobility of labour that comes from disposing off the hoary socialist rule of “once hired, never fired”, will never happen, the dream of India replacing China as the workshop of the world  will never materialize. And the opportunity of India exploiting the current economic rift between the US and China to attract Taiwanese, American and European capital and manufacturing companies to set up alternate production sites in this country, will be lost. And Modi and the BJP will lose a once in a lifetime chance of setting India on the course for accelerated economic development, will be wasted. The small door now open to India will inevitably close because the US and China are too invested in each other not to drawback from a mutually ruinous all-out trade war, unless India wedges a big Indian economic foot in it, forces it open by incentivizing global investors and manufacturers with the prospect of selling their wares in the vast Indian market and to produce for the international market.  This will require as prerequisite massive skilling programmes to get ready a skilled workforce — something that only the private sector can produce if it is induced to invest in such enterprise with attractive tax holidays and tax-writeoffs. The skilling endeavour in the first Modi government merely amounted to a lot of paper circulating  sluggishly through the endless bureaucratic corridors of the government.

Which brings us to the question of whether Modi will affect any real efficiency in the government’s functioning and to what extent and scale? As I detailed in my book ‘Staggering Forward’, this is not what Modi is inclined to do. So, India will remain stuck in the economic never-never land of glib rhetoric and, absent the will to change, an over-sized under-performing government ostensibly to service myriad populist, money guzzling, programmes launched  by Modi.

And abroad, the country will stay on the same old track — frequent foreign tripping and summiting by the PM, the careful massaging of Modi’s ego by foreign leaders whom he has hugged and embraced only to provide a bigger market for Chinese goods, and generate more arms sales for defence industries in Israel, Russia, France, UK, and the US, even as indigenous armament R&D and production by the  private industry is actively discouraged while wasteful DPSUs continue to binge on the taxpayer’s rupee but now with  licensed production deals for dated military hardware — F-21 (the antiquated F-16 with bells and whistles) and the like, in the name of ‘Make in India’.

And Modi will carry on tilting towards the US — do as Trump bids Delhi do whether on cornering Iran, reducing arms purchases from Russia, permitting US military to stage out of Indian bases, or going slow on building external bases on the Indian Ocean island nations and the rim. Much of this activity will be supported by the powerful policy eco-system working in Delhi comprising Indian origin thinktankers and academics in the US, former Indian ambassadors to America and US envoys to Delhi and such-like diplomats, and a whole bunch of poo-bahs in Indian officialdom hankering for, and rewarded by a canny Washington,  with green cards and scholarships, resident and H1B visas for progeny and family. Support for this tilt is vociferous in the media, and more subtly with appropriate notings on files. This is so  notwithstanding the fact that those urging such a policy line admit that the Indian government faces a “fickle” and unreliable US.

Meanwhile, Russia forges close economic, military and technological bonds with China and Pakistan, and Modi, starry-eyed about his budding relationship with the “extremely stable genius” residing in the White House, as  President Donald Trump unabashedly described himself on TV yesterday, ignores both the diplomatic-economic-political-military leverage India has in dealing with big powers, and the more obvious geostrategic moves he can make to sock it to China — the only substantial econo-military threat confronting India. By, for instance, freely transferring strategic impact missiles to states on China’s periphery,  formalizing ties with Taiwan, coordinating closely with Taipei to discomfit Beijing, mounting international campaigns, also in the UN, on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans  and Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and generally being disruptive like hell in India’s foreign relations.

But for this sort of disruptive policy Mr Modi has shown no stomach at all. He’d rather MEA mumble niceties about the “Wuhan spirit”, let Beijing kick us in the shins, and do nothing to stall the Chinese advances in Afghanistan and Central Asia by establishing India as security provider there and in Southeast Asia or rile Beijing by ramping up defence cooperation with Japan and symbolizing it by immediately approving the project for Indian production of the Shinmaywa US-2 flying boat for the international market that Tokyo would be happy fully to fund! So much for Modi’s strategic foresight.

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Big Carriers Are a Bad Idea

Posted on May 19, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

 | Point of View

The big carrier is a big mistake. In a milieu bristling with proliferating supersonic, and soon hypersonic, anti-ship missiles, aircraft carriers don’t stand a chance.

INDIA TODAY
ISSUE DATE: May 27, 2019
UPDATED: May 18, 2019 

Importing wrong weapons platforms has consequences beyond stretching the scarce defence rupee. Besides kicking the indigenous R&D and defence industry in the gut and being a perennial financial drain with lifetime costs many times the initial acquisition price, it locks the country into an inappropriate force structure whose frailties are quickly shown up in war. Securing them also leaves little money to obtain less glitzy but more appropriate and necessary fighting assets.

The Indian Air Force, with the cost-effective option of the upgraded Su-30MKI produced at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on the table, opted for the manifestly redundant Rafale fighter plane worth Rs 69,000 crore. Four hundred and sixty T-90 tanks valued at nearly Rs 14,000 crore are sought by the army for its armoured formations that are unlikely, under the nuclear overhang, to ever see major action. The T-90, incidentally, got beat by the indigenous Arjun main battle tank in all field tests. Not to be outdone, the Indian Navy, as per the British press, is plonking for an Indian dockyard-built 65,000 tonne Queen Elizabeth (QE)-class air­craft carrier. Given its colonial antecedents, the Indian Navy follows the Royal Navy in eve­ry­thing, including apparently repeating the latter’s mistakes.

And the big carrier is a very big mistake. In a milieu bristling with proliferating supersonic, and soon hypersonic, anti-ship missiles, aircraft carriers don’t stand a chance. A broadside of four supersonic Brahmos-type missiles, for instance, can sink this carrier, along with its complement of 36 combat aircraft, and two each of anti-submarine warfare and early warning helicopters. So an air or sea-launched cruise missile salvo costing Rs 40 crore can take out the QE carrier and its aircraft. Some ‘exchange ratio’! It is not just speedy cruise missiles but any combination of these and swarms of remotely controlled air, surface and underwater-launched drones and, where China is concerned, anti-ship ballistic missiles, will do in such a ship. No wonder a former chief of the United Kingdom Defence Staff reportedly called this vessel a “vulnerable metal can” and military historian Max Hastings has dubbed it the “HMS White Elephant”.

Worse, protecting the high-cost, symbolically high-value big aircraft carriers will operationally strain the relatively small Indian Navy that may have 50-odd major warships by 2040. The esc­ort for each carrier­-two destroyers, two anti-submarine frigates, a submarine, a tanker and a replenishment ship-will soon result in more of the Indian fleet deployed for aircraft carrier protection than on sea control and sea-denial missions, eventuating in a dangerously thinned-out Indian naval presence in the wide expanses of the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific. Indian admirals, who have attended the US Naval War College, imbibed the big carrier ideology, and pushed for the QE-ships, cannot, however, trot out the same justification for them as the 500-ship strong US Navy does.

Then there’s the cost aspect. Given the profligacy of the Indian defence public sector units, the cost of, say, a Mazagon Dockyard-made QE-class ship will be double that of the Royal Navy carrier, or £12 billion. And if, as the navy desires, the unproven, exorbitantly priced US-sourced electro-magnetic aircraft launch system is incorporated into the design, and the Boeing F/A-18E is chosen as its combat aircraft, the total cost of a fully loaded single carrier will be upwards of £18 billion or Rs 1,440 billion. This sum can buy an augmented force of nuclear-powered attack submarines and several missile destroyers and multi-purpose frigates. Spent on the unsurvivable QE-class ships of dubious utility, it will be a humongous waste of national wealth. But when have such considerations stopped the Indian government from making damn-fool decisions?

Still, one hopes the new government will be sensible, order a full cost and capability review-something never done by any Indian government at any time-and instruct the navy to stick with small carriers it has experience of, that cost a lot less and, because more expendable, can be used offensively in war.

Published in India Today, May 27, 2019, https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/up-front/story/20190527-big-carriers-are-a-bad-idea-point-of-view-1526363-2019-05-18

 

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Why is India’s national interest hostage to US’ Iran policy?

Posted on May 15, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

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The fears I have long voiced are coming true. The US is ramping up its combative rhetoric, talking up the non-existent Iran threat to the region, coercing its friends into  complying with its demand to zero out oil/gas imports from Iran and otherwise insisting that everybody  join in applying “maximum pressure” in the hope that this will, if not lead to a regime change — wishful American thinking than, at a minimum, to Tehran renegotiating the 2015 nuclear  deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) to secure an indefinite extension of the Iranian nuclear  weapons-related inactivity limited by JCPOA to just a 15 year- time frame.

The “bazaari” tilt of the mindset of the ruling ayatollahs means Iran and the US will eventually reach a compromise. But during this testing time, Tehran will discover who its friends are. So, while Tehran’s economic ties with the US will rapidly mend because, well, the US is the proverbial 600-pound economic gorilla that all countries have to come to terms with, links with states, such as India, that left Iran in the lurch, could be downgraded. This will, as I keep warning, imperil India’s grand geopolitical design for Afghanistan and Central Asia and for outflanking China (and, minorly, Pakistan) seawards  pivoting on connectivity ex-Chabahar, the Iranian port on the North Arabian Sea, and 75 kms up the coast from Gwadar.

I mean how forgiving can we expect Tehran to be as Delhi, despite having the political-military leverage has consistently shown it lacks the will to say NO to Washington, and always seems over-eager to please America. To wit, its undue haste in reducing the inflow of Iranian oil — from 14+% to 10% in just the last year as dictated by the Trump Admin.

The deficit is to be made up by increased buys of Saudi oil, in line with Trump’s promise that Saudi Arabia can replace Iran. But Riyadh’s prospective energy stranglehold on the Indian economy may not be a good thing. Oil, offers of investment, etc are all very well but it may come at a steep price. The strong wahabbi element in that country has always seen ‘al Hind’ as the great prize and pursued its agenda of spreading the tenets of harsh desert Islam in the subcontinent. A Saudi oil dependent India will be less able to resist the wahabbi ingress or to take forceful measures, like strict policing of Arab charitable funds channeled into this country to set up a supportive eco-system of mosques and mullahs propagating an alien ideology — wahabbism.

While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was right in telling her visiting Iranian counterpart, Javad  Zarif, seeking some reassurance,  that the new government, come May 24, will take the call on how much oil to import from Iran and how to pay for it, a cleverer move would have been for the Indian government to issue a statement asking both the US and Iran to not disturb the peace in the region. Delhi should also be more active in establishing an alternative non-US dollar financial regime for energy transactions that Russia and China are considering and even some European states are interested in, and which Zarif has said Tehran is agreeable to.  Swaraj should also have indicated that big power coercive diplomacy  has its limits, that alternatives exist, and that India will retain its policy of freedom of action.  The Modi regime didn’t do any of this and lost the chance of gaining Iranian goodwill and consolidating India’s traditionally strong links.

Notwithstanding the talk of Trump backing up the two carrier task force deployment in the Gulf by sending an additional 120,000 troops to the region, the reigning Ayatollah, Ali Khamanei, remains unintimidated. He has stated that there will be no war, a refrain repeated by Pompeo, especially after his visit to Brussels to confer with European allies who told him clearly that Iran had offered no cause for Trump to shred the nuclear deal and that US belligerence may lead to war in which they will not join. Russian president Putin also must have advised Pompeo not to precipitate hostilities  — a Reuters report mentioned that Putin talked of the need to maintain “stability” of global oil supply — a code word for not tolerating any disruption that US military intervention may create.

Except, just such intervention is, perhaps, sought to be engineered with reports of oil tankers being hit, off Fujeira, by sabotage attacks. Who carried out such strikes assuming they actually occurred, is a mystery. But whether Saudi Arabia and Israel are involved in covertly managing them or not, they certainly hope the US will somehow be offered the provocation for American forces to swing into action against Iran.  Except, attacking Iran will likely embroil the US in a real fight with no guarantees that Russia and China won’t assist the Iranian military spearheaded by the pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) with a view to embarrassing the US military.

A sobered up Pompeo said “We’re looking for Iran to behave like a normal country”. This was strange coming from the chief diplomat of a state that’s behaving so abnormally as to emerge as a menace to international order. After all, how many countries have acted as the US has done since Donald Trump became President — ripping up international treaties at will (Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty), shredding specific country-deals   (JCPOA), decimating economic arrangements (Trans-Pacific Partnership), abusing allies and weakening NATO, and hurting its “strategic partners” by, for instance, relentlessly hounding India — undermining its economic and geo-strategic interests. In contrast, the “bad ass” antics of Kim Jong-un are excused even though he loses no opportunity to mock Trump and thumb his nose at the US, and does exactly what Washington doesn’t want North Korea to do. Like shoot off ballistic missiles, leaving the US President to make excuses for it (“They were short range missiles”!).

The tactics North Korea has used to stymie the US and tame Trump is an object lesson in how to handle America. But that requires a ballsy leader.

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What’s in store

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Here’s all you need to know about Indian elections

The bulk of the general elections involving most of the country is over; the votes sealed in the EVMs as well as the fates of the contestants  Delhi area votes tomorrow. The thoughtful among the citizenry must have wracked their brains about which political party to favour and  whom to elect to office.  The fact is there are no good options — this being plainly a referendum on Narendra Modi. Indeed, the prime minister has said so that a vote for the “kamal” is an endorsement of him personally and his tenure in office. But are we all aware of the gravity of the situation and what’s at stake?

Modi has disappointed, failing to achieve a radical makeover of the government that he had promised in 2014. Further, he has been less the hard nationalist that we had every right to expect than the believer in the fuzzy-wuzzy “Wuhan spirit” he actually turned out to be. He also showed a tactician’s skill in  beating up on Pakistan at every turn rather than a strategist’s foresight. In this same vein, he revealed not so much the right instinct or strategic clear headedness — a prerequisite for a successful foreign and military policy — as a cloying deferential attitude to those he felt were his superiors. This was reflected in the hunched shoulders, the diffident, eager to please-smile when getting into his characteristic clinch with a Trump or a Xi. It was an embarrassing spectacle, and pulled down India’s stock in the world.

Naturally what followed in the case of the US was not a surprise — letting  Trump trample on India’s interests without so much as a squeak from Delhi. In the face of unrelenting pressure — the repeated Trump hectoring and harangues on India’s supposedly oppressive tariff structure, punitive imposts on Indian steel and other imports, and the deliberate measures to seal the Iranian oil supply line that will come at enormous cost to this country, and India’s being fingered by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom — the Modi regime made much of the crumbs thrown Delhi’s way — getting the UN to declare Masood Azhar a “global terrorist”. Washington expects the Indian government to, as a result, fall behind the US on everything, specifically in the targeting of Iran.

For the same small give  on China’s part (re: Masood), Xi, hopes he will be able to extract from the Indian government (1) a soft-pedaling of its opposition to the belt and road initiative, (2) staying with the present trading order in which India ships natural resources to China in return for finished consumer goods — the classical neo-colonial pattern that India was subjected to 150-200 years ago of Indian cotton shipped to Manchester in return for finished mill cloth, and a horrendous trade deficit; and (3) keeping quiet when Beijing appoints its own Dalai Lama which the Xi cohort is planning on doing to preempt his HH in Dharamshala preemptively installing his reincarnation discovered from among the Tibetan exiles in India and elsewhere, and thereby screwing things up for Beijing for another generation.

In short, in the external realm Modi has been more a failure than success.

So, what’s the problem? Why not vote for the mahagatbandhan and the alternative parties in the fray? Consider the prospective PMs — Mayawati, Mamata Bannerji, and Rahul Gandhi. It makes one’s blood run cold contemplating what they may have in mind to do in the external realm because both of the strongest PM aspirants Mayawati and Mamata have between them not voiced a single idea — good or bad — pertaining to foreign policy. The Congress party’s agenda, like the BJP’s, reveals lot less than what may transpire should Rahul G emerge as consensus candidate of the disparate opposition after the announcement of the election results on May 23.

However harshly one may judge Modi, there’s no question about his personal integrity. This is simply not the case with Mayawati or even Mamata — both provincial politicians of limited vision, with the former in particular having dark big corruption stains on her escutcheon. Rahul is being shovelled under his father Rajiv’s sins of accommodating his wife Sonia and her retinue of Italian relatives and carpetbaggers, such as the middleman and commission monger, the late Quattrochi (whose son supposedly  maintains an active office in the Meridian Hotel’s commercial complex and waits for the good times to once again roll around). Between the revival of these Italian connections and the unscrupulous antics of his brother-in-law, Robert Vadra, whom his sister, Priyanka, cannot or will not disown (unlike Indira Gandhi who separated from her husband Feroze G owing in part at least to the latter’s sustained criticism inside and outside Parliament of her father and PM, Jawaharlal Nehru), Rahul will have a hard time keeping his thieving home-grown and foreign relatives away from the Indian treasury’s cookie jar.

This is the sort of stark contrasts the voter is faced with, and it is no small problem to weigh the pros and cons, and the merits-demerits of this or that party and candidate, considering that a Lok Sabha seat here and there could decide who gets to run the show for the next five years or less, and who gets to play the chowkidar to keep away the grasping hands from the till. So, who should one vote for?

All things considered, a damned difficult decision. But it is Modi by default.

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Asia Society, New York: Q&A: Bharat Karnad on India’s ‘Inept’ Foreign Policy

Posted on May 8, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

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[This piece by Anubhav Gupta, Assistant Director, Asia Society Policy Institute, New York, uploaded to the Asia Society website on May 7, 2019, at https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/qa-bharat-karnad-indias-inept-foreign-policy ]

With India in the throes of the world’s largest exercise in democracy, Indians and the international community are assessing the performance of its incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The conventional wisdom about Modi’s first term in office has generally been: disappointing on the economic and social fronts; generally successful on foreign affairs. Some analysts have even credited Modi for ushering a bolder and more engaged foreign policy.

A recent book throws cold water on such assessments. In the opening pages of Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition, author and Indian national security expert Bharat Karnad describes Modi’s foreign policy as “inept” and “short-sighted.” The book makes the case that Modi has been anything but bold on the international stage. While Modi’s efforts may have garnered small successes, Karnad believes he has failed in the grander ambition to propel India toward great power status. Instead, Karnad sees Modi’s India as “great power lite,” being stuck for the past five years in “neutral gear.”

The book’s critique of Modi comes from an unexpected angle. While Modi is maligned by the left (in India and abroad) for his Hindu nationalist, strong-man approach, Staggering Forward is a takedown from the other side of the political spectrum. Karnad, a research professor at the Center for Policy Research who describes himself as “India’s foremost conservative strategist,” faults Modi not for being hawkish but for being diffident.

I asked Karnad some questions about what disappointed him about Modi’s first term. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The book is called Staggering Forward, which suggests progress, though of the uneven kind. How would you grade Modi’s foreign policy performance?

The “staggering” in the title is meant to denote a certain diffidence evidenced in Modi’s foreign policy, which boasts, in substance, of no unique feature nor approach, being a continuation of policies pursued by the previous governments in the new millennium.

Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition by Bharat Karnad.

You characterize Indian leaders as being too afraid to enact “proactive, offensive, pre-emptive policies” for fear of upsetting China. What policies would you want the next Indian government to adopt toward China?

Based on the long history of the factors that command the respect of China’s rulers, I have been advocating for some two decades now and also in this book that India adopt a tit-for-tat approach. For instance, the most obvious way to react to Beijing’s very successful initiative to arm Pakistan with nuclear missiles and use that country to contain India would have been for Delhi to transfer like armaments to many more small adversarial states on China’s borders to equalize the strategic context. It would have signaled India’s intent to respond in kind and equal measure and would have quickly sobered up Beijing and telegraphed to all Asian states India’s ability to take on an ambitious and oppressive China. It would have crystallized India as a competing power node to China in Asia. A similar attitude to inform India’s trade policy would have prevented the skewed trade and severe balance-of-payments problem India now faces.

The recent India-Pakistan crisis following the Pulwama terrorist attack became a major political battleground in India ahead of the election. Politically, Modi seemed to come out on top. How did India come out vis-à-vis Pakistan and its security going forward?

Pakistan, I believe, is Modi’s greatest failure. Rather than resorting to covert warfare methods to discreetly drive home the message to Islamabad that two can play at the terrorism game, Modi has sought to make political capital out of forcefully countering actions by Pakistan-sponsored terrorist organizations, such as Jaish-e-Mohammad, that are active in Indian Kashmir. This has a dual purpose of also communally polarizing the Indian society, which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hopes to benefit from. This is base tactical thinking.

At the start of the book, you declare that Modi’s extensive “personalized diplomacy” has “produced no signal departure from the policies of previous governments, nor any stellar results.” You do point to one exception: strengthened ties with the Gulf States. Why has this been a priority for Modi?

If all politics is local, then Modi has been sensitive about actions that fetch him domestic political dividends. A large section of Indian society gains from the remittances, estimated by the World Bank in 2018 as some $80 billion annually; sent home by skilled and unskilled Indian labor employed [primarily] in the Gulf countries. These remittances make for India’s healthy hard currency reserves and help sustain the economies of several Indian states, chief among them Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. The remittance beneficiaries also constitute a large voter base, which Modi has kept pleased by cultivating, in the main, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Intimacy with these Sunni majority states also balances India’s ties with the Shia majority Iran, giving India a role in the ongoing Shia-Sunni tussle in West Asia. More generally, close ties with Islamic nations symbolizes the fact that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world (after Indonesia), and is a counterpoise to India’s deep relations with Israel, on the one hand, and on the other hand, limits Pakistan’s influence in the Islamic world.

The book is about India’s place in the world, but you also write about how Modi’s tenure has exacerbated “tensions in society along caste and religious lines.” Why are these domestic divisions a problem when it comes to India’s global ambitions?

India has long projected itself, successfully, as an inclusive democratic country suffused with liberal values and exemplifying secular ideals. This image cannot but be hurt when domestic politics are communalized. India’s recent downgrading by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, for instance, will have repercussions in that many countries may be influenced by its findings, and the Modi government’s desire for India to be seen as a bastion of liberal thought and democratic action will take a hit. Further, anti-Muslim rhetoric will begin to impact India’s interactions with the Islamic world, alienate Muslim states, and cumulatively affect India’s quest for great power.

Lastly, any bold predictions about the elections?

Modi’s use of technology for development and in social welfare schemes has buffed up his credentials as a modernizer and a leader who means well and does good by the people. Moreover, his record of personal rectitude in office has left an impression on the average voter, as has his party’s performance in government. These attributes position Modi in good stead in the general elections underway.

My assessment is that Modi will be re-elected, but that his government, the BJP-led NDA coalition, will be returned to power with a much-reduced majority. However, if the majority is quite thin, Modi could be replaced as PM by someone like the Transportation Minister Nitin Gadkari, who has distinguished himself as a conciliator. Gadkari has warm relations with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the social service organization associated with pushing the Hindu nationalist agenda that is the power behind the BJP — but also with many leaders in the opposition. The belief is that he will be better able than Modi to draw support from small parties in the opposition, and thus beef up the BJP coalition.

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