Security Wise

Azhar — high point of Modi’s foreign policy, at what cost?

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of pompeo and swaraj

[Sushma Swaraj, Iranian oil, and Mike Pompeo]

The collaring of Azhar Masood is being hailed as the high point of its foreign policy by the Modi government. Masood is small change for the US and China. Delhi’s endowing the mere UN labeling of this man as ‘global terrorist’ and sanctioning of his outfit — Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), with needlessly high diplomatic value, however, has allowed the transactional-minded Trump Administration and the Xi regime to get a lot out of the Modi dispensation for little. Who can resist such one-sided deals?

It reflects, as I detail in my book ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’, the working of a small mind for small stake in a small game, and permitting the US and China to advance their agendas at India’s expense. Newsreports describe the tradeoffs negotiated by the Modi regime thus: Washington helps push the Masood issue and expects India will fall in line and cut off oil imports from Iran. The external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj calls US Defence Secretary Mike Pompeo and asks that India be given more time to find alternative sources for the 10% of its energy requirements (or 23.5 million tonnes of oil) met by Iran, Pompeo says nothing doing. Indeed, US officials point to the quid pro quo of Azhar bashing in return for an Indian cutoff of Iranian oil.

Likewise, the exchange is that for Beijing’s removing its technical hold on the terrorist label for Masood India would hold off saying anything bad about the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) even as a 2nd BRI summit of reps from some 150 countries was underway. The trouble here is that while this is a one-off exchange, Beijing may arm twist MEA into making India’s silence a permanent thing, which would be disastrous, because India’s opposition to BRI is a rallying point for a rethink in the region about the costs and consequences, especially in light of the Sri Lankan port of Humbantota passing into Chinese hands, of succumbing to the lure of the easy yuan infrastructure credit and falling headlong into a well-laid debt trap or surrendering strategic territory and assets. In fact, states such as Myanmar, Malayasia, Indonesia, Maldives, et al, that had previously jumped on the BRI bandwagon, are using Indian resistance to BRI as a shield to pullback on their commitments, with some countries (such as Ethiopia) even handing over BRI projects to Indian companies to run as economy measures!

Between Indian ambassadors in the US and the West and whole sections in MEA pushing Trump’s line and an equally powerful raft of China friendlies — Indian Foreign Service stalwarts in service and retired but scheming from the sidelines, and Indian PM Modi who doesn’t seem to understand, even less appreciate, just how leaning towards America or towards China undermines India’s standing and hurts its prospects as great power, blithely extols his supposedly intimate personal ties with Trump and the so-called ‘Wuhan spirit’ with Xi Jinping in striking compromises with the US and Chinese governments, ends up driving India’s national interest into the ground. And all for the dubious success of, and distinctly small returns in, branding Azhar an international terrorist and discomfiting Pakistan, which changes the situation on the ground not a whit. The Pakistan army’s ISI will continue nursing the same terrorists gangs under a different guise, and helping them to sustain their activity in J&K.

But it will hugely complicate, as this analyst has been warning for years, our relations with Tehran and the great oil deal India has been benefiting from for years. Which other oil supplier will provide terms that Iran does of deferred payment, barter arrangements to pay for oil in kind, and free shipping? And what will happen to India’s ambitious strategic plans for developing Chabahar, the Iranian port, as India’s economic gateway to landlocked Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, and as foundation for a strategic approach to outflank China (and Pakistan) both on land and sea? Perhaps, these objectives don’t count any more.

The irony is this: The US will ultimately cut a deal with Iran and will have no qualms about making its allies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and economic partners (China, India) who rely on Iranian oil stranded, suffer the sting of US sanctions for continued offtake of Iranian oil, while also pressuring the more weak-willed among them, such as India, to zero out their oil imports, which of course, will seed anger for India and Indians in Tehran, and waste away the store of goodwill India has collected over the years, and motivate Tehran to chip away at India’s foothold in Chabahar with a spate of restrictions, even as the more strongwilled China who, in the final analysis, will cock a snook at Washington than give up Iranian oil, will be rewarded with greater opportunity to make inroads in Iran by boosting its economic and other presence there. Nice going, Mr Modi.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Iran and West Asia, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Myanmar, Northeast Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Taiwan, Terrorism, UN, United States, US. | 2 Comments

Endgame Tidbits re: two mascots; and Yeti(?)

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of jaitley and parrikar together

[the late Parrikar and Jaitley in healthier times]

Returned from a 3 week sojourn abroad. Picked up small but telling bits of information on the end-state of two leading political personalities and personal mascots of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the former Defence Minister, the late Mahohar Parrikar, and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, both afflicted with cancer.

According to a doctor at Sloan-Kettering in New York — a leading cancer treatment hospital, who attended on both Parrikar and Jaitley, the former was in a very bad way but insisted that he be moved to Goa in the terminal stage, which required some very elaborate arrangements to ensure he didn’t succumb to the rigours of the journey inherent in moving a very sick and weak man half way across the globe. What was unusual, according to this oncologist, was Parrikar’s emphatic insistence that he not die in a foreign land, far away from home.

Jaitley too suffers from an irremediable form of stomach cancer. Indeed, the disease is apparently so far advanced the Sloan-Kettering doctors do not give him more than a few more months. For all that, Jaitley has been in the electoral forefront, refuting Rahul Gandhi’s contentions on the Rafale acquisition controversy, etc.

The point to make here is that Modi’s government lost a lot of its sheen of rectitude when between his differences with the PM on the Rafale issue and his desire to return to his state, Parrikar was eased out of the Defence Ministry. Not listening to the considered views of Parrikar on the French combat aircraft led the PM into the inextricable political jam he is in now. Whether he returns to head the next government or not, Modi will ever be mindful of Parrikar’s ghost at the banquet, always rueing the fact that he did not heed the advice the good engineer-cum-politician gave him.

Should Modi have a 2nd term as prime minister, he will also not have the reliable Jaitley around him. Jaitley’s, in many respects, will be the greater loss because it is his mastery of political forensics and his lawyer’s erudition that time and again kept the political waters from bursting the dam, like on the demonetization and GST decisions, and the Modi regime’s head above water. It will be interesting to see who replaces Jaitley as Modi’s go-to man in the cabinet, and whether he will be half as effective. This despite Jaitley’s great fault as confidant that more often than not, and unlike Parrikar, he sought to be in Modi’s good books than say and do the right thing.

———–

And then there’s the Indian Army’s emergence on the social media scene as supporter of the myth of the Yeti — an over-large man-like animal supposedly slinking around in the Himalayan uplands, whose big footprints (42″ x 15″ or some such dimensions) and vast stride a mountaineering Indian army team supposedly recorded with, what else, a conveniently available mobile telephone. There are two aspects about this curious little development. That the army really believes that its team comprising officers and ORs of sound mind has (1) recorded the presence of a Yeti, and (2) actually proved that such a creature exists — how else to explain the footprints in plain sight in the snow?

The Indian Army is, however, treading on ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’-territory. Assuming this is not some elaborate hoax imaginatively staged by a bunch of fun-seeking army men, the Yeti recording raises a pertinent question: How is a modern armed service to respond when faced with evidence of the para-normal, of a completely alien phenomenon it did not set out to discover but rather sort of lucked out with tell-tale signs?

The main aim when facing such situations is to record the evidence in as thorough a fashion as the situation permits, wait around or stalk such a beast — assuming it is perambulating in the high mountains — in the expectation of finding other marks of its existence. In any case, did the army men in question not follow the track left by the giant footprints, and if they did, where did the footprints end, and where, or did they at some point simply disappear? And did the team officially record and document its findings and pass them on to the theatre command HQ. If the team members did not do this, but simply rushed to broadcast it on social media, should they be shielded from ridicule that is already beginning to pour in? And why did Army HQ not put a lid on this “evidence of Yeti” the army team seemed intent on putting out?

There may or may not be a Yeti. Just as the jury is out on whether strange spaceships from distant galaxies transiting our small and fairly insignificant solar system and have been sighted by combat fighter pilots and airline pilots, are for real. The US Air Force since the 1950s, for instance, has a cell that records all such chance sightings without ever publicly commenting on them. More and more, astronomers, astrophysicists and astrobiologists are convinced that life and civilizations far more technologically advanced than on earth exist, and that, with deep space travel on the anvil, we are on the doorstep of interacting with such alien life-forces. Nevertheless, all these agencies and scientists have been cautious in saying anything about such sporadic interactions with the other worlds.

Yeti is of the earth and therefore far greater skepticism should have been applied by the Indian Army before it publicized “footprint” photos as some sort of breakthrough event. It would have been better to open a small office in army HQ to file such recordings and evidence, and of debriefs of the army mountaineering team members. All science is cumulative. And this should have been treated as another scientific venture. Proving or disproving the existence of the Yeti will require more sightings and more substantive proof collected over years. And the army will need to draw up protocols based on the experience of this mountaineering team of just what army men should do when next they encounter, or think they have encountered, evidence of the primal snowman.

An interesting aside on this topic is that pilots and aviators in the US who have seen and experienced ‘flying saucers’ and the like pulling improbable aerial manuevers in close proximity, last week petitioned the US government to disclose the collected evidence of alien spacecraft in its official archives.

Posted in civil-military relations, Culture, Cyber & Space, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Indian Army, Indian democracy, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, society, United States, US. | 6 Comments

Politicization of the Indian military? Alarmist nonsense!

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of former Indian services chiefs of staff together

[Modi meeting with Services Chiefs of Staff — when Gen. Dalbir Singh was COAS — and NSA Ajit Doval]

————

The April 11 letter by some 150 senior retired military personnel, including eight services chiefs of staff, to the supreme commander of the Indian armed forces, President Ram Nath Kovind, raises questions about whether legitimate credit taken by a government for ordering cross border retaliation against terrorist outfits, and the rising political awareness and involvement by retired generals and the like in party politics, is not being mistaken for “politicization” of the military.

“We refer”, said the letter, “to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as claim the Armed Forces to be “Modi ji ki sena”. It urges the President to take “necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes to further their political agendas.”

Much should not be made of UP Chief Minister Adityanath’s reference to “Modiji’s sena”. The yogi is the average cowbelt politician with limited knowledge and worldview who cannot be expected to do other than capitalize on a popular military action in a difficult election campaign. It is not unreasonable for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, in any case, to claim credit for reacting aggressively to terrorism for a change when the previous two PMs – Atal Bihari Vajpayee of BJP and Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party, lacking the stomach for a fight, failed to order retaliation in the face of more severe terrorist provocations than the suicide bombing of the CRPF convoy in Pulwama – the strike on Parliament, the symbol of Indian sovereignty, in December 1999 and the seaborne attack on Mumbai in November 2008, respectively. Surely, if hard military reaction and proactive or pre-emptive attack on adversary forces becomes the norm, as it should be, then there will be no political premium in crowing about it.

The issue really is something else – the civil-military tensions rife since the dawn of the Indian republic. Ever since the military was partitioned along with the country in 1947, the carryings-on of the rump element – the Pakistan Army, carved out of the Indian Army, has occasioned unease this side of the border. The apprehension of the “Ayub Khan” virus infecting Indian generals and infusing them with ideas about taking over the government has worried the political leadership. The elite sections of the permanent secretariat — the colonial era Indian Civil Service and the follow-on Indian Administrative Service have in their bureaucratic self-interest subtly and not so subtly kept such paranoia stoked, leading to the loss of status and standing of the Indian armed services, for instance, in the ‘warrant of precedence’. At one time, Commander-in-Chief, India, ranked next only to Viceroy in importance; today armed services chiefs of staff are 11^th or 12^th in the rank of officers of state and coeval with Principal Secretaries to the Government of India.

The fear-laced and deliberate institutional diminution of the armed forces led to the Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon publicly belittling General KS Thimayya in the late 1950s, the latter resigning in protest, being compelled to withdraw his resignation by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and then being humiliated in Parliament when Nehru sided with his cabinet colleague. This was a systematic takedown of the army chief. It had echoes in the subsequent run-in General SMFJ Manekshaw had with Menon, again in the half-baked January 2016 story about an armoured column heading towards Delhi published by a set of hyperventilating journalists briefed by an obliging civil service-intelligence agency combo, and is today evidenced in Prime Minister Modi’s reported antipathy to the “Anglicized” officer cadre and the liquor-swilling “Mess culture” in the military.

In the fin de siècle and the new millennium, however, there’s a heartening trend of retired generals (BC Khanduri, VK Singh, and lately DS Hooda) seeking a second career in domestic politics, joining parties of their choice, and braving the heat and dust of electioneering rather than whiling away their retirement years in frustrated argumentation drenched in whiskey sours. Indeed, former military veterans elevated to cabinet posts (Jaswant Singh, Khanduri, VK Singh and RS Rathore) have comported themselves in office with enormous dignity, propriety and honour, and have impacted the country’s policies.

Veterans cannot claim the armed forces suffer from the absence of military expertise and domain knowledge in the generalist civil servant-run government and turn around and deride the involvement of former uniformed personnel in politics under the rubric of “politicization”. The Indian military is a volunteer citizen force, and more soldiers, naval persons and air men joining politics, contesting polls, and rising up the political ranks is a welcome development, rendering the government progressively more sensitive to national security and armed services’ concerns.

[Published in MoneyControl.com Apri 15, 2019, at

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/politics/opinion-politicisation-of-the-indian-military-alarmist-nonsense-3834141.html

Posted in Afghanistan | 11 Comments

Another Iran-related US bulldozer headed India’s way (slightly augmented)

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of iranian quds force in syria

[Commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Major General Qasem Soleimani in the centre]

When contemplating the troubles India finds itself consistently running into at every turn in regional and international affairs, the question that repeatedly comes up but finds no answers is: WHY? It comes down to the inability of the Indian government — with PMO as the lead agency in the present dispensation and MEA as secondary player — to read the extant or unfolding international/regional reality, anticipate developments thereof, and to be prepared with ready choices and actions to minimize their ill-effects and, per chance, even advance the national interest.

Instead, India is, to use an American ‘Wild West metaphor, like the perennial damsel in distress, always finding itself tied to the rail tracks as a train pulled by a heavy locomotive comes barreling down the track. What are the damsel’s or India’s options in this scene? Apparently, none, other than to holler for help and hope that some kindly soul or country will take pity and come to its rescue. In this case, the train is the US policy targeting Iran’s military and the only person who can help is the erratic President Donald J. Trump, driver of this policy.

A couple of days back, the US government announced that it was sanctioning the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — the Pasdaran, as a “foreign terrorist organization”. How idiotic is that? It’d be like the US sanctioning the Indian Army tomorrow! You can’t simply sanction a sovereign force and the US State Department and the Pentagon (for reasons adduced below) strongly opposed any such move. But Trump is like an elephant in a state of ‘mast’ — uncontrollable. In reaction, Tehran has declared the US Central Command to be a terrorist organization, meaning any Indian entity dealing with this American theatre military command will be in violation of Iranian law. Where such action-reaction madness will end is a fool’s guess.

Iran’s main military force, Pasdaran, are divided into two wings the Quds Force for external actions and the Basij Militias for internal security. The US decision was made even though the Quds Force commanded by Major General Qasem Soleimani and the Quds-backed shia counter-terrorist Iraqi militias, such as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, time and again saved the goose of US Special Forces fighting the Islamic State, by concerting their battlefield actions with them. Indeed, in the decisive battle for Tikrit, the IS stronghold, while the US air force, as it is reported, bombed from the sky it was the Quds Force that swept the IS fighters out of their entrenched positions in the town. By US’ own official accounts, the combination of Quds and the shia militias was instrumental in the defeat of the Islamic state in Syria — an enterprise supported by the Assad regime in Damascus as well as by Russia (whose covert material involvement Soleimani managed with considerable aplomb). In fact, Pentagon officials are warning that the IS is far from wiped out in the Levant and without Quds’ active cooperative role, which the US military cannot do without, the IS will make a comeback, and that the US sanctions are, therefore, a political and military liability.

So why did Trump do it? Because he doesn’t understand nuances and is the typical dull-witted and blundering ingenue on the world stage who will careen from one disaster to the next without being remotely aware of the damage he is wrecking. He, moreover, seems to have set ideas of enemies and frenemies (among whom he counts China but also India, incidentally, whence his frequent riffs on India’s unfair trade practices, etc.!), and is otherwise led by the nose by John Bolton, his NSA. Bolton, in turn, has never made any bones about his intent to affect regime-change in Iran by indirect means because direct military action would run into the Pasdaran buzzsaw. The preferred means of the US government, in the event, from George W Bush’s presidency, have been sanctions, using them to slowly but relentlessly grind the economic life out of the shia state. Economic sanctions already imposed on Iran have pretty much snuffed out the country’s oil industry, its oil export revenue plunging to a low 13%, making Tehran desperate.

As if the problem was not complicated enough, Bolton-Trump’s Iran policy is motivated also by the mortal enmity between Iran and Israel. The Quds Force is in the forefront of orchestrating terrorist strikes through its Hezbollah arm within Israel and against the Israeli military, and Tel Aviv has reciprocated in ample measure with relentless covert warfare especially to undermine Iran’s nuclear programme, which Israelis fear has progressed beyond the failsafe point, meaning that it has crossed the weapons threshold. Trump-Bolton have bought into this Israeli belief and are determined to deny Iran the safety of nuclear weapons. Modi’s hinting in his televised interview (News18) on April 9 about balancing intimate relations with Israel with close ties to Iran doesn’t quite protect India’s relations with either country from the punitive actions of the other and their respective coterie of friends and partners. Modi’s effusive reaction to Bibi Netanyahu’s reelection as Israeli PM for a 5th term only puts India’s ties with Tehran in stark contrast to US sanctions on the Pasadaran. Will, Tel Aviv, in its own interests and following on this episode and perhaps with a side-prompt from Washington, not begin coercively to use the US sanctions as excuse to hold off on technology and high-value weapons cooperation with India?

So, where does India find itself in this melee? PMO run by NSA, Ajit Doval, plainly did not see any of this coming. But shouldn’t MEA have been sending policy briefs about what was cooking in Washington — assuming the Indian Embassy is even plugged into the scene , so that Delhi was not, once again, caught with its dhoti down? The PM who is his own foreign minister and defence minister and every other minister and, by his own reckoning, also his own best thinktank, seemingly knew little about this brewing storm, because in the above-mentioned TV interview Modi sanguinely described his success in the foreign policy field of, in effect, balancing relations with Iran with relations with the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. What he nowhere mentioned was how his government planned to deal with the US-Israel and/or Iran should Washington up the ante in its antagonism to Tehran as has just happened?

The pat answer may be that the Modi regime has by now perfected its reactive stance — when Washington says jump, Delhi does the pole vault! Every time the US government tightens the sanctions tourniquet, Indian ministers, Doval and the like, run to Washington, not to caution the Trump Administration against foolhardy measures but to, what else, plead shamelessly for a reprieve, for the US cutting India some slack. On US’s demand, India has reduced the flow of Iranian oil to a trickle and mostly injured the Indian economy. And in reply to Trump’s harangues against India supposedly unduly taxing US exports there’s the standard avuncular assurance from Commerce Minister Prabhu that India has forwarded a comprehensive trade plan to the US. OK, but the Trump White House has not responded to any Indian trade plan and is not letting up, and American imposts continue to hurt Indian exports badly.

The real reason Trump picks on India is because he knows India is no China, and Modi is no Xi, and will not react aggressively whatever the provocation. And that he can bully the Indian government into almost any disadvantageous deal his Admin can dream up just as long as he lets a few more Indian techies into the US under the H1B visa rules every time Delhi squawks — the metric that Modi, who appears to have a typical yokel’s fascination with glitzy America, has adopted to please the Indian middle class voter, and to retain whatever access he thinks he has to the Trump White House.

Anyway, to return to the main topic, the Modi government is on tenterhooks. The growing security cooperation with Iran radiating northwards from Chabahar and India’s grand strategic design for reaching out to Afghanistan and central Asia, and even Russia and Western Europe via the land route, with the proposed Indian-built rail and road links connecting with the Russian Northern Distribution Network, is endangered. Because any security cooperation involves dealing necessarily with the Pasdaran, the Indian Army, Navy and air Force and intel outfits are all equally exposed to US sanctions under Trump’s latest initiative.

Is anybody in the Indian government, including the extensive intel chains run by Doval, alive to this onerous situation just round the corner, and given it thought? Does Modi and his PMO, even less MEA, have the faintest idea of what India will do once any Indian armed service and/or intel agency in their normal run of things is identified by the designated Pentagon unit as having comported with the Pasdaran — a now sanctionable offense? Clearly not.

So to return to that picture of the damsel in distress — consider the piquant scene. Modi will cry for help when the engine driver, Trump, is also the very person who has decided to run down the person tied to the rail track but is also, strangely, the saviour Modi expects will spring to India’s assistance!

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, 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, Indian Politics, Intelligence, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Russia, russian assistance, SAARC, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., Weapons, West Asia | 10 Comments

Fine for Modi to make political hay out of Balakot. And why is abrogating Articles 370 & 35A such a big deal? Or, strengthening AFSPA?

Posted on April 5, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics -- indian mirages on balakot mission

[IAF Mirage 2000s taking off]

There’s been quite a bit of criticism of the Balakot retaliatory strike, particularly about the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party “politicizing” India’s small, but fairly ambiguous, tactical military success. There’s still no definite evidence about whether any telling damage was, in fact, done. In the absence of authoritative information, which will trickle out, not to worry, the people have had to make do with political bombast and election rhetoric and a whole lot of speculation. One of the more intriguing accounts has hinted at a trilateral operation — an Indo-Israeli-American effort that worked tickety-boo. In this version, the Israeli Delilah cruise missile was the weapon of choice, not the S-2000 glide bomb released by IAF Mirage 2000s, with a huge loiter capability, and guided by satellite and AWACS-based sensors stealthily to the target before plunging down unannounced through the roof of the crammed terrorist hostel to blow up a couple of hundred JeM cadres and assorted other huns sleeping secure, perhaps dreaming of the 72 houris doing a lap dance around each of them after they attained shahadat in action against the Indian army and paramils in Jammu & Kashmir. http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/defence/the-israeli-connection.

Israel’s role is plausible. That the US was in on it is harder to buy considering just how many agencies of the US government, Intel and military try to muscle in on even the smallest flyswatter action in order to claim credit for its success. Which is to say that the US involvement of the kind here outlined would have leaked out before the Indian Mirages had trundled off the tarmac. Washington leaks like a giant sieve (or else Trump wouldn’t be in the sort of trouble he finds himself in). Then again, post-Balakot Washington has begun presssuring the Modi govt to sign the third and final foundational accord — BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) that supposedly will allow Indian military assets to utilize geospatial info of the kind found useful in the Balakot action.Well, whatever.

But where’s the problem with Modi taking a bow for Balakot and seeking to portray himself as a leader who can make hard decisions and to contrast himself with the UPA era PM, Manmohan Singh, who did nothing after the ISI goons struck Mumbai 26/11 in 2008 and, more cheekily, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee who also did nothing after Pak-sponsored mujahiden attacked Parliament in 2000? If he portrays himself to the voters as a decisive leader who can rein in the terrorist menace by any and all means, then it is only fair that he make political capital out of it, deserving every last vote he is able to draw on this account.

What we can do without is the type of provocations of the godman and political tyro, Adityanath, running Uttar Pradesh. Having no administrative clue about how to govern the state other than issuing a one-line directive to state officials to haul up troublemakers (the musclemen propping up the opposition) and, his regime’s favourite strawmen — the minority muslims, the Yogi is a mortal danger to the BJP. “Modi’s sena”, in the event, seems to be something Adityanath is running in his home state. It has nothing to do with the Indian army.

That brings us to AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) — the law that protects all military men carrying out their duties, including the shooting of rioters and secessionists in Jammu & Kashmir. In its election manifesto Congress Party has promised to water down the AFSPA. But making this law toothless by introducing more layers of civilian control, etc., not only scales up the legal risk faced by jawans but also exposes them to the perils of shoot and scoot urban guerillas. Is this what Lieutenant General DS Hooda (retd), former commander, Northern Army, and military adviser to the Congress Party advised Rahul Gandhi to do? His public view that AFSPA needs to be reviewed leaves one with a sinking feeling.

The more irksome stands by the erstwhile J&K chief ministers, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, are almost a goad to the Indian state to act strongly against the very thing they are protesting against — the doing away with Articles 370 and 35A in the Constitution. The former said that whether this is done or not, the state should revert to its semi-sovereign status with its own flag and prime minister. The latter has opined that removal of these offending provisions would end up negativing the original accession decision by the Maharajah, and turning J&K into another Palestine. Such is their hubris and they have so completely misread the reality that they actually think Delhi can be coerced and compelled to simply hand over the state to their tender mercies, or into becoming a party to its spinning away into a sovereign orbit of its own! But who in the Indian political landscape has the will to run a steamroller over these Articles, so even the remotest rationale for a semi-sovereign Kashmir is voided for good?

Have long argued that at the root of the Kashmir trouble are these Articles that a muddleheaded Nehru government, having taken the dispute to the UN and internationalized it, tried to make the best of a bad situation it had got the country into by putting lipstick on a pig with these constitutional guarantees reeking of liberal conceit, meant more to assuage the international community than the local Kashmiris.

Time is nigh, I have said, for a final solution to the Kashmir problem by ridding the Constitution — by any and all means — of these Articles and, simultaneously, changing the demographic balance of the state by colonizing the LoC with army stalwarts. Troops retiring after their colour service should be allotted land along the border or in other parts of the province and a stake in protecting them. Removal of 35A will open up the sale of properties to Indians and steadily increase the flow of people from the hinterland. In the same vein, the state’s agricultural economy, instead of orienting its flow of produce to across the Neelum River should be enabled with rear area cold chains, etc. to service the vast Indian market southwards instead.

We cannot any longer have a Constitutional mandate for secessionist activity, which is what Articles 35A and 370 in fact are, and also complain that Pakistan exploits the sentiments of separateness fueled by these Articles, or that the Kashmiri leadership keeps the secessionist tinder conflagrated.

Have always commended the ‘Battle of Algiers’ as a model for wrenching out the jihadis root and branch. The use of Special Forces for deep penetration of Kashmir society and ruthless pacification is the answer. 70 years of fooling around has got us to the stage where the local leaders, who have grown fat and prosperous on the Indian paisa think they are doing India a favour by their province being part of India when any talk of secession, or of degrees of separation from the Union would draw death penalty . Indeed, once Articles 370 and 35A are gone, any such talk will in any case be automatically treasonous, and so dealt with. There’ll, in fact, be need for harsher army measures, whence the imperative is actually to tighten and strengthen AFSPA (by removing all loopholes that permit the questioning by civilian entities of any armed forces actions and activity), thereby according frontline troopers doing their duty fuller, more absolute, legal sanction and protection.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian para-military forces, Indian Politics, Intelligence, Internal Security, Military/military advice, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, satellites, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, UN, United States, US., Weapons | 7 Comments

A weapon that could change the game if India plays tough

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of Indian ASAT

[Launch of ASAT interceptor to take down the targeted LEO satellite]

The country must resist pressure to sign treaties that impose restraints on its ability to make the most of its A-SAT capability

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General elections are often a prompt for Indian prime ministers to take strategic “big bang” decisions that they put off making during most of their time in office. Atal Bihari Vajpayee could have followed up the 1998 series of nuclear tests by ordering the launch of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), the design of which the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad, had on its shelf for several years previously and was itching to test. It could have won the Bharatiya Janata Party a second term. Manmohan Singh could have derailed Narendra Modi’s ambitions in 2014 had he mustered the gumption to resume thermonuclear testing on the reasonable ground that the fusion device tested in the Shakti series of tests under a BJP dispensation had fizzled. Modi likely approved the testing of the anti-satellite (A-SAT) weapon, a capability former chiefs of the Defence Research and Development Organisation maintain was in suspended animation for almost a decade, as insurance against his re-election prospects trended in the wrong direction. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to blow up a satellite in space with a direct missile hit to follow up on the Balakot air strike as a way to burnish the Prime Minister’s tough guy image. But mark this: In each case, the decision was made or not made for extraneous reasons, and not to strategically advantage the country.

But a test is a test is a test, and deciding to green-signal it is the easy part. The more difficult thing to do, and where Indian prime ministers have tripped up, is to sustain the momentum of such tests/test-firings and similar seminal developments in the indigenous science and technology sphere, and then convert technology demonstration into military prowess. So, Jawaharlal Nehru, progenitor of the dual-use nuclear energy programme, suddenly got cold feet when it came to testing a nuclear device and weaponizing once the plutonium reprocessing unit in Trombay went on stream and began producing bomb-grade fissile material in 1964. Indira Gandhi approved the first nuclear test in 1974, and then, by barring further testing, brought the weapons programme to a shuddering halt, consigning India to strategic limbo for some 25 years. Not to be outdone, Vajpayee, despite knowing that the thermonuclear device tested in 1998 was a dud, announced a moratorium on underground testing.

The reason in each case was the same—strong external pressure, which is just another way of saying these prime ministers lacked the iron will to put national interest ahead of whatever puny rewards the external powers offered India for ceasing and desisting and otherwise remaining a subservient state. The question is, will Modi use the A-SAT success to obtain for India comprehensively capable and deployable anti-satellite missile forces able to take out enemy low earth orbit (LEO) satellites providing tactical military information and high earth orbit (HEO) satellites affording wide area strategic coverage, including spotting Indian missile launches?

The pressure will be on India to join one of two space treaties: The Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) tabled by Russia and China, or PAROS (Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space) proposed by the US. Because Indian political leadership, from the beginning, rather than shaping India into a disruptive force that elbows its way into international reckoning, à la Mao in China, prizes membership in “exclusive” clubs (United Nations Security Council), technology-denial groups (Missile Technology Control Regime), and commercial and trade cartels (Nuclear Suppliers Group), all of which have victimized India, Modi or a successor PM may choose one or the other treaty stream.

In terms of a regime permitting greater latitude, the PPWT allows A-SAT; PAROS doesn’t. Moreover, the provision in PAROS of a “no-first placement initiative” in outer space is moot because the US, Russia and China are racing to put into space war-fighting platforms that are able to look down and shoot downwards and also shoot laterally using laser and kinetic kill weapons that are in their testing stage. The Indian government surely doesn’t want to once again sacrifice its options by agreeing not to do things these big powers are doing. In the event a decision must be taken, staying aloof from those treaties and testing and finessing the capability will arm India with multiple leverages and do the most strategic good, including enhancing India’s credentials as “security provider” to a host of South-East Asian littoral and offshore states fearful of China.

What is significant is Beijing’s restrained reaction to the Indian A-SAT test. The Chinese army finds that the tactical edge it had banked on, courtesy its constellation of LEO satellites transmitting real time data on Indian force disposition along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), is gone. It cannot rely on such satellites anymore to plan hostile moves in sectors once identified for weak Indian defences, or expect continued transmission by its LEO platforms once action is initiated by Chinese forces in the face of an active Indian A-SAT capability. With a blunted Chinese conventional superiority, and nuclear warheaded Agni-V missiles and Arihant-class nuclear submarines holding the Hong Kong-Shanghai belt—China’s wealth producing region—hostage, Beijing may now be more open to formalizing the LAC as the international border.

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[Published in LiveMint, 29 March, 2019, at https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/opinion-a-weapon-that-could-change-the-game-if-india-plays-tough-1553797638314.html

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With A-SAT test, India takes leap in space defence: Mission Shakti can nullify Chinese cyber attacks at time of war

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of Israeli Ofeq satellite

[Indian LEO satellite may look like this Israeli Ofeq-3]

The successful culmination of the programme to test-prove India’s anti-satellite weapon capability — Mission Shakti — was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday. He informed the nation of a “live” low earth orbit (LEO) satellite being blown in space with a direct hit. It vaults the country into an exclusive club of now four countries boasting of such wherewithal.

This is the second but still infant step taken by India in the realm of space warfare. The first step, though still incomplete — in a plan that will eventually obtain for India a constellation of 13-15 LEO and high earth orbit (HEO) satellites, to cover the Indian landmass and the extended region bounded by the Indian Ocean, the Caspian Sea, the Central Asian Republics, Southeast Asia and China — is to provide India with its very own Global Positioning System (GPS). This will be a major capability upgrade for the country in the space warfare realm.

With A-SAT test, India takes leap in space defence: Mission Shakti can nullify Chinese cyber attacks at time of war

An Indian GPS will preclude India’s dependence on the American GPS or Russian GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) which has cost the country plenty in the past and can prove disastrous in a future war. It may be recalled that the second test of the Agni missile in the early 1990s failed. What is not widely known is that it did so, in the main, because the US GPS it was relying on “blinked” at a crucial moment just when the missile was pulling a critical manoeuvre. It provided a lesson the Indian government seems unwilling to learn that to rely on the US or any other big power for critical technical assistance is to be foolhardy.

In any case, it spurred the Indian government to do the right thing: launch a bunch of satellites to secure the country its own GPS — pivotal for minute or major course correction in order to guide missiles accurately to distant targets.

The anti-satellite weapon is, in some ways, the flip side of GPS. If the latter denotes civilian-cum-military utility, an A-SAT weapon represents a purely offensive military capability. It can take out the adversary state’s GPS and disrupt its internal communications traffic and the working of its financial market and, otherwise, centrally hurt its economy — and all this by simply destroying the enemy’s satellites and their various sensors and voiding their role as telecommunications nodes.

Further, A-SAT strikes can nullify the usual space-based cyber attacks which, according to Chinese strategists, constitute the first stage of “comprehensive war”.

The LEO satellite that was successfully targeted is one of the earliest sent up and was nearing the end of its useful life. The LEO satellites India has launched have been built in technical collaboration with the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) specialising in the Ofeq (Hebrew for horizon) satellites, small-sized platforms with onboard sensors capable of high-resolution imagery. LEO satellites are particularly useful in “seeing” and mapping the enemy’s side of the battlefield – its major force dispositions, etc, and can be the principal source of tactical information in war or peacetime. The significance of the Indian A-SAT hitting an LEO satellite is precisely to signal China that the PLA forces can be blinded because Chinese LEO satellites can now be preemptively destroyed.

The Indian A-SAT is derived from the country’s anti-ballistic missile defence system featuring Prithvi missiles that are supposed to shoot down incoming missiles with two-shot probability — the first shot fired in the exo-atmospheric regime which if it fails triggers the second shot in the endo-atmospheric milieu. But, ballistic missile defence is workable as a concept but not in real life, because too many BMD batteries will be needed to bring down even a few enemy missiles. A-SAT, on the other hand, is a handy means of keeping a leash on the Chinese over-the-horizon military capabilities.

This brings the game around a whole circle because India’s A-SAT development was prioritised after China first demonstrated its capacity to destroy satellites and space-based platforms with a kinetic-kill vehicle in 2007.

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This was first published in Firstpost.com March 27, 2019, at https://www.firstpost.com/india/with-a-sat-test-india-takes-leap-in-space-defence-mission-shakti-can-nullify-chinese-cyber-attacks-at-time-of-war-6338251.html

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Varthaman’s release was Modi’s nuclear tripwire?

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pictures of Pakistan's Nasr battlefield nuclear rocket

[Nasr on Parade]

All this seems a bit orchestrated with the United States the conductor. Two only slightly different narratives have emerged in newspapers in India and Pakistan today. According to the Hindustan Times story ( https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-pakistan-came-close-to-firing-missiles-at-each-other-on-february-27/story-rVsBjZ5qmxXMprktzDNqcM.html ) attributed to a source in the Cabinet Committee on Security, the day WingCo A. Varthaman was shot down on the morning of Feb 27 is when NSA Ajit Doval got on the horn to ISI chief Lieutenant General Asim Munir to tell him that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was prepared to escalate hostilities if the downed Indian pilot was not returned safe and in good health, and as evidence of the PM’s intent referred to the 12 batteries of short range ballistic missiles — presumably the Prithvi 150km range, deployed on the western border. He then repeated this threat to his US opposite number John Bolton. The Trump Administration had previously stated that any Indian reaction”in “self-defence” would be fine with Washington. Doval also informed the Saudi Arabian and UAE governments about India’s resolve and urged them to pressure Islamabad to pullback by releasing the pilot forthwith or face escalatory Indian actions. Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi in a Feb 27 early evening TV news programme warned his country about the possibility of India attacking Pakistani cities using land and/or air forces, but hoped Delhi would show restraint. It was a warning the Imran Khan government took seriously enough to order blackouts in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore and in areas with important military installations. The likelihood of an Indian aerial attack on cities was repeated in the Majlis (Parliament) by the foreign minister the next day, Feb 28. But Islamabad also communicated its intent to retaliate by firing 13 Nasr rockets should Delhi carry out its missile threat.

The Pakistani narrative written by Ambassador Zamir Akram, former permanent representative to UN, Geneva, and published in the Express-Tribune (https://tribune.com.pk/story/1934394/6-razors-edge/ ) apparently agreed with the essentials of, and the datelines in, the HT story, including the details (such as the Doval- Munir communication, etc.). Except it gave the entire post-Pulwama episode, not unreasonably, a nuclear colouring, besides maintaining that Modi’s decision to send in the Mirage 2000 punitive strike sortie against Balakot on Feb 26 was prompted by the prior “self-defence” justification provided by Washington.

At the core, the views clash. Delhi believes that its threat of missile strike gave Islamabad pause for thought while Islamabad’s point is that its counter-threat to fire 13 Nasr rockets for the 9 Prithvis India had in mind to trigger, sobered up Delhi.

Both the Prithvi SRBM and the Nasr 60mm-diameter rocket are touted by the two sides as vehicles for nuclear warheads. And, in any case, because there’s no current technology available anywhere to distinguish an incoming warhead as conventional, prudence dictates that the first blip on radar of a fired Nasr, or Prithvi for that matter, will be apprehended by the other side as an incoming nuclear attack whence a response calculus would kick in. The state espying an underway N-strike could (1) wait and suffer actual destruction to ascertain its conventional or nuclear nature, before responding in kind, and flexibly, proportionately and appropriately, (2) fire off a missile/rocket or two of its own and take the risk that the adversary’s delivery system if conventionally warheaded would result in it being responsible for starting a nuclear exchange, (3) decide that the devil takes the hindmost and fire a small launch- on-warning salvo on value-cum-area targets — in the subcontinent major military facilities are also in or near big cities, so it is collateral civilian or military damage either way, or (4) decide to go the whole hog and let loose an annihilatory salvo using various vectors.

The targeted country, especially if it is India with its record of buckling under US and international pressure will, in this situation, always be at a disadvantage because, as I have argued, it will be pressed relentlessly to limit its nuclear retaliation and to keep it proportional — which, of course, will make nonsense of the Indian nuclear doctrinal injunction for “massive retaliation”. But this is not the sort of consideration that will generally play on the Indian government’s mind in the circumstances because the Indian population for certain will demand that, with Pakistan violating the nuclear taboo, Delhi go all out.

The fact is any which way one cuts a nuclear weapon-use scenario — short of a harmless demonstration by Pakistan of its nuclear use intent by setting off a 5-KT battlefield nuclear ordnance in a remote part of its own territory to warn India against using its conventional superiority to endanger its vital interests, the [prospects are dicey. In the event of an N-demonstration explosion, Pakistan would have to ensure that west-east winds don’t blow radioactive clouds formed by the rising debris over into India and precipitate a radioactive rain on some Indian town — which, as I have argued (in my latest book — ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’), could be seen as a nuclear strike on an urban target, and a war of annihilation would follow.

This brings up the matter of ‘red lines’. There’s no doubt that Modi has redrawn the red line twice. The first time by sending IAF aircraft to take out a target fairly deep inside Pakistan. And followed up by pushing the red line some more to expand India’s operational space yet again, by intimating first use of its nuclear Prithvi missiles. He, thereby, proved that there’s far greater elasticity in the Pakistani nuclear stance — something I have long argued in my ‘Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security’ (2002), ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’ (2008) and ‘Why India is Not a great Power (Yet)’ (2015) — than Strategic Plans Division, Chaklala and GHQ, Rawalpindi, let on, and reflects, I have said, the survival instinct of the very professional Pakistan Army.

Recall that in the 1965 War Pakistan sued for peace once its War Wastage Reserve was down to a week’s supply (compared to India’s 10 days) and, in December 1971, ‘Tiger’ Niazi ordered the mass surrender of his army in Dhaka when General Yahya, a 1000 safe miles away, was urging the Pakistan army units in the then East Pakistan to die fighting. “Fighting to the last man” , it turns out, fares better in rhetoric and war films than in actual military hostilities, especially when all hope is exhausted in the face of imminent defeat or when the enemy is perceived as having a decisive edge. This to say that for Pakistan to mount a nuclear challenge would definitely be infructuous.

This brings the discussion back to Modi’s reason for contemplating a missile-qua-nuclear strike in the first place, and for what? If the CCS-leaked story is correct, then the non- release of a healthy Varthaman was the trip-wire. While it is all very well for a government to do its utmost to ensure the safe return of its captured military personnel, does it make sense to make it cause for nuclear war? This is so outlandish, many in CCS seemingly realized it. The HT story’s CCS source races uncomfortably past this troubling aspect. “Don’t know about nuclear button or nuclear flashpoint”, he told the newspaper, a bit airily. “But PM Modi gave green signal to all measures if any harm came the IAF officer at the hands of Pakistan Army….India was prepared to go down the missile road on February 27.”

At one level, use of the phrase “all measures” is vague enough to permit the Modi government and its champions to claim, with hindsight and in light of the inevitable criticism in the future about Delhi preparing to initiate a nuclear affray on a flimsy excuse, that no such nuclear first use was ever contemplated, and that option wasn’t even on the table. And that the CCS source misconstrued the PM’s orders — Modi nowhere said use nuclear weapons!

Lucky, it worked this time around against a Pakistan which, as I have analysed in my writings, relies on nuclear bluster as an effective deterrence measure against an India that it is convinced cannot hold its nerve in a crisis and will fold, but is in no position to actually convert the threat of nuclear first use into an actual go decision. The fact is threatening nuclear missile use for the safe release of a pilot trivialized Indian nuclear weapons, and suggests that no one in the Modi government is even aware that nuclear weapons are strictly strategic weapons meant for strategic purposes, and not means to gain tactical advantage and, even less, a bargaining chip to get back a downed pilot. In this respect, Ambassador Akram is right in concluding that perceived deficiencies of India’s conventional land forces to muster a hefty punch is what compelled Modi to bypass ‘Cold Start’ and step on the escalation ladder with the threat of missile strike.

The trouble is, as mentioned in my previous post, Varthaman would not have been brought down had Air HQrs sent up the MiG-29s instead of the venerable MiG-21 bis — a point now supported by Air Marshal Harish Masand (Retd), VrC, arguably the finest IAF MiG-29 pilot to-date, in a piece published in the Indian Defence Review on March 21 (http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/the-f-16-vs-mig-21-bison-more-questions-than-answers/ ). Masand also wondered why Varthaman, given the known limitations of the bis platform, had not used the longer ranged Russian R-77 A2A missile from a standoff distance to shoot down the PAF F-16 rather than close in to fire the R-73 A2A missile and get in harm’s way of other PAF aircraft in the vicinity.

In the preceding post I also referred to India exposing itself to diplomatic arm-twisting by inviting major states to evaluate the Indian evidence of Pakistan’s support for JeM-directed terrorism in Pulawama as provocation for India’s Balakot action. By painting itself into a nuclear corner and then depending on Washington, Riyadh and Dubai to get it out of a bad situation by having them prevail on Pakistan to back down, was once again to hand foreign countries the whip hand. It is the kind of deleterious strategy Pakistan has always used to get itself out of a jam. More and more, the Modi government, by aping Pakistan, seems bent on shrinking India’s stature and standing.

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IAF’s goofs and Delhi’s post-Pulwama debacle: A Post-mortem

Posted on March 19, 2019 by Bharat Karnad

Image result for pics of satellite images of india's balakot strike

Many things are incomprehensible when pondering the post-Pulwama developments. The nature of the retaliation is one issue, and India’s reluctance to say anything, do anything, that would be taken askance by China, is another.

If the idea of the aerial strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) training centre in Balakot in the Pakistani province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was to send a message of India going fully punitive, display Indian resolve to hit the terrorists hard, and cause such losses as to signal clearly India’s willingness to escalate, and to escalate again, should the Pakistan military react to the initial IAF foray, then why was a PGM (precision guided munition) the weapon of choice? The 500kg glide bomb outfitted with the Israeli Spice 2000 terminal guidance set is very accurate and may, in fact, have penetrated the roof of the JeM hostel and killed off and incapacitated many trainee mujahideen/jihadis.

But such a precision strike was inappropriate if the aim was to impact Pakistan and the world with wide-area destruction to take out the entire terrorist complex, which outcome, at a minimum, wouldn’t have been questioned or spawned, as has happened, an alternative Islamabad narrative of IAF Mirage 2000s dropping their ordnance harmlessly on some trees and scooting to avoid engaging with PAF aircraft in a dog fight. In light of disputed satellite imagery, the effect of the Indian strike was diluted and lost what deterrent value it had because it was seen to have, if not missed the target, then caused only minor damage. If massive area weapons – several 1,000kg bombs — to level much of the forested hilltop and the JeM facility were used instead and, post-attack, ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures with clearly labeled but destroyed terrorist support structures – hostels, arms depot, firing range, etc., been released to the Indian and international media, Islamabad would have had little wiggle room and the world would have been stunned into pondering a suddenly decisive India.

So, the question arises: Why did IAF choose a PGM not an area weapon? If it did so under Prime Minister’s instructions to minimize collateral damage, then it apparently failed to inform Modi, or the latter was not properly briefed by his National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, and the Intelligence agencies, that the selected JeM targets were, in fact, situated on a hill far from Balakot town, whence the possibility of civilian casualties was nil, and the use of wide-area destruction bombs was appropriate.

True, this may have upped the pressure on PAF to respond in kind but to hit what targets and where? After all, Pakistan has never claimed that India is conducting a terror campaign inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Had General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, in the circumstances chosen to escalate, target selection would have proved a major headache for it, because attacking military targets within India would have invited Delhi to up the ante by striking at tempting Pakistan military installations within easy reach of the border, and all-out war would have been risked that Pakistan was in no position to win. Further, had such conventional military exchanges tripped the nuclear wire, Pakistan wouldn’t have been able to prevent its own extinction as a social organism in return for the destruction of two Indian cities at most, owing to a very adverse ‘exchange ratio’ (the ratio of destruction absorbed to the destruction inflicted).

In the event, rather than daring Pakistan to climb the escalation ladder, the Indian government and IAF were left defensively to argue their claims of Balakot damage in the face of world-wide skepticism based on satellite images that showed most of the structures still standing. The lesson to learn from this cross border anti-terrorist aerial strike is that to finish off a gnat it is sometimes necessary to use an elephant gun.

So, two major goofs by the Indian Air Force: The incorrect choice of ordnance and the equally strange absence of the MiG-29 in operations. Sending up the old and venerable MiG-21bis against the F-16 while keeping the MiG-29, rated among the best maneuvering air defence aircraft, grounded, led to the embarrassment attending on an Indian pilot’s capture. These two mistakes point to something very wrong with IAF’s operational mindset and, naturally, with the conduct of operations.

To match, the post-Balakot dud initiative at the UN Security Council (UNSC) showed up a deficient Indian diplomacy. Delhi revels in symbolic victories while our adversaries, in the main, China, seeks substantive gains. For the Narendra Modi government it was apparently enough that several Western nations, especially US, UK and France, voted for or co-sponsored the Indian resolution to designate Masood Azhar a global terrorist, when the odds of success were huge considering China’s veto on the anvil. The only proof, in this respect, Beijing may be convinced by is if JeM cadres hit Chinese troops in Xinjiang. Not content with the UNSC failure, Delhi has now exposed the country to further foreign depredations. By declaring that third countries are free to verify and validate India’s painstakingly accumulated evidence about the terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan, it has handed China as well as US, UK and France the means to interpret whatever material Delhi provides them through the filter of their own national interests and contingent imperatives, adding still another layer of diplomatic complication. What happens the next time there’s a terrorist strike and India responds similarly? These states may choose to meddle by publicly doubting India’s reading of the threat as credible cause for its armed action, and thus put India in future diplomatic jeopardy. That this move was made with such little thought as to its ramifications speaks volumes about the impulsive thrust of Modi’s foreign policy.

The Indian government still doesn’t understand that Beijing’s reasons for its veto have little to do with the piddling matter of JeM and Masood but with reassuring Islamabad that it can rely on China, against India anyway. The MEA, bereft of historical knowledge and basic strategic common sense, is yet to realize that China is playing the role for Pakistan that the erstwhile Soviet Union did for India such as during the 1971 Bangladesh War, when it provided political cover at UNSC to realize its goal in the then East Pakistan. And that Beijing won’t budge because the benefits from having Pakistan wage, in effect, a meta-level proxy war against India to serve China’s interests at little real cost is too tempting to pass up.

But, why is it so easy for Beijing? Why has India not imposed any costs on China? Well, in the extant case, because MEA rates its own persuasive power very highly, which is reflected in its statement that Delhi will “show patience for as long as it takes” to bring Beijing around to conceding that Masood is, in fact, a bonafide terrorist. Such are the small stakes that the Modi regime envisions for the country.

Modi and MEA are surely habiting an alternative universe, one in which hurt to the country’s status and prestige with China repeatedly kicking it in the teeth is readily ignored. This because Modi expects the “Wuhan spirit” to pay dividend. Really, when this Spirit is taken as license by Beijing to act detrimentally against India’s vital interests while Delhi sits on its haunches hoping its reticence will someday be rewarded by Beijing? In fact, all this will do is reinforce the unalloyed contempt Beijing has always had for India. When the late K.C. Pant, as defence minister, visited China after Rajiv Gandhi’s 1988 state visit featuring the long and memorable handshake with Dengxiaoping, he asked his hosts where India stood in China’s threat compass. Nowhere, he was assured condescendingly by his opposite number – “India is not on our threat radar.”

That was 40 years ago! How much more disdain and disrespect would the Xi Jinping regime feel for Modi’s India that resembles a punching bag, letting China do as it wills, hesitant to turn off the Chinese trade spigot, ban the sale of Huawei telecommunications hardware and mobile telephones despite legitimate concerns about cyber warfare bugs inserted into them, and not responding in kind to the gravest possible provocation of nuclear missile arming Pakistan, by strategically missile arming states on China’s periphery, with Vietnam and the Philippines in the van? (Imposing killer tariffs on Chinese goods is entirely within India’s ambit under World Trade Organization rules and regulations considering Chinese manufacturing Companies, without exception, enjoy built-in subsidies — free land, free power, free water, etc.)

All things considered, the Balakot episode, it turns out, is only the latest instance in India’s ignominious history of drawing defeat from the jaws of victory.