Modi’s good friend — Trump? Really?

Posted on December 12, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Uhmm…Smellin’ good, friend!]

Come January 20, 2025, Donald J Trump will be re-installed as US President after the Joe Biden interregnum. And leaders all over are wondering what their rank-order will be in his court. The first invitation sent out to a foreign leader to attend Trump’s inauguration, not surprisingly, was to the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who visited him in his MaraLago home. Orban is a leader Trump has lauded for his autocratic ways, and whom he would readily emulate if allowed to do so by a US Congress his Republican Party controls. Except, the two Houses of the American legislature, especially the US Senate (upper house), are more respectful of their own separate and distinct identities, roles, and prerogatives. They more often stymie their own party’s president than, say, the Hungarian Országház (House of the Nation) has done Orban since he assumed office, or indeed the National Democratic Alliance, with a majority in Parliament, has done its Prime Minister in India, Narendra Modi.

President Xi Jinping of China received such an invitation yesterday. Should Xi betake himself to Washington, he could soon be busy cutting mutually beneficial deals with Trump. And this is the US the Modi regime expects to rely on for assistance against China?

By the way, Modi has yet to receive his invitation.

But the Indian government has been outfront currying favour, extolling Trump’s return to power in Washington, with the External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, claiming “a personal relationship” between Modi and the US leader, and revealing — in a self-satisfied way — that Modi’s call of congratulations after the elections was among the first three from foreign leaders that Trump answered. India, he implied, hoped to ride the American bandwagon on two counts. According to Jaishankar, India “missed the manufacturing bus in the 1990s, early 2000s” and hopes to make up for it by benefiting from the global supply chains moving away from China. Except, because of the by now trademark tardiness of the Modi government in reforming the regressive land acquisition and labour laws, most of these supply chains have already set up shop in Vietnam and Malaysia, transnational companies being impressed less by the rhetoric of “reform, perform, transform” than by the actual “ease of doing business” on the ground, where the needle has moved very little. India may thus miss the manufacturing bus once again, exacerbating the already impossible unemployment situation in the country, and keeping the country rooted in the ranks of Third World states.

And Jaishankar praised Trump for putting the Quad on the rails during his first term, and pooh-poohed Trump’s threat to punish countries for de-dollarising international trade by imposing 100% tariffs on BRICS countries, saying because the US was India’s largest trade partner New Delhi had no interest in hurting the dollar. The problem is will the incoming Trump Administration see trade in local currencies that this group is certainly pushing, to wit, the new rupee-rouble trade agreement, as undermining the primacy of the American currency? If it does, then India will get it in the neck because, unlike Russia with energy and minerals to sell, and China with every consumer item produced under the sun and, by cornering vast mineral resources all over the world, as the prime source of rare earths and minerals to sell, India has nothing to offer except its manpower. This Modi and Jaishankar have not been shy of highlighting.

But, as mentioned in the previous post, transacting in scientific, engineering and managerial talent in a buyer’s market is an iffy proposition. Any number of East and Central European states — the preferred sources of white manpower, would happily export trained engineers and scientists, were it not that Indian technical talent comes cheaper. Despite this selling point, the buyer can still set his terms. It means the US holds the whiphand, and there’s nothing India can do about it.

This is unlike China, which had the strategic foresight to emphasize from Maozedong’s time, high quality education particularly in mathematics and the sciences at the lower and high school levels until now when it has developed a solid STEM base and has emerged as peer rival to America, and India is nowhere in the picture. Because Nehru’s India, instead invested in building renowned institutions of engineering and management — IITs and IIMs, paving the way for millions of Indians graduating from these institutions over the years to settle down in the US and Europe. Meaning, these science, engineering and management graduates, their education entirely subsidized by the Indian taxpayer, were merely polished up by American universities for high-tech jobs in the post-industrial economies in the US and western Europe. A more one-sided bountiful arrangement to transfer intellectual and, potentially, material wealth from a poor India to the rich West cannot be conceived, short of the brigandage of the kind indulged in by the East India Company. Recall that the estimated wealth transferred from India to Britain in the latter’s imperial hey-day was in excess of $45 TRILLION (at current exchange rate)!!! An analyst some 50 years ago calculated that the shift of Indian technical talent to America was worth many times more than all the development and food aid amounting to $10 billion the US had given India in 1960s and 1970s.

But America’s “Dil maange more“! Mukesh Aghi, President of the non-government US-India Strategic Partnership Forum was pretty plain in his messaging about life for the rest of the world in Trump’s second presidency. He urged India to “play a pivotal role in rebuilding America” and to “Align yourself with what Trump is trying to achieve, which is America First”!!! And, here we have the poor souls, Modi and Jaishankar and the rest of the Indian bureaucratic caboodle and the Indian military, fondly believing the US, other than compelling India to buy American weaponry, will help them build a modern and economically prosperous India!

So, may be, the people in the Indian government need to alter their sights somewhat. For no small reason because Trump has indicated where he is headed. He nominated an out and out Khalistani sympathizer, Harmeet Dhillon, to the powerful post of Assistant Attorney General for civil rights in the US Justice Department. The Chandigarh-born, newly minted Californian, Dhillon has been pretty ranty on X (Twitter) about “India’s death squads targeting diaspora Sikhs”, etc. and is something of a Republican Party activist and celebrity in the American Sikh community. If Biden’s Democratic Party officials gleefully wagged an admonitory finger at India’s record on minority rights, wait till Harmeet assumes office and sinks her teeth into American Sikh grievances against the Indian state. Who knows, she might actually charge Home Minister Amit Shah and/or NSA Ajit Doval with masterminding the alleged assasination attempt against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Khalistani terrorist and chief mischief-maker, terminating in a trice the possibility of either Shah or Doval visiting the US anytime soon lest they get arrested on American soil.

Luckily for Modi Kash Patel, a fellow Gujrati, may help out and then again, perhaps, not. Kash’s adoring father commenting, without a hint of irony, on his son’s nomination as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wrote: that until recently Kash was managing his motel or potel — as roadside inns/hotels owned by the enterprising Patels from East Africa are known, now he will be managing the FBI! Assuming he is confirmed by the US Senate, Kash as head of this agency could go one of two ways on the Khalistan issue. Other than his promise to disembowel the FBI by ridding the agency of its intelligence collecting functions, which he deems is redolent of the “deep state” in the US that Trump and his acolytes are determined to bring down, he could ‘deep six’ the case against the alleged Indian government-hired assasins — Nikhil Gupta and Vikas Yadav, and otherwise ditch Harmeet Dhillon’s efforts to embarass the Indian government. Or, he can fan the embers of Dhillon’s campaign and pretty much end Modi-Jaishankar’s official lovefest with America. Unless Trump steps in to stop the slide in bilateral relations.

But then, he my have bigger fish to fry.

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Cornering Modi

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Adani and the PM]

It is said of highly professional intelligence agencies that what they consistently do well is focus on the leaders of countries their government deals with, to try and find some weakness, some sore spot, a well hidden secret in the present or from the past, perhaps, marital discord, or sexual peccadilloes, or evidence of sexual deviance, of a lover squirrelled away in some safe house somewhere, or a woman scorned who can be turned to provide the dirty on the leader, something, anything, that the leader would rather keep away from the public eye, and to use this or that piece of information to get that leader of that government of that country to do as he is told, to take this decision, make that policy, announce such and such friendly step, or sign a specific deal. Information is a foreign state’s leverage and it is the stuff of external intelligence gathering.

The biggest intelligence coup of recent years is Putin’s KGB — the Russian Federal Security Service reportedly videographing, among other things, Trump during one of his business tours, pre-presidency, to Russia enjoying the company of blondes and a “golden shower”. Do you wonder why, where Moscow is concerned, Trump is a mewing pussycat?

Indian leaders have always had their weaknesses. There were obvious giveaways. Nehru had this thing for Edwina Mountbatten, and Whitehall used it without compunction to scuplt many of India’s policies during the Interim government when Lord Mountbatten was Viceroy and, a short time later, as the first Governor General of free India got Nehru to do many things London asked for. It is as if nothing had changed.

Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s Defence Minister Jagjivan Ram’s openness in the mid-1970s to baksheesh — reportedly conveyed by MI6 via Whitehall to British Aerospace led, it is said, to the purchase of the Jaguar low level strike aircraft — the first of the numerous billion dollar defence deals that have followed, and are better known for the inevitable tales of corruption, “commissions” and payment in kind — “scholarships” and jobs in foreign companies for the progeny of babus and politicians in the decision loop — the preferred mode to “grease palms” these days, attached to the deals than for the hardware they procured.

Then again, Central Intelligence Agency and the Indian government have the goods, for instance, on a certain “Raoul Castro” relating to some travel activity out of Latin America and into Boston involving contraband.

And, it did not take long for the CIA to home in on Gautam Adani — Narendra Modi’s financial backer, and his Adani Group as possible pressure points. Indeed, there was enough information conveyed by many Western governments (such as the Australian) to Washington about Adani sitting in on meetings their PMs had with a visiting Modi, and how contracts involving the Adani Group fructified. And then Adani made the serious error of falling afoul of the so-called “sunshine laws” prohibiting corrupt practices by firms conducting business in, or seeking investments from, the American marketplace. Not sure how agnostically these laws are applied, but they seem more like legal flypaper to catch errant foreign businessmen. But Washington and CIA believe they have the hook to dangle Modi on, or at least to get the Indian PM to dance to their music. Of course, nothing will come of it, and Gautam Adani is free to travel anywhere he wishes to go as long as he never steps on American soil. A little like the travel ban imposed on Modi for the alleged human rights abuses by his government in Gujarat, after the Godhra train burning in February 2002. May be Adani should hereafter approach the “Sheikhs of Araby” — much safer bet, for investment.

But Adani is not the usual sort of prime ministerial crony. He may have increased his wealth manifold no doubt. But unlike almost everyother intimate of the PM in times past — think of “Captain” Sharma and the Italian fixer for Snamprogetti in India, Ottavio Quattrocchi, fluttering around Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, who were in it only to pad their secret Swiss or Cayman Island bank accounts, Adani is alone in furthering India’s strategic reach, clout and presence globally. His control of ports on the IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Corridor) route — the infrastructure counterpart and competitor to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is critical to India’s geopolitics. Adani has equity in three Greek ports (Kavala, Volos, and Alexandrapouli) as the trade gateway to Europe, and of the ports in Haifa, Israel, Colombo, Sri Lanka, and in Daresalam, Tanzania, and his ownership in Western Autsralia of coal and other extractive industries, all of which afford India the kind of strategic leverage New Delhi could not have imagined a few years ago. He is an agile proxy for doing things the Indian government is no position to do.

But, unless everyone has misjudged him, Modi, like Donald Trump, is loyal to his minions but only upto a point. Meaning, he is not going to go down with the Adani ship, should it begin taking water. So Adani may not be quite the instrument to armtwist the Indian prime minister that foreign agencies believe he is. But this episode, following so quickly on the Nijjar killing incident in Canada that was deliberately blown up into a major diplomatic hungama, and finally the brouhaha over the Pannun affair, with the US government virtually insisting that, at a minimum, the decision to bump off the Khalistani terrorist be formally attributed to the NSA, Ajit Doval, and he be hauled up legally for it. That didn’t work. But it should alert Modi to the fact that the US and Western bloc countries, generally, are desperate to secure something to manipulate Modi with, maybe because Washington feels he is growing too big for his boots.

In the Nijjar, Pannun and Adani episodes Washington’s role was significant, and far from benign. Where interstate relations are concerned, Modi needs reminding that America is no one’s friend, and the incoming US President Trump is no one’s buddy. Because as the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, observed in her recently published memoirs (as reported by the New York Times) that Trump “believed that all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other” and rejected the proposition “that the prosperity of all could be increased through cooperation.”

Trump, in other words, is a zero sum gamer, and Modi can expect no give whatsoever from him in his second term. It is something the Indian PM needs to bear in mind to prevent his policies from straying too far from genuine strategic autonomy, and listing too much America-wards.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Russia, SAARC, society, South Asia | Tagged , , , , | 51 Comments

Speed up the hypersonic to the FOBS regime

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Launch of the hypersonic missile from the Kalam test range]

The hypersonic test firing took its time coming. From its look, it is a low 6 Mach-end 1,500 km medium range missile. More like the Russian Kinzhal. That it was fired from a TEL (transporter, erector, launcher) suggests it is either already deployed, or in the process of being fielded. This is good news.

The government took an unconscionably long time to field the Agni-V IRBM and successfuly tested the Agni-Prime with maneuvering re-entry vehicle (MARV) only in 2020. Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL) should have been permitted to proceed parallelly, with developing and testing the hypersonic glide missile earlier than the programme was authorised to do so. The hypersonics, because they do not break out into space, are powered by air-breathing scramjet engines, and can rink and dink in their trajectory to target — are virtually impossible to get a radar fix on for an anti-ballistic missile system intercept. So, the US Patriot-3s, the Israeli Arrow-3s — the best of the current ABM systems, are of no avail.

This is fine. With the basic design tested, what needs to happen as priority are three things: Firstly, a real long range 8,000 km variant has to be rapidly developed, productionised, and fielded. Because of the Indian government’s characteristic strategic short-sightedness, the country has tarried too long with the short range and medium range stuff — the Prithvi’s and the 700 km Agni-1s. The Strategic Forces Command all these years was, therefore, denied the option readily to take out Bejing with multiple vectors, especially an un-interdictable hypersonic missile.

Secondly, an aircraft-launched version of this glide vehicle has to be tested soonest to afford a more versatile and flexible strike option.

Except, the hypersonic edge will last only so long as the Chinese don’t field a glide intercept system of the kind the US is developing and hopes to have working by the mid-2030s. And what the Americans can do, the Chinese have proved they can do faster!

The rate of production of missiles by Bharat Dynamics and other wasteful defence public sector units has been abyssmal — so bad, it is enough to make a grown man cry! It is therefore time, as I have been arguing — futilely it turns out — for some 20 years now, for the production of all missiles (as also the Tejas LCA, AMCA) to be farmed out to the far more competent, efficient, profit-minded private sector companies. That’s the only way we’ll have formidable forces in near to mid-term. And really get India on the path to genuine defence industrial powerhouse status that Modi’s atmnirbharta rhetoric has promised.

Thirdly, and most importantly, ASL, Hyderabad — one of the few, truly accomplished, units in DRDO, needs to quickly pivot its tremendous R&D capability to get a variant of the hypersonic as a space-borne system to the testing stage. The Chinese “Long March” missile operates on the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) mode. The warhead in the FOBS regime is released in space for re-entry to hit target, which is impossible for any system to track. That’s the system the Indian hypersonics require to transition to fast. It will make the Indian hypersonic FOBS a truly frightening piece of weaponry.

Because India has always been a technology laggard more because of government decisions than lack of indigenous talent and capability, Hypersonic FOBS is the way, for the country for a change to be in the vanguard rather than, as always, bringing up the rear.

The thing to fear, however, is the government’s lassitude in critical decisionmaking. In 2023, for instance, the BrahMos corp advertised that “If we want a hypersonic missile, we will take only eight years to develop it after the approval from the government.” That approval never came. Had it done so, there’d have been by now two competing lines that would have produced better hypsersonic missiles! This is how the arms race is lost to an immensely more agile and far-thinking adversary — China.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indo-Pacific, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Nuclear Weapons, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, society, Strategic Forces Command, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 52 Comments

Trump America will compel India to be self-dependent, a good thing!

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

An extraordinary political comeback by Donald J Trump — a convicted felon and an out and out conman who opened his mouth only to spew lies and rubbish, was re-elected 47th President by the bulk of American voters who cared only that their hero “pissed off” everybody and trampled on whatever was deemed “politically correct”.

Those in India who think that this a return to the good old “Howdy, Modi!” times ought to remember that his first term was marked by purely self-centered transactionalist view of American national interest. He will double down even more on this and on his isolationist impulses, insisting on getting more and giving less. Trump has no ideology, no scruples and, in the wake of his handpicked majority in the US Supreme Court, there will be no guardrails on his presidential actions either. He is quite literally free to act the dictator he has promised he will be “on Day One”!

But whether he throws his political opponents in jail, appoints cronies and sycophants as his ministers, legislates laws to fill his own pocket and benefit his family businesses, incarcerates those he and his supporters particularly hate — a long list with homosexuals and transgenders in the van, and otherwise runs riot on the domestic scene, is of no concern to India and Indians. The good thing for New Delhi is that Washington will be less inclined — given its own dismal record on view — to anymore make an issue of human rights violations in India, as the Biden-Harris Administration did. Trump officials may even be more indulgent when it comes to, say, Pannun and his ilk being mysteriously offed!

Linked to that issue is the plight of Punjabi and Gujarati families in India, who have mortgaged their land and wealth to fund the illegal entry of “dunkies” into America (through Mexico and Canada) of their sons and male relatives pursuing their dreams who, with Trump translating his election promise into policy, will find a negative return on their investment. These illegals, however long they may have resided in the US, will be rounded up and deported back to India. Newspapers are already reporting the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service, perhaps anticipating Trump’s return, sending several plane loads of “illegals” back to India. Get used to it. These flights will become more frequent.

Trump’s antipathy to Third World immigrants may spare the “techies” but they may have to jump through many more legal and qualification hoops. Still, that route will be open, but barely, to these “booted and suited” variety of Indian economic refugees, not little because Trump’s billionaire backers, among them Elon Musk — himself a onetime illegal immigrant from South Africa, require a steady flow of technically proficient IT guys and such to man their high-value firms. But non-techie economic refugees, particularly Sikh and Gujarati youth — the ones without software and similar credentials, who can barely speak the English language but who, once on US soil destroy their Indian passports and ask for “political asylum” — conjuring up all manner of Indian hell they supposedly escaped to convince the US INS officials, will find it hard going. Because such pleas will now fall on deaf ears. In effect, asylum as a means of illegals regularising their presence in America, is terminated. It will also end a source of embarrassment to India and the Indian government.

But let’s get down to brasstacks. To recall, Modi’s hugging Trump and the two walking hand-in-hand down the Houston ramp, did not prevent the latter from remembering that Harley Davidson motorcycles weren’t getting a fair shake, and imposing extortionst tariffs on Indian steel and alumium, and other products, effective overnight, in return! Among his main election planks was his threat to impose a 65% tariff on all imports. He may have in mind to penalise China, but Indian imports will be in the same bag. The out for New Delhi will be to fork out more of what Washington wants — like tariff-less access to the Indian market for its dairy and meat products — which will be a priority because he has won Wisconsin and Michigan, Ohio and Indiana — states with dairy-heavy economies!

The point to make is that unless Modi is willing to play hardball — and return fire with fire, which given the PM’s and Jaishankar’s personal investment in good relations with the US, is unlikely, India will be taken to the cleaners.

Trump has made clear to his treaty allies and security partners, for instance, that the US will expect European and Asian states, long accustomed to free-riding on the American security coattails, to payup for having US troops and military assets on their territories. With Ukraine now being compelled to make peace with Russia on Putin’s terms — which was always on the cards (as my posts on this Blog made plain from the start), this message will get hammered in. The lesson for Messrs Modi, Jaishankar, et al, is that India hereafter will have to fend for itself when militarily dealing with China, but, of course, Trump will be only too happy to sell his good friends — India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, other Asian countries and NATO members, expensive weapons systems and other stuff for billions and billions of $$$$$. Such sales will, of course, keep the US defence industry in the clover, create more American jobs, and strengthen his domestic support base. Who can argue with that?

The thing I contended in my 2018 book — Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition (Penguin), prophetically it turns out, is that such Trump policies would force India to become self-dependent, and genuinely autonomous as regards its own indigenous defence industry. But this outcome is only if Modi stops bending his knees to foreign countries — the US, China, European states, by way placating/pacifying them with continued access to the Indian market, when such access should be sold very, very dear — something that Piyush Goel, the Commerce Minister, signing every free trade agreement passing his table, has NOT been instructed to do. As part of Modi’s foreign country pacification program is India’s readiness to sign massive deals for military equipment as gestures mainly to generate goodwill. What else was the $4 billion deal with the US for 30 M9 Sea Guardian drones? And the multi-billion dollar contract with France for the Rafale Marine fighter aircraft to outfit the navy’s aircraft carriers?

By way of a curtain raiser, watch out for preemptive knee-bending when the Indian government announces that Elon Musk’s Tesla will be allowed to set up a factory to make electric vehicles with tax holidays and other concessions that he demanded of Modi, which were earlier denied him. It will be justified, of course, on the PM’s “Green” agenda grounds. Elon Musk contributed $75 million to the Trump campaign, made his social media platform X (twitter) a megaphone for Trump, and now virtually has a carte blanche economically.

The result of the presidential election only emphasises the point I made in December last year on this blog (https://bharatkarnad.com/2023/12/02/india-needs-to-erect-guardrails-in-its-relations-with-america/). If Trump’s 1st term in office was prelude to his 2nd term, we can expect a piling up of excessive US pressure and punitive policies because Washington knows that New Delhi buckles under when in duress. This makes erecting guard rails for Indo-US relations an urgent strategic imperative the country cannot do without.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, 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, Indo-Pacific, Japan, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Northeast Asia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Taiwan, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons | 44 Comments

A significant development with Israel India should have initiated

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Israeli Merkava Mk 4 main battle tank]

There are numerous nuclear, military and foreign policy recommendations and suggestions in my books and writings over the last 40 years that have been picked up and implemented, naturally without any public acknowledgement, that have given me great satisfaction.

But, for the first time an idea of mine to advance seriously substantive defence cooperation with a foreign country, Israel, is being pursued by that country’s government, even though all along I had hoped and wished it was an Indian regime that would initiate it!

Some 22 years ago, the then Israeli Home Minister, Uzi Landau, and his adviser — one of the most influential heads of Mossad (1989-1996), Shabtai Shavit, on a visit to Delhi, met with me in my office at the Centre for Policy Research. The subject was defence cooperation. We talked about a number of things, but a programme for defence industrial cooperation involving a merger of our respective strengths that I proposed, is what perked their interest. After a meaningful exchange of glances, Landau and Shavit requested me to flesh out what I had in mind.

Based on the history of close but covert relations India had with Israel from 1948 to 1992 when formal diplomatic relations were established, and especially the memorable episode not widely known in India of  Levi Eshkol, the long time Director General of the Ministry of Defense (1948-1963) flying into Mumbai, secretly, in a long range military cargo plane in late October 1962 with the first Israeli shipment of ammunition and artillery shells the Indian army desperately needed to fight the Chinese People’s Liberation Army at the Himalayan heights, I suggested the two countries needed to seriously enhance defence cooperation. (Incidentally, Israel was not only the first country to offer India military aid in 1962, but also the first promptly to deliver it. The next year, Eshkol became the 3rd Israeli prime minister.)

In the barest form, what I outlined to Messrs Landau and Shavit was that India and Israel jointly manufacture conventional arms and weapons platforms, and research, develop, and test advanced systems; that this would be economical, and the production scalable to meet the needs of the armed forces of both the countries, and ensure low unit price. And it would permit both states to avoid diplomatic pressure by powerful arms supplier countries in crises.

These aims would be furthered, I argued, by

  1. the Israeli defence industry keeping some select production lines humming as fallback, but the Indian defence industry being tasked to produce, in bulk, the small arms, machine guns and light machine guns, and ammo, long range guns and shells to meet the requirements of both countries, inclusive of the Uzi automatic machine pistol (named, like the Kalashnikov, after its designer — Uziel Gal), artillery, and even the Merkava main battle tank (currently deployed in its Mark 4 version) — called the “mother tank” because of the protection it provides;
  2. Indian defence firms paying royalty for technologies from Israeli systems that would be incorporated into Indian designed armaments and platforms;
  3. having the surge capacity to replace on an accelerated basis the attrited war materiel to meet the suddenly spiking needs of either/or both countries engaged in war, or for stocking up in preparation for war, and free the two states from being disadvantaged on the battlefield owing to depleting stores;
  4. the excess Indian manufacturing capacity, in peacetime, besides servicing the two militaries, producing slightly de-rated items in the product line for exports, with a suitable scheme for sharing profits — the objective being for this Combine to emerge as a leading arms supplier in the world;
  5. India investing in and helping fund R&D in cutting-edge military technology projects by Israeli companies, and having Indian scientists and engineers work alongside their Israeli counterparts in India and Israel on shared project work in every aspect of systems design and development, to promote cross-pollination.

I put forward this proposal to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he visited New Delhi in 2003. And then followed up by making the case to Israeli ambassadors. The last time I did so was with Alon Ushpiz (2011 – 2014) who returned home to be appointed, a few years later, as DG, Foreign Ministry.

This proposal was, however, just a bridge too damned far for the persons in the Indian govt and military I conveyed it to.

But all the advocacy over time may have left some paper trails in Tel Aviv, and the Gaza War no doubt helped drive home the point about just how vulnerable Israel really is when engaging in high-intensity operations to find that, at high rates of war materiel attrition, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was coming perilously close to exhausting its War Stock and War Wastage Reserve and can’t sustain fastpaced warfighting for too long.

The skyrocketing war demand has led as, Indian Defence Research Wing reports (https://idrw.org/israel-looks-to-indian-defense-firms-for-weapons-production-amid-supply-strain/), to the Israeli government and defence industry approaching Indian companies to license produce Israeli weapons and systems for the IDF to offtake. Among these systems are drones, electronic warfare systems, precision guided munitions and missiles. This is far less than the more comprehensive cooperation plan to mesh the defence industries of the two countries I had pitched to Landau and Shavit, but it is a beginning.

There have been Indo-Israeli projects. Such as the one to produce a long range surface-to-air missile. Except, as I pointed out in my writings and to an Israeli ambassador, the division of labour was skewed — with India exclusively producing the low value backend items, while the Israeli company designed and produced the high value LRSAM motor, guidance paraphernalia like the thermal seeker, etc. — this even though India funded the project in its entirety — in other words Indian monies financed the R&D of a new missile for a tech that the Israelis retained! Can’t blame the Israelis for taking advantage of a clueless Indian defence ministry’s defence production department’s agreeing to such a one-sided deal which, after all, is par for the course. The defence ministry always drafts contracts beneficial to the foreign country/company! Baap ka paisa hai!

Hearteningly, the IDRW report hints at the Israelis approaching Indian private sector firms, which is a damn good thing, and would be just the course for the latter to gain foreign customers and credibility with an Indian government fixated on the wasteful and quite hopeless defence public sector units, and for the country’s defence industry as a whole to takoff.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, DRDO, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indo-Pacific, Iran and West Asia, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, war & technology, Weapons, West Asia | Tagged , , , , | 34 Comments

No breakthrough! China stringing India along

Posted on October 22, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Jaishankar with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi]

Woke up this morning, and was startled by Indian newspaper headlines heralding a new dawn in Sino-Indian relations. All the breathless reporting about agreement being reached on the “patrolling points “northeast of the Y-Junction on the Depsang Plains — proximal to the strategic Chinese lifeline to its western Xinjiang province, is an instance of an over-eager Indian government jumping the gun. The clearest evidence of this? As of 2:30PM IST, there was no like intimation of this serious development by Beijing, which has said not a thing.

Assuming Jaishankar is right in that some outline of an accord has been reached — then it must be only an agreement in principle — as in agreeing to discuss how actual disengagement will take place. In real terms, this means next to nothing! Because, unless the modalities of the Chinese units withdrawing their stranglehold on the Charding-Ninglung Nala Junction and of Indian forward troops re-establishing their right by actually renewing patrolling, are worked out there is NO accord! And to hammer out the terms and protocols could take months, if not years! Indeed, this seems like the usual diplomatic tactic the Chinese have used in the past to string India along with an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ promise of jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, no jam today!

Jaishankar, however, has put himself in a spot because he told the Press that the modalities would be worked out within 10 days. TEN DAYS? Let’s wait and see! He may have set himself up to have egg on his face!

Why has the Modi government put itself in this situation? The upcoming BRICS summit is the reason some say. Because both Russia and China are keen that India decelerate its strategic cooperation efforts with the US and the West. If Beijing is so concerned, why hasn’t Jaishankar used it as leverage against the Chinese?

As a foreign service officer, Jaishankar’s chosen language for training was Russian. But Russia is the one place he never saw any significant time in. MEA’s tested and proven career management practices! But he did spend more than 3 years as our emissary to China without having a clue about the Mandarin language — its nuances and tonal complexities! So, if what the Chinese said to him was proverbial “Greek and Latin” to him, how did he communicate with Zhongnanhai during his tenure as ambassador? Through his fellow IFS juniors on his staff, of course. But how good was their Mandarin? By the way, the NSA, Ajit Doval, has even less Mandarin language skills, but he is the lead border dispute negotiator!

It is the same “failure to communicate” that may have always dogged Jaishankar’s current parleys with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. (Old timers may remember that this phrase refers to the most famous line uttered by the grizzled Hollywood veteran, Strother Martin, in the 1967 Paul Newman film — ‘Cool Hand Luke’ — “What we have here is failure to communicate!”) It may have led to our EAM misreading his Chinese interlocuters and, advertently, misrepresenting what was said to him, what with him having to rely on interpreters, and Beijing playing on the Modi regime’s desperation to show some progress, any progress, however ephemeral! Because, Modi’s China policy is one great big failure in which Beijing has held all the high cards.

This Chinese advantage is only because New Delhi is not willing to play the game by the rules of strict reciprocity. So, China proliferated nuclear missiles and technologies to Pakistan, and India did not respond by transferring nuclear missiles to states on the Chinese periphery as would have been justified by the UN’s Article 51 self-defnce provision.

And, since the 2017 Doklam and the 2020 Galwan encounters, it is the Chinese PLA that has strengthened its tactical positions in Ladakh, held Indian forces away from the Xinjiang Highway, even as the Special Frontier Force unit that occupied the Kailash Range heights with a bold and bracing nightime action, were ordered off the peaks for nothing in return. China has had to pay no price in terms of, say, losing its access to the Indian market that the Indian government generously affords it. Nor has Delhi insisted that Chinese tech companies, in particular, wishing to do business here, establish joint ventures and be required by law to transfer all the technology of the products they sell to the Indian people, to their Indian partners, and to manufacture every small sub-component and widget that goes into their products in India itself. Or, to get the hell out, and stay out! These are conditions, by the way, China insists on for any foreign company, including Indian firms operating in China. But no, the Indian government has no such set of pre-conditions. The result: a humungous trade imbalance — just in the first six months of 2024, the trade deficit grew to $42 billion — the highest it has ever been! Meaning $42 billion of India’s wealth has been shifted to the Chinese khazana!

New Delhi’s idea of sticking it to China is to take years and years before making a decision to permit Taiwan to set up a proto-consulate in Mumbai — when, India should have happily let Taipei convert its so-called Trade Office in Delhi into a full-fledged embassy which it really is, long ago — one that can fly the Taiwanese flag (which, by the way, it is not allowed to do!)

The Indian government acts so cowed down by China, it is ridiculous. The pusillanimity of the political class is mirrored by the military leadership with the armed services’ Chiefs of Staff regularly and routinely calling for resort to diplomacy as priority which, in turn, fuels the Modi dispensation’s desire to obtain a border agreement, and to resume trade and other relations with Beijing that are manifestly tilted against Indian interests. This is the unvirtuous cycle India is locked into. Go figure why this is considered good for the country.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Bhutan, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Relations with Russia, Russia, SAARC, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Taiwan, Technology transfer, Tibet, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons | 79 Comments

No Two ways to deal with Canada and terrorists (Augmented)

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Justin Trudeau courting Sikh constituents]

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington has suggested something that’s never occurred to us Indians and even less to the Indian government — to lead the charge on branding Canada as “State Sponsor of Terrorism”. It would have devastating consequences for that country if the Financial Action Task Force follows up with sanctioning Ottawa. For years, New Delhi has focussed obsessively on Pakistan, leaving the equally dangerous source of international (Sikh) terrorism — Canada — free to continue stoking a cause that long ago became extinct in Punjab. The Modi government should now take up this task as top foreign policy priority, and on a war footing.

The blowing up of Air India plane Kanishka — flight AI-82 on June 23, 1985, over the North Atlantic Ocean killing 329 passengers and crew is the biggest aviation terrorism incident to-date. It took the Canadian government, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (main police agency), and intel agency over 20 years to investigate and take the perpetrators to court, and then did not have enough evidence to convict the two men accused in the conspiracy, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, who got away scott free, and Inderjit Singh Reyat who put together the explosive device, served some jail time. The shoddy police work, no doubt overseen by Liberal Party ministers, is one thing. But that terrorist outrage should have prompted the Indian government to seek international condemnation of Canada as state sponsor of terrorism, and take it to the FATF. Now that the two countries have vacated their respective high commissions of senior diplomats, it is time Modi ordered the MEA to go hammer and tongs in a campaign to villify and isolate Canada as a promoter of terrorism.

The more the Liberal Party government’s popularity has eroded in Canada, the more strongly its leader and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has sought to strengthen his support among the burgeoning Sikh immigrant community settled in large discrete pockets (around Toronto in the east and Vancouver in the west) — a policy initiated by his father and also PM, Pierre Trudeau — yea, dynastic politics is live and well in Canada as well!! — of affording Sikhs virtually free access to the country and encouraging the Khalistan cause.

Indeed, the Liberal Party in Canada has been the analog of the Congress Party in Assam where it helped enlarge its voter base by unscrupulous means — allowing Bangladeshis streaming illegally into the state across a porous border and immediately legitimizing their electoral clout by handing out voter cards, ration cards and other state and national identity documents. Such means helped Congress to rule Assam uninterruptedly for a very long time. It is exactly the same policy being followed by the Trudeau regime to hang on to power by its fingernails. He hands out resident visas to Sikhs once they somehow manage to reach the Canadian shores, often on forged passports and farzi visas. Until now when backing the Sikhs in their quixotic venture has become a political imperative for the ruling Liberal Party to retain power, even if the Khalistan Movement is really a cover for the growing criminal activity of Sikh gangs engaged in extortion rackets, trafficking in drugs and women, and running prostitution rings.

Rubin argues (https://www.aei.org/op-eds/opinion-india-should-designate-canada-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terror/ ) that Trudeau “errs by confusing militancy with legitimate religion” and suggests that Ottawa ponder the conclusion of the ‘Bloom Review’ — the report of the Independent Faith Engagement Adviser appointed by the UK government 5 years ago to monitor religious extremism among the immigrant population. That Review said that  “Subversive, aggressive and sectarian actions of some pro-Khalistan activists and the subsequent negative effect on wider Sikh communities should not be tolerated.” And why the Canadian leader’s strategy of seeking protection for his otherwise legally unmaintainable Sikh policy by dragging the “Five Eyes” Intelligence sharing combine of exclusively English-speaking Anglosaxon countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) into the fray, has precipitated a “crisis” with Trudeau asking the US government/CIA to validate his claims of New Delhi’s complicity in the killing of the Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year. It has put the Biden Admin in an icky position. The “Five Eyes” members — US and UK, however, felt compelled to maintain solidarity with Trudeau and officially to wag a finger at India even though Trudeau himself confessed that what his government had by way of evidence is “intelligence information” not something that would stand up to legal scrutiny in court.

Rubin concludes: “Subjectivity, be it in the United Nations, the Financial Action Task Force, or on various country’s terror lists, undermines institutions; objectivity strengthens them. As such, India can do Canada, the United States, and Western Europe a service by designating Canada as a terror sponsor for its safe haven, if not support, for Khalistani militants. Western finger wagging does not defeat terror; financial crackdowns, arrests, and extraditions do. Ottawa and, for that matter, Washington (where President Joe Biden recently welcomed Sikh militants at the White House) may not like the limelight but as both capitals lecture others, the best way to avoid such unpleasant attention is to make substantive reform.”

Rubin followed up a few days later with an op/ed ( https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-must-stand-with-india-against-canada/ ) in the Washington Examiner, pointing out that “Juxtaposing the Trudeau temper tantrum toward India with Canada’s muted response toward Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai bombings simply reinforces the point” and that “Nijjar openly advocated violence against his opponents and endorsed terrorism to achieve his aims. His death, even if caused by India, was no loss.” Canada, he adds, “may be America’s neighbor and second-largest trading partner, but to side with Ottawa over New Delhi would be wrong. Trudeau’s progressivism may mirror the Biden administration’s, but his erraticism should concern Washington. He puts ego above national interest”. And he advised President Joe Biden for the US not to “sacrifice its India ties to help extricate Trudeau from a hole of his own digging. Biden must cut Trudeau loose and embrace Modi. Not only truth and justice but also 21st-century security and a grave and growing terrorism threat demand it.”

[Gurpatwant Singh Pannun]

But to focus on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun — the man at the centre of India’s differences with the US. Pannun realised sometime in the mid-2000s that there was a lucrative career to be made out of being a pusher and propagandist fulltime for Khalistan in North America and Britain, because his lawyering business in the US — such as it was, was not flourishing. Accordingly, the clean-shaven Pannun grew a beard, covered his head in a patka, to conform optically to the image of a Khalistani, and began frequenting and sounding off in anti-India protests in New York (such as the one against Modi for the killing of Muslims after Godra)! But Pannun and his ilk also saw how the early Khalistan backers in America, such as Ganga Singh Dhillon, funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency, made a very good living out of remaining in the public eye and playing on the grievance-fueled sentiments of the Sikh diaporas in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia for a Sikh homeland carved out of Indian Punjab.

But first, a bit of history.

The Khalistan movement in the West got off the ground after the twin 1984 events: Operation Blue Star — a disastrous military operation Indira Gandhi ordered to rid the country of the Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale incubus she had created out of political whole cloth to contain the Zail Singh-dominated Congress party machine in Punjab and, later that year, her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards that led to the horrific massacre of Sikhs in the congested lanes and colonies of Delhi.

It was a cause the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence quickly converted with large dollops of funding, operational planning, and arms training of malcontents in Indian Punjab, into a potent separatist movement that began to gain traction among the youth of certain aggrieved sections of the Jat Sikh community. (The Jat Sikhs were especially incensed, it may be recalled, with the Indira G government’s decision to reduce the Sikh strength in the army from around 5+% to some 2% to make room in it for youth from other communities.) The charismatic Bhindranwale, always accompanied by a retinue of fierce-looking bearded youngmen with bandoliers strung across their chests and carrying bolt action Enfields — verily the vanguard of the Khalsa nation as they advertised themselves, struck fear in the Punjab population and occasioned admiration among the disaffected.

Except, that Khalistan dream died a lingering death when Jarnail Singh perished in the storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian army, and the redoubtable KPS Gill, heading Punjab Police, followed up by brutally finishing off what remained of the Khalistani presence in the state, both underground and overground. He did so by recruiting young Jat Sikh men from families who had seen their fathers, older brothers and relatives serving in the military or police, retired from the services, or employed at the lower levels of the state government, being bloodily shot by the Khalistanis seeking to impose a reign of terror in the countryside, and raping their sisters and looting their homes. These select young avengers in the ranks of Punjab Police commando were afforded the licence by the redoubtable Gill to hunt down these Khalistani killers, and eliminate them “like dogs”. The terrorised Khalistanis quite literally ran for their lives to Pakistan and from there to Canada, to Britain, to America, to Australia, to wherever they could find refuge, however they could get there.

The Khalistan movement in the West today is, for the likes of Pannun, mainly a commercial enterprise. They view it as a means of earning moolah by peddling dreams, and taking over gurdwaras there and channelling contributions by the faithful into their personal accounts. Thus enriched and on easy street, Pannun, in particular, finds that turning himself into a public nuisance pays, especially when he talks bombastically of dismembering India, and starting movements in the Indian northeast and elsewhere “to Balkanise and disintegrate the Union of India” as one of his posters declared. It gains him Delhi’s attention and alerts Washington to the possibilities. And this the dangerous aspect to this Khalistan game.

The Paki ISI still sees in these Khalistani yahoos a means of discommoding India and Indian interests and presence abroad — an activity Indian intelligence has been tracking diligently. But the wave of point blank shootings of state-protected terrorists (belonging to groups like Babbar Khalsa, etc) inside Pakistan responsible for planning and carrying out terrorist acts in India, sent shivers particularly through the Khalistani ranks abroad. They had not reckoned with the toothless Amma of an Indian government suddenly sprouting fangs. After Nijjar’s killing in June last year in Surrey, British Columbia, that Canadian intel had an inkling of but couldn’t prevent, Khalistani activists and sympathizers in the West were on tenterhooks — they didn’t know what awaited them round the corner.

And then the manifestly amateurish operation to take out Pannun came to light. It was appalling to find desi Intel minders who used whatsapp for communications and tasked a freelancer to recruit a hitman. Next they’ll do what? Advertise in New York Times that India is going after X, Y and Z? With the issue going so public, the Biden Admin’s ego was engaged, and they created a brouhaha. But Washington has been placated by the stringing up of a scapegoat — a mid-level RAW officer. (The lightweight Justin Trudeau and Canada can go stew in their own pot!)

It is an axiom of spycraft that governments think of the killings of their intel agents and assets as par for the course, as long as this is done on the sly and, to use an American idiom, “the shit doesn’t hit the fan”. This is the operating principle of all self-regarding intel agencies — create no public ruckus while conducting your business. By all means, kill off your enemies but do so without getting in the host country’s face. But, Pannun and others like him who know that survival depends on the protection provided them by Western laws and governments, have an incentive to cry themselves hoarse shouting wolf, and to be as publicly vocal as possible about real and imagined threats to their life and limb from Indian agencies. It is in this light that the fiasco related to the planned operation to kill Pannun must be seen.

But this shouldn’t fool anyone into thinking that Washington (CIA), London (MI 6), Ottawa, or Canberra don’t espy profit in keeping their fingers in the Khalistani pie, and cultivating that leverage for use in future contingencies.

That said, guardrails have to be erected, especially against a friendly America. Washington has to be told firmly that if CIA feels free to kill off “undesirables” for endangering its national interest — for God’s sake, it bumped off Homi Bhabha (by blowing up his Air India flight to Geneva) to prevent India from going weapons nuclear in the mid-1960s!, no person imperilling India’s territorial integrity would be spared, whatever the cost to bilateral relations. Unfortunately, this is not the attitude of the Modi government, which has served up a RAW officer as a sacrificial offering. Given the policy tilt, this is unlikely to be a one-off concession. Jaishankar has not brought up the matter of 61 Indian extradition requests to the US government, as a pink paper reported, for terrorists/criminals such as Tahawwur Hussain Rana who planned the 2008 Mumbai strike or Goldy Brar whose gang killed the singer Sidhu Moosewala or Ramachandran Viswanathan, a money launderer, residing in the US. Washington feels free to act tough on supposed Indian lawbreakers while shielding Indian criminals in its midst wanted by Indian authorities.

A contrary attitude to dealing with the enemies of state, is Israel’s. It tolerates not a smidgeon of danger from any quarter or source, from anywhere in the world. And shrugs off pressure. The Biden Admin warned against Israelis going into Rafah. This is precisely where the IDF advanced, and Mossad tracked down and killed the Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar. It goes proactively after those who mean Israel ill. Its reputation is so fearsome and inspires so much dread everwhere, that after Indira Gandhi got cold feet in 1982 and, to her great discredit, called off at the proverbial last minute the planned Israeli air strike operation to bomb the Pakistan nuclear weapons complex at Kahuta — a mission that was to be staged out of Indian bases in Jamnagar and Udhampur, an Islamabad, frightened out of its wits, thereafter assured Tel Aviv that it would never ever be part of any effort to do Israel harm in any way, including by giving its A-bomb to the Saudis, which was rumoured to be the deal for Riyadh’s financing the Chinese transfer of nuclear weapons and missile technologies to Pakistan, and to please therefore spare Kahuta!

Actually, there is a need in India for a ‘Special Operations Executive’-type of organisation that Churchill created in wartime Britain. It has to be outside RAW, operate under deep cover, and tasked to deal with dispatch against Indians and Indian-origin foreigners who grievously harm India and its national interest, or threaten its territorial integrity, because the fast-expanding Indian disasporas the world over, could source real problems in the future.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, Decision-making, domestic politics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, NRIs, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, society, South Asia, Special Forces, United States, US. | 34 Comments

Israeli attack on Iran’s N-facilities — very unlikely

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[Natanz centrifuge unit]

On the first anniversary of the Oct 7 Hamas attack on Israel that has unravelled the region and pushed the world, some alarmists claim, to the brink of the Third World War, it may be useful to look at certain salient developments. Anybody who is aghast or surprised at the sustained brutality of Israel’s retaliation in which the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) razed Gaza City to the ground using indiscriminate aerial bombing and heavy artillery fire, virtually eliminated Hamas by bombing whole residential areas where Hamas members resided and individually hunted down the cadre that survived such strikes, and eviscerated the Hezbollah organisation entrenched in southern Lebanon, is apparently unaware of the essential Israeli mindset animating its approach to national security problems — “Rise and Kill First”! This, incidentally, is the title of a book by Ronen Bergman dealing with Mossad’s seemingly endless campaign of targeted assassinations carried out the world over with lethal imaginativeness and ruthless efficiency.

These characteristics of Mossad’s working were illustrated, most recently, in the spectacular operation of exploding pagers that, at a stroke, decapitated Hezbollah, killing most of its top leadership, including its emir, Hassan Nasrallah, and communications chief, Mohammad Rashid Sakafi. It required penetrating and controlling parts of a global supply chain involving design units and factories stretching from Japan and Taiwan to Hungary. Ironically, the Hezbollah had switched to pagers to enable its leaders to communicate with frontline commanders, fighters, and support staff without worrying about Mossad listening in, which is what it feared was happening! That Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu activated the kill order despite Nasrallah agreeing to a temporary ceasefire, indicates both Tel Aviv’s bloody-mindedness but also just how determined it is to zero out threats, even if it means undermining the underway efforts at peacemaking. Tehran then responded, unwisely, by opening up with a barrage firing of long range ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv which did little consequential damage. But it provided the rightwing regime in Israel a ready excuse to extend hostilities to Iran if it chooses to do so. Netanyahu is now deciding whether or not to escalate in the face of intense presure from the Biden Administration against such action. And, this is where matters presently stand.

The biggest uncertainty now is not the goal Netanyahu will set Mossad and IDF as regards warring with Iran — because he has long made public his intention to take out critical Iranian nuclear facilities, and remove this nuclear threat to Israel once and for all, but whether he will actually order such a strike. In this respect, recall that in 2009, Mossad and the US Central Intelligence Agency launched a joint cyber strike with the deadly stuxnet software that put a large bank of centrifuges at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz out of action. Indeed, so severe were the results of that attack Tehran decided it needed time to recover and “rebuild” this uranium enrichment capability and agreed on an executive agreement — not a treaty — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with a consortium of leading states — the US, Britain, France, China, Germany, Russia and the European Union, in the hope of using it as a political-diplomatic cover but, formally, in return for a partial lifting of US sanctions.

What was surprising was the extent Tehran went to show good faith to obtain the JCPOA. According to a White House Fact Sheet, between October 2015 and January 16, 2016 when it was signed, the government of Hassan Rouhani “Provided unprecedented access to its nuclear facilities and supply chain; Shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of the country; Dismantled and removed two-thirds of its centrifuges, & Removed the calandria from its heavy water reactor and filled it with concrete”, and shipped some 70 tons of Heavy Water to Qatar, presumably, for safekeeping.

And then the best thing that could have happened from Iran’s point of view, actually happened. Ill-advised, US President Donald Trump on May 8, 2018 announced US withdrawal from JCPOA, calling the agreement “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made” and adding, as an afterthought, “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

A relieved Iran quickly revved up its nuclear programme. With 19,000 centrifuges working, inside of 2-3 months enough bombgrade uranium was outputted for 9 nuclear weapons. Compare this to the situation under JCPOA when Iran had only 6,104 centrifuges cranking out high enriched uranium (HEU) that was barely enough for a single bomb and, as the White House Fact Sheet crowed, when “all 4 pathways to bomb [were] blocked.” The blocked pathways being HEU at Natanz and at another centrifuge facility in Fordow, weapon-grade fissile material via the Heavy Water route, and via covert production owing “to extraordinary and robust monitoring, verification, and inspection” by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran has three main targetable nuclear weapons-related installations, if the Heavy Water reactor at Arak able to produce around 9kg of weapons-grade Plutonium annually sufficient for a single bomb is discounted, because of the gutting of its core with cement, and which plutononium pathway to the nuclear weapons in any case is unavailable to Iran as it lacks a spent fuel reprocessing facility. There are the two centrifuge facilties at Natanz and Fordow, the installations in Isfahan to convert uranium to uranium hexafluoride gas — the Uranium Conversion Facility — for running the centrifuges for enrichment to bombgrade, and the one to convert HEU into metal — the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant, to configure the metalised uranium into fissile cores for weapons, and the main weapons design centre — the Tehran Research Centre. Iran also has a nuclear power plant complex in Bushehr on the Gulf coast with a single 1,000MW VVER Russian light water reactor operating since 2013 and two more 1,000MW VVERs under construction. Hitting it might lead to the contamination of the Gulf waters.

But there are problems with some of these target sets. Natanz, for instance, is located near the shia religious city of Qom. Bombing it may result in collateral damage to religious sites, institutions and in the deaths of the shia clergy, and that would surely trigger an enhanced religious war and an anti-West upsurge in the region. Built for enrichment on a commercial scale with 50,000 potential centrifuges, of these around14,000 are said to be installed and only 11,000 actually functioning and capable of refining uranium to up to 5% purity. Except, post JCPOA the enrichment has gone up to 60% purity or nearly 90% weapon grade at both the Natanz and Fordow sites, with the latter having 1,000 plus centrifuges operating there, a small portion of them of an advanced type (IR-6 machines) enriching uranium to up to 60%.

Having learned from the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981, Iran installed the centrifuges in Natanz and Fordow in caverns excavated deep inside the Zagros Mountain Range in central Iran, rendering them nearly invulnerable. As General Frank McKenzie, retired commander of the US Central Command, told CBS News recently, “The Iranian nuclear target is a very difficult target. We have special capabilities that allow us to get at it. The Israelis do not have all of those capabilities. They can certainly hurt this target if they choose to, if they choose to strike it. But again, because of its size, complexity and scope and how it’s expanded over the last 10 years, it’s a very difficult target to take out.”

It is precisely these special American earth-burrowing weapons that Netanyahu craves in order to carry out strikes, which Washington is denying him. This is what has restrained Tel Aviv so far, and not as has been bandied about by some in the Indian media that Israel lacks tanker aircraft to facilitate the 2,000 mile flights to Iranian targets and back by Israeli strike aircraft. There is such a thing as “buddy refuelling” — additional F-15s and F-16s with transferrable fuel as payload for mid-flight refuelling accompanying the contingent comprising F-15s pulling combat air patrol for the striking F-16s. And the Tehran Research Centre is not singly worth attacking because the scientists and engineers will have been relocated to safety.

Or, Netanyahu can simply wait out the Biden Administration and hope Trump returns to power because in his presidential campaign he has been urging Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities “first” and “worry about the rest later”. But even an impulsive re-elected Trump may hesitate in allowing Netanyahu a free hand in 2025 because Russia will come in strongly against any such action, and Trump has never not deferred to Putin (whether on Ukraine, or other issues).

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, disarmament, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Russia, sanctions, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | 100 Comments

Extraordinary tech innovation by IISc, the Indian govt better not screw up!

Posted on September 14, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[The IISC team: seated in front: Sreetosh Goswami (left) and Navakanta Bhat (right). Standing behind (from left to right): Deepak Sharma, Bidyabhusan Kundu, Santi Prasad Rath, and Harivignesh S ]

The Security Wise Blog is doing something unprecedented — reproducing below an article published elsewhere. It is an account of a technological breakthrough in the field of ‘molecular kinetics’ announced September 11 and written up in accessible language by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for TechXplore and is available at https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-neuromorphic-platform-significant-efficiency.html. It is featured here to give this phenomenal indigenous tech innovation the widest possible exposure.

The ‘integrated neuromorphic chip’ or ‘brain on chip’ that is expected to accrue from the R&D by the project team headed by Professor Sreetosh Goswami, combined with normal desktop computers will actually amount to an immensely more economical alternative to the still nascent Quantum Computing technology!!

The development of this tech innovation was revealed in a technical paper published in the reputed international British journal, Nature. The reference is: Sreetosh Goswami, Linear symmetric self-selecting 14-bit kinetic molecular memristors, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07902-2. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07902-2

This Centre for Nano Science & Engineering at IISC, Bengaluru, is funded by the Indian taxpayer through MEITy (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology). What the Modi government needs to ensure is that Goswami and his team — Deepak Sharma, responsible for “the circuit and system design and electrical characterisation, Santi Prasad Rath handling synthesis and fabrication, Bidyabhusan Kundu tackling the mathematical modelling, and Harivignesh S crafting bio-inspired neuronal response behaviour” are incentivised in every possible way to remain and conduct more research in India.

Because the neuromorphical chip has myriad uses, including military, the Indian armed services will be well advised to do something unusual for them — touch base with this IISc team to see how they can fund practical military applications for this chip. Because the molecular film concept was developed in collaboration with Stanley Williams of Texas A&M University and Damien Thompson of University of Limerick, Ireland, there is every likelihood the team members will now be tempted by universities and chip companies in the US and Europe to work for them. The reason why GOI needs to do whatever is necessary to keep these young IISc scientists and engineers in India is, therefore, obvious.

Indeed, for further development of the chip, it may be best to get Indian private sector Companies to join up with IISc, rather than channel the project into the “brain dead” public sector realm (DRDO, etc.)

————

The TechXplore article:

Neuromorphic platform presents significant leap forward in computing efficiency 

by Indian Institute of Science

Neuromorphic platform presents huge leap forward in computing efficiency 
Implementation of VMM. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07902-2

Researchers at the Indian Institute of  Science (IISc) have developed a brain-inspired analog  computing platform capable of storing and processing data in an astonishing 16,500 conductance states within a molecular film. Published today in the journal Nature, this breakthrough represents a huge step forward over traditional digital computers in which data storage and processing are limited to just two states.

Such a platform could potentially bring complex AI tasks, like training Large Language Models (LLMs), to personal devices like laptops and smartphones, thus taking us closer to democratizing the development of AI tools. These developments are currently restricted to resource-heavy data centers, due to a lack of energy-efficient hardware. With silicon electronics nearing saturation, designing brain-inspired accelerators that can work alongside silicon chips to deliver faster, more efficient AI is also becoming crucial.

“Neuromorphic computing has had its fair share of unsolved challenges for over a decade,” explains Sreetosh Goswami, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), IISc, who led the research team. “With this discovery, we have almost nailed the perfect system—a rare feat.”

Neuromorphic platform presents huge leap forward in computing efficiency
Using their AI accelerator, the team recreated NASA’s iconic “Pillars of Creation” image from the James Webb Space Telescope data on a tabletop computer – achieving this in a fraction of the time and energy required by traditional systems. Credit: CeNSE, IISc

The fundamental operation underlying most AI algorithms is quite basic—matrix multiplication, a concept taught in high school math. But in digital computers, these calculations hog a lot of energy. The platform developed by the IISc team drastically cuts down both the time and energy involved, making these calculations a lot faster and easier.

The molecular system at the heart of the platform was designed by Goswami, Visiting Professor at CeNSE. As molecules and ions wiggle and move within a material film, they create countless unique memory states, many of which have been inaccessible so far. Most digital devices are only able to access two states (high and low conductance), without being able to tap into the infinite number of intermediate states possible.

By using precisely timed voltage pulses, the IISc team found a way to effectively trace a much larger number of molecular movements, and map each of these to a distinct electrical signal, forming an extensive “molecular diary” of different states.

“This project brought together the precision of electrical engineering with the creativity of chemistry, letting us control molecular kinetics very precisely inside an electronic circuit powered by nanosecond voltage pulses,” explains Goswami.

Tapping into these tiny molecular changes allowed the team to create a highly precise and efficient neuromorphic accelerator, which can store and process data within the same location, similar to the human brain. Such accelerators can be seamlessly integrated with silicon circuits to boost their performance and energy efficiency.

A key challenge that the team faced was characterizing the various conductance states, which proved impossible using existing equipment. The team designed a custom circuit board that could measure voltages as tiny as a millionth of a volt, to pinpoint these individual states with unprecedented accuracy.

The team also turned this  scientific discovery into a technological feat. They were able to recreate NASA’s iconic “Pillars of Creation” image from the James Webb Space Telescope data—originally created by a supercomputer—using just a tabletop  computer. They were also able to do this at a fraction of the time and energy that traditional computers would need.

The team includes several students and research fellows at IISc. Deepak Sharma performed the circuit and system design and electrical characterization, Santi Prasad Rath handled synthesis and fabrication, Bidyabhusan Kundu tackled the mathematical modeling, and Harivignesh S crafted bio-inspired neuronal response behavior. The team also collaborated with Stanley Williams, Professor at Texas A&M University and Damien Thompson, Professor at the University of Limerick.

The researchers believe that this breakthrough could be one of India’s biggest leaps in AI hardware, putting the country on the map of global technology innovation. Navakanta Bhat, Professor at CeNSE and an expert in silicon electronics led the circuit and system design in this project.

“What stands out is how we have transformed complex physics and chemistry understanding into groundbreaking technology for AI hardware,” he explains. “In the context of the India Semiconductor Mission, this development could be a game-changer, revolutionizing industrial, consumer and strategic applications. The national importance of such research cannot be overstated.”

With support from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the IISc team is now focused on developing a fully indigenous integrated neuromorphic chip.

“This is a completely home-grown effort, from materials to circuits and systems,” emphasizes Goswami. “We are well on our way to translating this technology into a system-on-a-chip.”

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Plan for Partial Theaterisation is Unsatisfactory on Many Counts

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Bharat Karnad

[CDS Gen Anil Chauhan with CAS, ACM VR Chaudhari, CNS Adm Hari Kumar, COAS Gen Manoj Pande — left to right]

Earlier this year in June, in an hour-long session with the Chief of Defence Staff in his South Block office, General Anil Chauhan, was forthcoming on many issues I raised. Regarding theaterisation, he seemed pleased when revealing to me that approval for it had been secured from the then three armed services’ chiefs of staff — General Manoj Pande, Admiral Hari Kumar, and Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari. “They have signed off on it”, he informed me. Pande and Hari Kumar have since retired. Chauhan then outlined the theaterisation blueprint with some of the details that were officially made public in Lucknow at the Joint Commanders’ Conference on September 4.

Among the proposed purportedly transformative changes is the restructuring of the current 17 separate commands under the three services — 7 with army, 7 with IAF, and 3 with navy, plus the two “integrated” commands — Strategic Forces Command (SFC), and the Andaman-Nicobar Command into three “theatre commands” — Maritime or Peninsular Command, China Front Command based in Lucknow, and the likely-Jaipur HQed Command for Pakistan contingencies, each to be headed by a 4-star rank officer. It means the elimination of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Southern Air Command and the Jaipur-based army’s South Western Command. Chauhan also clarified that his predecessor, the late General Bipin Rawat’s interest in fast-forwarding a single command for the air defence of the country had been de-prioritised. Perhaps, because of the complexities involved. (On this see my my blogpost of July 10, 2021 — “Maddening CDS-cum-Military Theaterisation Muddle (Augmented)” at https://bharatkarnad.com/2021/07/10/maddening-cds-cum-military-theaterisation-muddle/)

The Press has reported on how the political-bureaucratic circles may baulk at creating three new 4-star billets in the military who, like the armed services’ chiefs of staff, will outrank secretaries to the Government of India, and why such a step is necessitated by the fact that the theatre commanders will have operational control of fighting formations and units from all the three services.

Chauhan, in his quiet way, has achieved something quite spectacular — in that no one quite believed that he would be able to get theaterisation over the Air Force hump! IAF was the unmoveable barrier that frustrated all efforts at “jointness” in the past, arguing, in effect, that ceding any control over aerial fighting assets to a non-flier (from a sister service) would imperil India’s air power because only a professional combat fighter pilot sufficiently appreciates and understands the demands and vagaries of air warfare.

IAF had its way until now only because of lack of political will, even though the Kargil Committee and the Defence Higher Defence Reorganisation committee under the late KC Pant recommended theaterisation. Previous Prime Ministers having at best only a passing interest in matters military, did not care enough about more effective and efficient use of military resources via jointness and theaterisation. It was this political disinterest that an officer cadre of ignoramuses, domain expertise-wise — the generalist civilian bureaucrats, clogging up the Defence Ministry MOD who have long viewed putting the clamps on the military as part of their remit, stoked.

Chauhan, who was recalled from retirement to serve as the 2nd CDS, may have succeeded where Rawat failed maybe because he was expressly tasked by the Prime Minister with realising theaterisation and assured of every assistance to move the process along. There’s little doubt that the Chief of Air Staff was prodded by the PMO, or Chaudhari thought it prudent not to stick his neck out once he recognised the lie of the land. The only good thing about a military system where all the powers are vested in the Service Chief is, that with the bureaucracy falling in line with Narendra Modi’s wishes, any institutionalised reluctance would be at the cost of the Service chief himself and this rendered him more persuadable. Chaudhari, it is apparent, had no stomach to go up against the PM/PMO. Whatever the reason for the CAS’ playing ball, it smoothed the way for Chauhan to draw up his “blueprint”.

The plan for 3-Theatre Command setup, however, is problematic mainly because it amounts to partial theaterisation and has nested problems. To sketch a few of them:

  1. A military reorganisation plan is likely to be successful if is geared to a total makeover, and its actual implementation is in steps. But if all that’s proposed, in this case, a 3-theatre command structure — then given the bureaucratic tendency — military and civilian, to tolerate as little change as possible, that’s where the jointness may, willy-nilly, terminate, assuming the 18-month timetable for establishing these Commands works out.
  2. One obvious reason why theaterisation has been limited to 3 Commands is because there are three Armed Services and each can have a Theatre C-in-C, it simplifies the distribution of the loaves and fishes of office — Army takes the China Front Command, Air Force the Pakistan Front Command, and the Navy takes the Maritime Command.
  3. This is bad news, because all the other other capabilities that would benefit from centralisation may be left out of the theaterisation programme for good, or postponed to the never-coming tomorrow! Thus, there will be no separate Joint Planning Command, no Joint Procurement Command, no Special Forces Command, no Joint Logistics Command, no Joint Transport Command, no Joint Training Command, no integrated Air Defence Command, no centralised Tri-Services Military Intelligence Command, and no Support Services Command. And the proposed theaterisation that is only partial will become an end-state, permanent. Meaning baby steps will result in stunted theaterisation.
  4. And for the purposes of coherence, why has the maritime ANC (Andaman-Nicobar Command) not been folded into the Maritime/Peninsular Command, rather than have it hang out by itself awkwardly outside the ambit of the Maritime C-in-C? Won’t that lead to needless confusion over turf, and command and control?
  5. And, finally, what’s the guarantee that this theaterisation schemata will not stumble when it comes up before the Cabinet Committee on Security for approval, considering the civilian bureaucrats in MOD will be trying desperately to torpedo the 3 extra 4-star rank posts under the guise of strengthening civilian control of the military? Recall that MOD babus manoeuvered for years to prevent SHFJ Manekshaw from getting the remuneration due his rank until an appalled President APJ Abdul Kalam visiting the old Field Marshal in his hospital bed in Coonoor (Nilgiris), ordered it.
  6. Talking of ‘Field Marshal’, does it not make sense for the Theatre Commanders to be 4-star, and to salve the egos of the Services Chiefs, who will be stuck only with administrative roles, having lost their most prized operational control of forces to the Theatre Commanders, to elevate them to the active Field Marshal/Marshal of the Air Force/Admiral of the Fleet rank, making it easier for them to swallow the theaterisation pill? After retirement, these Field Marshals can go on half-pay. The small British Army — a fraction of the size of the massive Indian Army, for instance, has other than the 4 “Royal Field Marshals”, eight FMs on “half pay”.
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