Scorpene subs now good only for junking: Thank you DCNS!

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The Indian Navy’s fleet of the French Scorpene submarine — the first of which, Kalvari, has entered service, is now completely compromized. The most secret data about the performance attributes and technologies incorporated in the Scorpene are now common knowledge, and the details in some 22,000 pages of this project has been “leaked” from the French company DCNS’ facility in France. The gist of these documents is published in the Aussie paper, ‘The Australian’ and is accessible at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/our-french-submarine-builder-in-massive-leak-scandal/news-story/3fe0d25b7733873c44aaa0a4d42db39e.

The restricted data, per the Australian news story, reveals information in the following broad categories the newspaper has, fortunately, not retailed:

• The stealth capabilities of the six new Indian Scorpene submarines

• The frequencies at which the subs gather intelligence

• The levels of noise the subs make at various speeds

• Diving depths, range and endurance

• Magnetic, electromagnetic and infra-red data

• Specifications of the submarine’s torpedo launch system and the combat system

• Speed and conditions needed for using the periscope

• Propeller’s noise specifications

• Radiated noise levels when the submarine surfaces

Assuming the DCNS data was stolen from DCNS computers by cyber thieves or by a staffer with eye on the main chance, with the express purpose of derailing DCNS’ contract with Canberra to build six Sorpenes for the Australian Navy, the Indian Navy is a collateral hit — its prospective sea-denial capability a lot of showpiece rubble, its submarines good for nothing when, not if, the China and Pakistan buy the entire stock of documents as they will. Not sure, at this late date, that DCNS can do anything structurally to change the stealth or cavitation parameters, for instance, and if they can, at whose cost? The disclosures about the diving depths, weapons, and sensor specifications are really damaging. Worse, what can or will the Indian Navy now do? Look at the categories and the comprehensive info about the Scorpene, what option’s left other than to junk the nearly $22 billion worth of French submarines?

France has always been distrusted by the US as being unable to safeguard its military secrets. One reason why Washington was relieved when General de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO in June 1966.

This blog has been full of posts retailing my suspicions on various counts about French military hardware in the context of the impending Rafale acquisition decision, and particularly with regard to DCNS’ bid for the Project 75i submarine. Will the Modi regime now go ahead with the Rafale aircraft buy considering its secrets, assuming there are any, may be spirited away from the Dassault vaults and made public as the Scorpene info was from DCNS? And, more worrying still, will Parrikar in order to please Modi, instead of blackballing DCNS for its lax attitude to secret data, shortlist it for the Project 75i?

Have always argued that the only secrets about military hardware India can be sure of is about weapons systems it has fully made itself — from design to delivery. Reason why Tejas, Arihant, Agni missiles are such force multipliers — but little else in the Indian military inventory is as the rest of the stuff is all procured from foreign countries, who will happily reveal their secrets if it serves their national interest. In this respect, recall that during the 1982 Falklands War, France shared with Britain the operating frequencies of the Exocet anti-ship missile it had sold to Argentina. Only Russia has been above board in this respect.

This DCNS leak is a god-sent opportunity for the Indian govt, MOD, and military services to correct their imported armaments-oriented attitude, and to begin investing fully in only indigenous weaponry. If even after this, the Modi-Parrikar duo persists with its tilt favouring Western foreign suppliers, then what’s there to do except await the inevitable — an India fast declining in status and standing.

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Modi’s LEMOA will make targets of Indian bases

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Indian defence minister Manohar Parrikar is set to visit the US Aug 29-Sept 1. News reports suggest he will travel thither expressly to sign the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), a suitably worded derivative of the standard Logistics Support Agreement the US requires all its Treaty allies to sign. Parrikar was never enthusiastic about these “foundational” accords but is reduced to being the Sancho Panza to Modi’s Don Quixote.

The Americans are seeking enabling provisions in this agreement to specifically permit US naval and air elements to stage out of Indian air and naval bases, to repair and service its fighting assets, and to preposition critical, high-consumption, spares in special depots protected by US military personnel, etc. Such provisions are apparently proving the stumbling blocks.

Washington wants desperately to resolve these issues and is deploying the US Navy Secretary Ray Mobus and the US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James to New Delhi to iron out these wrinkles so there’s a final document for Parrikar and US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to sign end-August. To assist in this process is Ashley Tellis, the only non-head of state foreigner who can have an appointment with Modi whenever Tellis desires it, who is now in Delhi. He is “softening up” MOD officials and preparing the ground for mutually acceptable wording that both parties can live with, and Mobus and James can sign off on. The affable Tellis, the arch fixer, is relied on by the US govt to smoothen things whenever it gets rough in New Delhi. With his deep contacts at the highest levels in PMO and MEA and his reach into the Indian military, he is expected to show the way out. Who is to say he won’t succeed? (Of course. Mobus and James will push the F-16 induction in IAF and production, etc., but these are ultimately sidebars for the media to chew on.)

That the Bharatiya Janata Party regime of Narendra Modi is serious about signing the LEMOA despite its potentially very negative strategic impact, indicates the Indian PM has seemingly gone daft, losing what little strategic sense he may have started out with.

But why is the US so eager? As pointed out in earlier posts, Washington thinks accessing Indian bases and military facilities are crucial to the US sustaining its operational military presence in the Indian Ocean region. It will allow US combat aircraft and warships embarking from Indian bases to be switched east to the South China Sea area or to the Gulf region in the west to provide overlapping coverage in conjunction with the US 5th Fleet assets based in Bahrain and the new and extensive facility the US is constructing at Duqm on the Omani coast, on the one side, and on the other side, with the US military forces based in Singapore and Darwin in northern Australia.

So, what’s the problem with LEMOA? As one understands it, there are sticking points in the draft-agreement originally produced by the US Department of Defense for the Indian MOD to work on. These have to do with writing the enabling provisions in the agreement permitting Indian military facilities to be used for repairing and servicing fighting assets, and storing spares in US military protected encampments. A possible compromise, considering the politically sensitive nature of some of the enabling provisions — such as the one regarding US military personnel protecting these military stores depots and, hence, breaching Indian sovereignty, is for the formal LEMOA to be filled with ambiguous language, but for there to be an accompanying secret document/memorandum detailing the specific terms and conditions that will legally sanction the uses of Indian territory and Indian military bases/facilities/installations/military infrastructure in the prescribed manner. But howsoever much the LEMOA circumscribes the US military presence, it will still mark India as a secondary power and American camp follower.

Other sovereignty-related issues may arise out of the stationing of US troops and military personnel on Indian soil. Whether stationed here or on R&R (rest and recreation), US soldiers, sailors, and airmen — a usually rambunctious lot — in Indian cities will create awkward social, and law and order problems. US may insist that any arrested US personnel will be handled under US law, what then? The social turmoil that could erupt can only be imagined if the long record of US troops proving a handful for the local police and sourcing social disturbance in night clubs and eateries, by “dating” Indian women, etc. Consider the social wreckage left behind by the US military wherever they have been based post-1945. How about Okinawa, where notwithstanding the US military’s presence there for nearly 80 years, the Japanese have been protesting the routine excesses of US troops?

There’s however a far more significant and deadly set of military and national security problems the Modi govt has obviously not given thought to. Consider this scenario, because Iran is very much the US radar: US bombers and strike aircraft, say, fly out of Indian bases to strike Iran. That would torpedo Indo-Iranian relations, of course, but also expose the Indian base(s) in particular, and India in general to retaliatory attacks, entirely legal under international law. But let’s make the scenario more plausible by assuming USAF aerial tankers take off from India to refuel US bombers coming out of Bahrain, on sortie to strike Iranian targets. This doesn’t in any way lessen India’s complicity in the US strike, or weaken Iran’s legal basis for counter-striking India and Indian military targets. This is precisely the sort of situations that could be created by signing LEMOA or any other “foundational” agreement with America.

Conceived above is a scenario involving a lesser power, Iran. But what will happen if India is in any way involved in US actions against China or Russia or their proxies in Asia? It will be a disaster.

If the MEA and PMO haven’t conceived of these dire, but very real possibilities, have the Indian armed services too been so seduced by Tellis’ pleasing demeanor and so deterred by Modi’s manifest desire to please Washington that they have sworn off their duty to alert the govt to the dangers of the course it is following? The pity is the political opposition is in complete disarray and cannot adequately play the Cassandra and sound the tocsin.

The fact is the Modi govt cannot have a LEMOA that will not violate Indian sovereignty. Where’s the urgent need for it, in any case, unless India’s security needs are conflated with those of America’s. As it is, there’s an arrangement that’s been followed since PM Chandrashekhar’s days in the early 1990s when US aircraft could refuel, etc here in India, with permission being given on a case-by-case basis. What are the arguments for upending it, unless the goal, by whatever means, is to make India a formal US dependency.

Unfortunately, my warnings post-1998 N-tests of the strategic perils of getting too close to the US, will come true. Whatever Modi may say, however he may justify the LEMOA, India is set to lose its sovereign decisionmaking status and strategic independence. Ironically, this is the doing of Modi, a man I had very early extolled as the singular nationalist hope to make India a great power. But Narendra Modi, alas, is in a long line of Indian rulers who, lacking strategic vision and the will not to subordinate India to any country in any way for any reason, will bring India down.

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Narrowing the Seas: Security Ramifications of the SCS Verdict

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

There’s an aspect of China’s seeking to acquire dominance in the South China Sea that the verdict on July 11, 2016, by the International Court of Arbitration at the Hague, did nothing to address and, which difficult military problem, curiously, has not so far been identified in international and regional strategic circles, nor have solutions been bruited about.

The problem concerns China’s narrowing this Sea by, quite literally, creating an obstacle course by forcibly annexing territory belonging to weak states, such as Philippines’ Scarborough Shoal in the Spratly Islands chain, and by creating ‘artificial’ islands. These are impediments designed to compel the navies of out-of-area powers and of the in-region disputant states, and, more generally, the $5 trillion worth of annual ship-borne trade transiting this area through select waterways that the Chinese can more effectively police. It will strategically disadvantage adversary navies, allow Beijing to exercise a whip hand over global and Asian trade, and, otherwise obtain a mere closum (closed sea) that countries will be able to access only at Beijing’s sufferance.

This article briefly examines the security ramifications of this development and proposes certain counter-measures that India, in particular, and other like-minded states, such as Japan, need to take. The most potent solution, it will be argued, is to respond by counter-narrowing the same sea for China. India can do this, it will be contended, by arming ASEAN members, starting with Vietnam, with the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, which will tilt the “exchange ratio” hugely against Chinese warships, and to militarily exploit factors, such as the distance of the disputed islands, rocky outcroppings, and the “artificial” islands from the Chinese mainland against China, and skewing the advantage toward defender states.

Context

But to first set the context: The Hague Court not only rejected outright China’s expansive “nine dash line” claims in the South China Sea but declared illegal its occupation of rocky protuberances that at high tide disappear under water. It also declared illegal the artificial “islands” China has created by pouring cement on coral reefs in order to bolster its spurious claims, saying these do not endow Beijing with any exclusive economic zone rights and privileges, and condemned such manifestations of “land reclamation” on seven features just in the Spratly Islands area alone, and chided China for such construction it said were “incompatible with the obligations on a state during dispute resolution proceedings”. Even if Beijing cannot claim the 12 mile exclusion zones around these newly built islands, it will feel free to consolidate its presence and use them for military purposes.

But the Tribunal did cut the ground from underneath Beijing’s historical basis for its claims. Chinese junks plying the disputed waters in the distant past, it ruled, cannot constitute a foundation for China’s extensive claims in the South China Sea, which the Court virtually dismissed as so much nonsense. “There was no legal basis”, it said unambiguously, for China’s “historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’ ”. It is an injunction that will hereafter apply to Chinese claims landward as well, including large parts of Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin in Ladakh.

While the Philippines, which took China to Court, called for “restraint and sobriety” in the wake of the verdict, and was supported by India, Japan, and the United States, who called on all parties to respect it, China, predictably, rejected it. Foreign minister Wang Yi described it as a prescription for “a dose of the wrong medicine, which will not help cure the disease.” He went on to describe the malady as “fever” he accused external forces of “stirring up”. In any case, by imposing an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) and conducting live fire naval drills in the disputed sea conjoined to some severe diplomatic pressure, Beijing succeeded in having the 10-member ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) remove references to the dispute or the Hague verdict in the communiqué issued by the group’s 49th foreign ministers meeting in Laos on July 20. China’s strong arm tactics fit in with its preferred mode of negotiating separately and on bilateral basis with each of the disputant states, something that Beijing believes will render them more amenable. But most legal experts agree that even if the regional states end up dealing singly, one-on-one, with China they will hereon insist on the new legal template established by the Hague Court.

That regional countries are loath to cross China is understandable. They have profited from balancing economic cooperation with China and US’ security assurances. In the weeks prior to the Hague ruling, three US missile destroyers and the nearby USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group, had taken to “stalking” the artificial islands, such as those near the Scarborough Shoal the Chinese had forcefully annexed from the Philippines in 2013. These ships operated in the 14-20 nautical mile range of these islands ostensibly on freedom of navigation patrols (FONPs) permitted by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). The US will continue with such operations in the future to assert its rights. And more frequent FONOPs is also what New Delhi should dispatch to these waters to assert India’s right of free and peaceable passage.

Except the United States has not ratified this Convention, and neither has China, even as the ASEAN have done so, as have India in June 1995 and Japan a year later. Hence, such naval and air actions as the US may undertake against Chinese forces under the 2014 Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with Manila, which revives in a way the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty that became defunct in 1992 with Philippines refusing to extend it could, theoretically, come under a legal cloud, unless the US warships fly the Philippine flag providing Manila and Washington the cover of self-defence, which last will not happen.

Chinese Buildup and US Response

Speed of buildup being of the essence, China, according to satellite intelligence, had by February 2016, erected a high frequency radar on Cuarteron Island able to monitor on real time, 24/7, basis the air and surface traffic in the southern part of the South China Sea, i.e., the northern end of the Malacca Straits. It augmented the radars already on Fiery Cross, Gaven, Hughes and Johnson South Reefs in the Spratlys chain, with helipads, and possible gun and missile emplacements too at some of these posts. Mapping the Chinese land reclamations in the South China Sea indicates a pattern. These are mostly grouped in the spread of the Spratly Islands right smack in the middle of the South China Sea – a quadrant that opens out to the East Sea in the northeast and the Malacca, Lumbok and Sunda Straits to the southwest encompassing most of the main oceanic trade-carrying highways.

To deter US carrier task forces from entering these disputed areas, Beijing has deployed the Dong Feng DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile system along with Hong H-K6 medium bombers (Chinese variant of the Soviet Tu-15) on the islands it has illegally occupied or constructed. The logic obviously is that if the US Navy can be made less confident in these waters, the other countries will offer no resistance at all. These artificial and natural islands bristling with radar/other sensors and weapons systems will constrict the passage ways, and all maritime traffic, including naval movements, through these waters will be subject to Chinese surveillance and effectively pass under Beijing’s control.

While Washington says it will contest what the US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Scott Swift said at an October 2015 conference in Sydney, is an “egregious” tendency of countries, like China, to “view freedom of the seas as up for grabs, as something that can be taken down and redefined by domestic law or by reinterpreting international law” and to impose “superfluous warnings and restrictions on freedom of the seas in their exclusive economic zones and claim territorial water rights that are inconsistent with [UNCLOS]”, the US is unlikely to come to any ASEAN partner’s aid, EDCA or no EDCA, if this interferes or diverts from the larger US aim of reaching a modus vivendi with Beijing. The US Naval Chief, Admiral John Richardson, made this plain. “Cooperation [with China] would be great”, he said at a Center for New American Security conference held in Washington in June 2016, “competition is fine [but] conflict is the thing that we really want to avoid.” He was reflecting the views of US President Barack Obama, who in early 2016 negatived a muscular approach proposed by the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, per a news report, to “counter and reverse China’s strategic gains” in this region.

What India Can and Should Do

Washington’s willingness to compromise with China, and Beijing’s desire to prevent militarily riling America means these two countries will eventually work out a mutually acceptable solution that may not constitute rules-of-the-road for anybody else, or help the ASEAN disputants bolster their individual claims with respect to China. This is the main reason why it is in New Delhi’s interest to be proactive and to coordinate its policies to beef up the dissuasive military capabilities of the ASEAN states with those of, say, Japan. India and Japan cannot anymore afford to fallback on their default position of free riding on America’s security coattails in the hope their interests will be served, or to identify with the US military activity in the South China Sea not aimed at constraining China’s freedom of action.

Which are the littoral and offshore states that have shown the most grit in opposing Beijing? These are Vietnam and Taiwan, followed by Indonesia and Malaysia. Except, Taiwan for political reasons claims exactly the same nine dash-line space as China, and will not array itself against Beijing in this dispute. Empowering Vietnam is the best bet and could have a telling demonstration effect. India has a burgeoning economic stake in the Vietnamese sea territory with the Indian energy major, ONGC Videsh, in 2014 formally joining PetroVietnam to exploit the energy resources in Blocks 102/10 and 106/10 in the Paracel Islands area claimed by China, where it has 40 per cent and 50 per cent share respectively. Assets, such as giant rigs and the underway oil/gas exploration and drilling activity will have to be protected against adversarial actions in what Beijing calls “China administered waters”.

The strategic gains from arming Vietnam with specially devastating armaments having finally dawned on the Indian government, New Delhi agreed to sell/transfer to Hanoi the indefensible Brahmos supersonic cruise missile. Operationally deployed in coastal batteries and on Vietnamese warships and submarines, the Brahmos will have a chilling effect on the Chinese Navy’s secret “Fourth Fleet” tasked for the Indian Ocean and co-located with the South Sea Fleet on the Sanya naval base on Hainan Island. It could lead to Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia seeking similar armaments. With all these countries so armed, the same sea will be effectively narrowed and rendered equally dangerous for Chinese merchantmen and naval ships acting belligerently. When a cruise missile costing Rs. 10 crore can take out a destroyer costing Rs. 7,000 crore, Chinese commanders will soon face a huge operational dilemma. It will immediately inhibit Chinese commanders from casually ordering their vessels on provocative missions and combatant ship captains from courting risk. In this respect, China will also discover that the relatively long distance from the mainland to the disputed area can become a liability in terms of sustaining offensive naval or other military action. Scarborough Shoal, only 145 miles west eastern most island of the Philippines, is some 620 miles from the Chinese coast.

Thus, BrahMos versus Chinese warships, militarily exploiting the distance-differential from home areas, etc. are the sorts of asymmetries that countries within and without the South China Sea region need urgently to exacerbate. It is the only way to prevent China dominating the South China Sea.

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Published in ‘SP’s MAI’ (Fortnightly), Issue No. 16, 2016, at http://www.spsmai.com/experts-speak/?id=247&q=Narrowing-the-Seas-Security-Ramifications-of-the-SCS-Verdict

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Boeing C-17s, Shashikant Sharma, & accountability

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

It is curious that the mainstream Indian press and media that raise hell when it comes to anything going wrong with ex-Russian military hardware are strangely silent and fail even to report the findings of the Comptroller and Accountant General regarding problems with Western and US-sourced equipment and platforms. The bulk of the $13+ billion defence purchases from the US over the past decade and more, have been made of high value transport aircraft — the C-17 Globemaster III long haul, heavy duty, planes, and the more versatile C-130J Hercules airlifters that can also double up for expeditionary missions. A govt-to-govt deal was signed in June 2011 for an initial order of 10 C-17s valued in excess of US$ 4.12 billion (Rs 18,645.85 crore).

It is a very good thing IAF finally prioritized distant logistics capability and acquired the C-17s able, in theory, to deliver 70 tonnes payload over 4,200 kms, or some 40 tonnne load to 9,000 kms. So far so good. Now here’s where the glitches begin. A number of precursor conditions needed to obtain for these aircraft to perform optimally in IAF service. A C-17 training simulator had to be set up in and activated PRIOR to the delivery of the planes, so that pilots of the IAF’s 81 Squadron based at Hindan AFB, would have acquired familiarity with on-board systems and operating procedures and protocols, and achieved a certain level of handling knowledge and proficiency before they took to the air. Indeed, it is mandatory that each air crew pull on the simulator 1,700 hours per year for initial qualification, quarterly certification, and “instructional and role clearance and special operations”.

The IAF, as the CAG report notes, wanted one simulator installed and functioning a minimum of THREE MONTHS months “before the delivery” of the first C-17. As per the offset contract (of June 2011), simulator services in India were to be made available by July 2013 for the planes inducted in the period June 2013-December 2014. Audit observed that Boeing “was yet to setup” the simulator through its Indian Offset partners — Mahindra Defence Systems and Tata Consultancy Services, with total value of offsets pertaining to equipment worth US$ 135.08 million (Rs 611.92 crores) for maintenance training simulator and flying training simulator. The lack of these facilities were being made up by 81 Squadron “routing pilots for simulator training” with US Air Force “as per slots given by the US Government”.

Nice. So, there’s actually an incentive for IAF not to make a fuss or the CO, 81 Sqdn, not to agitate for establishing simulators in-country, because air crews and maintenance personnel now get to do their training in America, if this could be for the lifetime of the aircraft, what better? Who can object to such a pleasing arrangement?? Certainly nobody in the IAF!!!

Likewise, the “specialist” ground infrastructure costing US$152.75 million (Rs 723.27 crore), had to be created by Boeing with the programme executed, for quality control purposes, by the US Army Corps of Engineers nominated by Washington (presumably, along with the Indian offset partner, L&T), BEFORE the arrival of the aircraft in June 2013. While as of September 2015, only 54% of the work had been completed, “the completion of the infrastructure” was, CAG says, expected by Dec 2015. Whether this work is finished, CAG Report doesn’t say. Perhaps, as part of the infrastructure, high quality runways with specified pavement classification number (PCN) of 75 are required for C-17s to fly their full load of 70 tonnes. Again, this needed to be in place PRIOR to the induction in IAF of this plane at all the bases planning to host this aircraft — besides Hindan, at Sirsa, Sarsawa, Jammu, Pathankot, Udhampur, with another four airfields Western Air Cmd decided in Dec 2013 would undergo evaluation for PCN upgrade — Awantipur, Chandigarh, and Thoise.

CAG faults IAF for not assessing “suitability of its runways before induction”. The result is sheer “underutilization of pay load capacity”, according to CAG, with C-17s carrying as little as 17 tonnes on sorties and averaging around 26-35 tonnes. “Thus, a costly national asset, procured for carrying heavy loads was not being used as per its capacity.” Vayu Bhavan’s criminally wasteful, kaam chalauu, attitude is reflected in its explanation in April 2016 to CAG: that the C-17 “is capable of operating from runways with lesser PCN value in case situation demands such operation.” And that this assessment “holds good partially in respect of 14 airfields” found “unsuitable for operation” because of “low PCN values and ground maneuvering requirements.” In other words, IAF was prepared, underutilized carrying capacity apart, for faster degrade of the C-17s themselves operating from sub-par runways.

Deficient infrastructure included, of course, absence of ground equipment such as ground handling equipment (forklifts) and for “palletization” and specially trained handlers for them that would have enabled “reduce(d) ground time of a strategic asset whose main aim was rapid deployment”. All there was to expedite loading/unloading is a 13-tonne forklifter occupying 35% of the available cargo space being carried onboard by all C-17s. This requires a couple of sorties to the same destination where just one would have sufficed. The cost penalties are huge considering the cost per flying hour is Rs 43. 19 lakh, which CAG deems “imprudent”.

So, how come IAF and its C-17s are in this mess? The CAG Report plainly blames the fact that “although schedule of quarterly payment to the US Government was defined in the LOA (Letter of Offer & Acceptance) but there was no condition stipulated for imposition of penalty for delay in supplies/delivery of infrastructure services.” In other words, there is an obligation for Boeing to be paid on time and the US Government to deliver, but no obligation for Boeing to deliver, other than the aircraft itself, on the contracted services and infrastructure related to efficient operations of this aircraft. Legally then, Boeing and USG need not deliver the infrastructure until near the end of the lifetime of the aircraft! Not that the IAF cares!

But here’s the nub of the whole issue. How did this substantively flawed and faulty contract pass muster with the Ministry of Defence, and who is responsible for it? Well, the Director-General, Acquisitions, in MOD in June 2013, when the LOA was signed was one Shashikant Sharma, IAS, and hence directly responsible for accepting this contract. Sharma demitted the office of DG, Acquisitions, the next month (in July 2013) but not before concluding the Augusta-Westland VVIP helicopter deal — remember that scam? — for which he was rewarded with posting as Defence Secretary, retiring from which capacity he was appointed CAG by the Manmohan Singh’s Congress party government. And it is as CAG that he now has the chutzpah to pronounce on the shortfalls of the C-17 contract, which he was originally responsible for in the first place. Very rich.

As stated in earlier blogs, Shashikant Sharma on his retirement as CAG in 2017, needs to be investigated for his hand in the Agusta scam, but also for the C-17 fiasco. A start has been made by the CBI fingering HC Gupta (Retd, IAS) former Coal Secretary for the scam in that Ministry during the Manmohan years. There are more important, national security, reasons for investigating Shashikant Sharma and jailing him with a stiff sentence. It will have a huge effect on bureaucrats. Unless accountability becomes the norm, the present phenomenally lax system, ultimately of financial resources mismanagement, will persist, and India willfully reduced, by its minders, to a pauper.

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Sinking feeling — Modi’s I-Day speech

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

India is going to advance despite its government, not because of it. It is BJP today, some Congress coalition tomorrow, or a third front regime the next day, the dispensation in New Delhi of the moment will talk big, flaff on a bit, but accomplish little where it counts — on the ground.

This was Narendra Modi’s third address from the Red Fort. The first was uplifting, broke new ground, a PM who spoke feelingly about poverty, which he experienced at first hand which almost no predecessor in his office ever did, and surprised one and all with his earthy and candid raising of the issue of open defecation. Such a leader, it was hoped, would be relied upon to begin alleviating poverty, and ending rural and even urban India’s defecatory habits, using practical means. Modi is using his PM-ship as a bully pulpit alright but, two years later, no visible progress on these fronts is seen. Modi acknowledged as much, saying that the problem of delivery of public services, subsidies, and cash handouts to the deserving poor through the Nandan Nilekani-helmed Aadhar programme, the “last man” delivery problem, remains.

The Second Lal Qila speech was in the “holding” course . Today’s address however reeked of that old Soviet malady that Indian “socialist” leaders perfected (which Modi hinted at) — achievement measured in terms of enumeration of government statistics relating to how much of this and how much of that, and announcement of new government programmes. How much of what Modi claimed as delivered actually exists on the ground? Take the project taken up to build lakhs of latrines in villages. Assuming these are not all only on paper but can be found in brick and mortar form, how to ensure that villagers in fact use it for the purpose they are intended when news reports suggest that the country folk insist on enjoying squatting in the fields so they can commune with nature while the gentle morning breeze fans their bottoms? Or, the matter of cleaning the Ganga River — where there’s almost no improvement except a sweeping of the Varanasi ghats for the TV cameras every time the PM is in his constituency. And, while Modi spoke of the buying of train tickets and securing of passports by the common man being hassle-free, is that really the situation? In lieu of substantive results, he has, it seems, taken refuge behind information forwarded him by the various secretaries to the government and the army of babus who are past masters at obfuscation, siphoning off funds into their pockets, and otherwise potemkinising a ramshackle reality. In the face of negligible change in the attitude and functioning of even the centrally controlled administrative apparatus, the (yet another) new slogan he coined — “Reform, Perform, Transform” to describe extant mode of governance, at best, occasions jest.

Finally, a PM has woken up to treating J&K issue as a whole and speaking about the so-called “Northern Areas” in the Pakistan Army parlance — Gilgit and Baltistan, besides Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. I have been pleading for 30 years now that GOI make of Gilgit and Baltistan a ram to batter Pakistan’s Kashmir advocacy with. Hereon, hopefully, MEA and its far-flung stations will highlight Gilgit and Baltistan whenever Kashmir comes up. Except, as some former MEA-types have noted, the raising of the Baluchistan issue by the PM has the obvious downside of now providing Islamabad with evidence of the Indian hand in the ongoing strife and turmoil in Baluchistan. However, the television snippets of Brahmdagh Bugti, a grandson of the Baloch Tribal Sardar, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, attacked and killed by the Pakistan Army’s Special Services Group (Special Operations) on General Parvez Musharraf’s orders in March 2005, thanking India and Indians for supporting the cause of Baloch freedom, was perfectly fine as a psyop to unsettle Islamabad and GHQ, Rawalpindi. That’s the way to keep up the pressure.

But the section of his speech on foreign affairs was nevertheless a curious thing. He talked of interdependence just when the great powers and the international system is turning inward, stressing sovereign imperatives, as I predicted and have analyzed in all my books. If this is meant as a policy template to justify the BJP government’s decision to bull ahead imprudently and court some serious strategic dangers for the country (as explicated in my latest book and in many previous posts), and finally sign, what American officials call, the “foundational” accords, then Modi may be best remembered for irreversibly shrinking India’s stature and standing in the world and hurting the national interest. The first such accord is the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, the draft of the standard Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) the Pentagon passed on to the MEA to amend only at the margins, is what defmin Manohar Parrikar is expected to sign when he visits Washington soon.

And, more predictably, while he waxed eloquent about Pakistan’s support for terrorism, he failed to mention even by indirection, China. If Modi continues to make so fundamental a mistake as misperceiving the primary military threat to the nation, and commits to the extraordinary misstep of allying formally with the US — no amount of parsing the truth will get around the fact that only formal US allies have LSAs/LEMOAs with America, and the lesser one of publicly disclosing Baluchis thanking him, what hope is there that Modi will do anything else right in the national security and external realms (that are directly managed by Modi and his PMO bypassing, in the process, the defence ministry and MEA)?

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, corruption, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Western militaries | 20 Comments

Ambiguous news on the Wang front

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in India ostensibly to inspect the arrangements for the BRICS summit in Goa later this year. His more immediate task is to explore just how determined the Modi govt is to stick to the line it has taken on the South China Sea dispute, where India has joined with the US and Japan in urging Beijing to respect the Hague verdict rejecting China’s expansive nine dash line claims in the Sea. It is solidifying of the regional opinion around these Big Three that Beijing wishes to thwart.

He met today with the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, whose brief was to see if Beijing would cede ground on its veto to India’s entry into the Nuclear suppliers Group. Considering, the PMO runs the MEA, Swaraj was on short reins, but implicit in her task was freedom accorded her to hint to Wang that some kind of deal was possible — Beijing’s support for India’s NSG membership in return for New Delhi being less strident on the South China Sea (SCS) issue, because surely it cannot entirely disown the principle of freedom of navigation and the UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) that the International Court of Arbitration upheld.

Wang is here to do just the reverse, extract a promise of support on the SCS while yielding less than nothing on the NSG veto but to talk nevertheless, albeit very vaguely, of a “compromise” in the hope that PM Modi — keen on Chinese investment in Indian infrastructure projects in particular and eager for a BRICS summit success, can be suckered into making concessions.

It is this possibility that ought to worry the Indian people the most. Modi sees the BRICS Goa Meet as a means of balancing his overt tilt to America. But this works to China’s advantage because Beijing will ask for India, at a minimum, remaining “neutral” in the SCS dispute while retaining its veto on NSG, because President Xi Jinping will reasonably surmise that Modi is more in need of Chinese have, than he is in need of India’s on SCS — after all Beijing is dealing directly with Washington to muzzle its backing, for a start, to the Philippines.

Time and again, Modi has sprung a surprise, departed from the agreed upon policy line or game plan, even as Foreign Secretary Jaishankar and his colleagues in MEA in attendance have been nonplussed by the prime minister’s usually wrong moves for the wrong reasons. Sushma may not have committed to anything in the way Wang would have liked her to, but what is crucial are the impressions about the “give” in China’s NSG position that she conveys to Modi. If she mistakes Wang’s ambiguous words — and the Chinese interlocuters since Zhouenlai have been masters of ambiguity, as indicating some movement forward, then Modi may jump to conclusion — and whatever happens in the formal talks — will exercise his uniquely personalized diplomacy in Goa in October to offer what Xi wants in the expectation the Chinese President will reciprocate, when actually he will do nothing of the kind.

Playing the Game on Chinese terms is to be at the losing end. It is best, GOI points out that there is really no connection between the two issues — SCS is a global commons matter of universal concern and affecting global trade, NSG membership is only an Indian concern, and the twain don’t meet. Modi could, however, emphasize how there are many states in the SCS region fearful of China which have approached New Delhi for help and assistance and that with a few of them, such as Vietnam, Indian has direct and substantive energy and other economic interests that need to be protected. It is the scale of naval and military effort India may deploy in SCS that can be calibrated to minimize offence to China while requiring Beijing accommodate India on NSG by abstaining from the vote. This is the only deal that won’t imperil India’s strategic options and interests. Should this be made clear to Wang, and China is found agreeable, Modi will have the plank to grandstand in Goa.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, disarmament, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Japan, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, UN, United States, US., Vietnam | 4 Comments

Weekend musings — the inevitable Hockey debacle

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Did anyone watch the India-Canada hockey match telecast yesterday evening from the Olympics at Rio? This was supposed to be a walkover game that would have secured India the 3rd spot in the group after Germany and Netherlands. Predictably, we botched it. We couldn’t even overcome a lowly Canada. What chances of our doing better against a more efficient Belgium next? Those who witnessed the game against Germany — the best showing yet by a talent-challenged Indian team, followed a day later by the match with the Dutch, must have noticed the nerviness of our players in the last quarter and the feeling of inevitability, especially with Germans swarming to attack in the dying moments of the game, that the Indians on the field would falter, and lose. It has been downhill thereafter. Now our team can be expected to let the Belgians run all over them, and then Australia. Given the certainty of loss, the question is defeat by how many goals?

The trouble is India’s performance on the hockey field is a near analog of the Indian government’s confused conduct of the country’s strategic foreign and military policy fields. We don’t seem to know what the game is about, do not prepare well, and show no will to fight and, as surely as night follows day, end up with egg on our face. In fact, the Australian coach of the Indian hockey team at the last (London) Olympic Games, Michael Nobbs summed it up beautifully: “The players need to to make a decision whether they are satisfied just to be in the Olympics…or, are they willing to be tough and make the commitment for the nation’s cause.” The Indian hockey players, four years later, as in the past, seem to believe that merely qualifying for the Olympics is enough, not winning any medals.

This may be pertinent but I used Nobbs’ bemused statement post-London Games to say [in ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’, p. 525]: “New Delhi seems so thrilled with just being acknowledged as a country with some standing, so overwhelmed with inclusion in exclusive conclaves (G-3, G-8, G-20, etc.), and so satisfied with itself and the way things have gone so far in the new millennium, it doesn’t see the need to raise its sights, put in the effort, and do the things that will in fact make India a genuine great power. Then again it may be a cultural trait.” And, of course, whether in a national security crisis or on the sporting field, Indians can’t hold their nerve, becoming nervous wrecks ere the crisis peaks.

I schooled at the King George’s Military School, Belgaum (since then renamed the Belgaum Military School), previously known as the King George’s Royal Indian Military College — one of the five such institutions post-1947 (besides Belgaum, at Ajmere, Bangalore, Nowgong, and Chail), the forerunner of the numerous Sainik Schools run by MOD to provide the feedstock for the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla. [Was put in this school by my father who considered me a brat in need of discipline and also because my hometown, Dharwar, was just 48 miles away, in case the cry-baby ever wanted to run home! Graduated from KGSB aeons ago, in December 1963, in fact.]

Curiously what fills me with nostalgia about school days is not anything else but the wonderful hockey we, school boys, saw played on our hockey field. Belgaum hosts the centre of one of the great regiments of the Indian Army — the Maratha Light Infantry. At the time, MLI all by itself constituted the bulk force in Indian hockey — Shankar Laxman in goal, Right Back ML Jadhav, Bandu Patil Inside Right, and featured the fastest winger in the country (and the world?) never to don India colours (because while he outran any ball, he couldn’t adequately control it!), Outside Right Subedar Akalkot. The 1960 Rome-bound Olympics team, led by Leslie Claudius, played practice games against MLI on our field. And at least in two games that I vaguely remember, the MLI team, with its champion players in the team facing it, gave Claudius and his men fright. India won the Silver; Pakistan beating us for the first time for the Gold. The star turn was always Sub Major Bandu Patil, a wizard with the stick, so deft and quick silver, it was dazzling and exciting to watch. The usual melee in the middle out of which would routinely emerge Patil with the ball, speeding towards the adversary’s goal post while the opposing team members were still collecting their wits, running around trying to find the ball!

Now, and this is the point to make about not keeping up with the changing game — India kept emphasizing the dribbling skills of individual players even as by the 1970s the game was transitioning into a game of fast man-to-man lateral and deep passes, and striking the ball goalwards — first time, every time — when in the D, rather than dribbling ourselves into oblivion as Indian hockey stars still seem to want to do. Dhyan Chand was the genuine article, but not everybody can be one. But to this day, there’s no want of trying by every aspiring Indian hockey player to be Dhyan Chand, except such individual magic has long ago been superceded by the long pass-hard strike game stressing teamwork. The Indian hockey team members, despite their Dutch coach Oltmans’ no doubt fervent pleadings for change in attitude, seem not even to be aware that the way they play is obsolete!

Re: teamwork and stamina. Dribbling is anathema to teamwork. Players hogging the ball, showing off their ball-hawking competence usually lose the ball to hard-running opponents. Stamina is something Indian players seem invariably to be out of by the time the game clock shows 10 minutes to end-time. Indeed, one can see the energy levels exhausted by the third quarter. Stamina can ultimately be reduced to a matter of diet and physiology. Eating dal-bhaat is fine, but it does not provide the protein for the muscle mass that beef and red meat eating bigger, taller, heftier Europeans (and even Pakistanis, whose affliction is the same — in a word, the penchant to dribble, not to hit!) muster. In hard-dashing sports, at-most chicken (white meat)-eating Indians simply run out of gas, something one can palpably feel when watching the strained faces of Indian players in televised hockey games summoning the last ounce of energy to just stay upright at the final hooter.

Ultimately, the issue is to understand what the game is about now. The second order worry is the complacency that sets in with just the first glimmer of slight success (thus, after a hard-won victory in the first game at Rio over Ireland — IRELAND, for God’s sake), there were commentaries about how India was ready to take to the podium (!!!) and, finally, the express inability to prime oneself up for the job at hand. Whatever it is.

Posted in Culture, Europe, Indian Army, Pakistan, society, South Asia | 29 Comments

Ditching the Excalibur and every other indigenous armament project

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The army brass in 2012 decided they wanted a multi-purpose infantry weapon with interchangeable barrels — 5.56x39mm for conventional warfare and the 7.62x51mm for distant kills. Foreign weapons — CM 901 from Colt (US), VZ 58 from Ceska (Czech Republic), possibly SIG 716 or SIG 543 from Sig Sauer (Switzerland), the Israeli possibly Tavor X-95, and the Baretta ARX 160 from Italy — all came up short.

The Excalibur, indigenously designed & developed by the Armaments Research & Development Establishment, Pune and manufactured by the Ordnance Factories Board (OFB), was the Indian entry in this competition. Sure, ‘Excalibur’ is an odd name for an Indian 7.62mm infantry weapon. May be the Ordnance Factory Board hoped that its client, the Indian army leaders, besotted by foreign goods, wouldn’t notice it was not ex-British and would be entranced by the moniker. (Excalibur is the name of the sword stuck in a rock by Merlin, the wizard, that as the legend goes, attracted the young Arthur to pull it out and be crowned King of England — a feat that others failed at, whence Camelot, etc.) And, in any case, it was hoped by OFB that this name would magically win over the army brass who, alas, have proved they are immune to Excalibur’s allurements and appeal. At their annual conference in April 2016, the army commanders decided, in their wisdom or lack thereof that, no matter what, they were done with the Excalibur option and, in the face of the failure of the interchangeable barrels-based concept, that the service would go in for a foreign 7.62mm product as standard infantry weapon.

This despite the proven performance of the Excalibur in field tests in competition with the above-mentioned foreign weapons. A much improved derivative of the INSAS 5.56mm infantry weapon, the Excalibur can be fired in full automatic mode. It failed only twice in repeated and ceaseless firing of some 24,000-odd rounds, a miniscule failure rate level no foreign weapon was able to achieve. Excalibur also fared better in firing after being submerged for long periods of time in muddy water, etc., in other words it did better than any foreign gun in all-weather battlefield conditions the Indian army jawans are most likely to encounter.

But the army commanders, like other military leadership, apparently has a soft corner for “Western maal”. How else to explain their case in support of foreign weapons of 7.76×51 mm calibre that are able to kill an enemy soldier at 500 metres distance, which requirement controverts the modern-era basic logic of infantry weapon?

The whole point about an effective infantry weapon that seems to be lost on the Indian Army’s top leadership echelon is that it should incapacitate an enemy soldier for life, so that he thereafter becomes a social and economic burden for the enemy state to bear. If an enemy soldier is killed outright, there’s only the relatively minimal expense of disposing off the body and pensioning off the spouse. Then there’s the matter of the demoralizing factor — an enemy soldier with a grievous wound being carried away on a stretcher can psychologically unhinge other enemy troops in the vicinity. And there’s the factor of troopers being pulled from the frontlines to carry their injured comrades, thinning out the forward advancing line. This is the logic of the 5.56 mm item as close-in weapon capable of raking fire and gravely incapacitating an enemy at 100 meters, but not of killing fire.

For sure kills at a distance and for sniper missions, the Indian army has always used the Russian Dragunov SVD — derived from indisputably the finest infantry weapon in existence, the Kalashnikov. Had the US Army in the early 1960s the strategic wit to go for the light weight revolutionary plastic-bodied Armalite AR-15 assault rifle (designed by the legendary Eugene Stoner) in Vietnam, who knows, America might have won that war, and the AR-15 would have run the Kalashnikov close for the soldier’s affection worldwide. The US Army chose the heavier M-16 instead, which made a name for itself chiefly for being discarded at the first instance by American troops in the field, who’d pick up the Kalashnikovs from the Viet Cong guerrillas they killed.

So, tell me again, why are our army commanders keen on an imported 7.62??? Surely, not because they are unaware of the 5.56 logic.

But the army commanders’ collective desire has run smack into the defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s dogged insistence on the Indian military going seriously indigenous. So Excalibur is back in the picture, except the senior flagrank types in the army are trying their damndest to somehow kill off this option. Any indigenous armament has to run an obstacle course in MOD and against the armed services. Indeed, Excalibur’s troubles in many ways mirror the problems the Indian designed Arjun MBT is facing with the armoured combat arm. It has beaten every foreign tank, including the Russian T-90S in every field trial and test, and yet it’s being sidelined, and tanks are being imported from Russia. Parrikar is in the right to oppose the French Rafale and to fully support the Tejas Mk-I and Mk-II options. But where the M-777 light mountain gun is concerned, he has erred by preferring it to an equally capable artillery system available in-country.

Parrikar and the Modi government have to decide for once and for all whether they are serious about propelling forward an Indian armament design and development capability, or whether this is just rhetoric the PM can now again wax eloquent with. If the BJP regime is serious then they should institutionally shut down the import route in all its manifestations, and dismantle the military procurement system that, notwithstanding the DPP-2016 still favours the import option under cover of the “MAKE in India” policy. Make in India should be replaced with “MADE in India” and appropriate reforms rung in. But, who wants that?

Of course, getting rid of armament imports will leave a whole bunch of Generals, Air Marshals, Admirals, and officers downstream in the acquisitions loop crying in their cups — because they will be suddenly denied foreign trips, padded accounts, and scholarships for progeny, rich post-retirement jobs offered by Indian companies fronting for foreign suppliers, etc., which benefits political leaders and senior bureaucrats have availed of from the early days of the republic. But the military is catching up fast on this corruption front! (The eye-popping extent and scale of corruption in the Indian armed forces to match the extant corruption in the civilian quarters of the Indian government, is revealed in Josy Joseph’s book — A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India.)

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Israel, Military Acquisitions, Russia, SAARC, society, South Asia, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons, Western militaries | 22 Comments

Time to revive a “Kuka” Parrey-type Group in Kashmir

Posted on August 7, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

One of the reasons, other than fatigue of the people absorbing the costs of insurgency, that the intifada-style uprising in the Srinagar Valley that had gained momentum following the 1989 state elections in Jammu & Kashmir, which New Delhi tried to manipulate and ended up botching completely, petered out, was the effectiveness of the counter-insurgency group headed by the former MLA, Mohammad Yusuf (“Kuka”) Parrey. The Parrey group — Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen, was anti-Islamist and sought a more seamless integration of the state with the secular Union of India. Parrey was killed in a militant ambush in Bandipore in 2003 by when his group, after its huge successes in the war to keep militancy and militants out of Kashmir, had been all but disbanded.

True, the Kuka Parrey fighters operated on a grid mapped out by the Indian army, which also provided on an ongoing basis logistics support, accurate and realtime intelligence, communications wherewithal, and such other assistance in operations as these doughty Kashmiri fighters required. As part of the fish active in Kashmiri waters, they notched up signal successes in turning the fight around, not least because of the spirit of Indian nationalism instilled in its cadres, which due to a process of social osmosis affected the social milieu and influenced the rest of the social milieu as well. Whence the eroding of the militancy and growing participation in electoral politics evidenced in the last two state and general elections.

Whatever caused the insurgency to come back into the picture in Kashmir, it may be time to revive and incentivize a cadre of Kashmiri youth to take up the gun against the militants relying umbilically on material support, safe havens, and training on Pakistan’s deep state. If one cares to examine how Parrey originally gathered his group of motivated youngsters around him, this shouldn’t be too difficult. Among Parrey’s fighters there were many who joined him for purely mercenary reasons, which is perfectly fine. There are huge numbers of the educated unemployables available to choose from to inspire, and to train to fight the militants, and otherwise gradually to strangle their support base in the Kashmiri society.

Time is nigh to pursue this option also because the Pakistan-merger seeking Hurriyat headed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani has declared open war on the state law & order apparatus by threatening to name Kashmiris serving in the state police and paramilitary organizations involved in anti-militant actions. By doing this, Hurriyat intends to virtually paint a bull’s eye on the backs of each native policeman and paramilitaryman, identifying the targets for the militants to eliminate. In all his 83 years, Geelani never before made this sort of mistake, and it is a grievous one that New Delhi should capitalize on. Geelani has handed the perfect incentive to Kashmiris responsible for maintaining law and order and desirous of protecting themselves and their extended families and circle of friends and acquaintances, to fight the militants. It is a strong motivation for them to make the fight with the Hizbul Mujahideen of Sayeed Salahuddin and the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba of Hafiz Saeed, and their ISI handlers in the shadows, a personal one. Perfect opportunity and time, in other words, to again form and field a nationalist, anti-Islamist, counter-militancy force skilled in guerrilla warfare and hit-and-run tactics.

In this respect, I recall what KPS Gill, ex-DG, Punjab Police, long ago told me, that the best recruiting poster for anti-militancy fighters are two things — fear (of losing their own lives and putting the lives of family and friends in danger) and revenge. In the Khalistani insurgency of the 1980s Gill exploited what he called the “Jat Sikh mentality” of avenging the wrong done a person and his family. Gill remembered going to villages in the Doab and elsewhere, rounding up young Sikh boys who had seen their parents or siblings killed and raped by the Khalistanis, and telling them that he would give them the license to go after these killers, hunt them down like vermin, and let them have the satisfaction of personally executing the wrong doers and, if they were unreachable (because they had found refuge in some bolt hole in Pakistan, California, Canada, or the UK), their immediate relatives. It was a horrific saga but Gill bloodily killed off that insurgency.

In Kashmir, it is the fear for one’s life and threat to family and friends that will gain for the nationalist cause adherents both within the Kashmiri police and paramils and their extended social circles, and whose guerrilla actions can then be sustained without too great an expenditure of resources by the Indian state. The Indian army, instead of being on the front lines, can then be engaged in cordoning off suspected areas (as happened in Punjab and during Kuka Parrey’s time in Kashmir) while leaving the more onerous task of dealing with the young men heeding the call of the late Burhan Wani, to the locally-raised vigilantes.

Time for NSA, Ajit Doval, to wake up and muster this option soonest, as part of the larger scheme of things that includes coming down hard on the sympathizers and (potential) recruits of the Islamic State and such others as are dreaming of another khilafat, and helping sections of the Pakistani and the Afghan Taliban to achieve their aims.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia | 25 Comments

UN SG race — India has no stake

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

It is that time in the international calender again when a new person has to be elected to the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization.

Shashi Tharoor, the Congress Party MP from Kerala, may ruefully recall, no doubt with some heartburn, this underway process, considering how wrong it went for him the last time this happened in the summer of 2006. How his attempt to secure a promotion from UN Under-Secretary General for Communications to SG, bombed. Tharoor’s candidacy was undermined by four factors: His relatively thin credentials (in contrast to most candidates who are usually ministers, if not foreign ministers or even prime ministers), Tharoor was only a UN apparatchik — the former SG Kofi Annan’s public relations manager, first in Geneva at the UN High Commission for Refugees headed by Annan, and later in New York when his UNHCR boss made it, almost at the 11th hour, as Africa’s candidate in 1997); his ambition outpacing his support among the (s)electors — the members of the Security Council; the feeble, almost nonexistent, canvassing on his behalf by the Indian Permanent Mission, New York (in this respect, he mistook Sonia Gandhi’s approval that fetched him Manmohan Singh’s formal support for MEA/Indian diplomats in the field going all out to campaign for him); and, the balance of influence that tilted on the side of the self-effacing South Korean minister for foreign trade and civil servant, Ban Ki-moon. A curious aside, along with Tharoor, Abdul Ghani, the President of Afghanistan, was candidate.

There’s the curious mechanism of successive “straw polls” (among the member states of the Security Council) that winnow the field until only one person is left, when he/she is installed by consensus to head the UN. Of the top five finishers in the first straw poll held July 21, in which the male candidates beat out the female candidates and the former Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Guterres topped it, four were Eastern European: Slovenian president and U.N. official Danilo Türk, UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova of Bulgaria (came in 3rd); former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, and former Macedonian Foreign Minister Srgjan Kerim. Of the others in the running, Argentinian foreign minister Susana Malcorra and Ban Ki-moon’s ex-UN deputy came in 8th, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres, and Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusić, didn’t fare well. In fact, Pusic, who came in last, has quit the race.

This is around the time in the game when the old Great Power politics kicks in. Everybody is agreed that it is time for a woman to take charge, a secondary concern is also that the candidate be from East Europe. Russia has covered both these bets with its preferred candidate, Bokova, a Russia-educated Bulgarian who formerly served as a deputy minister in Sofia. The US however thinks Malcorra is the better choice, to coordinate whose campaign, Secretary of State John Kerry betook himself to Buenos Aires for consultations.

Moscow can reasonably expect China to back Bokova, and among states doing two-year stints as non-permanent members, Ukraine, Angola, Senegal, and the Leftist regime-run Venezuela, to do so as well. The US will have UK and France on the side of Malcorra besides, possibly Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, and Uruguay.

India has no say in this selection, but will likely be approached by both Russia and the US to do what it can to push their respective candidate by building up a bit of head steam in the UN, and it can get dirty as Moscow and Washington up their stakes. It is best New Delhi keeps out of this tangle altogether as India has nothing whatsoever riding on the outcome.

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Asian geopolitics, China, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Japan, Latin America, Northeast Asia, Russia, South Asia, UN, United States, US. | 2 Comments