Clever Chinese will sidestep the Hague verdict

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

All indications are the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the International Court at the Hague will tomorrow rule for the Philippines with respect to its sea territory encompassed by the Scarborough Shoal forcibly occupied by China. The court is expected to reaffirm the UNCLOS standards and hence the Philippine claims (and logically, also Vietnamese, Malayasian, Brunei-ian claims in that expanse of water) rather than supporting China’s case based on vague historically infirm assertions sourced to the tumultuous civil war period in China. The Arbitration Court will parri passu also rule on the legality of the artificial islands China created literally overnight to buttress its expansive claims and now already put to military use with the installation of radars and other sensor posts.

It is equally certain Beijing will disdainfully dismiss the Court ruling as irrelevant and violative of the understanding it says it has with Manila requiring the resolution of maritime territorial disputes on a strictly bilateral basis. (Shades of the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir here!) What will be significant to see is what the US will do to back the Hague verdict beyond what it is already doing in the South China Sea and, more importantly, how Beijing will react to the US acting as a self-appointed sheriff.

Leading up to the Hague verdict, Washington had sometime back rejected imposition of an ADZ (Air Identification Zone) by China and had warned it’d routinely ignore it. This was followed up by the mounting of freedom of navigation patrols. These were challenges China did not contest. The US Navy then followed up by the US Pacific Command sending three missile destroyers (Sruance, Stethem, Momsen) to aggressively patrol around the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Island chain (some reefs and other above-water features of which have been expropriated by China). This destroyer flotilla is backed by the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group. The Chinese Navy has responded by conducting some sea drills in the vicinity.

But otherwise China has so far only huffed and it has puffed. The People’s Daily of July 6 questioned the locus standi of the US as an “outsider” interested in using this dispute “as a lever to realize its own strategic objectives” and warned that America’s “pressuring and intimidating ‘brinkmanship’ policy” will lead to an “outcome” it will have to “assume full responsibility for”. China’s intent to safeguard “its national sovereignty and territorial integrity” may be “unshakable” as the Daily put it. The question however is whether Beijing will risk endangering the G-20 Summit it will host in September. It will not.

But, the far-sighted Beijing had apparently already planned for such contingency and a political way out of it. It financed the campaign of Rodrigo Duterte in the general elections in May this year in the Philippines. Duterte is regarded by many as a maverick. The returns for China from this investment are coming in. Manila has already announced it is willing to sit down with Beijing, discuss the Hague judgement in its favour, and arrive at an amicable solution. It will save President Xi, who has engaged his ego in the South China Sea dispute, from actually delivering on China’s threats. Clever, clever, Chinese.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, United States, US., Vietnam, Western militaries | 12 Comments

The old French tactic

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Defense News (US) recently carried a story that the French negotiators had upped their stance on the Rafale combat aircraft, now insisting that the $8.9 billion govt-to-govt contract be first signed for 36 planes before the supplier company, Dassault Avions, even considers signing a 50% offset deal, with 30% of the offsets allocated for “futuristic military aerospace programs” — whatever this phrase means, and 20% for producing Rafale components to satisfy its ‘Make in India’ obligation. The French firms Safran, Thales and MBDA along with Dassault are reportedly committing to transferring stealth tech, radar, thrust vectoring for missiles, and materials to DRDO units.

A few days earlier, an Indian pink paper carried another related story sourced from the French Embassy about Safran helping revive the waylaid Kaveri engine project, completing the 30% remaining work to bring it up to 90 kN power level at a cost to France of 1 billion euros and requiring no additional investment whatsoever by India.(Kaveri, incidentally, had reached the 81 KN mark in bench test with no help from anyone before the programme was stalled.) So a revived Kaveri engine is another inducement to GOI/MOD to hurry up and sign the Rafale deal that will easily cross the $30 billion for lifetime upkeep, retroactive AESA radar and ongoing weapons fitments.

If all this incentive-making sounds fishy, well, it is. Especially in the context of how the French made monkeys of India not too long ago. Recall that in the years preceding the announcement in 2014 of the Rafale winning the IAF’s MMRCA sweepstakes, the French company SNECMA was in talks with DRDO for assistance for the Kaveri project. The idea was to reconfigure the Kaveri around the SNECMA M-88-2 hot core. The French kept on stretching the negotiations months on end, year after year, according to those in the know, raising objections or some piffling issues to deliberately cause delays and prevent a successful closure. The French negotiating strategy is plain enough in retrospect. Because soon after Rafale’s selection, SNECMA called off the negotiations, begged off the deal! Now to get the Rafale over the finish line, they are falling back on the same old tactics — this time another French firm promising to get the Kaveri off and running just so long as Delhi signs on the dotted line! Obviously, the day the Rafale ag is initialed is when Safran will withdraw its offer. What’s the sacrifice of $1.4 billion — assuming a penalty is imposed should Safran fail to deliver as inevitably it will — if it fetches $30+ billion in return?

India’s traditional military suppliers have absolutely no interest in helping make India self-sufficient in critical aviation technologies, such as combat jet engines. That not doing so is a perpetually paying proposition became clear to them in the wake of the decision by the extremely shortsighted defence minister VK Krishna Menon in the Sixties who declined to pay the English firm, Bristol Siddeley, Rs 5 crores to make adjustments in its BOR 12 jet engine — which had just lost the NATO fighter engine race to an American company — to outfit the multi-role HF-24 Marut, which proposal included complete transfer of technology. Those were simpler times, and the full tech suite would have been transferred, setting India on the course of jet engine independence. It began the steep slide of the indigenous defence industry established with such imaginative verve by Nehru importing, not combat aircraft, but the premier fighter designer of that time, Dr Kurt Tank. It provided the IAF the justification for ditching not just the Marut as under-powered but its Mk-II designed by Tank-trained HAL designer Dr Raj Mahindra, and to start the shameful period lasting to this day of purchasing combat planes abroad. Tejas is still just a blip — which, even with its induction, could be sidelined as the Marut was, if IAF is offered half a chance to do so.

But the BOR 12 on Marut-episode also was the sudden dawning of wisdom among Western suppliers. It alerted them to the benefits of keeping India on the supplier string. After all, why sell India the capability to design and produce jet engines and, per chance, even eventually set it up as a competitor when, with a collaborationist IAF and Indian government in tow, they could sell an unending series of whole, inordinately expensive aircraft, continue making ooddles of money, and thanks to spendthrift nations such as India, keep themselves commercially in the clover for ever?

If we still haven’t learned from the French, whose perfidy is replicated by every other military hardware supplier in one guise or another, then it isn’t Paris’ fault, surely. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Keep getting fooled interminably, what’s left other than to hang a shingle out on the MOD gates in South Block: SUCKERS at work. Come LOOT!

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Military Acquisitions, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Weapons | 29 Comments

Strategic neglect of (East) Africa

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting South Africa and countries on the East African littoral starting July 7. He will specifically be in South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania — three states of immense strategic interest to India, whose neglect by MEA has cost India plenty, and which I have analyzed in my recent book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’.
Because what I have written remains relevant, I am reproducing below with small modifications a small extract from the third chapter on ‘Pivotal Relations’ (pp. 175-178) in this book.

———-
Not many are convinced that the Indian government has done enough to cash in on opportunities and to capitalize on the half-chances to establish India’s credentials as a coming power. It hasn’t taken up invitations, for example, to Indian farmers from Punjab by countries with surplus land and small populations, such as Mozambique and Angola in Africa. Further, smaller alliance or partnership systems, such as the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) combine, have been neglected with New Delhi sticking, as Yashwant Sinha, External Affairs Minister in the Vajpayee government, said with ‘large and unwieldy’ groupings like the Non-aligned Movement, G-77, and G-15 or leaving ‘things to one super power, which will call all the shots.’

The fact, however, is that despite playing to its traditional strengths, fielding some imaginative programs, and racking up considerable foreign policy successes in Africa and Central Asia, where Indian assistance programs focused on capacity building in the countries, cemented an Indian presence in the local economies, and in the extractive industrial sector, India has failed to convert the enormous goodwill, even by official accounts, into a tangible economic and strategic advantage.

The absence of a comprehensive national vision compounds the problem of weaving the various successful regional policy strands into a single fabric of grand strategy to serve the country’s great power interests and ambition.
The failure is also because of the extreme compartmentalization or silo-based thinking and policy-making within and between the Ministries in the Indian government [which Modi, in interviews published in several of today’s newspapers, insists is a thing of the past, but in reality continues]. It leads to foreign policies in discrete streams that do not spring from the same fount and run separately, usually ending in uncoordinated, stand-alone, policies.

The over-arching reason though for the less than expected returns from a potentially promising position in Africa, for instance, is the seeming disinterest of MEA to utilize India’s hard power to win diplomatic points and capitalize on the enormous goodwill for India, which can be easily translated into concessions for extracting mineral riches and, in the security sector, for help to train their militaries. Locked into big power-centered foreign policy relating to the United States, Western Europe, and China, MEA has not found the time for African countries and the opportunities they provide.

Thus, the longstanding request by Mozambique to establish a navy and to equip it, initially with coastal policing vessels and surveillance gear has been ignored.Some years back both Mozambique and Tanzania offered India concessions to mine one of the richest veins of coal in East Africa on the condition that a 600 km railway line be constructed from that site to the coast. The problem was the senior MEA official responsible for the decision spurned the invitation conveyed to him by the Indian ambassador saying that that region was ‘not on our radar’.

Worse, Indian diplomats affect superciliousness with regard to African governments, notwithstanding some $10 billion in Indian government-to-government aid for infrastructure and development projects since 2008. The private sector has been more successful in its forays in Africa. Relative to the 14 percent decline in European trade with Africa, the India-Africa trade has doubled to 6 percent in 2000-2013, with the two way trade standing at $93 billion behind only China ($211 billion) and North America ($117 billion). Major investments by Indian companies are expected to soon capture 7 percent of the IT, 5 percent of the fast-moving consumer goods, 10 percent of the power, and 2-5 percent of the agricultural services sectors.

A McKinsey Report lists various reasons for this success, among them, investing in local talent, partnering local governments, involving local insiders as partners, and going ‘granular – Understand[ing] local nuances and adapt[ing] business models accordingly, with 55 different countries, each with its own culture, customs and behaviours.’ It has helped the Indian commercial presence become part of every-day African scene. In contrast, Chinese companies have not been inclined to accommodate African complexities, have remained insular, and not earned goodwill.

Modi has expressed the view that Indian diplomats should primarily be promoting India’s economic interests abroad, which will also be his policy thrust during his African tour. Except, neither he nor his government has ever talked, leave alone emphasized, the strategic importance of cultivating South Africa and the states in the East African littoral with arms exports and military infrastructure assistance, and with the placement of army, naval and air force training missions, such as in Bhutan, in these friendly countries. It will bind their national interests to that of India as little else can to the same degree. Indian defence presence and security cooperation programmes in South Africa and East Africa should be the show-piece of India’s military diplomacy in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. It is a means of freezing not just China but also the US and other big powers out of these contested strategic-military spaces in Africa.

The problem is GOI/PMO/MEA, on the eve of the PM’s visit, remain unappreciative of the benefits and strategic advantages from making military-to-military links and security cooperation projects the cutting edge of Indian foreign policy in Africa. [To wit MEA Joint Secretary (Africa)’s views carried in today’s Hindustan Times but not featured anywhere in its online version]

Posted in Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bhutan, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, South Asia, United States, US., Weapons | 7 Comments

Get on with testing A-5 and the on-shelf MIRV tech: No lame excuses please!

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Yesterday I was asked by the New Indian Express for my reaction to DRDO Chief Dr S Christopher’s reasons for the repeated postponement of the Agni-5 launch originally slated for 2015 Fall as not political but technical, specifically a “snag” in the battery! The report is accessible at:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/DRDOs-cause-for-Agni-test-delay-under-cloud/2016/07/04/article3512648.ece.

The news story did not, however carry my quote in full, cutting out some pertinent facts. So here it is:
“This seems a lame excuse by the DRDO Chief. The Agni-5 test was
originally slated for sometime in Autumn 2015,which has been postponed
a couple of times already. Is it Dr Christopher’s contention that the
supposed battery “snag” — a relatively trivial problem compared to
what can go wrong in a complex IRBM system — is of so grievous a
nature that ASL, Hyderabad, has been unable to fix it over the past
nine months? Actually, it confirms the suspicion that the A-5
testing has been stalled for political reasons, to avoid friction with
the US. But now that membership in MTCR has been secured, perhaps,
time is now to remind the US, China, and the world what India has in
its missile quiver with a series of A-5 tests, including to extreme
range of 8,500 kms.”

Trouble is the Modi government continues in the policy pattern set by the predecessor Manmohan Singh regime of being over-sensitive to Washington, always worried about what the US would do if New Delhi did this or that, until now when policy is into doing nothing, hamstrung between the uncertainties at the MEA and MOD ends buttressed by the PMO.

The reason why GOI held off on testing the Agni-5 was the Missile Technology Control Regime, fearful that it would rub the Obama Administration the wrong way, and lead to the US scuppering India’s chances of gaining entry into this technology-denial regime. So much can be deduced from the events leading up to the formal membership in MTCR and since.

However, have consistently opposed India’s seeking entry into MTCR because the country has now lost an extraordinarily disruptive leverage of upsetting the whole missile tech denial apple cart, to impose its will on other matters of import in international forums. India as member of MTCR cannot hereafter export ballistic missiles — India’s strongest strategic suite, of 300km+ range. China has been denied MTCR entry, which it first applied for 12 years ago, because of its proliferation record. But do you think Beijing will do other than force an entry soon by threatening (and carrying out the threat) the transfer of ever more potent MRBM/IRBM technologies to Pakistan via North Korea? Wait and watch.

Of course, New Delhi has always been too lack-lustre and apprehensive, chicken-hearted really, to ever do anything similar — elbowing aside resistance by promising to do worse against the West-dominated global order. Modi, like the other recent PMs, wants to get along to go along with mainly the US and the West, w/o any independent vision for the country as driver of policy, plans, and strategy.

Even so, there’s something the Modi govt will have to gird up its loins to do. With India in MTCR, and assuming the PM is serious about showing Beijing what is what, he should remove all testing constraints on the Agni-5 so a rapid series of test-firings can happen, some to its max range of 8,500 kms. Modi should also immediately sanction the testing of the MIRV technology that’s been withering away on the shelves of the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad — the progenitors of the Agni missiles, since the early 2000s (detailed in my 2008 book — ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’). With MIRVed warheads, the A-5 can actually extend its reach to ICBM range, something the Chinese have feared, whence their dubbing the A-5 an ICBM!

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Technology transfer, United States, Weapons | 13 Comments

Finally Tejas in IAF service!

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Congratulations, Team Tejas! This is a historic day for the Indian Air Force with the first two Tejas Mk-1 light combat aircraft inducted into service in the ‘Flying Daggers’ No. 45 Squadron were handed over to the IAF in Bangalore. The 45 Sqdn will be home-based at the Sulur AFB in Tamil Nadu. This is the first time that indigenous aircraft will be featuring the IAF roundels. The last time this happened was when the HF-24 Maruts were in the air order of battle; these were retired in the late Seventies. The Tejas formation will be headed by the experienced Group Captain Rangachari, who had put the plane through its paces at the Bahrain Air Show earlier this year. The two aircraft will grow to four and soon 20. This is how particular aircraft fleet grow in air forces. Considering the stepmotherly treatment meted out to the Tejas by the air force, it is a surprise to many that this Indian aircraft survived at all. It will now thrive.

Many recall that the MiG-21 fleet started with just two aircraft flown in from Russia in late 1963 or thereabouts, grew to squadron strength around the time the hostilities broke out with Pakistan in 1965, eventually peaking to some 750-odd MiG-21 fighters in the IAF. For those hyperventilating about the initial small numbers of Tejas, they need to be reassured that this is normal. The US Air Force, which is considered gold standard by some, had just two JSF-35 Lightnings-IIs to begin with.

It is unfortunate though that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar restricted the production of the Tejas to the DPSU — HAL, instead of also farming its manufacture, as advocated by me in this blog, out to private sector companies, such as Mahindra Aerospace and Reliance Aerospace which, once they get rolling, will be far more efficient in outputting the aircraft than HAL. It would, in the process, have established a competitive production scheme, helped in getting a larger number of Tejas in the air fast and speedily enlarged the Tejas’ force fraction in IAF, and gotten the best out of both the public and private defence industries. That’s the way to integrate public and private sector production.

Parrikar should also instruct the IAF to get the growing numbers of this aircraft to not just train in-squadron under forming at Sulur, but for the Tejas to fly out in pairs to various bases all over the country, including forward bases, to exercise as the air defence component against Mirage 2000s, Su-50 MKIs, and Jaguar aircraft in the aggressor role. It will speedily familiarize the rest of the IAF to the high-performing indigenous Tejas fighter, and sharpen the skills of the Tejas pilots by helping them to test, extend, and push its operational/fighting envelope.

And to ramp up its export potential, MOD and IAF should right away begin carting air attaches especially from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, and from the embassies of other countries of Asia such as Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Malayasia, and from Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from Delhi to Sulur to begin with, and later to other air bases where the Tejas will be exercising with other combat aircraft, to see this Indian designed, developed, and built aircraft in action, and to naval air stations to watch the navalized Tejas in operations.

However the IAF naysayers are already cribbing. (See retired Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak’s lament at http://www.thequint.com/opinion/2016/07/01/celebration-over-lca-tejas-calls-for-reforming-defence-sector-too-mig-21-indian-air-force-hindustan-aeronautics-ltd.) They say the Tejas took 33 years to get into fullscale production. OK, but that is starting from a zero baseline. But consider that it has taken the Lockheed Martin JSF-35 over 25 years and it has problems galore, and is in fact rated a “lemon” by aviation experts. It is also said the Tejas will take another 15 years to be “combat worthy”! This is the kind of utter nonsense IAF often voices to dishearten the Indian citizenry and government in order to strengthen its case for continued import of combat aircraft. Parrikar better throttle this sort of bad mouthing in the crib, as it were, and tell the IAF brass in clear terms — no more imports after the Super Sukhois and FGFA! — and to get flying with the Tejas.

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Central Asia, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Latin America, Maldives, Military Acquisitions, SAARC, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Vietnam, Weapons, West Asia | 31 Comments

NSG and MTCR: Where does India stand?

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Rajya Sabha TV in its program — ‘The Big Picture’ broadcast June 27, 2016 evening featuring a discussion on “NSG and MTCR: Where does India stand?” is
accessuble at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRQUNYl7egI. The panel features former ambassador to the US Meera Shankar, Ajay Lele of IDSA, Sid Varadarajan of Wire.in, Uday Bhaskar, and myself.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, disarmament, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons | 5 Comments

India’s NSG dream

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

PM Manmohan Singh’s Special envoy on disarmament and nonproliferation, Ambassador Rakesh Sood, and myself discussed the Seoul NSG fiasco in the Maroof Raza-hosted program — Latitude, on Times TV aired June 23, 2016. The video of the program available at
http://www.timesnow.tv/Indias-NSG-dream/videoshow/4490712.cms

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, disarmament, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons, West Asia | Leave a comment

Air-launched Brahmos — Southeast Asian counter to China’s bullying

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The air-launched Brahmos supersonic cruise missile was recently flight tested for the first time off a Su-30 MKI platform at the Nasik air base. A short video of the Brahmos-armed Su-30 MKI taxing for take off on https://twitter.com/livefist/status/746585004784816129. A still better video of the event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4iZ-M2Jujg

With India’s formal entry into the Missile Technology Control Regime, the last excuse for delaying the immediate transfer/sale of quantities of this missile to Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia who have strongly expressed an interest in having this weapon in their arsenals, is now gone. Without further ado or loss of time, defence minister Manohar Parrikar should order transactions for the Brahmos to get underway right away. Between the land-based (in coastal batteries) and the air-launched versions of this missile in the Vietnamese, Indonesian, Philippine and Malayasian land and air orders of battle, the Chinese armed forces can be stopped dead in their tracks. Vietnam Air Force has Su-30MKs in its fleet whose flight control computers can be readily configured — as has been done with the IAF Su-30MKIs — to fire the Brahmos.

Perhaps, Moscow held off permission for dealing the Brahmos to our friends in Southeast Asia until recently because Russia was awaiting India’s entry into MTCR and the removal of all legal hurdles. With the barriers now removed, Parrikar’s MOD better get going. There’s no time to be lost because an exasperated Vietnam has already complained to New Delhi about its tardiness regarding the supersonic missile sale, with Hanoi actually giving an ultimatum of end-2016 by which time it expects a contract to be signed and for the training and other support aspects of the Brahmos program to be initiated.

If, as I have advocated, a Kolkatta-class destroyer or, at the very least, an indigenous (upgraded Shivalik class — Project 17A) frigate is offered Hanoi, at cost price if not gratis, to Vietnam, of course, but also to the Philippine, Indonesian and Malaysian navies, the returns on such a venturesome policy will go through the roof. At a minimum, the powerful Chinese South Sea Fleet and, even more, the Indian Ocean-specific “Fourth Fleet” (joining the North Sea, East Sea and South Sea Fleets in China’s naval rollcall) based in the Sanya base on Hainan Island will be well and truly grounded. In fact, it will be risky for any naval armada to negotiate the narrows with the Brahmos trident — coastal batteries, and the very mobile air-launched, and ship-fired, leave alone for a largely untested PLA Navy. For China then to offer provocation to or bully any of the smaller disputants in the South China Sea will mean Beijing risking humiliation — the sinking of, say, a Guangzhu-class guided missile destroyer with a single Brahmos broadside hit launched from any one of a number of platforms in the region.

Incidentally, the flotilla embarked for the Malabar naval exercise off Okinawa is led by INS Satpura, a Shivalik-class frigate that littoral states will have a chance to examine up close (when the flotilla exercises with the various navies in the area during its return passage).

In the aftermath of the NSG fiasco in Seoul, this is the right sort of actions as payback and to equilibrate the strategic situation in China’s neighbourhood, raise the potential costs to Beijing, and make India’s intentions of limiting China to short of the South China Sea, clear. And this we should do quietly, without the usual media hullaballoo. But, alas, it is precisely the political vision, will, and gumption driving such actions that are absent in Modi’s government which, like its predecessor regimes is looking for India to do little itself but increasingly relying on Washington to take on China.

Consider also that just 50 Su-30MKIs (out of Car Nicobar base or staging out of, say, INS Baaz air strip with extended runway) in Campbell Bay, can stop any aircraft carrier battle group from any country venturing into the Indian Ocean, or at any other oceanic choke point to the east and the west.

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Diplomatic mishap at NSG Seoul

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

It was an astounding misread of the international political situation for the BJP government to believe that just having Prime Minister Narendra Modi do rounds of his now trademark personalized diplomacy would get India a ticket into the Nuclear Suppliers Group at its two-day plenary in Seoul. It is one thing for Modi to be convinced about his own persuasive powers. Quite another thing for the Ministry of External Affairs mandarins, with Foreign Secretary K. Jaishankar in the lead, to go along with the PM’s conceit without alerting Modi to the near insurmountable barriers in place visible to any level-headed analyst and made perfectly plain by Beijing’s repeated negative pronouncements.

Did Modi really think that a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tashkent and Jaishankar’s attempts at changing the minds of the other holdout states — Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, Brazil, and Turkey, would prove anything but futile? Two days back Sartaj Aziz, PM Nawaz Sharif’s foreign policy adviser, had telegraphed this with his statement that Pakistan had succeeded in firming up the opposition to India’s NSG membership. As usual, he was taking more credit than was due his diplomatic efforts. The problem was/is with the different reasons for their holdout by the six countries. Let’s see what these are and decide whether India’s chances will brighten with time.

China WILL NOT budge until India begins seriously to strategically discomfit it with counter-leverage and counter-pressure. Such leverage/pressure has come its way with India formally becoming a participating state in the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime). China has been seeking an entry into MTCR since 2004. New Delhi can hereafter veto China’s membership in MTCR, and should do so. Secondly, it should fast-track the sale/transfer of the Brahmos supersonic cruise missile not just to Vietnam that has desperately desired it for years, but also the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei the states disputing China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. MTCR membership means that India’s Brahmos transactions with these states and any other country that has any problems with Beijing and wishing to acquire this deadly and indefensible missile, are instantly legitimated, and will not draw sanctions for either India, the supplier, or any of its customer states.

And then India should resist all initiatives for an exchange Beijing may propose — its lifting NSG veto for India’s doing the same in MTCR. Because the fact is NSG is not all that important for India considering it has already secured a waiver in 2008 as part of the nuclear deal and can engage in nuclear commerce and trade without let or hindrance. As to why MEA is set on NSG entry and has pushed Modi into making such a big deal of it, resulting in the PM getting a whole lot of egg on his face is a mystery. A well-connected commentator attributes this entire diplomatic mishap to the “devious” view of many in the MEA that pushing Modi into canvassing China, would up the stakes and Beijing’s formally resisting India’s NSG membership will confirm its status as an adversary country and justify to the domestic audience the government’s policy of siding with the United States to contain it in Asia.

But such an undiscriminating slide towards the US will actually lose New Delhi leverage with Washington. The more India holds back and joins the US only sporadically — so the US govt does not take India for granted as it is inclined to do, the better it will be in terms of serving and furthering the national interest in the long run. Moreover, the more agilely New Delhi manipulates its security cooperation with dibs and dabs of military-to-military linkages with the US, the more Beijing will feel impelled to accommodate India as a means of preempting/preventing New Delhi’s going over more fully to America’s corner. That’s how the game of great power politics is played, and was so done by Nehru in the Fifties. But since then and especially in the new Century MEA seems to have lost that ability abetted in recent years by Modi’s personal West-leaning preferences.

As regards Brazil — envy and jealousy are very much part of its stance towards India. Brasilia did not have the wit or the strategic wisdom to not sign the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and hence its passage to weapons status has been for ever barred. Now it confronts India as a nuclear weapon state, and cannot stomach it considering its nuclear programme too is pretty advanced. As regards Ireland, Austria and New Zealand, the Indian govt had obviously hoped they would take their cues from the US and fall in line at the Seoul plenary. That has not occurred because they feel unwooed and therefore unmoved. Switzerland got the full treatment with the Permanent Mission in Geneva at the cutting edge (not the embassy in Berne) and yet the Swiss did not follow through on promised support. Its position at Seoul that it still had to liaise with Berne hints at second thoughts or cussedness. In any case, it reveals, as does Modi’s confabulatory procedure with Xi, the limits of personalized diplomacy.

Then there’s Turkey and India has hit a brick wall. Like China, it has hyphenated India and Pakistan and has opted for joint entry into NSG. And, by the way, it will not relent even if China ever does.

Considering all the factors laid out above, can anyone make a convincing case that India needs to expend an additional iota of diplomatic-political capital on trying to get into NSG? The answer is a resounding NO. But Modi and MEA seem bent on it. Figuring that out will tell you just why India is where it is and points to the Indian government’s lack of understanding of what hard power is and how it works. It is not a coincidence that some 52 years after India reached the nuclear weapons threshold in Feb/March 1964 but decided deliberately not to speedily acquire a nuclear arsenal, New Delhi still thinks its abstemiousness in not proliferating indigenously developed nuclear materials, expertise, should win India rewards!!!

That’s not what the harsh world of international relations is about, I am afraid. One had hoped that with Modi’s advent there would be an injection of realism in our foreign policy approach and attitude. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Modi seems to have fallen in — as he has done elsewhere in government by relying on civil servants, with the old MEA way of doing things: Depending, in the sadly famous words uttered by a character in Tennessee Williams’ play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire”, the needy Blanche Du Bois — “on the kindness of strangers”. Except, in the external realm, all countries are strangers and never kind.

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Washington — Heritage Foundation panel on ‘India’s Asia-Pacific outreach and relations with China’

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

In the lead-up to the Modi visit, there was a panel discussion in Washington, DC, at the Heritage Foundation May 25, 2016 on “India’s Asia-Pacific Outreach and relations with China” involving Lisa Curtis of the Heritage, Jeff Smith of the American Foreign Policy Council and myself. The video recording of this event is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVKmxZeNVOk — [it was apparently moved here from the main Heritage Foundation site at
http://www.heritage.org/events/2016/05/indias-asia-pacific-outreach–and-relations-with-china

[Unfortunately, the presentations of other than those speaking from the lectern, is not very audible and needs to be ramped up by those cueing in.]

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