Steering into troubled seas with eyes wide open

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

As anticipated some weeks back (“India in America’s coils”), the Modi government seems bent on having the three foundational agreements — logistics support agreement (LSA), Communications Inter-operability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) in some form for signing when US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter is here next week. We are told MEA and MOD negotiators have been hard at work with their American counterparts to obtain draft accords tailored to specific Indian needs that also serve US purposes. There are fundamental problems even with the India-specific content of these agreements.

Consider LSA: For many years now, Indian and the US warships at sea have had a “barter” arrangement in place whereby an Indian ship with fuel excess to its mission needs transfers a fuel quantum to an US warship on the basis that a passing American warship can be tapped mid-ocean by an Indian ship at low tank for the exact quantum of fuel. So there’s some kind of a running account between the two navies. There is no exchange of monies — because the different accounting systems make for a mess, making reimbursement in value, rather than in kind, difficult. This was an expedient stop-gap arrangement arrived at by the two navies over the course of the Malabar and other naval exercises, joint piracy patrols, etc. This working scheme is operational. Other consumables — food items, potable water, servicing tools, naval maintenance kits, etc. can likewise be accommodated by simply enlarging the barter arrangement that has so far worked well. Why does India need a formal LSA for these things, especially on a “reimbursable” basis? This last, whether any one in the Indian govt concedes it or not, will do two things: (1) Place India in a position similar to Pakistan vis a vis US ISAF presence and military operations in Afghanistan, and (2) make reimbursements for materials offtaken by US forces in the region from Indian military stores subject to financial subventions from Washington. This will bring India under Congressional scrutiny which, in turn, will create its own difficulties. New Delhi, in effect, will have to account for the quality of every item or service rendered, and be compelled to respond on pain of non-payment. This is the punishing procedure all US’ formal allies undergo. Does it help the country’s cause even a little for India to be thus ensnared by the United States? And if high-technology is the big deciding issue: Is the US willing to TOT the EMALS (electromagnetic aircraft launch system) for the two Indian-built carriers, following Vikrant? Of course, not. But the Americans will happily part with technologies considered advanced in the 1970s — F-18 Super Hornet! Boy, are we dumb. Even Pakistan has not proved itself so naïve and gullible and is keeping its arms supply lines to China open. Why is the Modi govt so enamoured of US-sourced military technology when Russian topend hardware available to the Indian armed forces is tech-wise, generationally superior?

In a discussion on this topic, a former naval chief had no answer to the kind of objections I have raised above, or why the Navy in particular would rather rely on US warships or the base at Diego Garcia for mid-oceanic resupply and replenishment than speedily invest in and build-up the naval and air bases on North and South Agalega Islands offered by Mauritius, or on shore in a base in northern Mozambique offered by that country.

CISMOA: news reports portray Indian negotiators being satisfied with something called the “pre-bid guarantee” in case India chooses to manufacture an US armament system here — a combat aircraft, for instance. This “pre-bid guarantee: is supposed to require the US govt to guarantee the full transfer of technology. One can foresee how this will pan out. Such a guarantee is given but the supplier companies keep to the old way of doing things with India, namely, merely exporting first SKD kits, followed years later, by CKD kits while claiming there is full TOT. If questioned, they’ll point out that it is not their responsibility to ensure Indian firms, DPSUs, ingest and innovate the technologies passed on to them — which will be an irrefutable case. And hand over the full tranche of contracted funds, please! This guarantee, in the Indian context, is worth nothing.

The more significant issue is why the Modi PMO is going down this route. And shouldn’t it have been advised better, asked to temper their enthusiasm, not go full out, without being aware of booby traps down the supposed primrose path? The trouble is those in MEA advising the PM have long since jumped on to the American bandwagon. Foreign Secretary S, Jaishankar — his father K Subrahmanyam’s son alright — is in the van on these accords. Recall it was Subrahmanyam during the previous BJP govt’s tenure who persistently advocated buying peace with the US — sign the CTBT he said in 1996 along with his acolytes, such as Air Cmde Jasjit Singh, and for making the sorts of concessions his son first negotiated (as Joint Secretary, Americas) in the 2008 nuclear deal with the Congress party apparatchik Manmohan Singh as PM, and now as head of the foreign service, is configuring these foundational ags for an ideologically different, supposedly “nationalist”, BJP regime.

If China is the major worry and military cooperation with the US is deemed necessary, India can maximize collaborative activity and have similar outcomes by other solutions than committing to agreements that only bonafide allies of the US have so far accepted. Close embrace with any big power is always to the lesser state’s detriment. For India that sees itself as a great power in the process of being, it is all the more necessary to keep its distance but work with all powers, especially Russia and the regional states, such as Japan, and on the extended Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian littorals to more effectively stymie Beijing.

But this is obviously not the sort of counsel Modi hears, indicating the lack of professionalism in MEA and at the centre of foreign policymaking in New Delhi. Neither Modi — a politician, nor NSA, Ajit Doval, an ex-policeman, can be expected to know the complexities of friendship with the US formalized in treaty-like agreements. But MEA staffers are expected to do so. That they are failing in their duty to warn the PMO of pitfalls ahead, is what’s worrisome. By the time India begins to pay the full price of such accords pushed on the run, the present dramatis personae will have vacated the scene, and no one will be held accountable for the loss of India’s freedom of policy maneuver, its basic autonomy, and worse.

All we will be left with is the chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, SAARC, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 12 Comments

N-security summit on ‘Public Forum’ & ‘World Panorama’ TV programmes

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Both the ‘Public Forum’ programme on Lok Sabha TV and the ‘World panorama’ programme on Rajya Sabha TV discussed the recent nuclear security summit in Washington. These shows were broadcast over the past weekend. ‘Public Forum’ is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGu52lu9QyQ0, and ‘Panorama’ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CETo0836Zw&index=1&list=PL9E8D2AED720ECC2B.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, disarmament, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Terrorism, United States, US. | Leave a comment

Modus operandi of payoffs to the military

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The Panama Papers leaked by a root source, apparently for altruistic reasons, has tarred a lot of public figures, including the baritone-voiced Amitabh Bachan, who had set himself up in recent years as spokesman for Gujrat Tourism garbed in the toga of national pride (and is now reduced to explaining, as if this has an iota of credence, that his name was perhaps misused by Panama-registered shipping companies, etc. since 1993! and, contrarily, that it revealed no illegality!).

The more interesting sidebar story (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/panama-papers-mossack-fonseca-files-iaf-navy-italian-firms/) related to the system of payoffs to the Indian military, in the Panamanian case, to officers in the IAF and Indian Navy, by the Italian firm, Elettronica SpA, peddling elint (electronic intelligence) equipment, radar warning receivers, laser warning receivers/missile warning systems, electronic support systems (for helos), and self-protection jammers. The commissions range mostly in double figures from 13% to 17% of the deal amount for basically spares supply and servicing contracts. Thus, a top-end 17% commission for just one 1996 deal totaled 112,399 Euros or approx Rs 85.5 lakhs (at today’s conversion rate) for distribution by the Indian agent to corrupt Indian militarymen. Any delays in delivery that draw penalties result in the penalty sums being deducted from the commissions disbursed. And if the supplier is ever caught in this nefarious payoffs scheme, it invariably responds by brazening it out with statements, to wit by Elettronica SpA, that it “rejects any wrong or illegal practice and can adhere to facts…”, etc.!

Indian arms agents operate on retainer plus basis and Elettronica SpA is a relatively small firm. There are as many as 300-odd foreign arms companies active in the New Delhi circles, the majors with more than a single company representative presence to further their interests. The bulk of these up-front commissions, according to informed persons, are for disbursal to officers in the procurement loops in the three armed services and to officials in MOD, with the registered or unregistered agents being paid off through separate channels.

While rules require arms agents to register with GOI, these are often flouted, so there’s only minimal accountability. Moreover, because the payoffs process is necessarily secretive, just about every minor and major arms vendor has Panamanian-kind of offshore instruments to channel payoffs that are impossibly difficult to trace and their activities just as difficult to track, and well nigh impossible to bring to book. It is a system tailor-made for uniformed and civilian staffers in the procurement process to help themselves with payment — their choice — in cash or kind. So the Panama Papers have uncovered only a small part of the corruption system — the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

This is precisely why I have been maintaining over the years that the armed services which do not admit to the taint of corruption, are about as soiled as the politicians and bureaucrats. Just visit the residences services chiefs build for themselves to get an idea. I know only of one retired service chief who survives on his pension income — Vishnu Bhagwat. He lives frugally in a two room apartment in Colaba. Recall, he was the naval chief dismissed by the socialist defence minister, George Fernandes, in Vajpayee’s govt in 1996, and who followed in the footsteps of ADM Ronnie Periera. The day after his retirement, Periera took to a bicycle coz’ he admitted he couldn’t afford a car. He finally upgraded his conveyance, I am told, to a scooter.

Corruption — the fundamental weakness and historic failing of South Asian societies is the principal cause of internal insecurity and why countries of the subcontinent will always remain vulnerable. It is also one of the main reasons why India will never become a great power, because there’ll always be people within the policy establishment and in the system who’ll do a foreign country’s or an adversary’s bidding for a price.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, society, South Asia | 10 Comments

Conversation with a reputed Service Chief and an IAS officer

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Belated though it is, readers of this blog may want to see and hear a “conversation” the 6th Goa Arts and Literature Festival Dec 10-12, 2015, scheduled between former Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash, an ex-IAS official who was in Vajpayee’s PMO, Shakti Sinha, and myself. The contents of my book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ was the subject. A video of this event is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0geeoQNjII.

Posted in Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, 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 Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Maldives, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Relations with Russia, Russia, SAARC, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons | 1 Comment

Will Obsolete NATO be able to Assuage India’s Security Concerns?

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

On April 4, 1949, twelve countries, with the United States in the van, created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It was the victorious alliance in Europe of the Second World War transformed to resist the military threat posed by one of its erstwhile members, the Soviet Union. Flush with its success on the battlefield, Moscow had carved out its own exclusive sphere of influence in the Baltic states and central and eastern Europe captured by the Red Army and conceded as spoils of war by the US and UK. In response to NATO, Russians in 1955 set up a matching bloc — the ‘Warsaw Pact’.

Sixty-seven years later, with the Cold War long since won, NATO is floundering, consumed by differences over handling a freshly assertive Russia under President Vladimir Putin in a reshaped Europe, an America strained by involvement in too many conflicts and by the effort to contain China, and by squabbles relating to the equitable sharing of alliance costs and military effort.

How NATO comports itself in Europe is of secondary concern to India. But should the US and NATO over-balance toward European contingencies, the prospect for Asian states feeling menaced by a belligerent and expansively oriented China becomes commensurately bleak, more difficult, and will impact India’s security interest.

The trouble for NATO began with Washington’s hubris-laced interventions in the new Century to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Moamar Gaddafi in Libya, and to destabilize the Bashir al-Assad regime in Syria. It led to the prevailing awful mess in the Islamic arc stretching from the Tigris to Tunis, which fraught situation was compounded by the simultaneous US military foray to eliminate the Taliban in Afghanistan. These various adventures have facilitated the rise of the brutal Islamic State, which in confluence with sections of the Afghan Taliban, constitute the adversary in America’s Global War on Terrorism.

NATO’s dilemma is plain enough. The maelstrom churned in the Maghreb, Middle East, and Southwest Asia is draining the US of its wealth and political will, and exhausting its military. With Washington footing over 75% of NATO’s bill and only the US, UK, Greece, and Estonia meeting the minimum standard of defence expenditure of 2% of GDP agreed upon in 2006, the American Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, in 2011 foresaw “a dim, if not dismal future”. “The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S”, he had warned, “to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

The situation will deteriorate sharply for NATO if Donald Trump is elected US president. He will up stake and leave unless the European (and Asian) partners pay the full cost of US force deployment. This is at a time when Putin is strengthening Russia’s military clout, and used Article 10 in the treaty that permitted NATO’s expansion to 28 states, with the newcomers being mostly members of the defunct Warsaw Pact, as threat and justification for detaching Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014.

Washington is up a creek. Attending to NATO needs will necessarily denude the Indo-Pacific of US military presence. This is reason for serious worry, especially in light of the 2014 declaration by US Assistant Secretary of Defense Katrina McFarland that owing to budgetary cuts “the [Asia] pivot … can’t happen.” Meaning Pentagon’s 2012 promise of, for instance, redeploying naval assets from a 50/50 split between the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic to a 60/40 split favouring the former, is voided. This is in part because as the US naval chief Admiral Jonathan Greenert revealed, the navy has only 289 ships when a 450-ship fleet is required to meet world-wide commitments.

With the US security attention thus divided between Russia and China at the two ends of Eurasia, New Delhi is confronted by a stark fact: India cannot anymore free-ride on security afforded as public good by Washington (and earlier by Moscow). It will have to protect itself with its own resources the best it can. Tragically, the Indian government and military are not strategically geared, materially or policy-wise, to do so.
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Published in The Quint April 4, 2016, at http://www.thequint.com/opinion/2016/04/04/will-obsolete-nato-be-able-to-assuage-indias-security-concerns

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, Culture, Defence Industry, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Pakistan, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | 9 Comments

Predicted NSS-4 outcome: Modi gave much, India (once again) got stiffed

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has ended in Washington. While some of the apprehensions expressed in a previous post on this subject have been borne out, some of PM Modi’s commitments could become problematic depending on how exactly India follows through on them.

The most damaging turn of events was US President Obama’s re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan and, much worse, implicitly reaffirming US’ longstanding nonproliferation policy objective of “cap, freeze, rollback” of nuclear weapons capabilities in South Asia. “We need to see progress in Pakistan and India [to] make sure”, he demanded, somewhat magisterially, “that as they develop military doctrines that they are not continually moving in the wrong direction” as regards expanding “nuclear arsenals” “especially those with small tactical nuclear weapons that could be at greater risk of theft.”

Modi responded, not by asking Obama to stop lecturing and defining the nuclear deterrence requirements of other countries but to get going with drastic reductions of US and P-5 nuclear weapons inventories but, with Washington’s soft-pedaling of Pakistan-sourced terrorism in mind, carping about treating terrorism as “someone else’s problem and that ‘his’ terrorist is not ‘my’ terrorist… All States must completely abide by their international obligations.”

In light of the US government’s approach and attitude some of the six commitments Modi voiced at the summit could create trouble for India. These commitments are:

1) India’s continuing to accord a high national priority to nuclear security through strong institutional framework, independent regulatory agency and trained and specialised manpower, to include physical and cyber barriers, technological approaches, setting up a facility for medical grade ‘Moly-99’ using low enriched Uranium and using vitrified forms of vulnerable radioisotopes such as Ceasium-137.
2) India will counter nuclear smuggling and strengthen the national detection architecture for nuclear and radioactive material, with a dedicated counter-nuclear smuggling team.
3) India will support IAEA’s central role in nuclear security by a further contribution of $1 million to the nuclear security fund and a workshop to be held in India with IAEA experts on International Physical Protection Assessment Service (IPPAS).
4) India will join trilateral initiative of NSS chairs (US, South Korea, Netherlands) to oversee the implementation in subscribing states of measures to strengthen nuclear security.
5) India will also join three gift baskets for this summit in priority areas of countering nuclear smuggling, nuclear security contact group in Vienna, and sharing of best practices through Centres of Excellence such as India’s own.
6) India will host a meeting of Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in 2017 to complement the international conference on countering nuclear smuggling planned with Interpol. The nuclear security architecture in the country is to be strengthened and participate in strengthening security architecture at the global level.

For example, items #3,4,5 & 6 all involve international/multilateral/IAEA arrangements which could be the tool used by the US in particular and the P-5 states generally to penetrate the secret parts of the nuclear establishment under cover of progressing and providing technical “expert” advise for increasing the security and protection of dangerous materials. It could be used to suborn Indian participants with the aim ultimately of subverting the Indian weapons program, wherewithal, and capabilities. By now most countries have got the hang of a basic feature of Indian reality: Indians, by and large, are “bikaoo” (purchasable) — all that needs determining is their price.

Further, the Indian side, as per a statement released to the media that seems to have been drafted without any apparent awareness of where the country’s strategic and national security interests actually lie, crowed about India’s export controls list and guidelines being harmonized with those of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and how it “looks forward” to strengthening its contribution to shared non-proliferation objectives through membership of the export controls regimes. This commitment, mind you, is despite India’s being prevented from getting anywhere within smelling distance of membership in NSG, and which membership will obtain once Pakistan too (shepherded by China) gains entry into it.

To further emphasize its “good boy” status, and hammer a few more nails into its own nuclear coffin, India at NSS-4 also pointedly referred to its enacting the Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems Act, 2005, giving effect, inter alia, to India’s obligations under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540.

So ends another of Modi’s forays into the outside world.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, disarmament, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., Weapons | 9 Comments

‘Statement of Intent’

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Over the years, many people have been asking me to spell out clearly the general principles and philosophy animating my writings (and this blog). So, though long overdue, below is what has been just posted in the ‘About’ page of ‘Security Wise’.
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STATEMENT OF INTENT

‘Security Wise’ was the title of a fortnightly newspaper column I wrote for many years (in the ‘Asian Age’ and ‘Deccan Chronicle’). It is a blog dedicated unapologetically to espousing realpolitik values and realist foreign and military policies as vehicle for furthering India’s national interest (stripped of abstract universal concerns, such as world peace, disarmament and nonproliferation, Third World good, etc., and of emphasis mainly on soft power, that have for too long been the bread and butter of Indian foreign policy, both in the declaratory sense and in substantive terms). In a system of sovereign nation-states and a harsh “dog eat dog” international milieu, National Interest should be the only motivation and driver of all state policies in the external realm. Conjoined to the relentless and focused acquisition of strategic hard power capabilities, it will, as this analyst has argued since 1979, achieve for India Great Power it has always potentially been but which governments since 1947 have failed to realize. This is because of the absence of clearly articulated national vision, strategy, disruptive game-plan and policies, and of strong political will to implement them. It has resulted in a often skewed world-view, miscued geopolitics, a myopic approach fixating on “unfriendly neighbours”, an over-accommodating stance vis a vis powerful states, an inclination to uphold the status quo rather than challenge and upend the prevailing Asian and global order that discriminates against and victimizes India, a manifestly wonky threat perception and, hence, a military, dependent on imported armaments, with limited reach and clout backed by a truncated nuclear deterrent (that can boast of credible and reliable thermonuclear weapons only if India resumes open-ended underground nuclear testing). This constitutes the meat of the argument I have made for three and half decades now (in 2016), within government and military circles and outside of them, and reflects my bedrock beliefs, which are reflected in all my writings and in my posts in this blog. The arch-realist policy compass ‘Security Wise’ represents will not change, whichever the government of whatever ideological stripe is ruling in New Delhi at any given time.

Posted in Indian Army | 4 Comments

Fear an impetuous Modi at Washington nuclear security summit

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The fourth and the last of the Barack Obama-inspired nuclear security summits (NSSs) in Washington is upon us. Leaders from many countries (except Russia), Prime Minister Narendra Modi among them, will meet in plenary sessions on April 1 to take stock. It will be hard for them not to conclude that notwithstanding some progress in agreeing on the ways and means to deny access to nuclear materials by terrorist outfits, the absence of any movement on the underlying disarmament ideal means this talk shop too will end up consolidating a global order of the nuclear Haves and Have-nots. Indeed, US Obama indicated as much.The US is committed, he wrote in an op/ed in the Washington Post (March 30), “to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons” and only secondarily “to seeking a world without them.” His Administration’s budgetary allocation on international security supports this thrust, falling from $800 million in 2012 to some $500 million this year(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/science/nuclear-fuels-are-vulnerable-despite-a-push.html.

Rather than making the world safe from nuclear weapons, the NSSs have only made it safe for nuclear weapons (and those states possessing them), which is fine as far as India is concerned.

In trying to set a post-NSS/post-Obama nuclear agenda a Harvard study – ‘Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?’ by Matthew Bunn, et al., has tried to flesh out the international mechanisms (agreed in these Meets) and the mechanics of protecting and safeguarding nuclear materials.(See http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/PreventingNuclearTerrorism-Web.pdf ) Unwittingly, this report hints at the problems inherent in tackling the potential menace of N-terrorism in the manner the NSSs have proposed. It also prefigures traps that Obama may set for Modi.

Reflecting the broad biases animating US thinking and policies, the report conceives of two futures –- “low” and “high security” scenarios for 2030. In the South Asia-relevant parts of it, in order to realize the latter, apparently more desirable, scenario, Washington is advised, in essence, to pressure India and Pakistan into capping their N-arms inventories and agreeing on confidence building measures to “greatly reduce the probability of crisis”, which might necessitate the alerting of nuclear forces (pp. 8-9). What this has to do with reducing the potential of nuclear terrorism the authors don’t make clear. One can only surmise that Indo-Pakistan crises situations are assumed as affording terrorists the opportunity to steal nuclear materials and/or capture nuclear weapons. But this is at best a fanciful notion, considering it is precisely in wartime that the protective cover provided by the armed forces for nuclear weapons and their transport/movement will be most severe. A more reasonable explanation is that the authors — charter members of the US nonproliferation mafia, mean to somehow achieve, partially or in full, that old Washington nonproliferation policy goal of “cap, freeze, rollback” using NSS as medium.

The study, moreover, is critical of “non-monetary barriers” – complacency, bureaucracy, and “excessive concerns for secrecy and sovereignty”, prevailing in India & Pakistan, saying it prevents them from taking effective anti-terrorist measures (p.9). Except, these measures include greater nuclear security cooperation between the two countries — which perhaps is not a negotiable idea, between each of them and a strengthened IAEA, and between the two countries separately with the US. It is the last two aspects of an interventionist IAEA – a handmaiden of the US and an intrusive United States, in the nuclear affairs of South Asia, that are the most worrisome.

An it is the Obama government espies possibilities on this front with Modi. Laura Holgate, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director at the National Security Council, said something intriguing. Washington, she averred, was going to use Modi’s presence at the summit “to highlight steps that India has taken in its own nuclear security to go beyond, perhaps, some of the activities that it has done before.” (emphasis mine). What are these “activities” Modi may be cajoled into implementing “beyond” India’s present commitments (such as setting up the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership to, among other things, host workshops organized by the US State Department’s Partnership for Nuclear Security? (This GCNEP is coming up in Haryana, some 200 kms from Delhi.)

Could these additional commitments sought from Modi be in the form of “gift baskets” (an infelicitous phrase used by the Harvard report, p. 75, in light of Modi’s penchant for expensive Rafale buy-like gift-giving) to include Delhi’s subscribing to the “international fuel bank” under construction in Kazakhstan (mentioned by Obama in his op/ed)? This fuel bank is supposed to supply low-enriched uranium fuel for light water reactors so that all countries take to the uranium route for electricity generation rather than follow the plutonium path taken by India with its indigenous natural uranium fueled, heavy water moderated, nuclear reactors. Except, three successive Indian governments — Vajpayee’s, more centrally Manmohan Singh’s and now Modi’s, have chosen to divert from the road to energy independence laid out by the great visionary Homi Bhabha in his 3-stage 1955 plan based on India’s vast thorium reserves, by purchasing largely untested, exorbitantly priced, imported reactors (Westinghouse and General Electric reactors from America, Areva reactors from France and the VVER 1000 reactors from Russia). Fuel bank means India will even forego the slight freedom reprocessing the spent fuel, something that India has so far resisted.

And/or, will Modi, under the rubric of “Building Confidence in Effective Nuclear Security” (pp.70- 74 in Harvard report) agree to open India’s nuclear security system for international and US scrutiny to assess it capacity to deal with “security system design-based threats”. This will require foreign experts “to visit and examine security procedures”. This desire for more classified information about the country’s “approaches to nuclear security” will be legitimated as India merely following through on its UNSCR 1540 obligations, ‘coz nuclear materials from India could be used to threaten other states. MOdi could also be persuaded by the smoothtalking Obama to permit “technical cooperation programs”, inclusive of “in-depth discussions” and visits by foreign experts to “key nuclear facilities” (pp.70-71). Modi could moreover be gently pushed into accepting “bilateral dialogues” with the US of the kind that Washington has ongoing with Pakistan and China. As the Harvard study states plainly: “Not all security improvements depend on cooperation with the United States. But [such] cooperation often accelerates such improvements and offers increased assurance that they are really taking place.” (p.91)

The significant issue India faces is whether its national (security) interest will be better served by further accommodating Washington and making this country’s nuclear and strategic complex more transparent. It is not terrorists India needs to fear as much as the US somehow gaining access into the innards of the country’s nuclear programme. To the extent India has garnered substantive successes in the nuclear weapons (and generally nuclear energy) and missile sectors, it is because these sectors have remained opaque, and not been corralled into any international, bilateral or multilateral arrangements, and hence have enjoyed immense immunity to international diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, and Western technology denial regimes. The civilian nuclear deal with the US has already compromised a good part of India’s versatile, dual use, nuclear programme. Should Modi allow further inroads, ostensibly to advance nuclear security, for nothing more than a pat on the back from Obama, India, already on a slippery nonproliferation slope as is already evident, will be reduced to another of America’s camp followers. No wonder US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, soon to visit New Delhi, is reportedly demanding the Modi regime sign the three “foundational agreements” – LSA, CISMOA, and BECA to cement the military relationship between the two countries (as apprehended in a previous post — “India in America’s coils”).

NSS-4 and the foundational ags could mark India’s pell-mell descent. Good bye India as great power.

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Silly “two-front war” scenario and related IAF’s Rafale push at expense of Su-30

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

All war planning ought to be on the basis of the worst case. That’s a truism. But the worst imaginable circumstances still have to bear some relation to reality and should be based on reasonable probability calculus. That there is cooperation and collaboration between China and Pakistan in the conventional and nuclear military fields, leading to sharing of intelligence, and transfer of weapons and related technologies is to acknowledge a fact. To conclude from this that China will join with Pakistan in waging general military hostilities against India is, however, to indulge one’s fancies and is belied by history.

Time and again, having initiated conflicts that rapidly turned against it on the ground, Islamabad hoped, and fervently pleaded for, the Chinese militarily to intervene — open a second front, to stave off inevitable defeat. This happened in 1965 when Beijing, trying to please its partner, warned Delhi about some of its livestock on the disputed mountainous border being herded off by Indians which probable cause for war was immediately rendered laughable when, to Beijing’s mortification, Indian opposition leaders, the socialist Madhu Limaye, among them, marched to the Chinese embassy gates in Chanakyapuri offering a gaggle of bleating goats in train as recompense. In 1971, Yahya waited in Islamabad, Niazi in Dhaka, for the “yellow army” to save Pakistan’s goose/goat from being tandoored with the Indian army contingents speedily converging on the Pak forces in soon-to-be Bangladesh, and waited some more before giving up the ghost and abjectly surrendering.

This to say that no country — a calculating and cautious China least of all — will fight on another’s country’s behalf or help out if its means courting danger for itself, let alone save, even an “all weather friend” — Pakistan that has managed once again to muddle into yet another military mess of its own creation. China will do everything short of actually deploying its forces especially now and in the future when it knows that opening a war front in the north and east in concert with Pakistan doing the same in the west, for any reason whatsoever, could likely end — should the situation become dire enough to India to merit it — Agni-5s popping up mushroom clouds over the extended Shanghai region and abruptly ending China’s run as economic power. If the Chinese were not foolish enough to do this in the past when much less was at stake, it is likely they will be even more circumspect now and in the future when, other than concerns of avoiding irreparable damage and destruction to itself, will be preoccupied with displacing the US as the dominant great power rather than stepping into the breach for a whiny but risk-acceptant Pakistan on its flanks. So a two front war featuring China and Pakistan is not only inconceivable but the weakest possible predicate for Indian force planning.

So why is the IAF brass so vociferous in drumming up fear of precisely this contingency? To wit, Vice Chief AM BS Dhanoa in March 2016 who averred:”Our numbers are not adequate to execute an air campaign in a two-front scenario… Probability of a two front scenario is an appreciation which you need to do. But are the numbers adequate? No.” For his part, DCAS Air Marshal R K S Bhadauria revealed IAF’s plan behind such statements, saying a decision to fill the full MMRCA complement will be made after the 36 Rafales are first secured, meaning IAF will thereafter argue that having gone a third in with the Rafale, it makes sense to go full in with this same plane, damn the treasury-bankrupting costs of going in a third and, even more, fully with Rafale. (http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/not-enough-fighters-for-two-front-war-iaf-116031000648_1.html). Obviously then, the two-front war-talk is not for any grand reasons of geostrategics (assuming Vayu Bhavan has sense enough to read the unfolding geopolitical situation correctly). But because it serves IAF’s parochial purposes well, particularly in propelling its preferred but wasteful and unnecessary procurement of the French Rafale combat aircraft — a decision hanging fire for some years now. Such an improbable war scenario is being summoned up as a last gasp argument to push the Modi government into signing up for this white elephant of a plane. By doing so, Vayu Bhavan is resorting to an old and tested tactic favoured by the military — frighten the generally national security strategy-wise ignorant and illiterate political ruler-generalist bureaucrat (in MOD/Finance) tandem operating in Delhi into anteing up scarce funds for near useless military hardware purchases that invariably leave the country in a bigger financial-cum-national security hole than before.

But Let’s look at some details. Air chief Marshal Arup Raha soon after assuming his post in Sept 2014 himself provided figures for a contract for 126 Rafales — $25 billion (or Rs 1,50,000 crore). Assuming the deal would be signed by end-2014, Raha had also stated that delays couldn’t be brooked because the last of the Rafales will enter service only by 2025 by when, and this he didn’t say, these aircraft would be way on the other side of antique. (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/iaf-can-t-afford-delay-in-rafale-deal-air-chief/story-CKAPRC58Tvmd0hHz0BvyrJ.html)

Except two years later and properly worked out, this $25 billion is, actually the projected lifetime cost of just 36 of this aircraft inclusive of the necessary infrastructure, spares, weapons, etc. But two years is a long time and this figure is too big not to balk at. Whence, the Rafale decision, fortunately, is on the verge of becoming a non-starter, notwithstanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s impetuous and, hence, foolish decision to travel to Paris bearing the gift of a buy of a third of the requirement 126 MMRCAs at, as it turns out, about the same total cost! Quick on the uptake, Modi has perhaps realized the costs of his unmerited intervention and is, therefore, staying his and PMO’s (read NSA Ajit Doval’s) hand in pushing the Rafale regardless. In other words, he is leaving it to the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who has favoured the more cost-effective Su-30 MKIs, to extricate him and the country from a difficult situation by not peremptorily nullifying the deal as allowing it to wither away, die a slow death, in the Price Negotiation Committee. It saves Modi’s face with President Francoise Hollande to whom he had made the Rafale buy offer, even as Paris does a slow burn.

Seeking to do an end-run around Parrikar’s Su-30 option, Raha on February 18 this year volunteered that the Rafale, which he insists on calling “MMRCA”, and Sukhoi-30 requirements are “slightly different, [each with its] own capabilities.” “They complement each other but do not replace each other”, he intoned. Important to note he didn’t dilate on just what the differences are between the Rafale and Su-30, or how Rafale is indispensable. Su-30 is primarily an air dominance aircraft that can outdo the Rafale in air defence, interdiction/interception, and strike mission-roles as well. This is vouched for by all the reputed international aviation experts, among them Dr. Karlo Copp, the highly regarded Australian fighter aircraft analyst, who considers Su-30, all things considered on a comparative basis, the best combat aircraft flying, period. Indeed, so pronounced is Su-30’s superiority even a yokel would look askance at IAF’s choice of Rafale. More fundamentally, the low, medium, and heavy combat aircraft categories IAF’s force-structuring plans rely on are at best disingenuous, at worst ridiculous. (For analysis in detail about why this is so and for insights into other aspects of the country’s manifold military weaknesses, do read my book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’!)

The CAS then drew an over-familiar arrow from the IAF’s quiver, namely, a warning about the supposed drawdown of combat squadrons and to deflect potential criticism about rank bad force planning by the IAF HQrs that obtained this deplorable situation, he maintained that air forces everywhere face the same problems of obsolescence in their respective cycles of operations. “It is not new or specific to Indian Air Force,” he assured journalists at Aero India (with almost all media persons entirely innocent about what operational cycles or anything else remotely technical mean and thus are reduced to being just obedient regurgitators of whatever is proffered by uniformed types). Raha added that if the Rafale agreement were inked that day, the first squadron will be available only in three years and the rest in 5-6 years. (http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-02-19/news/59304999_1_sukhoi-iaf-chief-arup-raha). Raha apparently hoped no would notice the discrepancy in the induction timelines he had glossed over. In 2014, he had claimed the last of the Rafales would enter IAF by 2025. By Feb 2016, apprehensive about the definite obsolescence of the Rafale by the 2nd decade of the 21st century becoming a factor in nixing the deal altogether, he had collapsed that time frame for the public’s and Modi govt’s consumption from 11 years to 9 years. Alas, this is a minor matter and akin, as the phrase goes, to dressing up a pig with lipstick.

In March 2016 VCAS Dhanoa, in a concerted attempt in line with Raha’s pronouncements seeking to derail Parrikar, pitched in with the implied criticism of Su-30 with its serviceability alleged in the 35%-40% range by assuming 90% serviceability of the Rafale saying “If we have 35 squadrons and 90 percent serviceability, it will be as good as having [the authorized strength of] 42 squadrons.” By this reckoning the natural solution for India would be to do what’s being planned for the production of Kamov utility helicopters — Tata will also make all the spares in-country, thereby ensuring high serviceability rates. That this solution has not been implemented for the Su-30MKI only confirms HAL’s and IAF’s duffer-headed policies. DCAS Bhadauria joined the melee by citing the US sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, asserting this made his life “more difficult”. He now has “to put more hi-tech platform [read Rafale] against it.” “The MMRCA is designed in such a way”, he explained, “that we need to offset this capability. If you demonstrate your deterrence, we should have peace because he will know that he will be hit very badly.” (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/do-not-have-the-numbers-to-fully-fight-two-front-war-iaf/). This last suggests IAF’s assessment that Rafale can out-match Su-30, really?!! Bhadauria must know something the rest of the aviation world doesn’t.

It is hard to know what to make of the above sort of statements by Messers Raha, Dhanoa & Bhaduaria except to say it smells of quiet desperation to buy French and to persist with the cost-prohibitive import habit IAF (and the armed forces, generally) have cultivated over the years with the connivance of the political and bureaucratic establishment. Such import-tilt is sustained, moreover, by the extraordinarily resilient and entrenched system of payoffs established over the years by the arms vendors and their agents (“commissions” routed to secret offshore accounts, “green card” and equivalent, “scholarships” to prestigious universities and job placements for sons and daughters of secretaries to the central govt — which no one talks about because everybody’s hand, up and down the hierarchy, is in the cookie-jar).

And finally nobody seems to have noticed that the basic problem of combat squadron drawdown is not going to be addressed anytime soon by the Rafale. So, the question arises: Are Raha and his cohort serious about filling the immediate need or not? If they are, and Rafale is manifestly not the answer, why are they equally noisily avoiding indenting for more HAL Nasik-assembled Su-30MKIs, that will be available at a fraction of the cost of Rafale and in vastly big numbers? For everyone’s information, just the up-front $9billion cost of 36 Rafales will fetch India 130 of the fully armed Su-30s, with newly bought units inductable inside of two years. It highlights IAF’s insidious intent to acquire the Rafale at the cost of beggaring the country. This quite curious behaviour by those in high posts in the service is rightly a matter of public concern and may in time to come require investigation as it tilts against the national interest and toward the ultimately unclear and unexplainable weightage the IAF leadership has accorded a particular exorbitantly priced Western combat aircraft.

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Nothing major in Mauritius

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Just returned from a short visit to the Hindu community-dominated and beautiful archipelagic country, Mauritius — India’s natural anchor in the southwestern Indian Ocean, if only Delhi had the political will and the geostrategic wit to clasp it. Met some prosperous businessmen — all Bihari stock (the largest portion of the indentured labour the British transported in the 19th Century to that island to work on the sugar plantations, with Tamils next, and smaller representations from other parts of India following in their train).

When asked about the North and South Agalega Islands proximal to peninsular India, they said the Mauritian govt was keeping it all very hush-hush. Nobody vouched for this, but there were hints that official permits were needed to fly to these islands. Perhaps, what was being referred to was the electronic intelligence station and radar systems on these islands forming with like setups in Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives and northern Mozambique, what I have said in my writings and recent book, is a communications and surveillance grid in the so encompassed oceanic expanse. But there’s less here than meets the eye.

The establishing of the communications & radar station on Mauritius took a long time, becoming operational some 10-15 years after the Indian govt first began talks and reached an agreement after years of haggling. The then Labour Party regime of Navin Ramgoolam in Port Louis signed it in 1996. The original plan was ambitious. It conceived of a full-fledged Indian presence on the Agalegas under pretext of a resort run by an Indian hotel major — Tata’s or Oberois’s, to deflect pressure from France, for instance, which was also eyeing these islands for military use. The long lag time between agreement and its partial realization was owing to the usual and familiar systemic problems, among them, finding somebody in Delhi to own up the great idea, lead the charge and push in a sustained fashion for it, and getting the monies for such vast project at a time when India was resource-scarce. These private hoteliers (with resorts on the main island) baulked, for instance, at investing in the necessary infrastructure — a desalination plant costing some $150 million to provide a steady supply of potable water, and power plant, etc for the supposed resort.

But the chief military purpose of the Agalegas never quite took off — not least ‘coz (as revealed in my book’Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ the IAF leadership even less than the naval brass were not all that into having an airfield on North Agalega able to receive heavy airlifters and, to complement it, a naval base for a forward Indian naval flotilla presence in around a fine deep water harbour in the neighbouring South Agalega Island. So in the years since, besides the elint stuff, the airfield is ready but not a large jetty to berth a number of warships and the other support facilities. But just so the French (with presence on the nearby Reunion Island, part of the French Indian Ocean Territories) or the Chinese (putting down littoral roots in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar) do not sneak into the Agalegas even as Delhi endlessly and uselessly debates and discusses — and then in a low key, their military utility, India secured an understanding from the Mauritian govt that no other country would be permitted to establish anything remotely of military use there.

So, despite every strategic provocation by China, India has not marshaled the resources it can for such military bases to obtain a sort of hammerlock on the southern and western Indian Ocean, but has prevented other countries from doing so either — which last the Indian govt considers a stellar accomplishment! Port Louis, meanwhile, is only concerned, by way of quid pro quo, that India maintain the current financial system enabling Mauritius to continue as the primary channel for re-routing Indian monies (black and white) back into India w/o tax liabilities. This middleman role is lucrative and constitutes a large part of the revenue of this stat — and very small price for India to pay.

This habitual disregard by a succession of strategically feeble-minded Indian govts for the geostrategic verities is hard to explain, except as product of the trademark ennui and inertia that have long since become known as Delhi’s calling card. So, consider this: India has refurbished and lengthened the Farkhor air base in Ainee, Tajikistan, but there’s no sign of the squadron of Su-30s that was to be deployed there. India has the Agalegas for the asking but is doing little in a major military way about it. Similarly, Mozambique’s offer of a naval base for Indian warships to settle in has not been acted upon. This is criminal negligence of the country’s strategic interests that one had hoped the “nationalist” BJP govt under Narendra Modi would reverse. No such luck. Among the first countries he visited, Modi may have signed some agreements, including re: the Agalegas, but so far there’s only slight movement. Why India needs any pretext or cover for a security agreement to lease out the outer Mauritian islands is a mystery — but this apparently is MEA’s contribution to the mess (besides lack of leadership of the issue, shared with MOD).

What will it take to strategically rouse Delhi into acting on the country’s behalf and get going on distant defence — the surefire guarantee of India’s long term security? It is only a matter of time before China succeeds in weaning Mauritius away from India, the Hindu majority, notwithstanding, with oodles of financial and economic inducements, investment, and aid, and then we’ll be stuck with having to contend with a Chinese stranglehold on the lower Indian Ocean as well. Wouldn’t it be better, in the circumstances — Mr Modi, NSA Ajit Doval — for India to preempt such inevitable Chinese moves by confronting them with the fait accompli of a rapidly built-up and fully functional Indian naval and air bases on the Agalegas, Indian military units on the ground, including army and marine commandos on rotational short-term stints, and transfer of armaments, than trying painfully to recover lost ground (as happened in Sri Lanka, Myanmar)? If India did that, Mauritius will finally feel safe, considering it is all but unarmed. (An ancient rust bucket — a small corvette type vessel is seen anchored forlornly off the touristy stretch of Le Caudan, which, apparently, is about all the protection Mauritius can summon for itself.)

Then again with the utterly wasteful and, military-wise, near nonsensical Rafale deal hanging fire, are the Agalegas too some sort of a pawn to involve France in the strategic game afoot in the Indian Ocean? This makes no more sense than buying the Rafale as MMRCA because the US is present in strength in Diego Garcia (detached from Mauritian control in 1963 by the departing imperial power, UK, and handed over to the American armed forces) not too far away, and is far more capable than France will ever be.

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