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.

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‘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.

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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.

Posted in Africa, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Defence Industry, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Maldives, Myanmar, SAARC, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Sri Lanka, Weapons, Western militaries | 4 Comments

A-5 test launch cancelled

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Just learned that the test firing of the canisterized Agni-5 that was earlier scheduled for yesterday and postponed virtually at the last hour, has now been cancelled altogether, at least in the present time window. This decision at the highest levels of govt was owing to Washington’s supposed allergy to rising powers displaying their distant strike capabilities. The K-4 SLBM fired from a moored underwater pontoon tube system tested March 8 was, unlike the A-5, not in a ready state of induction. A-5, hermetically sealed in a canister with a dummy warhead, was set to be launched from its mobile platform to its full range, whence the Modi PMO’s hesitation.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Forces Command, United States, US., Weapons | 13 Comments

Missile test-launch schedule altered

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

A second test firing of a cannisterized Agni-5 IRBM, which was announced by DRDO early Feb without the date being revealed, was scheduled from Balasore on the Odisha coast today. It didn’t take place. Instead, a 700km A-1 MRBM was launched, perhaps, as consolation. The talk is the instructions for this change came from PMO which was concerned US President Barack Obama would have been upset by the symbolically “provocative” action of firing a long range missile in the run-up to the nuclear security summit in Washington, thereby imperiling the “success” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip, March 31-April 1.

The problem though is DRDO’s launch schedule cannot so casually be trifled with because there’s high level of preparations that are involved. As mentioned in a previous blog the window for the test firings is for this week. It remains to be seen if the A-5 was merely postponed or taken off the table altogether and should the cannisterized A-5 launch not happen in the next few days, then those in the know claim it’d be a good indication of the BJP govt bending to US’ will much as its predecessor Congress Party regime had done during its tenure, and the desire to please the US Govt is uppermost in its mind rather than the national interest.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, disarmament, domestic politics, DRDO, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Ocean, Missiles, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 5 Comments

Securing realism at the Washington summit

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The United States President Barack Obama, perhaps, to justify his winning the Nobel Peace Prize for just one peroration in Prague in April 2009 initiated the so-called nuclear security summits. Ironically, in the speech, he did not promise any progress towards a “world without nuclear weapons”, but mentioned the need for nuclear governance measures within the confines of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to protect “vulnerable nuclear material”. It is something these summits have pondered, and the last of which — Obama’s diplomatic swan song is scheduled in Washington appropriately for Fool’s Day (March 31-April 1). Except, measures to keep nukes away from terrorists and madmen only underline the iniquitous nuclear status quo and, where disarmament is concerned, amounts to putting the cart before the horse.

New Delhi’s enthusiasm for these summits is incomprehensible. Animated less by national interest than a desire to join the causes dear to the US, Indian prime ministers have been imprudent, ignoring the wisdom of staying aloof from such international conferences that invariably end up eroding India’s freedom of strategic action and room for foreign policy manoeuvre. Responsible for negotiating the deleterious nuclear deal with the US, which stymied the country’s development of thermonuclear weapons fetched India nothing in return — neither the rights and privileges of a nuclear weapons state nor the membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as assured by the July 18, 2005 joint statement signed between then US President George W Bush and then prime minister Manmohan Singh. Singh, however, attended the first two of these summits.

As if to prove he is no laggard in conceding sovereign nuclear policy ground, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has prepared for the Washington conference by formally committing to join the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC). This gesture, while doubtless pleasing to the US government and Western nuclear industry leaders, who can expect to sell India nuclear power plants worth tens of billions of dollars, violates the 2010 Nuclear Liability Act. This made foreign vendors accountable for accidents sourced to deficient or flawed nuclear reactors and related technologies they supply, and does not limit their compensation to victims, as the CSC does to $300 million. Modi’s flouting the Act means the Indian taxpayer not only pays through his nose for technologically faulty imported nuclear reactors but, in the case of nuclear accidents, also for compensatory payouts in excess of the CSC cap, which could potentially run into billions of dollars.

Nuclear governance presumes a stable nuclear order. But the extant regime has always been roiled by the ongoing strategic force modernisation and augmentation programmes of the five NPT-recognised nuclear weapons states (P5). It has destroyed Article VI of the NPT requiring disarmament negotiations in good faith by the P5 and hence the treaty itself.

The US is investing $1 trillion to rebuild its strategic triad over 30 years or $35 billion annually, including the upgrading of the B61 Mod 12 tactical nuclear bomb, designing new “tailored yield” thermonuclear warheads, developing next generation strategic bomber and nuclear-powered submarines in order to achieve, what deputy secretary of defence Bob Work called “technological overmatch” against Russia and China. Russia is spending some $16 billion a year in sharpening its nuclear attack capability, stressing the centrality of its modernised arsenal in future wars and as means of compensating for its conventional military inferiority (thereby neatly reversing its thrust of the Cold War when it enjoyed a massive conventional military edge). Moscow has embarked on a new strategic bomber (Tu-PAK DA) project, and deployed the advanced Borei-class ballistic nuclear missile firing nuclear submarine (SSBN), and the Topol-M Inter-Continental range Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that President Vladimir Putin has deemed “indefensible”.

China with an annual expenditure in excess of $10 billion on its newly named Strategic Rocket Forces is the only P5 state increasing the size of its nuclear arms inventory besides fielding new fusion warheads on DF-21A and DF-31 missiles, and the JL-2 submarine-launched missile from the new Jin-class SSBN. Meanwhile, Britain and France, each with yearly budgets for strategic forces of around $7 billion, are seeking to modernise their thermonuclear warheads by sharing in fusion weapons advancement infrastructure (Teutates programme), such as the multi-axes hydrographic-radiographic testing EPURE facility at Valduc with second and third laser streams becoming operational by 2019 and 2022, respectively in the inertial confinement fusion facility in Bordeaux. The British nuclear weapons establishment at Aldermaston has just improved the W76-1Mk-4 hydrogen warhead for hardened targets, and installed the Orion laser that is a thousand times more powerful than the Helen system it replaced.

The militant tilt of the P5 aside, China continues to undermine India’s nuclear security by transferring to Pakistan design expertise to configure new missiles and miniaturise its fission warheads. The Modi government, much like its predecessor, has reacted to the skewing of the international and regional nuclear military “correlation of forces” by actually strengthening the decrepit NPT system that has victimised India by, among other things, reiterating the testing moratorium. Disowning a treaty it is not signatory to, resuming open-ended testing to extend the country’s thermonuclear muscle and reach, and responding, however belatedly, to China’s proliferation excesses with tit-for-tat transfer of critical nuclear missile technologies to countries such as Vietnam, on the Chinese periphery, is the way to go. But New Delhi seems content only with occasionally tom-tomming India’s ICBM and thermonuclear punch when, in fact, absence of evidence indicates evidence of absence of any such capabilities.

It is time Modi departed from the traditional script and spoke candidly at the Washington summit about the irreparable NPT regime and hinted at India’s options. He may win himself and the country leverage and respect by speaking the truth.
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Published in the Hindustan Times, March 15, 2016 at “http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/securing-realism-at-the-washington-summit/story-of5K9XPAwZuEAXIWmtD77H.html, and and in the print edition entitled “Let’s rewrite the script now”.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, disarmament, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons, Western militaries | 2 Comments

India in America’s coils?

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

This is a piece on the likelihood and the ramifications of the Modi govt signing the so-called “foundational agreements” starting with the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), published today (March 11, 2016) in thecitizen.in — ‘India’s First Independent Online Daily’, at http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/1/7109/India-in-Americas-Coils. It is a topic I have been writing about for several years now, and explored in some depth in my new book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ as well. But apparently it is not a matter of concern for many people in the country.
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It is a devastating turn of events – the indication that the Bharatiya Janata Party government will soon sign the three so-called “foundational” accords with the United States that Washington has been fiercely pushing in the past decade.

The Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) is first in line. The other two agreements are the CISMOA (Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement) and BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for geospatial information and data).

LSA, the most significant of these, will permit the military forces of each country to resupply and replenish, and stage operations out of the other’s military air bases, land facilities, and ports. CISMOA will allow integration of the communications networks and systems enabling the two sides, for example, to mount military actions together, assist unit and higher echelon commanders to converse in peacetime and war, using real time communications links, and to share classified data and information. BECA will, in the main, facilitate the exchange of sensitive information picked up by sensors on satellites and other space-based platforms.

There are some tactical military advantages to accepting some of these accords, such as BECA which will, with digitized maps, cue Indian missiles and combat aircraft to target coordinates. But there are many more negative geopolitical and strategic consequences to becoming America’s military ally in all but name. These aspects have not been publicly discussed and the government is getting a free pass to drastically change India’s geostrategics and foreign policy. But first a bit of recent history to contextualize this development.

In India ideology has always been conflated with foreign policy and suggests that elected governments in New Delhi are motivated only minimally by concerns of national interest. Thus, left-of-centre Congress party governments, besides “socialist” policy nostrums and statist solutions for socio-economic ills of the country, have invariably aligned foreign and defence policies with what used to be the Soviet Bloc and, post-Cold War, owing to inertia in official thinking, with Russia.

Likewise, the ideologically right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party when in power talked individual initiative and free enterprise at home and sported a US (and generally, West)-friendly attitude abroad. Even so, different party and coalition regimes never overstepped the bounds of the “consensus” view of not closing in with any great power. Balance of power has always been preferred in the external realm and, whenever possible, India has also acted as balancer in the global system to maintain equilibrium. It made for an accretion in India’s political, diplomatic, and military leverage and heft, and obtained a stable international “correlation of forces” which, because it was prevented from ever tipping over, did not permanently favour any particular power and skew the game.

This policy stance and world view began wavering in the last decade. The Congress Party government under Manmohan Singh in 2004-2014, instead of gently steering the policy back to mid-channel, as it were, followed up on the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP government’s NSSP (Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership) initiative, made quite extraordinary concessions to the United States for the civilian nuclear cooperation deal. This deal predicated on New Delhi’s sticking with the so-called “voluntary moratorium” announced by Vajpayee after the 1998 Shakti series of nuclear tests, a decision made with little forethought even less strategic foresight, hobbled not just India’s thermonuclear weapons capability and the indigenous nuclear industry based on reactors run on natural uranium and the abundant locally available thorium to attain energy independence envisaged by the 1955 three-stage Bhabha Plan, but lofted America into the central position in the country’s geopolitics and foreign policy.

As this analyst had predicted, the disastrous nuclear deal led to growing pressures on the Indian government to mesh Indian policy interests with those of Washington and to ground intimate military cooperation and coordination supposedly to address common threats – China and Islamic terrorism, in the foundational agreements. The Barack Obama Administration also cleverly weaved the issue of India’s access to US high-technology and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ rhetoric into the emerging matrix, saying that without these accords the Indian demand for high-technology collaboration wouldn’t materialize.

The trouble is these accords will mainly achieve for the US its grand strategic objective of reducing India, in effect, to a client state, like, well, Pakistan! It is a denouement the country had avoided in the Fifties and Sixties when it survived on US aid largesse and “ship to mouth” American PL 480 grain and, more recently, during the otherwise pliant dispensation of Manmohan Singh owing to the stonewalling by the Leftist defence minister, A.K. Antony.

So, what’s the problem? LSA requires portions of the host country’s air and land bases set aside for use by its military units and of ports where its ships will berth, to be literally taken over by American personnel with responsibility for any and all activity in these delineated zones coming under exclusive US authority. Thus, the US exercises near absolute control of parts of the Pakistan Air Force base at Jacobabad.

This arrangement is meant to ensure security of US military assets and secrecy of missions undertaken by them. In essence, the host country loses sovereign control over portions of its own territory. True, with local sensitivities in mind, the LSA with India may be tweaked for dual or joint control with US activity in these areas possibly coming under some sort of attenuated Indian oversight. But it will not dilute the fact that a foreign power will wield authority in India, which last happened when the British colonials lorded over this country.

What India gets in return – the ability of Indian naval ships and submarines to be resupplied in Diego Garcia, say, and for aircraft to refuel there, will doubtless extend India’s maritime density and presence and air surveillance reach. But the garnering of such facilities begs the larger geostrategic question as to why New Delhi has not established naval and air bases in North and South Agalega Islands the Mauritius government long ago offered India, and on the northern Mozambique coast where Maputo has been urging India to emplace its naval units. The Agalega and Mozambiqan bases would make the Indian military independent of any need for a mid-oceanic resupply option provided by Diego Garcia, courtesy the US.

Why be beholden to a foreign power whose interests do not overlap with India’s, when the country can have distant and separate military presence in Mauritius and the East African littoral? Besides, the Indian military oriented to territorial defence, will nowhere utilize the far flung US bases and military resources as much as the more actively deployed US military units in the Indian Ocean and West Asia will use Indian bases. So, on balance which country’s interests does the LSA actually serve?

CISMOA is extraneous to the need for the simple reason that the lack of a shared communications grid has not stopped interoperability from being realized by jerry-built solutions, which have proved adequate. In the annual Malabar naval exercises, for instance, Indian and US ships communicate through the US-supplied Centrix interface plugged into Indian vessels and manned by American seamen to permit ship-to-ship and command communications.

Moreover, some sections of the Indian armed forces have so far resisted the idea of integrating communications system because of the not unreasonable fear it will permit US “penetration” of the Indian military command, control, and communications net to the highest levels, and the insertion of cyber warfare-capable, remotely activated, “bugs” that can extract, store, and transmit classified information, and sabotage it.

BECA will become redundant once the entire Indian constellation of some 13 satellites is up which will happen inside of another five years. With the successful launch of the sixth IRNSS satellite the system is more than half way there, and has sub-metre photo imagery capacity and a footprint covering the entire sea and landmass of Asia relevant to India’s security concerns.

There will, however, be a more telling fallout. A miffed Russia, already apprehensive about India’s increasing military closeness to the US and the West, may decide to shrink technology transfer and assistance programmes in the most sensitive and critical strategic armament areas, such as in developing a powerful highly enriched uranium-fueled nuclear power plant to run the second Kochi-built aircraft carrier, the 65,000 ton-class INS Vishal. Really crucial high value technology help is not, under any circumstances, something Washington will render for love or money. A sufficiently riled Moscow could virtually instantly bring the Indian conventional military, strategic forces, DRDO, and defence industry to its knees (and its senses?) by withdrawing its support and collaborative help.

Then there’s the fact that US military presence on Indian soil will attract the attentions of jihadis and Islamist radicals, ranging from the al-Qaeda and Islamic State, to the garden variety terrorist outfits — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, and its ilk, and their local offshoots. Because India will be responsible for the overall security of American military materiel and manpower in India, the central, state and local Indian government, police, and intelligence agencies will have their hands full trying to keep Americans and their property safe. And any shortfalls in security leading to successful terrorist attacks on American personnel and assets will blow up in New Delhi’s face.

It is not certain the Modi government has considered any of the politico-military ramifications of signing the three agreements and their social impact, properly assessed the dire internal security risks of terrorists targeting the American presence, nor pondered the political and diplomatic costs and the debilitating effects of India being perceived in the world as an American appendage rather than as a proud and independent country and emerging great power in Asia to rival China.

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Cyber & Space, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Military Acquisitions, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, satellites, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Terrorism, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 49 Comments

K-4 launched but media not informed

Posted on March 9, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

As anticipated in previous blog, the K-4 SLBM was successfully test-fired from an underwater pontoon off Vizag on Monday, March 7. The govt/DRDO have still to inform the media/press about it. The logic behind such rationing of publicity, however, escapes me. Sure, a failed launch is best kept under wraps. But the success of what is a decisive nuclear warhead delivery system from submerged platform is something that needs to be crowed about a bit, just so everybody knows. May be GOI/DRDO will later, if not sooner, get to this task.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Weapons | 6 Comments