No LEMOA — possible reasons

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The Logistics Support Agreement the US has been keen on and which the visiting US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter had hoped to sign, has been put off. This despite advance notices in the media of the draft-Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), a watered down variant of the standard LSA providing restrictive, case-by-case, access for the deployed military of each side to the other’s military bases for replenishment and R&R purposes, being ready for signature. However, LSA is “tweaked” it will still bear the taint of a formal military partnership, will be used more by US forces in the IOR theater than Indian forces will use American bases and, hence, will always be one-sided. Moreover, where’s the need for such an agreement tying India down, willy-nilly, to the US strategic camp when in these past many years, US assets have been refueled and replenished on an as and when requested-basis w/o any formal accord?

So, the signing of LEMOA is postponed. That’s a relief for the nonce. A last minute rethink may have been occasioned for the followings reasons: (1) It would have raised a political storm. However tattered the country’s unaligned status, deciding so overtly to go over to the US side, as it were, reduces hugely India’s room for policy maneuver. (2) The troubling transfer of F-16s and Viper attack helos to Pakistan in the face of Delhi voicing its discomfiture, suggests Washington’s ongoing military supply relationship with Islamabad is unlikely to be moderated even a bit whatever closeness may be achieved by higher degrees of military cooperation. Meaning in practical policy terms, while the US retains its policy latitude, India losses its freedom of action. (3) China can be kept quiet with fluid and contingent partnerships of the kind India has tried out, including with Southeast Asian states, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, and US, perhaps, far better than by signing on with the US. And most importantly (5) It will really throw a monkey wrench into the hardy and resilient Indo-Russian relations. Moscow had formally warned Delhi that should it sign CISMOA, for instance, the Akula-II in service with the Indian Navy would be immediately pulled, and the 2nd such SSN — the Iribis, will, of course, not be lent to India, and the transfer of other more advanced Russian military hardware could also be affected. Why specifically the Akula pullout? Because, per sources, the Russians fear that the air-to-submarine communications, which this agreement will technically facilitate, will permit the Americans to spoof the communications hardware on the ex-Russian SSN, etc., a risk the Russians are unwilling to take notwithstanding any assurances in this regard at any level by the Indian state. The ending of a Russian role in the country’s strategic armaments field will be a singular development, and perhaps grievously hurt India’s strategic posture in the future. This warning may have led to the draft- CISMOA, which was also negotiated, being put on ice.

Indira Gandhi signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in summer 1971 as cover for the military operations she expected to launch in East Pakistan later in the year. But she successfully prevented Moscow in subsequent years from using this document as a tool for Russian navy to gain permanent military access to India’s warm water ports — despite sustained political and diplomatic pressure from President Leonid Brezhnev. It is precisely military access when required that the US too seeks some 45 years later, except the Bharatiya Janata Party government of Narendra Modi, over-tilting to the West, is not proving as adroit in maintaining distance from the US or in balancing American, Russian and Chinese influences. Modi seems smitten by America (and the West, generally), and losing the plot on how to further the national interest. LEMOA is the thin edge of the wedge. It will be used by Washington to widen the US military and other presence in India, which an over-committed Modi, a little too gung-ho on the supposed technology benefits of getting close to America, will be unable to resist.

Before the prime minister proceeds down a ruinous path that will terminally hobble India, he should get some credible persons, even if informally, to do an objective analysis of the comparative levels of military technology the country has procured from the US and Russia, and if Russian tech TOT deals haven’t fructified, whether it is not the extant DPSU and public sector dominated-mil R&D system and entrenched arms import lobby to blame, and whether his “make in India” programme really needs such treaty intimacy with the US for it to prosper. Of course, if such a study is tasked to the usual lot of compromised, retired and serving, civil servants, MEA diplomats, and militarymen, we already know what their conclusions will be, and it will be a wasted effort.

Modi, Parrikar, and those advising them should pause and consider if they are doing the right thing by the country in light of the historical record of India’s relations with the United States, and US’ own interests in the immediate region and Asia, and its overarching deep political and economic interlinkages with China. Modi is here today, may not be here tomorrow, but India will always be there. Don’t do anything, Mr Prime Minister, that will harm India’s prospects.

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Offer Ash Carter a meaningful multilateral initiative to counter China

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

India’s attitude and policy towards China, surprisingly, hasn’t deviated even a little bit after the BJP assumed power in May 2014. If anything, Narendra Modi’s government has shown even greater reticence if that’s possible than the predecessor Manmohan Singh setup in taking on China. This despite Beijing’s moves steadily to grow its presence in the Indian Ocean region and to emerge as a player regional states have to reckon with. It was expected — this was more a hope than any real indication by candidate Modi — that BJP with a view to burnishing its “nationalist” reputation would be less passive on the northern and the northeastern borders, and that the forward deployed Indian army units would be told to be more “in the face” of the Chinese PLA troops facing them. It turns out just the reverse is happening. Indian units have been told actually to cease doing anything the PLA objects to. Thus, according to a press report, Indian troops who were constructing a water channel from a hot spring source on the Indian side of LAC in the Demchok area of Ladakh were instructed to heed PLA’s objections to such activity and stop it. This water was sought by the local people who, understandably, are upset that New Delhi is more concerned about placating the Chinese than meeting their need in the high-altitude arid terrain they subsist in.

This is the usual submissive approach to China that I have long decried. So the recommendation that follows for the Indian Defence Minister Parrikar to propose to the US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter in their April 12 meeting joint or, even better, multilateral actions to stop Beijing from realizing its expansive “nine dash line” claims in the South China Sea, will obviously be ignored by a fearful Indian government.

The context for such multilateral action is China’s dredging the waters around the Scarborough Shoal 125 miles from the Philippines preparatory to what Manila fears will be the creation of yet another artificial island air base conjured out of cementing dredged up sand, corals, and earth, which will then be used to justify Chinese claims and exclusive ownership of these narrow seas.

The US has informed Beijing it does not respect the ADIZ (air defence identification zone) in the skies off the Chinese coast, and has sent a US warship on a “freedom of navigation” (FON) patrol through the disputed waters, attracting nothing more than a bit of finger wagging by the Chinese. This has to be followed up with more such patrols but constituted with warships from a whole bunch of countries effected by the disputable Chinese claims. Parrikar should offer, for a start, that Indian naval ships will join American warships in periodic sailings through these waters on FON mission. And agree to persuade littoral states in the region — Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Australia to also join in such patrolling. The problem with single state FON sailings is that China can easily intimidate and thwart them by pressuring the country undertaking it. Even the US has not been immune to such pressure. But a flotilla comprising naval vessels from three, five, or seven regional states will be more difficult for Beijing to handle in the manner it has done single states — by huffing and puffing, and hinting at more decisive military action. This way forcefully to impose the collective will of regional states will have a more salutary effect on China than anything else.

For once, New Delhi needs to lead such an initiative to gain credence especially with Southeast Asian states who are convinced India is all talk and no action. Carter will be taken aback by this show of new found Indian resolve, no doubt, and will likely jump at it. Even if Carter doesn’t, India should proceed with this initiative, try and get other regional countries to join it in opposing China’s adventurism. It will be a welcome departure for the staid and stale no-risk national security strategy New Delhi has followed. It could be the first among other such actions India could take to push China on the defensive.

But, realistically, does the Modi government have the moxy for such enterprise that will serve India’s distant defence interests very well? Nah.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Australia, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Japan, Northeast Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Western militaries | 30 Comments

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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