N-“flashpoint” for 3rd party intervention

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The nuclear “flashpoint” is the usual reason trotted out especially by Western thinktanks to gather willing Indian and Pakistani commentators and get the whole caboodle to endorse the official US, UK, or other view that to ward off a nuclear exchange, Western intervention is necessary. Most subcontinentals with variable knowledge of issues nuclear are easily roped in for the purpose because they crave invitations to such conclaves in the hope that these will lead to more such invitations and to short or long term attachments with the host and other participating institutions. Have never ever heard any of these South Asian invitees to do other than in various ways end up supporting the view that because Indians and Pakistanis cannot take care of the business of keeping themselves and their countries safe from rogues, hotheads, and similar variety of undesirables ostensibly populating the governments and the strategic forces commands in their home countries, or their inability generally to keep a cool head in crises, that well-meaning US government forays into peace-making and peace-keeping is in order. It is understandable why retired Pakistani generals and the like would stoke the idea of a pressure-cooker situation obtaining along the LOC — after all Islamabad has always sought such intervention as an antidote to certain annihilation in a nuclear exchange and, in any case, have desired international intervention in the Kashmir dispute. If the possibility of a Kashmir confrontation can get such attention, then damned if they don’t put light to that tinder. What isn’t clear is why Indian commentators seem so eager to buttress the case of an inherently unstable situation when, in reality, it is anything but, unless it is for aforementioned reasons.

As I have argued since 1987, in fact, the subcontinent has reached a meta-stable state in security relations, which cannot easily be disturbed. Unless the concerns of a really skewed exchange ratio — the extinction of Pakistan for a couple of Indian cities, notwithstanding, GHQ, Rawalpindi, is determined on national suicide. After all, the Pakistan Army has been nothing if not thoroughly professional particularly in gauging its own severe limitations and how far it can push India short of provoking it to deliver a fatal blow. This is the point I have made to Western and Pakistani audiences, and it is a telling one that has brooked little refutation. It is not a point welcomed, however, by thinktanks in America and Western Europe because it robs their governments of a line that accommodates a go-between/mediator role for the US, UK, et al, and the thintanks in question of a good part of their funding available to them by generating scenarios of prospective apocalypse that scares everybody to death. And, any promise to prevent it — including by such soirees — opens up the purse strings! In the event, herding a bunch of professional Indian seminar-ists with variable grip on deterrence reality, history, or even the national interest, is not difficult. They are relied upon to mouth stuff conforming to the laid down script. The still grander aim of such do’s is by slow degrees to build up a regional consensus to draw India fully into the nuclear nonproliferation treaty net. (This little disquisition is triggered by a newsreport of a conference on “limited nuclear war” hosted by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory with grants for this exercise sourced to the US National Nuclear Security Administration.)

Isn’t it time an Indian government with some strategic wits about it hosted an international conference about the nuclear touch-trigger situation now obtaining in Europe and the imminence of a US-Russian nuclear war which, by the way, is a far greater possibility than a nuclear conflagration in South Asia? So if the US and Russia are not going to blow themselves up, neither are India and Pakistan.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian Politics, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 6 Comments

Buying what with $3 billion?`

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Narendra Modi is making it a habit of trying futilely to buy respect, soft attitude, or consideration — it isn’t clear what, by approving multi-billion dollar military hardware acquisitions either just before or, springing surprises, during his trips abroad as happened with his announcement in Paris of the purchase of some 2 squadrons or 36 Rafales. These countries will glad-hand Modi, and just as gladly take India’s money. With the US visit looming, the finalization of the $3 billion deal for two types of helicopters — 22 of the Apache for ground attack and 15 Chinooks for heavy lift was on the cards. With cabinet decision it’s settled.

Note that despite all the talk of ‘Make in India’ and indigenization, that as regards these government-to-government (G2G) deals that Washington in particular favours, there’s absolutely no question of any technology transfer. These are off-the-shelf buys where India forks out the money and the supplier state/Company pockets it. It may cut out the middlemen-commission agents and minimize the attendant corruption, true. But there’s also no offsets, no tech, no long term benefits, no nothing. And because it zeroes out the possibility of in-country production, the country is even more at the mercy of the supplier state for spares and servicing support, with the ever-present danger of the entire fleet or formation with such armaments and weapons platforms being grounded if policy differences grow between Delhi and the supplier state for any reason at all, as is bound to happen. In other words, there’s no guarantee that operations of these aircraft — Apaches and Chinooks as much as the Rafales, can be sustained at intense rates in, say, a conflict against Pakistan, where the interest of the US, for instance, would be in limiting and constraining the military force India can bring to bear. Obviously none of these factors have been scrutinized, and if pondered, given their due weightage.

Now, other supplier states, such as Russia, will ask for similar mode because along with money they also acquire political-diplomatic leverage in a neat package! Is this not known to GOI? Or does the govt believe that Modi’s charm will over-ride these aspects? Or, perhaps, Modi is convinced that buying goodwill with high-value arms transactions is the way for India to make a mark, get traction in foreign capitals, and advance the national interest. As history, however, shows such tactics/moves only reflect policy bankruptcy.

Worse, such G2G deals firm up the transactional bent of bilateral relations which many even in this govt have decried, because it fetches the country few benefits other than having impressive-on-paper orders of battle. This is one way to pushback full-scale indigenization and arms independence, empty the treasury, and obtain a hollow military capability. There are always repercussions.

Unfortunately for Modi, the Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington around the same time and the contrast couldn’t be starker. The Obama Admin is preparing an agreement to lay down rules of cyber warfare that originally contained many do’s but mostly don’ts that Beijing peremptorily rejected, because China is unwilling to accept a skewed arrangement benefitting the US. So the agreement will protect most of China’s interests, including its latitude to attack US economic facilities, etc. Xi too is pleading for lines of economic cooperation to be kept open, except he is also holding out a threat. Modi, on the other hand, goes thither as a supplicant asking for investment, FDI, without however preparing the ground in the country to receive it with administrative, labour and tax reforms foreign investors want. So, again, we’ll have pledges of investment amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars that eventuate in only a trickle and then of investment funds whose managers are bold enough to accept at face value the Indian PM’s promises. And oh, yes,we’ll get a televised eyeful of occasions where large gatherings of flag-waving, Modi-hurrahing NRIs shouting themselves hoarse let off patriotic steam, safely offshore!

This is not what many of us who early plonked for Modi as a hard nationalist and fervently desired his electoral success, hoped and, even less, expected. May be, we misread the man, that he is in fact just another ‘namoona’ from the Indian political mainstream, another version of Manmohan Singh — with no strategic vision, will, or many good ideas and a willing captive of the bureaucracy and the permanent establishment. What a disappointment!!

Posted in 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 strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 17 Comments

Su-35 nudge?

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Top guys in Israeli and Russian establishments such as Deputy NSA Maj Gen (ret) Amos Gilad and Ambassador Alexander Kadakin respectively are fond of saying where military supply and security cooperation is concerned that “the sky is the limit”! But the sky has a limit — restricted to the belt around the earth with oxygen — beyond which’s space. Which’s to say Moscow has reached its limit, and is starting to make things very sticky for India. One of the costs of relying on outside powers — any external supplier — for armaments, as I have been stressing over the years, is the country puts itself in a tourniquet that can be turned tight any time. Kremlin has already indicated with its sale of the Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan that it will not hesitate to push India into a hole. With the news that Su-35 fighter-bomber with AESA radar — that the Strategic Forces Command had sought as dedicated manned bomber element in the strategic triad, is now being offered Islamabad. It exposes Indian pigeons to the Paki cat.It may well be that this is a tactic to nudge New Delhi into choosing this aircraft as the MMRCA need that 36 Rafales cannot meet with full TOT and all the aircraft produced here to meet “Make in India” strictures. But the threat is real of the Russians substantively arming Pakistan with frontline armaments to make up for the loss of Indian sales. But lots more is at risk. To-date Russia has been the only country that has helped India out in its most sensitive projects — Arihant SSBNs, Agni missiles, etc. It is not the sort of assistance available in the market or that any other country will be willing to give for love or money. Assuming India will eventually reach the point of arms independence despite resistance from an imports-loving Indian military, then it is now in the transition stage when some hand-holding will still be required. However, an alienated Russia may imperil the larger strategic objective. The Modi government has to be very careful that in its desire to court the West it doesn’t take the wrong step.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US. | 7 Comments

Height of naivete

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

There’s apparently no end to the Indian government’s naivete even with a supposedly hardheaded Narendra Modi running the show. New Delhi discovered anew — surprise! surprise! — that the Big Three — the US, China and Russia far from helping lubricate India’s much-craved passage into membership of the UN Security Council, will actually go all out, use every means and underhanded stratagem, to ensure India does not get within even smelling distance of it. Originally, the MEA touted the adoption of a consensus resolution to use the long-in-the-works framework document laying out the case for the expansion of the Security Council by the UN General Assembly as basis for negotiation, as an enormous success and show of India’s diplomatic heft. Once it became clear to our diplomatic dunderheads — who cannot see the obvious barreling down at them — that it would be rough going with Moscow and Beijing, doing the dirty work also of the US, being intent on injecting some esoteric/tangential technical issues into the negotiating text to guarantee long many years of further frustrating (from Delhi’s perspective) negotiations before anything is brought to the main stage of negotiation, the MEA is now satisfied with having thwarted the Chinese-led moves designed to derail the consideration of India for a permanent seat in the UNSC. As victories go, this was distinctly minor stuff — more procedural than substantive — but not if you believe the MEA!

The real hard slog begins now. One hopes the Modi government is going into this with its eyes wide open and not with some fluff in their brains that the path is cleared for India to take its place at the apex level. That age when Nehru in the mid-Fifties was offered the Koumintang China-Taiwan’s seat in UNSC by both the US and USSR and which offer the Indian PM in a fit of extreme national self-abnegation summarily and contemptuously rejected, canvassing successfully to seat Maozedong’s China in the UNSC instead, is now long gone. But the ramification of that bit of extraordinarily foolish generosity is that the now ensconced China is determined to veto India’s entry and make it pay the full price and more for Nehru’s stupidity and/or cupidity. But the harsh reality is still not digested by New Delhi despite fifty years of evidence that the clear-eyed Chinese leadership will simply not permit India’s ascent. Why else would MEA and GOI persist in still trying to somehow wrangle UNSC membership? What the GOI and Modi don’t seem to understand is that in international affairs there are, in fact, no friends — “good friend, Barak” notwithstanding, only interests. And the collective interest of the Big-5 does not lie in letting India or any other country into UNSC. So, Washington will look on from the sidelines, watch China-Russia play the bad guys until they falter, when it will step in and finish of what slight chance remains. Remember how the Clinton Admin helped introduce the “rolling text” in the CTBT negotiations in Geneva in 1995-96, ultimately forcing Delhi to cry “Uncle” and Ambassador Arundhati Ghose, under express instructions from a strong willed PM, Deve Gowda, to tell the Big-5 where to get off with her stirring sign-off — India will sign the CTBT “not now, not ever”?

This analyst has been saying for over 25 years that a UNSC seat is worthless, specially one without the veto power which is the most Delhi can expect 20 years down the line!!! Mark my words. Shouldn’t this be a matter of national self respect and a time to resolve by way of policy direction that India, because denied the UNSC entry on merits, has no stakes in the UN body and its agencies, and that it will do all it can to undermine it, which threat it can then carry out without fuss and on the sly and sans any public hoo-ha, starting with ensuring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Control Treaty are buried in the Committee on Disarmament.

The reason this won’t happen are twofold: Because (1) Modi exaggerates the power of his personal relationships — with Obama, Putin, Xi. So far it has fetched him nothing. But he will persist in the belief that he and India are something special!, and (2) MEA staffed by Indian Foreign Service officers will upend any such move because most of them aspire to service at the UN HQ secretariat or in some US agency where there is little work but fat pay-packet and tax-free pension. India will fall at these two hurdles and will continue to strive futilely for an UNSC seat while spurning the one way it would, in fact, be invited into that club — by moving fast and hard in doing things frowned upon by the Big-5 which would upset their applecart.

Such as resuming open-ended thermonuclear testing and transferring nuclear materials, natural uranium reactors and whole weapons and missile systems, along with expertise, to states in Central Asia and Southeast Asia on China’s and Russia’s peripheries and scramble America’s nonproliferation calculus — the sort of thing that will frighten all three into abruptly ceding ground. Sustained and stealthy acts of disruption — highly regarded, and cannily used, by Beijing and a wily Pakistan Army over the years — is India’s short-cut and ticket to great power. A North Korea or a Pakistan can’t pull it off. But, India can. Except Indian leaders are mostly big talk, not big action, lack the iron will and the guts. Besides, disruptive activity has never been appreciated by the MEA mandarins. Small wonder then that between our leaders and the babus the nation and its interests get shafted.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, disarmament, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Missiles, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, 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., Vietnam, Weapons | 12 Comments

India — not mattering much

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

At a function yesterday evening to release the ‘Oxford Handbook on Indian Foreign Policy’ edited by, among others, my CPR colleague Srinath Raghvan, we were astounded to hear an imported economic adviser in the Modi government, Arvind Subramaniam, say, in the context of multilateral negotiations on climate, trade, etc., that “India matters, but not much”! He further wondered if the Indian government can adopt this “ättitude” for apparently best results. Really! Is this what he is advising the Finance Ministry and GOI to do? Doesn’t his outlook and approach amount to asking India to compromise its national interests? We should not be surprised with this kind of counsel from a person who last served in the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC. So, whose interests is Subramaniam looking out for exactly? Certainly, not India’s. Then again, Subramaniam’s advice falls in squarely with the policy orientation of the Manmohan Singh regime and, to-date, the BJP government’s as well in the foreign, military, national security policy sphere generally — that India does not matter all that much.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, society, South Asia | Leave a comment

Invitation to attend my new book launch Sept 24

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Dear All,

My new book – ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ published by Oxford University Press will be released by General VK Singh (Retd), Minister of State for External Affairs, Thursday, September 24, 2015, 7-8:30 PM, Gulmohar Hall, Habitat Centre, Lodi Road, New Delhi. It will be followed by a panel discussion that, besides the Minister, will involve the former NSA, Shivshankar Menon, Rear Admiral Raja Menon (Retd), former head of the Net Assessment & Simulation Centre at the National Security Council and ex-Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Ops), and Lt. Gen. SL Narsimhan, Commandant, Army War College, Mhow.

As this is the age of e-invitations, for those among you readers residing in the national capital region, do consider this a personal invite from me to you to partake of the occasion. Please block the date. Expect to see you at Habitat Sept 24 then.

Similar events are planned abroad at:

1) The Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall, London — panel discussion with Raffaello Pantucci and Shashank Joshi, 1800 hrs-1930 hrs, on Monday, November 9, 2015
2) Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC — conversation with Ashley Tellis followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session, 1030 hrs-1200 hrs, on Thursday, November 12, 2015

Hope very much that members of the large strategic policy and NRI communities in the London metropolitan area and on the US eastern seaboard interested in Indian foreign & military policy will try and make it to the RUSI/Carnegie event. Again, a request to block the relevant date.
Many thanks.
All Best,
Bharat Karnad

Posted in Indian Army | 7 Comments

Time for China to turn the page on the ‘War of Resistance’

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

This piece was solicited by ‘Pengpai Defense’ (‘The Paper’) and published in its Mandarin translation on September 1, 2015 as lead-up to the massive Sept 3 Military Parade and celebration in Beijing, and is accessible at http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1370253.

What I would dearly wish is for readers of this blog proficient in Mandarin to see if the translation is accurate and, even more, what the many Chinese reactions to this piece say.

————–

China suffered grievously at the hands of Imperial Japan in the years 1937-1945. As against 396,040 dead Japanese soldiers, nearly 20 million Chinese perished in the ‘War of Resistance’, approximately a sixth of this grisly total constituting soldiers mostly from Changkaishek’s Koumintang forces fighting the invaders in pitched battles, and of the Communist 8th Route Army and the New 4th Army (the kernel of the later Peoples Liberation Army) carrying out guerilla operations in the enemy’s rear areas. This was a horrendous price for a China embroiled in a civil-war-cum-‘anti-fascist’ war to pay even without accounting for the sustained atrocities, principally the ‘Nanjing massacre’ perpetrated by troops of the Imperial Japanese Central China Area Army and the 10th Army, excesses that pale only in comparison to the campaign for exterminating European Jewry by Hitler’s Nazi regime.
This experience has undoubtedly seared the Chinese people’s collective psyche and consciousness crowning, in their mind, the ‘century of humiliation’ their country suffered. That it embitters China’s relations with Japan to this day — some seventy years after the events of despoliation and mass murder, is not surprising. Bad national memories have a way of lingering, even growing weightier as resentments pile on with every passing year, and end up influencing current attitudes and future policies. The scorched memory has fanned the visceral fear in China of a re-militarised Japan.
The planned military parade on September 3 to mark for the first time and on a grand scale the victory in the war against Japan may thus be seen as sort of national catharsis, a means of venting anger at the suffering inflicted on the Chinese nation, and an occasion for a militarily ascendant China to flex its muscle, let Tokyo and the rest of the world know they are now dealing with a very different country. The parade will likely feature the most advanced armaments in the PLA arsenal, including the anti-ship ballistic missile system – a unique Chinese innovation expressly designed to keep Japanese warships and the aircraft carrier task groups of its treaty-ally the United States, from closing in on the long Chinese coastline on the East Sea and the South China Sea and initiating a conventional military affray, and the latest long range thermonuclear warheaded missiles, especially the DF-41, with the Second Artillery Strategic Forces to deter Washington, from escalating a losing campaign to the nuclear level.
So far so tolerable. Except China’s overly rough and belligerent foreign and security policy particularly vis a vis the countries it has territorial disputes with on land and sea – and there’s a whole host of such states on its periphery, conjoined to the matching military buildup the parade will try and showcase, is at an inflection point. Despite the beneficial economic interlinks it has with many adjoining countries, the uncertainty mixed with their apprehension and worry about how forcefully a powerful and ambitious China will push its claims and leverage its material resources against them, is forcing these states to seek protection, and secure military assistance and help from friendly big powers with problems of their own with Beijing.
Thus, three of the bigger Southeast Asian states contesting Chinese claims in the South China Sea are forging close military relations with extra-territorial powers. Vietnam has offered India the port of Nha Trang on its central coast to use as naval base and for electronic monitoring of the communications traffic to and from Hainan Island hosting both the headquarters of the Chinese Navy’s South Sea Fleet and the PLA’s Cyber Command. It has sent its Kilo attack submarine crews for training to the Indian submarine headquarters in Vishakapatnam, and secured batteries of the deadly Brahmos supersonic cruise missile from the Narendra Modi government. Hanoi is also seeking a rapprochement with the United States, and Cam Ranh Bay is likely to be opened to US aircraft carriers and escort vessels as rest, repair and replenishment station. Philippines, likewise, has sought American help, invoking the ‘mutual defence’ provision in the 1953 treaty, and received a number of F-16 combat aircraft to equip a depleted Philippine Air Force. Manila has also offered the Subic Bay naval base and Clark air force base for contingent use by the Indian military. Indonesia, meanwhile, has strengthened its security cooperation with India, for example, in terms of Indian help in maintaining its air force fleet of MiG-21Fs and Su-27s/Su-30MKs.
More significantly, a New Triple Entente is emerging in Asia of India, the United States and Japan with the aim, to the extent possible, of peacefully containing China. This entente is a backstop to the series of bilateral security arrangements between these big powers, and between them and the smaller rimland/offshore countries. The danger to China is that a clutch of states, motivated by feelings of shared threat and danger could end up coalescing into a formidable “nightmare coalition” of the kind Bismarck’s Germany faced in the 19th Century. Surely, this is not what Beijing wants to see happen, but it is something that will transpire and ultimately hurt China’s interests.
At the core of this emerging coalition is the trio of India-Japan-United States. China’s ties with India and the US are often troubled but do not carry the emotional-historical baggage of the kind Sino-Japanese relations do. If Beijing fears a militarily significant Japan, Tokyo is afraid of an over weaning China bent on redressing historical, wartime-related, wrongs with coercive use of military force. Tokyo feels aggrieved that the financial restitution and reparations, and direct investments Japan has made in the intervening years totaling in excess of a hundred billion dollars that enabled China to become a major manufacturing and economic power has made little difference to the anti-Japanese sentiments the Communist leadership keeps stoking in the Chinese people. Given the emotional drivers of this testy relationship on both sides, the situation could turn combustible.
At its heart, ironically, lies a seminal opportunity for peace. Can China move on, turn the page on a bad chapter in in the history of bilateral ties, and alight on a modus vivendi not laced with the animus from the past? Or, put differently, should a statute of limitations on the recompense and guilt for the long ago excesses committed by the Japanese imperial army not now apply? To argue that there has to be closure on this issue, sooner rather than later, is in no way to absolve the Japanese of the responsibility for the barbaric acts, albeit in wartime. But unless Beijing stops raking up the same old emotions, a fed-up Japan feeling it has atoned long and hard, has paid sufficient financial recompense, done enough to try and win China’s forgiveness, will simply stop feeling bad. After all, Japan is now three generations removed from the Second World War-generation. In an analogous situation Israel, with far more to cavil about the state-driven program to eliminate Jewry from Europe, has nevertheless made peace with Germany and is on the best of terms with the German nation and people.
There is, after all, only so much guilt that can be extracted from a one-time adversary. Beyond a point though there will be no guilt to feel. Japan has if not reached that point is rapidly approaching it. The nationalist government in Tokyo under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is moving to unsaddle his country of the political obligation to be under a system of permanent guilt and moral debt to China. It, perhaps, explains Abe’s visit to the Yakasuni Temple enshrining the spirits of the Japanese war dead soon after assuming power despite knowing fully well the sort of furor it would create in China. His government, moreover, is moving to amend the country’s ‘peace Constitution’ and to begin selling armaments to friendly states. Japan sought to interest the Indian Navy in its Soryu-class conventional attack submarine and the Shinmeiwa Company will soon be signing a deal for its US-2 flying boat optimized for maritime surveillance and expeditionary missions.
Nanjing can no more be forgotten than Aushwitz, and it is only right for China (as it is for Israel) to remind the world that such episodes will not be tolerated, let alone allowed to recur. But this is very different from using the memories of excesses to keep enmity alive and all fired up, because that would create a powder keg milieu which is liable to blow up at any time should tensions begin to spiral with neither country feeling any obligation to control the situation. It is an outcome Asia and the world can well do without.
——–

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Cyber & Space, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, Japan, Pakistan, South East Asia, Tibet, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons, Western militaries | 1 Comment

Distinctive attributes of the 1965 War

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Beyond the plans and the preparations, Wars by their very nature are hit and miss affairs. The hits are mainly attributable to acts of incomparable bravery, of determined and resolute action by a few to turn events around. These are the singular events which when aggregated over time and over the expanse of the battlefield constitute victory; their absence, defeat.

With the GOI, for the first time, celebrating the 1965 India-Pakistan conflict — albeit its “Golden Jubilee” — in a big way, it is time to tot up the distinctive attributes, persons and events that stand out from a medley of incidents and extraordinarily brave individuals, whose reputation is burnished, many of whom won no recognition at the time or since.

In bullet points:

1) the two formations that the rival armies considered elite, their spearheads — the very best, curiously, the 1st Armoured Divisions of both the armies flopped! The Indian 1st Armrd Div deployed in the Sialkot sector went up against the Pak 6th Armrd Div — a unit without history and cobbled together literally on the run! The Indian Div was virtually decimated at Phillorah and Chawinda. Its Pak counterpart featuring the most modern tank then in existence — the M48 Patton, didn’t fare much better. Tasked ambitiously not just to lead the charge on Amritsar, but cross the Beas River, take Jallandhar on the way to making a run to Delhi. Really! It, however, faltered at the very first step in the Khemkaran area, held off for the crucial first 3-4 days of the war by only four antiquated Sherman tanks of the Deccan Horse led by the indomitable Colonel Fahad Bhatti, who won no recognition, other than a measly VSM. As Colonel AR Khan then a junior officer with the 4 Grenadiers in that action recalls, Bhatti had no godfathers, no recommenders. But he was a karm yogi. The other tank unit that was supposed to assist Bhatti — the 2nd Independent Armoured Brigade was described by Khan as neither independent, nor armoured, nor even a brigade (which description is along the lines of that of the Grand Trunk Express — not grand, trunk, or express). Bhatti afforded the rest of the units of the 4th Mountain Division under Maj Gen Gurbaksh Singh time to firm up, eventuating in the justly famous battle of Assal Uttar that broke the back of the Pak advance and its armoured strength in the Khemkaran area. The Patton was brought down mostly by the light field gun — the 105mm recoilless outfitting a unit that just prior to Sept ’65 was honing its skills in mountain fighting. That the small force of Deccan Horse stopped the Pak 1st Armrd Div in its tracks was fortuitous, because there was nothing behind it. It highlights the inglorious fact of frontline units just melting away — units, which as Col Khan said, shall remain unnamed!

This episode suggests that the fame and reputation of fighting units matter very little in hostile engagements. It is the grit and the stomach for a fight that matters more.

2) Assal Uttar was won also because the Pattons couldn’t move rapidly through the slush and the mud created by the deliberate breaching of the Roha Nala, and were often stuck — sitting ducks, their tracks running in place, and picked off by Indian gunners at will. (This tactic of flooding the battlefield, was used by the Iranian forces but ended up bogging down both Iranian and Iraqi tanks in the Susangerd sector in 1981 in the largest tank battle of that war, when the west bank of the Karun River was breached).

3) Talking of grit — no finer illustration of it than the 3 Jat of the 15th Infantry Division under the luckless Maj Gen Niranjan Prasad (who had previously made a hash of things in the 1962 War leading the 4th Division, and somehow survived that fiasco without being cashiered). Led by the iron-willed Lt Col Desmond Hayde, the 3 Jat crossed the Ichhigoil Canal and took Dograi and secured a lodgement in Batapore on the outskirts of Lahore not once (the first time on Sept 6) but twice — the second time on Sept 21 after the Pakistanis had strengthened that position with tanks and artillery. The 3 Jat were asked to withdraw the first time around owing to relentless aerial attacks by Pak F-86 Sabres, which is when the Pakistanis came back. Even so Hayde’s unit succeeded again.

I remember two things about this set of actions: in 1982 the then retired Brigadier Hayde — a Britisher who “stayed on” (in a letter to me, memorably described his son “as first generation Indian” and who, like his MVC-decorated father, joined the latter’s paltan and went on also to command it) wondered why there was no countervailing response and protection offered by the IAF over Dograi. The absence of Indian counter-air was something the Western Army commander during this war, the redoubtable Lt Gen Harbhaksh Singh too was livid about (when I met him in his Vasant Vihar home in the early Nineties). He hinted at dark happenings in Delhi, besides of course, cursing Niranjan Prasad in the most violently abusive language!

The explanation for the absent IAF, per my lights, and which I have dilated on elsewhere in my writings, is political. The unexpected breakthrough over a supposedly Pak-fortified Lahore front, confronted PM Lal Bahadur Shastri with a politically pregant option of allowing Harbhaksh, who immensely desired it, to take Lahore. I suspect though that Shastri and his advisers must have considered the ramifications of such capture, and thought better than to green signal such a move. I have speculated that this was because at that time Lahore was the socio-cultural centre of gravity of Pakistan. Had it been captured, rather than merely being invested — capturing that city would have required 4-5 Divisions — could have led to the unraveling of Pakistan, with what consequences for the subcontinent can only be imagined. This thesis of mine is also borne out by the express instructions from MOD to the Navy under Soman to keep out of any action, not even to react to the provocation of the Pakistani naval shelling of Dwarka.

3) And, of course, we are absolutely hideous at winning the peace, after finishing the hard work of winning wars. Indira Gandhi did not impose a victor’s peace that international laws of war permitted India after its resounding victory in 1971 — when the minimum that could have been insisted upon was the formalisation of the ceasefire line — LOC — in Jammu and Kashmir as the international border, and thereby settling that dispute for once and for all. Instead she succumbed to Bhutto’s oily theatrics and his pleadings asking for time to garner support for this with his people, when the correct stance would have been to tell the slippery Zulfikar Ali B that how he managed to get support from his people was his problem, and that he’d have to sign an ag to make LOC international border if he wanted the return of the 93,000 Pak POWs. Then again, there was precedent. Six years earlier, Shastri at Taskent, likewise, accepted a grovelling Ayub’s plea to let him return with some respect, whence the Haji Pir salient captured by 1 Para was restored to Pakistan.

It points to the lack of any real understanding of anything remotely military by the political class, leave alone appreciation of, and sensitivity to, strategic geography. That is to say our political leaders have always lacked, and still do, what Halford Mackinder called “the map reading habit of mind” and the country has paid a heavy price, and continues to do so.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, society, South Asia, Special Forces, United States, US., Weapons, West Asia | 2 Comments

NSAs will talk

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Writing early morning with all kinds of trend-stories carried by Indian media with newspapers hinting at breakdown before the talks get underway. The fact is the Modi regime will ensure the Sartaj Aziz-Ajit Doval talks will happen tomorrow — how the conversation ends and with what results is more difficult to predict considering there’s a basic disagreement even about what was agreed upon at Ufa by way of an agenda for the NSAs’meet — because the Indian PM has invested far too much in initiating a thaw as building block for his ambitious “Look West, Act West” policy. He apparently understands more than most people that while Pakistan is not indispensable to gaining access to Central Asia with Iranian port of Chahbahar in sight, it will help to bring Pakistan into the mix for two important reasons: (1) to address the sentiment of the Obama Admin that India’s not doing enough to normalise relations with Pakistan, thus keeping the security situation in the subcontinent on the boil, and (2) moderate to the extent possible the effects of a too close China-Pakistan nexus by offering the Nawaz Sharif govt an Indian channel for trade and commerce as path for economic prosperity.

I am also not convinced General Raheel Sharif and the Pakistan Army is the problem. The Pak COAS has time and again talked of the greater threat to his country from the extremist Islamic quarter and the Taliban in its two avatars — Afghan and Pakistani, not to mention the looming possibility of the dreaded IS putting down roots, and the need to concentrate Pak military resources in defeating this menace. For this. Raheel needs the eastern border with India to be quiet. Rather, I think it is elements in the Nawaz Sharif coterie who may be advising against de-prioritising the Kashmir issue, for fear of its domestic fallout.

Instead of making such big noise about Aziz meeting the Hurriyat leaders, wouldn’t it have been easier to simply put them under house arrest as soon as they landed in Delhi, and release them as soon as the Pakistani departed? There may be a negative effect but the onus would be on Pakistan to cancel the talks or sabotage them. Very different thing to happen than for GOI to gather opprobrium for ditching the talks.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, civil-military relations, domestic politics, India's Pakistan Policy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Internal Security, society, South Asia, Terrorism, United States, US. | 4 Comments

Nonexistent cyberdefence

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Aug 20 Washington Post carried a story by its Beijing correspondent Simon Denyer saying Indian government and its myriad agencies have been under attack for four years, have had sensitive information extracted from its data banks, and are vulnerable in the future because of secret electronic pathways being emplaced by the Chinese hacker permitting it future easy access. The Chinese are targeting other South and Southeast Asian states, and the Tibetan activist circles wherever they may reside.

More damningly, the WP report said the Indian government knew nothing about this high-value cyber operation until, it is implied, the information about the successful phising attacks was conveyed to it by an American cybersecurity company, Fireye, via the Obama Administration. So, what’s new?

If you look up my past writings on this blog, I have commented on how the National Technology Research Organization tasked with installing and operating cyberdefences and prosecuting offensive operations has become another heavily bureaucratised govt agency with minimal competence in cyber matters, and which has been used by its managers to siphon off funds by, for instance, hiring young talent on freelance basis, paying them little, but showing inflated bills and outgo’s on this account, with the balance being pocketed by the NTRO officials. A neat scamming channel, what?!

This mind you is the state of affairs in a country that’s supposedly rich in precisely the sort of hacking talent the cyberworld values highly. The trouble is no one really bright wants to join the govt payrolls because of low remuneration, low satisfaction — which is true across the board, including the civil services. So the nerdy dregs join NTRO and once in, do little except fall into the organization’s bad ways. And the bright ones who join initially for the challenge, leave soon enough.

Apparently, the Modi govt has recognized that the problem is beyond its capability to resolve. Whence as Denyer reports it has agreed on a joint Indo-US cooperation to thwart what’s called “cyber crime”. Considering, official India will bring very little to the table, this is a means to virtually outsource cybersecurity to the US/US Companies. This makes India doubly vulnerable in that the Chinese attacks won’t cease but the Indian system will be opened up to US companies ostensibly to help them defend the Indian official networks, an opportunity that will be used to implant remotely-controlled cyber-bugs that will send out sensitive information but now in the other direction!

Meanwhile, GOI and NTRO are content with small “victories” in our little backyard sandlot, whooping it up because Indian hackers penetrated/downed Pakistani websites and info networks!!!

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Cyber & Space, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Pakistan, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Tibet | 1 Comment