Electric Modi decision & short circuit in China

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

At the end of the formal meeting between PM Modi and Premier Li Keqiang, the FS K. Jaishankar held a press conference and informed reporters that there was no decision on e-visas for Chinese nationals. Less than two hours later, speaking to students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Modi announced that e-visas would be available to all Chinese visitors. There’s either insufficient communication between the PM and MEA, or Modi took it on himself, on th spur of the moment, to shove aside whatever Home Ministry objections may have held up a decision, and to announce it as done deal. Just a few weeks earlier he had made an end-run around Defmin Manohar Parrikar when he announced, again apparently off the cuff, the G2G deal for 36 Rafale combat aircraft, when Parrikar himself was leaning on the side of the more economical option of the Su-30MKI already being produced at HAL, Nasik. Parrikar had to scramble to now hail Modi’s decision as a big breakthrough. Not sure what this means other than wondering if this is to be the pattern for the Modi tenure, and if so, what the policy implications are or will be?

Curiously, Modi at Tsinghua mentioned “mutual and equal security” — a formulation that finds no mention in the Joint Statement issued by the two govts at the end of Modi’s time in Beijing, nor does the notion of “shared neighbourhood”. Considering there’s only the mention in it of “peace and tranquility” on the border — a construction from the 1996 agreement signed when Jiang Zemin visited Delhi, it suggests the two countries are not in synch, which”s the strategic reality. Especially because Modi also said at the Tsinghua event that without resolution of the border issue “neither side knows where the border is” and hence that military tensions will occasionally occur. But this is apparently acceptable to the Chinese because they have not as Jaishankar informed the media, agreed to direct links at the military “command” level but only at the unit level. In other words, Beijing has reduced the differences over the undelineated border to a tactical, field level, military problem!

The Chinese have, however, extended the idea of a “new relationship between major powers”, originally used to describe China-US relations in the new Century, to include India to now talk about “new relationships between major countries”. There’s however less to this than meets the eye.

There’s a laughable lapse on MEA’s part when it agreed to the language re: nuclear nonproliferation. The point #39 in the Joint Statement states that the two sides noted “the commonalities in their approach to global arms control and non-proliferation”, come again!! This is ridiculous that China has, with MEA’s help, elevated itself to the too scrupulous status of India where nonproliferation is concerned when, in reality, China has been the most brazen proliferator of nuclear weapons and missile expertise and materials in the last three decades to Pakistan (with, and we should not forget it, the US complicity), and North Korea and, more recently, Iran!!!! Why did MEA allow this?? Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval will have to answer for this quite extraordinary giveaway — permitting China to equate itself to India as an ardent nonproliferator!!! Sheerest fiction and nonsense! Did Modi expressly approve this? In that case, a black mark against him and his PMO.

And, finally, with India outsourcing its infrastructure development to China — telecommunications, high-speed railways, highways, won’t China have an inside track on Indian security as well (logistics — rail movement, and cyber penetration through telecom network, and Xiaomi, Huawei mobile telephony sets)? Is anybody in GOI worried?

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Flinching on Japan in Malabar

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Some of us were hoping against hope that Prime Minister would gird up his courage and formally invite Japan to participate in the annual Malabar naval exercise involving the Indian and the US Navies to be conducted later this year, and to join in its planning. It was not to be, he buckled under pressure from MEA, which has always been extraordinarily careful not give offence to China, even as the Zhongnanhai (the Chinese policy complex) has never cared about India’s concerns and interests when announcing a slate of military aid and development assistance projects, in the Northern Areas — Gilgit, Hunza, and Baltistan, part of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu & Kashmir occupied by Pakistan since 1947 and hence very much a territory India has claimed, but as I repeatedly said, never made a fuss about.

This is a repeat occurrence because the Congress party coalition govt had similarly invited Japanese naval planners some years back to partake of the Malabar Exercise planning, thought better of it, and at the last possible moment rescinded the entire planning exercise, after the US and Japanese naval officers were already in town! That such lily-livered decision would ensue from Narendra Modi as well, is something of a shock.

But by now it is clear Modi heeds bureaucratic advice even when it goes against the national interest. On this occasion, rather than exercise his own judgement and sense of realpolitik, and over-rule the MEA and make a big show of welcoming Japan into the grouping of Malabar naval powers, a day before flying off to Xian, which would have sent a powerful message to Xi that this is not anymore the India of Manmohan Singh. Instead, Modi has once again proved that he simply doesn’t have the gumption to stand up to Beijing. He will undoubtedly receive a warmer embrace from Xi and a noisier welcome.

The MEA’s action of calling in the Chinese ambassador yesterday to protest Chinese Karakoram Highway project passing through the Northern Areas, was obviously an afterthought to still the expected criticism of the decision to keep Japan out of Malabar. Japanese Admirals who, uncharacteristically, have often publicly voiced their frustration with India in various forums during their visits to New Delhi, will now have an extra reason to feel let down. The Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, who has invested much political capital in courting India will begin to worry about this investment turning bad. Modi may well permit the Japanese navy officers to join in the tripartite Malabar planning scheduled for sometime in July. But by then, India and Modi will have missed the stage and the occasion to make a strong statement. Besides, such restraint will confirm India’s standing to ASEAN states, and even Australia, as a country that cannot be relied on when the going gets tough.

As stated in the preceding blog, weak geostrategics and the strategic vision deficiency of the country is a deadly combination. It will keep India tethered to smallness of endeavor and aspiration, and provide proof of India as a fairly inconsequential power.

The odds-on bet is that Modi will return, as his predecessors did after their sessions of kowtow in Beijing, with nothing much to show for his forbearance and supposed tactfulness in not upsetting China, except some small favours that the Chinese Emperor has always bestowed on weak states that accept China’s supremacy.

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Bad Policy, Geostrategics Will Go against India

Posted on May 13, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Prime minister Narendra Modi goes to China weighed down by traditionally bad geostrategics and even worse policy.

Consider the underway Chinese initiatives in India’s neighbourhood—the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to access the warm water port at Gwadar, submarines and combat aircraft to Pakistan, the Qinghai-Lhasa railway with a loop-line to Xigatze on the Nepal border, the “maritime silk route” and the “string of pearls” in the Indian Ocean, the old silk route connecting China with Central Asia and Russia majorly through Kazakhstan, investment in infrastructure and extractive industry in Afghanistan, and the BCIM (Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar) scheme worked out of Kunming to provide the fast industrialising western provinces an opening on the Bay of Bengal. These developments are enveloping India in a geostrategic mesh—the essence of Wei-qi, an ancient Chinese board game and template for Chinese statecraft.

In Wei-qi, the objective is to fill as many of the squares on the board with one’s pieces, the corners inwards, to crowd the adversary and leave him little manoeuvring space and freedom of action. Using trade, aid, military assistance, and cultural exchanges with countries around India and farther afield, China means to influence India’s policies by influencing these states that otherwise fall naturally within the Indian strategic penumbra.

What is the Indian geostrategic model to compete with Wei-qi? From ancient times the Hindu sense of the subcontinental space bounded by the mountains, deserts, and the seas is that of Jambudwipa—the great big island state. It is hardly surprising that its outlook has been insular, and friends and foes conceived on the basis of geometric determinism dictated on the basis of a simplistic formulation of the mandala, codified in the Arthashastra. The mandala concept of concentric circles—the inner-most circle comprising adversaries, followed by a tier of friends, the next outer circle again of enemies, and so on has ensured maximally-riled neighbours. Whatever its utility in pre-historical India of perpetually warring kingdoms, the mandala scheme virtually disabled rulers from envisaging distant threats, because vast intervening spaces made perceiving nations far from the homeland as friendly or adversarial difficult, whence the preoccupation with smaller, weaker, adjoining states—a foreign policy affliction to this day. Wei-qi obviously scores over the less engaged mandala-infused approach (non-alignment, strategic autonomy).

Against a more equal rival such as the United States, however, Wei-qi turns, in effect, into a classical balance-of-power game, with moves countered by corresponding moves to deny the opponent spatial domination. Against a strategic vision deficient-India that, for instance, did not respond with alacrity to China’s nuclear missile arming Pakistan by prompt transfers of nuclear and conventionally warheaded missiles and major armaments to Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries on the Chinese periphery, Beijing will always have the upper hand.

The new thing Modi brings to the table is his boundless confidence and ready wittedness. An impactful incident of Modi’s diplomacy that few know about occurred during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit last September. With the intrusion of an armed unit of the People’s Liberation Army in the Chumar sector of the disputed Aksai China region as backdrop, Modi asked Xi if the PLA in China dominated the political leadership in the manner the army does the government in Pakistan. Cut to the quick Xi professed ignorance of the intrusion, but PLA troops pulled back the next day.

This little episode no doubt induced in Xi respect for Modi, particularly for the manner in which the message was conveyed, complete with the derisory allusion, and in light of the history of PLA provocations as accompaniment to high-level meetings. Recall that China invaded Vietnam in February 1979 on the day external affairs minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee reached Beijing, a symbolic slap and a warning to India that it may be next! But can the personal regard Xi has for Modi be converted into real benefits for India? Doubtful, because Chinese leaders, pickled in the brine of China’s centrality in the world, are not swayed by flummery. For them the strategic end-state matters, not small profit from marginal attributes.

The larger picture is still more worrisome. Deng Xiaoping’s 1991 guideline—“hide your capability, bide your time”—has been given the heave-ho. Xi has apparently determined that China’s economic and military capability is sufficiently muscled to flex it and that now’s the time to begin challenging the United States for supremacy in Asia. This is evident in the growingly aggressive military measures—naval patrolling in far-off waters, announcement of the air defence identification zone in the South China Sea, embedding of sonar buoys around the disputed Senkaku Islands to monitor Japanese and US warship traffic, and by rendering potential partners of the US, such as India, less effective once Beijing starts acting decisively in Asia-Pacific.

This is the reason why despite Modi prioritising the resolution of the border dispute, the 18th meeting in late March this year of the Special Representatives—National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and the former Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi—achieved nothing. This outcome was preordained, because keeping a border solution dangling keeps New Delhi in check. Then again Beijing has had to do little for Indian governments to unilaterally cede ground on the Tibet issue—surrendering of inherited Indian rights in Lhasa, recognition of Chinese suzerainty, then sovereignty, “One-China” policy, stapled visas, in return for zilch (unless Beijing’s infirm acceptance of Sikkim as part of India is considered a big deal). But this is the recessive China policy the ministry of external affairs has flogged, and Modi has not retracted.

Modi will get investment but only if India stays with the Chinese line on Tibet, and the lopsided, neo-colonial, $75 billion trade—Indian minerals for Chinese finished goods—and a skewed balance-of-payments problem that cost this country $37 billion last year. This imbalance will not be dented by increased Indian exports of vegetables, fruit and, ironically, in the face of the brouhaha over cow slaughter, of beef. The fact is the China-assisted infrastructure build-up, a rousing welcome for Modi in Xian, and a hall full of screaming Indians in Shanghai do not compensate for India’s strategic reduction.
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Published in New Indian Express, May 13, 2015 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Bad-Policy-Geostrategics-Will-Go-against-India/2015/05/13/article2811089.ece

Posted in Afghanistan, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Central Asia, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Ocean, Japan, Maldives, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Tibet, United States, US., Weapons | 5 Comments

Save Maldives from the Gayooms

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The Maldives — an archepelagic island chain in the south-western Indian Ocean — and of strategic importance to India that cannot be under-estimated, is under terrific strain from the continued rule by President Yameen Gayoom, who means to consolidate the Gayoom Family hold on this island country mostly by crook, and now needs to be visited by the Indian High Commissioner in Male and informed that unless the democratic order is restored and the former President and head of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party, Mohammaed Nasheed, released forthwith from prison on trumped up charges alongwith his defence minister who is similarly incarcerated, that he may find an Indian army’s Special Forces unit dropping by his presidential palace for a little bit of gentle persuasion. New Delhi did no react strongly enough in Feb this year when Nasheed was sentenced for 13 years (and his defence minister drawing a 10 year sentence) by a Kangaroo Court masquerading as the Maldivian judiciary on the charge of ïntending to kidnap a judge during his presidency. While the act was never carried out and intention is hard to prove, these factors have not swayed the existing Maldivian judiciary, which is known for its links to the Gayoom order, from doing the dirty political work of removing the only democratic threat extant to Yameen. There is every danger that if the Modi government fails to act now, Yameen will feel emboldened by Delhi’s traditional passivity to ask Beijing for a permanent military presence on the island territories to preempt India from strong arming him and proving any threat to his rule.How was Nasheed brought down within 2 years of being voted to power? By the police and the small Maldivian military with vested interests in the Gayoom dispensation, rebelling against the newly installed president, That should have been the event to trigger an Indian intervention, even though Nasheed prematurely resigned. It was little over 2 years ago, that Yameen was on the point of leasing the northern-most Maldivian island, just 19 kms off the southern-most Lakshdweep island, to China. Only a timely visit and advice by the Flag Officer commanding-in-chief, Western Naval Command, VADM Shekhar Sinha, prevented this deal from going through. Yameen’s older half-brother Maumoon, is the one whose hide was saved by the Indian airborne operation (Op Cactus) ordered by Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 from a coup d’ état by some LTTE adventurers.But once Yameen gets the Chinese in, it’ll be direct confrontation with Beijing. To preempt such a possibility is why India needs to act forcefully and NOT as some MEA types appearing on TV have suggested that India should bide its time, let the Maldivan people get sick of the Gayooms as the Sri Lankan people were of the Rajpaksas, and otherwise be part of a multilateral effort to pressure Male, etc. If India does not secure Maldives, no one else will do it for us. Gunboat diplomacy still works wonders. Time Modi used it, because Yameen is unlikely to become more democratic just by the PM cancelling his visit. The Gayooms have been adept at radicalizing the peaceful Maldivian society with extremist Wahabbi Islamists and cultivating China, whence that country is becoming a growing source of IS fighters and another pearl in the Chinese chain heralding the Chinese maritime silk route. They also have a thick skin and they need to be treated with prejudice, with extreme prejudice if Yameen acts tough. Act now Mr Prime Minister.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Maldives, society, South Asia, Sri Lanka, Terrorism | 3 Comments

No Time to Lose for Modi to Arrest Slide after Promises

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Recall this time last year. The country was in the throes of a general election the electorate instinctively accepted as a game-changer. The nation was agog with the prospects of then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi storming the central bastion and transforming the Indian state from a slow-paced elephant into a pouncing tiger.

The story of Modi’s spectacular rise from selling tea on trains to commanding India has in it something of Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King. His ascent signalling to the poor, the weak and the youth the importance of working for a better tomorrow by relying on one’s self rather than on the handouts from an abomination of a “mai-baap sarkar”. It represented an ideology of self-help and an antidote to the stale socialism of family outfits masquerading as political parties grown rich by suckling at the teats of a nanny state. It reached absurd levels with Sonia Gandhi during the election campaign declaring Marie Antoinette-like—“We gave you Rights”—as if paper rights confer material benefits or are a substitute for them!

Recall too the worried hubbub within the ranks of the bureaucracy, the so-called permanent secretariat in the government of India. They apprehended a ruthless slashing of the public payroll, elimination of countless government agencies and departments, and introduction of accountability. Modi’s personal rectitude and reputation as hard taskmaster who wrenched good governance out of the Gujarat state apparatus, moreover, sent shivers down the spines of babus everywhere. The Modi hammer was expected to fall on red tape, the slovenly ways of the government, and the unproductive and wasteful public sector. None of this has happened but Modi has shown an unusual appetite for foreign trips.

Perhaps consumed by the pomp and novelty of tours abroad—16 in the last 11 months—Modi sought promises of billions of investment dollars and help for “Make in India” schemes. But neither the dollars nor the schemes have materialised because he hasn’t called a joint session of Parliament to remove unfriendly land acquisition laws or retroactive tax regimes. Modi has also had embarrassing missteps. His initiation of the Rafale combat aircraft deal on government-to-government basis without competitive bidding and genuine technology transfer, for instance, is a throwback to the bad old system of scams, scandals, and corruption that characterised Congress party rule.

Modi could have taken the most radical measures to remake the government, overturn the system, and build anew, but he didn’t. He played safe and has achieved little. Not only has there been no organisational overhaul, but there has also been no evidence of rewriting of the “rules of business” within the government or streamlining of its functioning. The irony is, as one of Modi’s ministers confided to me, instead of imposing himself on the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy has imposed itself on Modi, imprinting its views, values, and methods on a prime minister who was expected to show apparatchiks their place. So, it is the taming of Modi by the babus that is at the heart of why things are going wrong.

There are two other factors to explain the slide in Modi’s fortunes. One pertains to the usual outcome of any electoral victory in India—unruly elements within the new ruling dispensation or its support base flexing their muscles, going on a violent binge. In the BJP’s case, the Hindu fringe lit fires of “love jihad”, attacked churches and, the newly elected BJP Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, by banning beef, even legislated what people can eat. It has frazzled the middle class and lowered the PM’s stock, showing up Modi’s powerlessness. If he cannot check indiscipline in his own party, the possibility of his bringing order to the country is remote.

The other factor has to do with the centralisation of power with almost all (presumably major) decisions requiring the prime minister’s approval, according to my ministerial acquaintance. For a PM-centric system to work, however, requires a large Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with an array of specialists mustering comprehensive expertise that Modi can call on to assess the policy choices forwarded by ministries, suggest new options, and to shape his decisions. But Modi is handicapped because while the PMO is numerically large it is not very capable, manned as it is by hordes of civil servants. Besides, the oversight that should be exercised especially over strategic economic and foreign and military policies by the National Security Adviser, according to this insider, is missing because the competence of the present incumbent, Ajit Doval, doesn’t cover more than the intelligence field and his attention doesn’t stray beyond Pakistan.

It is a pity that when Modi had the intellectual wealth of the country to draw upon to engineer more creative policies and programmes, he chose to stick with the babus and the institutional status quo. But this system is of Modi’s contrivance. And its performance in the past year signposts what the country can expect in the future—steady under-performance, legacy programmes dressed in new rhetoric, and shoddy implementation, unless there is radical improvement. In the past year 178 infrastructure projects worth six lakh crore rupees have been cleared with nothing to show for it on the ground.

The insider also cannily observed that Gujarat is not India and managing the show in Gandhinagar is small preparation for running the government of India. In any case, the default position of any PM who finds himself in over his head, he said, is to leave it to the permanent secretariat to do the job. Modi promised much but seems to have lost his nerve for doing big things. The voter has every reason to feel cheated.

This slide can be arrested. Modi has four more years to prove he is not a political shooting star. The PM should remember that the people mandated him to realise his new vision, which the existing civil servant-shackled order cannot translate into imaginative ideas and policies for transformative change. He has so far wasted his political capital in system-tinkering. He can expend what remains of it in reconfiguring the policy-making process by calling in outside experts to intellectually revitalise a government in doldrums. There is no time to lose.
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Published in New Indian Express, May 1, 2015 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/No-Time-to-Lose-for-Modi-to-Arrest-Slide-after-Promises/2015/05/01/article2791405.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, society, South Asia | 20 Comments

India-US in “strategic partnership plus zone”

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Just back after hearing the US Ambassador to India Richard Verma speak forenoon at the USI. He talked of the two countries being in the “strategic partnership plus zone”. He said “security cooperation and defence” was a “pillar” of this partnership, and referred to the 6 defence co-production projects underway. The interesting thing was to see Verma play off against fmr Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, chairing the event, who took up a good deal of time allotted Verma, to air his own views that came off as the same old tired whining about US support for Pakistan, and the US doing nothing about Pak-sourced terrorism, about the China-Pak nexus, and so on — the MEA’s default position! To Sibal’s complaint that the US may have global interests, but India’s concerns are with the “immediate neighbourhood” with two unfriendly states Pakistan and China, the personable Verma responded with the classic put-down Washington has been perfecting for some 15 years now. Firstly, he informed Sibal that his perspective was not shared by the new FS, Jaishankar, and secondly, that in any case “We don’t want history to be a drag on India’s global role”. As an example of the global Indian role he talked of air and sea lifting of stranded Indians and other foreigners from Yemen on Indian assets. But he also said something troubling that the US approved of India seeking to “rise within the post-second world war order”. That — right there — is why India, as I have always maintained “aims low, hits lower”, unlike China that wants to reshape the global order on its terms. Two very different paradigms!

But Verma’s take on India’s Pak-fixation reminded me of Robert Blackwill at a ceremony at the Roosevelt House to bid goodbye to his adviser Ashley Tellis, complaining that while Washington would like to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan, India won’t permit it! That no matter what the issue at hand or what the forum, it was always the Indian side that brought the discussion back to Pakistan, implying that New Delhi seemed uneasy with the de-hyphenation that the US was trying to affect in its policies!

As regards US military aid and assistance to Pakistan — the usual reason for Indian squawking, Verma said that as per the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act, it was “narrowly tailored” to prevent Pakistan from becoming a failed state, and to enhance that country’s counter-terrorism capability, though he did grant that there could be differences on how narrow the tailoring was! [Attack helos, anyone!]

He revealed that a few days back, the CVN USS Carl Vinson was anchored off Kochi, and he went on board with a team of Indian Navy aviators for a briefing by an US Admiral (didn’t say who) or what the IN officers discussed with the Americans.

As far as US investment capital inflows, he pointed to systemic impediments and recalled a Hotelier wishing to put up a hotel considering India and Singapore as the two possible sites. The hotelier informed Verma that while 80 permits were reqd to start a hotel in India, only six were needed in S’pore. This by way of stressing that CEOs and investors look primarily at “ease of doing business”, little else, and why India is a “difficult sell” to American business. But it’d help he said if India agreed to an Investment Treaty to inspire confidence in the US industry and corporate circles that in case of disputes these will be adjudicated fairly. He hinted that India was dragging its feet on such a treaty. Verma also said that such a treaty would not ensure that our economic relations will be “dispute free but that we can compartment the next dispute that comes along” so as to not hurt the otherwise high-flying bilateral ties.

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Juggler Ghani’s dilemma

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Afghan President Mohammed Ashraf Ghani is as different from his predecessor Hamid Karzai as chalk is from cheese. Ghani, an ex-old World Bank staffer and longtime resident of Washington, DC suburbs is in the American mould — at ease with straight talk and strong free market beliefs,but is in a new game of managing a unity govt and a cabinet of his adversaries, like Abdullah Abdullah and the Tajik warlord Colonel Abdul Rashid Dostum in an Afghanistan sans a large US military presence but enough drone-attack capability to kill-off Taliban leadership ranks to be decisive.

So, naturally Ghanis has to juggle and keep many more balls in the air. Dostum oversaw the Northern Alliance’s ferocious fight against the Soviet occupation troops in the ’80s, with the star turn provided by the Lion of Panjshir — Ahmed Shah Masood, and during the one-eyed Mullah’s Omar’s reign in Kabul, kept the north-eastern part of Afghanistan out of the Taliban government’s clutches. He is Ghani’s First Vice President. Abdullah, Karzai’s preferred successor, controls the interior ministry. Both Abdullah and Dostum are old and trusted friends of India.

Ghani is trying to solidify bridges to Delhi but is keen to revive his country’s relations with Pakistan as a practical necessity — all seaward Afghan trade transits Pak territory, and also to correct an all too obvious pro-India tilt of Karzai — a JNU product. In the neighbourhood there’s also China flashing its money power and securing mining concessions (nickel, etc) and running extraction industries in the Hajigak region and elsewhere. If Ghani cannot do without China’s money, it cannot afford to alienate India either for two reasons — one India provides a counterpoise to China, and two, Delhi has long cultivated sections of Afghan Taliban with generous handouts of funds and material goods. These India-friendly Taliban are accused by Islamabad of crossing the Durand Line to wreck havoc in Waziristan and attack Paki targets on Afghan soil in the manner Pak-patronised Taliban attack Indian interests and diplomatic missions in that country. It is a standoff. But India can at any time if not tip the balance within the Afghan Taliban, then skew the tribal dynamic to ensure there’s no internal peace.

The question is can Ghani get India to back off without economically disengaging from his country which has benefited from development and infrastructure aid, such as the Delaram-Zaranj highway that the heroin traffickers and the Afghan Taliban they are close to are hugely thankful for? Soon after assuming presidency, Ghani announced with great ceremony that he had cancelled Indian aid involving heavy military hardware, like tanks. He did this to gain credibility with the Nawaz Sharif regime. This was a signal departure, considering India had over the years arranged to pay arms companies in the Ukraine in particular to secretly ship overland to Afghanistan artillery, tanks, helicopters, etc. Such military assistance allowed Karzai to keep the Taliban at bay. Ghanis’s ostensibly turning against Indian arms aid
served India’s purpose however. These deadly armaments killed India-friendly Taliban as well and this was resented by our well-wishers. And so the arms ban had, as it were, dual purpose and both Kabul and Delhi agreed on Ghanis’s announcement that initially pleased Pakistan. To firm up his Pak links,
Ghani also announced that more Afghan National Army officers would go for training to Pakistan and, a little later, declared that an enlarged Afghan officer contingent was headed for military training in India. The proportion of the Pak-trained and Indian-trained officers in ANA will decide over time which way the Afghan military eventually tilts and how that will affect relations with India and Pakistan.

The facts are these: India retains close links to a powerful section of the Taliban, and can create trouble for Pakistan in Afghanistan, Waziristan, and Balochistan. It has far-flung consulates in Herat, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-sharif, places where Pakistan too has its consulates. It retains its intimate relations with Dostum and the Tajik faction, which positively impacts India’s ties with Takjikistan. India remains close to the nationalist Pakhtun element loyal to Abdullah/Karzai. And its has commercial iron mining interests in Afghanistan, and burgeoning development aid programmes. India is cooperating with Iran, even as Taliban attacks across the western border have agitated Tehran, creating a common cause fro Delhi and Iran to band together. And finally, Ghani’s publicly asking India to desist from sending it military equipment doesn’t mean Afghanistan won’t accept such hardware as is required by Kabul, such as the three Cheetal helicopters (derived from the French Aerospatiale Lama) in Kabul whose transfer will be announced after his meeting with Modi, with Delhi taking care to see that these weapons platforms are minus weapons lest they be turned against friendly Afghan Taliban by ANA..

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Iran and West Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Terrorism | 2 Comments

No end of embarrassment

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

An acronymically-challenged Pakistan is always good for a laugh. In the wake of the recent Xi visit to Islamabad, RANDI — Research and Development International — was founded with some fanfare and tasked, presumably, to research issues of foreign policy and military concern to the two countries. It is another matter that potential staffers will be saddled with their intimate association with RANDI (whore in Hindustani!). It puts me in mind of an embarrassment I saved the Pakistan Foreign Ministry-funded Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. It was December 1982 and this Institute, founded with an assist from the army, by the good natured Brigadier (Ret) Noor Hussain (whose claim to fame was that he was ADC to Jinnah), ex-Lucknow, who died four years ago — was staging a coming out party as it were by hosting what was billed as “The First International Conference on Peace and Security in South Asia”. It was a grand affair with the Indian invitees — the redoubtable IK Gujral and K. Subrahmanyam, and yours truly, given star billing. The early afternoon I reached the Marriott Hotel, where the guests were lodged and which was also the Conference venue, I discovered on entering my room a beautiful leather folder with conference papers with the name ‘Pakistan Institute of Strategic Studies’ proudly embossed in gold. Walking down into the lobby a bit later I encountered the Brigadier and asked him if he had seen the folder. He asked if something was wrong. Not, I replied, if you didn’t care about the unfortunate acronym PISS! Hussain, who had scheduled the then CMLA (Chief Martial Law Administrator), dictator in other words, General Zia ul-Haq, for an evening with the invitees to the Conference, was mortified, thanked me profusely, and rushed for his aides, instructing them immediately to remove all folders and stationery with the offending PISS on them from the invitee rooms and to “destroy” them. The question is this: what will the erstwhile PISS do now that RANDI backed by the prestigious Tsinghua University, is on the scene doing much the same work? A question of working the same side of the street, no?

Posted in India's Pakistan Policy, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia | 1 Comment

Rafale sliding, BAE edging in with Typhoon?

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Rafale had the shortest run imaginable. With the Modi govt sobering up after the Paris high when the PM merely broached — did not commit — to a G2G deal to buy the Dassault product outright, GOI is backing off which, if true, is a welcome return to good sense. These are, in any case, the soundings one is getting in Delhi circles.

However, this is seen as an opportunity by the British govt and BAE — albeit a slim one — to edge in with the European consortium (EADS) fighter — Typhoon. Whether or not the German chancellor Angela Merkl initiated the gambit this time around, the fact is London is using the visit by the Deputy Chief of the UK Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach to push the proposal. A senior BAE representative in in Peach’s team and, as he told me at a dinner last night, has been given “15 minutes” with Parrikar later today.

The British spiel I heard yesterday was that Typhoon had 20% longer range, blah, blah (Peach), in what combat profile he didn’t say; and that BAE, according to its rep, would readily partner HAL, Reliance, or anybody else GOI wished it to join, in setting up a full production unit in India generating 20,000 jobs and producing 50% of the aircraft in the country, and some 13 Typhoons for immediate detachment from RAF for Indian duty to be replaced with new Eurofighters as they begin coming in off the Indian line. So, I asked the BAE chap whether the 50% Indian component in the Typhoon would be by weight or value. And he shut up. In essence this deal is marginally better in that the bulk of the aircraft production will be in India but with minimal TOT (of the kind mentioned above). With the RFP system scrapped, this too apparently would be on a G2G basis.

The BAE rep in turn asked me what would get Parrikar’s attention in his quarter hour with the defence minister. And I told him straight out that if BAE was really serious and if it had to have smidgeon of a chance, it’d have to part with the source codes and control laws so India can actually learn how to build advanced aircraft from the ground up to add to the invaluable experience garnered by Indian aircraft designers at ADA on the Tejas, and not put on the table yet another Meccano-license manufacture deal. If BAE, overnight rethinks its attitude on opening up to genuine TOT, who knows, it may just get a hearing from a BJP govt which is plainly confused and doesn’t know which way to go. Otherwise it’ll be another polite thankyou-goodbye episode, which is what I expect to happen.

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Rafale discussion on HT TV channel

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

For those interested in the Rafale, esp’. interesting ACM Tipnis’position that it’d be “a disaster” if 36 Rafale MMRCA are followed up with some other aircraft as MMRCA in a TV panel discussion hosted by Karan Thapar (April 15, 2015) on the deal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdOtR76z3gc

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, domestic politics, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, russian assistance, russian military, society, South Asia, Technology transfer, United States, Weapons | Leave a comment