Avoid speaking tripe in China, General Bikram S

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

Chief of the Army Staff General Bikram Singh is scheduled to visit China July 2-5, and to meet the top military officer there — General Fan Changlong, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, the apex military-defence-national security-related agency in the Chinese system. COAS’ talking about the forthcoming “Hand-in-Hand” exercise — the fourth such exercise on counter-terrorism tactics, etc is fine. It is the fact that he’ll be hosted by the Zhongnanhai (Foreign Office) in Beijing and will be discussing among other things, what PTI described as, “bilateral ties, regional security and other issues of common concern” that raises the gravest apprehension. General Bikram with a long stint in the army’s PR Wing as its spokesman (during the Kargil ops) fancies himself a talker. From the few times I have heard him he seems to get easily carried away with his own words, which come out as a jumble.

The potential problem, especially where China is concerned, is this: His often ‘stream of consciousness’ kind of babbling could be genuinely confusing to the Chinese or create serious misunderstandings. The Chinese language is at once abstract and precise in what they say and the message they want to convey. Designated Indian interlocuters — all of whom invariably consider themselves, albeit unwarrantedly, as masters of the English language and tend to be garrulous, sometimes going beyond their brief. It is a problem compounded by imprecise language (usually of the stilted variety). COAS’ minders, hopefully, will keep this trait of his in mind and advice him to curb it, and coach him in what to say and how to say it on such issues as the South China Sea disputes China has with a number of littoral and offshore states in Southeast Asia. And, if the Modi Govt wants to convey its no-nonsense attitude then Bikram should be instructed to bring up the unceasing habit of PLA on the LAC to be needlessly provocative and to signal to the other side the Indian Army’s intention to respond strongly and in kind. He could mention the trampling of the democratic instincts of the people in China generally and in Tibet, and throw in HongKong as well — where over 780,000 people, a few days back, braved harsh official retaliation to endorse a petition for more individual rights and democracy.

The short point to make is and this is something Bikram S should bear in mind. He is the Indian Army Chief, not a smooth-talking diplomat. A gruff exposition mostly on the unacceptability of the habitual offensiveness of the Chinese military stance and political attitude, would push the Chinese back, which is what’s needed and required of him. Leave all the tripe about perpetual peace, Panchsheel, and the rest of that nonsense to MEA staffers paid to shovel it. And, he should be reminded, that for God’s sake to rein in his tongue, lest what he says inadvertently or otherwise be noted down by the Chinese note-keepers and regurgitated by Chinese negotiators at a later date as something representing GOI’s view. The rest of us meanwhile should cross our fingers and pray Bikram doesn’t shove his foot in his mouth.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Internal Security, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Terrorism | 12 Comments

Cartographic initiative

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

This is the umpteenth time this has happened — a recent Chinese map shows Arunachal Pradesh as its territory. What has been India’s reaction? The MEA spokesman responded by saying that “cartographic depiction” does not change reality on the ground. And that “The fact that Arunachal Pradesh is integral and inalienable part of India has been conveyed to Chinese authority at several occasions including at the very highest level.”

The point about China emphasizing its outrageous claims soon after vouching for the 5 principles of Panchsheel and its continued relevance in the 21st Century is par for the course, but something New Delhi is simply unwilling to concede as other than the usual provocation the Indian govt has over the years gotten used to. It is a wrong tack to take because it is precisely the repetition that dulls the foreign policy sense of the adversary and conditions him to react as India has done — as only a map, etc., when actually the aim is to consolidate its international legal claims.

Soft words and caution will not do the trick that a like cartographic reaction can — such as depicting Tibet in a different colour and NOT as part of sovereign Chinese territory, as has been advocated by this analyst for over 25 years now. It will at once depict the fact of India’s accepting Tibet as Chinese ONLY when it is treated as a genuinely “autonomous” part of China voided of all PLA presence. This is the sort of “muscular” reaction one would have expected as follow-up to the formal invite to Lobsang Sangay, the elected PM of the Tibetan Government in Exile to Modi’s investiture on May 26, and the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s heartening statement that if Beijing wants India to support a “One China” concept Beijing should reciprocate by supporting “One India” principally inclusive of Arunachal Pradesh.

What is India frightened of? When India does not respond in like, tit-for-tat, fashion is when it makes everybody on China’s periphery doubt India’s druthers, leadership qualities, and its will to take on a natural rival in Asia, brings into question India’s ambitions, and encourages Beijing to become progressively more daring. That way lies not peace, but war.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | 8 Comments

India’s Unused Nuclear Leverage

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The news that India had ratified the 1997 Additional Protocol permitting more intensive and intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle and research including nuclear installations and facilities excluded by the Indian government from the safeguards regime came as a shock. Especially as India did not condition its consent, as did the US in 1998, to the IAEA sticking to restrictive procedures for “appropriately managed access”. IAEA is hence free to inspect what it wants when it wants in order to get a “comprehensive picture” of India’s nuclear activity. Whatever happened to the dissatisfaction expressed in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto with the nuclear situation generally?

This development coming so soon after Narendra Modi assumed command suggests one of two things: Contrary to his party’s manifesto the prime minister had mulled the problem of how to advance India’s nuclear interests, and arrived at a definite view ere he assumed office that placating the US by buying its Westinghouse AP 1000-enriched uranium-fuelled light water reactors (LWRs) and thereby ensuring the country’s formal entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was best. Or, and this seems the more likely explanation, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) that has invested heavily in the Congress party-Manmohan Singh regime’s policy of nuclear giveaways used the excuse of the upcoming Washington meeting with US president Barack Obama to push its institutional agenda and secure Modi’s approval, as concurrently Minister for Atomic Energy, to “complete” the 2008 civilian nuclear cooperation deal with America.

The empowerment of the bureaucracy in Modi’s scheme of things without the prime minister first articulating a geostrategic vision and laying down new policy guidelines, put continuity of policy at a premium—something that was foreseen (“Modi’s ‘India First’ Agenda”, May 2, 2014 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Modis-India-First-Agenda/2014/05/02/article2200416.ece). In this regard, the MEA was no doubt aided by the fact that neither Modi nor Sushma Swaraj, appointed as minister for external affairs, had other than limited exposure to international relations and the conduct of foreign policy would, therefore, be inclined to accept its advice. Except Swaraj was a stalwart of the parliamentary fight over the nuclear deal that, but for Amar Singh and his reportedly US-lubricated antics to convince the Samajwadi Party into supporting the ruling coalition, would have brought down the Manmohan Singh government on July 8, 2008. And she was in the forefront of the opposition move to blunt the nuclear deal by forcing the Congress regime to accept the 2010 Civilian Nuclear Liability Act. Apparently, by the time foreign secretary Sujatha Singh and officials in the disarmament and international security division briefed the minister, Swaraj had forgotten the reasons why the BJP had opposed the nuclear deal that Washington desperately wanted and the weak-minded Manmohan Singh fell in with, and failed to counsel rethink to the PM.

There reportedly was not much discussion in Modi’s office, and the contra-viewpoint championed, other than this analyst, by the late P K Iyengar, ex-chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, A N Prasad, former director, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and A Gopalakrishnan, ex-chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, that informed the BJP’s thinking when in opposition, was ignored. Let’s therefore enumerate some important reasons why the original nuclear deal was bad and follow-up actions such as signing the Additional Protocol are, too. One, the nuclear deal torpedoes the 1955 three-stage Bhabha Plan based on large reserves in-country of thorium for energy self-sufficiency by diverting attention, effort, and monies from the pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) technology (first stage) India has specialised in, and from speedily developing for subsequent stages the breeder reactor, and upscaling the Kamini thorium experimental reactor to funding the purchase of exorbitantly-priced foreign LWRs. These reactors costing $6-7 billion per 1,000MW plant will produce unaffordable electricity at Rs 40-50 a unit at present prices! Two, uninterrupted operation of the string of foreign LWRs will become hostage to India’s good behaviour in the economic and foreign policy fields as the supply of nuclear fuel packages and spares can be choked at any time. Thus, the dependency syndrome that prevails with respect to conventional armaments will now be replicated in the nuclear energy sector. Three, the position of foreign supplier countries will be further strengthened with regard to shaping India’s foreign policy choices by threats of extraordinary economic disruption of, say, 10,000MW of power from the imported reactors going off the grid. Four, these things will happen if India resumes nuclear testing, which it needs to do to remove design flaws in its thermonuclear weapons. Five, in which case, tens of billions of dollars invested in these white elephants will become radioactive waste, needing expensive vitrification and entombment. And finally, with all but eight of the PHWRs under safeguards, the country’s capacity for surge production of weapons-grade plutonium has been severely hurt. Is the goodwill of the US worth surrendering “strategic autonomy”?

India never needed membership in NSG to export its 220MW PHWRs and related technologies to eager Third World states. Had it, as a non-signatory to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, done so in the past 20 years, the country by now would have had a flourishing nuclear industry, a tier of countries tied to India outside the non-proliferation structures, and amortised the huge public investment in the nuclear energy programme. Some African countries, moreover, could have paid for these reactors with their natural uranium reserves. Besides propelling the Bhabha Plan, it would have meant exercising hard leverage as spoiler that could have been used to extract the rights and privileges of a nuclear weapons-state and NSG membership from the US.

It requires iron will and strategic imagination which New Delhi has always been short of, but China has in plenty. Time and again the US, Russia, and Western Europe have been shoved to the wall, and Beijing has compelled respectful treatment from them in return for promising not to do worse! It is why China is advantaged and India is not, and why they are so differently placed in the emerging world order.

[Published in the New Indian Express, June 27, 2014, at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Indias-Unused-Nuclear-Leverage/2014/06/27/article2301824.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 4 Comments

Nuclear folly

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The first indication of a decision to sign the IAEA Additional Protocol (AP) came yesterday when someone in the know contacted me. I professed disbelief. I was wrong because in the afternoon today news agencies carried the story of GOI agreeing to the AP that will extend and permit more intensive and intrusive international inspection of the Indian nuclear facilities and installations brought into the IAEA safeguards net as condition for the US agreeing to the deal for civilian nuclear cooperation.

Where was the need for such haste when a geostrategic vision hasn’t been spelled out by PM Narendra Modi nor grand strategy in any way intimated to the govt, leave alone the people, to realize it? In all matters nuclear the rule of thumb is to make haste very, very slowly.

Apparently, GOI felt things required speeding up because it wants India formally to acquire membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and to begin exporting technology and applications relating to the INDU/CANDU natural uranium-fueled pressurised heavy water reactor stream in which India has, perhaps, the most experience and is the most advanced. Exports of INDU reactors is something this writer has been advocating for the last decade and more, and is a great development EXCEPT for the fact that it is as part of the exchange for NSG member status.

It is not clear why India hadn’t exported the INDU reactor and technology for the past 20-odd years which, besides earning DAE oodles of foreign exchange as amortization of the investment in the nuclear energy programme, would have compelled the NSG to take notice and offer India membership in it lest Indian exports remain outside the safeguards system, creating an entire tier of countries outside IAEA inspection and control. That is powerful leverage that India could have used to get what it wanted on its terms and WITHOUT having to acquiesce in the nuclear deal that the Congress Party-Manmohan Singh govt recklessly did in 2008 without paying the slightest heed to the long term national interest.

The BJP govt has now compounded that folly because, assuming it is convinced that NSG membership is an imperative, it could have used it as a negotiating card to ensure the US did not pressure GOI on sidelining the the Liability Act passed by Parliament as a means of generating export orders for the US Westinghouse light water reactors, which India needs like a hole in the head.

Was the decision taken at this time by the PM as Minister for Atomic Energy because he wanted to improve the Obama Administration’s as curtain raiser for his upcoming visit to Washington, to improve the Obama dministrations’s perceptions of him personally, and to make his first official visit to the US a success? All concerned people would have wished Modi to have consulted with those outside govt circles who have worked on the subject and know something about nuclear negotiation, and could have given him the contra viewpoint to ponder.

This is an especially troubling development and so early in the term of Prime Minister Modi!! Hope he is not embarked on a foreign policy of surprises that will serve the country ill.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, society, South Asia, Technology transfer, United States | Leave a comment

Shooting oneself…

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

In any healthy organic system, a self-correcting mechanism kicks in the moment the system sensors sense something going wrong. For Narendra Modi led-BJP, which didn’t set a foot wrong in the long election campaign and, as regards its initial moves, in government, the Home Ministry directive to use Hindi in all inputs — even if only in the “social media” is an appalling misstep. Because social media today, could be all official correspondence tomorrow. It has predictably led the southern states starting with Tamil Nadu to rear themselves up on their hind legs to oppose the imposition of a “North Indian” language. Indeed, it was precisely the Tamil fear of such cultural imperialism that led to the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu to consolidate their hold on the state polity. That such instructions should have been ordered fairly casually, presumably, by Rajnath Singh in the main suggests the PM’s social sensors are beginning to go on the blink. For surely, Modi would have been in on this decision and should have warned Rajnath of this folly — which has every potential of spreading like wildfire and consuming all the hard work the party has done so far so early in his first term.

The language issue has historically been at the centre of Dravidian identity. Reviving this problem at just the point in time when BJP’s prospects in South India are looking up — if the performance of the party at the hustings is any indication — amounts to shooting oneself in the foot even as the race has just begun. Combined with the BJP’s support for the Rajasthan MP, Nihalchand, accused of rape and his minions charged with terrorizing the young woman at the receiving end of his evil actions — was no background check done? And if this rape-case in the court did turn up on his docket, was it willfully disregarded or inadvertently ignored — it isn’t clear which, in either case it shows up the BJP in very bad light, and are the sorts of things that were avoidable and could have been easily avoided.

Posted in Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, society, South Asia | 7 Comments

Prepare Baghdad airlift and deploy a Special Forces unit

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

It’s been about a week since the threat to Baghdad from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) began developing into something serious. The greater Baghdad area also has the highest concentration of Indian expat workers in Iraq. While the militant sunni ISIS is facing a firmed up shia front with Iran sending in possibly the Pas Daran — Islamic Revolutionary Guard to join with the mainly shia army and, if there’s an agreement between Tehran and Washington – the air cover/air assault being provided by carrier borne fighter-bombers — two US Navy carrier task groups are presently in the waters off the Gulf, then the ISIS tide will be turned. Even w/o US assistance but with full Iranian involvement, the ISIS militants will be beaten and the wave they set off will begin receding.

The trouble is this may not happen soon and the thousands of Indian expat workers are in real danger of being lined up and shot — the sort of modus operandi of the ISIS designed to create uncontrollable panic as much among the shia ranks of the Iraqi soldiery as the local population. A people acting hysterically will make effective mobilization of resources and of counter military actions that much more difficult.

Understandably, members of the Indian expat community would hesitate to leave precipitately and endanger their livelihoods. Then again waiting until the ISIS are upon them would be equally dangerous.

Dispatching a Special Envoy to Baghdad is all very well. It will be more sensible though to prepare immediately to mount a massive airlift — nothing the IAF can’t manage, recall the orderly airlift of Indians from various such locations in the past, with the envoy only seeking permission from the al-Malliki regime for the Indian C-17s to land, etc. As a precautionary measure, GOI should also have a contingent of Special Forces secure the Baghdad landing strip and ensure safety of all Indians collected at an assembly point for embarkation. The last plane out of Baghdad should carry the deployed SF unit. There should be no delay in implementing these measures.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, South Asia, Special Forces | 1 Comment

An Indian Monroe Doctrine

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The news reports of secretaries to the government of India running around tidying up their office complexes in fear of an imminent visit by prime minister Narendra Modi puts one in mind of the hilarious short story—“Inspector General” by the early 19th Century Russian novelist, Nikolai Gogol.

Warned of a “surprise” visit by the IG checking up on the workings of the state apparatus in the hinterland, an outpost of the Tsarist empire finds itself suddenly in the thrall of frantic activity with previously somnolent and corrupt officials at all rungs of government busy sprucing up the workplace, “cooking” the books, and addressing the woes of a startled people, in the hopes of pleasing the boss. In this fraught milieu a luckless traveller is mistaken for the eminence himself and feted and fussed over, wined and dined, before someone in the town discovers he’s not the real thing and he is unceremoniously booted out! Gogol could be lampooning the 21st Century Indian state.

It is good that the mere hint of Modi on the prowl has galvanised the babus. The question is whether such heightened awareness, order, and efficiency can be sustained, become a permanent feature of government? More likely Modi’s “11 commandments’’ will lose steam before these can percolate to the grassroots levels of bureaucracy. But such measures, while a welcome antidote to years of paralysis in the previous regime, are concerned only with the processes of government and not the content and larger aim of policies.

Candidate Modi’s promises were grander, far-reaching. He had promised galloping growth, responsible financial policies, minimising the role of state in the lives of people while ensuring that government services and social welfare benefits are delivered efficiently to the deserving. But this requires a ruthless axing of a multitude of useless government bodies and organisations and radical pruning of public payrolls. Speedy digitisation and computerisation of records and of official functioning generally will beget a paperless regime and facilitate a better outreach that he favours. It’ll, moreover, reduce the rocketing government expenditure and crippling fiscal deficit and improve India’s credit rating.

But, and this is worrying, there’s no blueprint for such dismantling of the socialist state and the agencies of the “command economy”, no trace of a scheme for privatising the public sector, nor any indication of the “rules of business” guiding the various ministries and agencies of government being rewritten to remove anomalies (such as defence secretary being responsible for the security of the country!). In the proverbial first “100 Days”—the honeymoon period, Modi with his sweeping mandate can push through the most ambitious structural and systemic reforms in the government of India. If this opportunity is lost then the aim of a smaller, efficient, more effective apparatus of state will remain only a dream, and changes Modi rings in to improve state functioning will last only as long as he does in power.

The troubling thing is Modi’s success as chief minister in turning around Gujarat state government enterprises suggests he believes he can do the same with the national public sector units (PSUs), most of them on life support. In that case, PSUs will endure and in the defence sector, for instance, it will mean dependency on imported armaments in perpetuity. The fact is not one defence PSU can survive fair competition with the private sector companies who, driven by the profit motive, are masters at ingesting and innovating transferred foreign technology for commercial gain, and their labour is markedly more skilled and productive. In contrast, what the ordnance factories and Hindustan Aerospace Ltd. do is assemble tanks and aircraft from imported kits under licence manufacture agreements, relying desperately on the department of defence production in the ministry of defence to steer large military acquisition programmes with local production element exclusively to them. The extant arrangement will continue draining off India’s wealth in the name of security.

If there are no plans to shrink the government, there’s no evidence of new policy ideas either. Most conspicuously, Modi has not so far articulated a vision for India—which should have been the first order of business. Unless there’s a singular national vision to guide the various arms of government, contextualise policies, and to motivate the people, government activity will be dictated by inertia and past policies, dressed up in new frills, will continue to be pursued. Indeed, the Congress party was quick in charging the BJP government of merely “copying” its policies. This is apparent from Modi falling in with, say, the ministry of external affairs’ agenda without first laying out the parameters of policy. The only section of society that so far feels empowered is the bureaucracy, whence a story in a pink paper, taking off on the BJP’s election slogan, was tellingly titled “Ab ki bar, babu sarkar” (as if it was ever otherwise!).

Let’s be clear about what visioning is not. Cultivating a friendly neighbourhood is not vision, encouraging economic growth is not vision, emphasising economic diplomacy, or even improvement of strategic ties with assorted countries, such as Japan, ASEAN, Russia, and the United States, isn’t either. Nor are sets of policies labelled “Look East”, “Look West” or look wherever tantamount to vision. These are tactical policies of the moment. Vision is related primarily to geography and physical constants.

The only time India had a genuine, if flawed, vision was when Jawaharlal Nehru spelled one out at the dawn of the republic. Addressing the first Asian Relations Conference in Spring 1947, he spoke unfortunately of an “Asian”, rather than an Indian, “Monroe Doctrine”, derived from president James Monroe in 1823 defining the entire hemisphere of north, central, and south America as US’ exclusive backyard at a time when that country had little hard power. In line with his view that “the need of the hour is to think big” and based on India’s geostrategic centrality, Modi should declare an Indian Monroe Doctrine sphere encompassing the Indian Ocean Region and, landwards, the arc of the Gulf-Caspian Sea-Central Asia. This grand vision of great power should be the lodestar guiding all policies.

[Published in the New Indian Express, Friday, June 13, 2014 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/An-Indian-Monroe-Doctrine/2014/06/13/article2277168.ece

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Central Asia, China, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Japan, Maldives, Military Acquisitions, Northeast Asia, Pakistan, Relations with Russia, Russia, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, Weapons, West Asia | 2 Comments

Extraordinary weapons

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

According to a source, one and half to two months back COAS Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha witnessed the demonstration of extraordinary weapons DRDO labs have been attempting to develop, such as bunker-busting bombs. The one device that abjectly failed related to EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) system — in technical terms “a magnetic flux compression generator” that can knock out whole communications grids. Initiated at AEC’s laser facility in Indore many years ago, weaponizing the concept was undertaken only a few years ago by DRDO. Designed to yield 100 megagauze the device, mounted on a tower, “tore itself into pieces” reportedly because of wrong experimental parameters, geometry, and magnetic field configuration. As a consequence the device — that can be used from an airborne platform or ground based, in which case, the earth is a conducive medium — in the manner of a shaped charge however suffered “asymmetric explosion” (in the process knocking out at most a few cell phones). There’s a history behind the EMP weapon project. Several years ago, the Russians offered to design one for India and asked for involvement of certain Indian scientists by name. For whatever reasons, DRDO and MOD showed no interest!!!

Posted in Cyber & Space, Defence Industry, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Military Acquisitions, South Asia, Technology transfer, Weapons | 4 Comments

RC out, tk God; Saraswat in?

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

Those acquainted with my writing are no doubt aware of my antipathy for Dr. R Chidambaram, erstwhile Chmn, AEC, and for the last decade, S&T adviser to the PM whose removal has been advocated by me post-1998 tests. He has been the greatest retardant of the nuclear weapons program — by placing it in the no-testing mode. He’s finally gone, and good riddance. What little good he did do — by calculating the equation of state for the fissile material in our n-weapons was long ago frittered away by his dogmatic championing of the “no need for more N-tests”-thesis, which has been lapped up great many in the policy Establishment and the commentariat, who are a little too mindful of the American don’ts than is good for the national interest.

That the former scientific adviser to the PM V Saraswat’s name is being bandied about as RC’s replacement is problematic for three reasons: (1) He is absolutely innocent of any intimate knowledge of N-weapons/warheads, (2) lacking any technical insights of his own, he has blindly toed the RC line — and believes that software and simulation is enough to make modifications in the failed thermonuclear design (S-1 tested in 1998) and to render the extant fusion arsenal credible. The third reason is in a generic sense similar to RC’s — he’s wedded to the idea of the ballistic missile defence system, he being the chief promoter of this project. Physics, as I have argued, is against the BMD, but Saraswat has managed to keep this exorbitantly priced project funded by making wild promises of superior performance that cannot be supported by the orchestrated tests DRDO has conducted so far. It has screwed up the country’s deterrence posture. As S&T adviser he’ll ensure a lot of good money goes down that sinkhole. It’s one of the many projects that India cannot afford, and ought to be if not shut down altogether, continued with as only a technology demonstrator.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Weapons | 3 Comments

Uses of Ambush Diplomacy

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

Modi understands the importance of a friendly near abroad to realise India’s great power aspirations
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The meetings with invited heads of government of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) states, following the grand spectacle of Narendra Modi’s investiture, reveal the Indian Prime Minister’s conviction that a friendly and pacified neighbourhood is an essential element to realise India’s great power aspirations, and that ambush diplomacy is a good way to secure a ‘first mover’ advantage—and, eventually, the desired outcomes.

Modi’s invitation was less a calculated move than an inspired initiative that surprised the Ministry of External Affairs. The alacritous acceptance by most of the countries was anticipated, but not the invitation being turned into a matter of high strategy in Pakistan, which suggests that overcoming Islamabad’s historical suspicion of India will take more than imaginative moves, an open mind and a show of good faith.

The drama that attended the reactions and responses to this Modi move at home and in the neighbouring countries was nevertheless instructive from the point of view of the challenges he faces. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, mindful of the army’s antipathy, teetered between giving in to the traditional wariness of India, reflected in its former Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad’s dismissal of the invitation as a ‘patronising gesture’, and letting the more venturesome section spearheaded by the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi hold sway with its view that for the Pakistani PM to miss such a chance of interacting with his Indian counterpart so early in the latter’s tenure would be a ‘visceral squandering’ of a rare opportunity.

In more hardline quarters, the Modi gambit was denounced on the one hand by Shireen Mazari, a one-time director-general of the military-supported Pakistan Institute for Strategic Studies and member of Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf party, as an Indian ploy of ‘power and dominance’, and, on the other hand, seen by Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Shahzad Chaudhry as testing ‘the mettle of Pakistani leadership’ that required Nawaz Sharif to display what he called ‘the acumen to dominate’ the meeting with his Indian counterpart. The one-time pilot and former deputy chief of Pakistan’s air staff did not, however, explain just how Sharif was supposed to do this. But Mazari and Chaudhry reflected the confusion within Pakistan’s armed forces; especially since its new army chief, General Raheel Sharif, had, soon after his appointment, identified Islamist militancy as the country’s principal threat—a view recently seconded by the head of its air force Air Chief Marshal Tahir Rafique Butt at Sargodha whilst speaking to pilots of a newly inducted squadron of reconditioned F-16 fighter aircraft acquired from Jordan for the purpose of counter-insurgency operations.

The Pakistan military’s hesitation, however, is understandable. With heavy investment over the years by the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) in such tools of asymmetric warfare as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad, any abrupt policy turnaround by a rapprochement-inclined Nawaz Sharif would put the country’s policy edifice, designed to counter India, out of joint. However, a desperate LeT attack on the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, failed to thwart the Pakistani leader’s journey to Delhi. It did not deter Modi or Sharif from talking to each other. Predictably, in their extended session the two leaders had the obligatory riffs on terror and Kashmir respectively to satisfy domestic constituencies before talking shop and the prospects of opening up trade.

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The point of ‘ambush’ diplomacy is that it is unsettling, compelling foreign leaders and governments to respond in an appropriately heightened way in line with the tenor of the initial gesture. Thus, Nawaz Sharif acted on his gut feelings, reflected in his daughter Maryam’s tweets, rather than on reservations voiced by sceptics. Likewise, India’s invitation to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa upset the political applecart on both sides of the Palk Strait. Rajapaksa, in turn, did the unexpected by inviting the Tamil chief minister of the country’s Northern Province, CV Wigneswaran, to join him on his Delhi trip. The latter declined in fear of upsetting well-wishers in Tamil Nadu, even as most of the parties, including Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s, reacted along cynical lines of fighting for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka to the last Sri Lankan Tamil.

In similar vein, Mamata Banerjee kept away from the Delhi event while pleading for ‘special status’ and enhanced financial subventions for West Bengal, conceding, in effect, the futility of opposing Modi when he seals and delivers the deals on the Teesta River waters and a minorly redrawn border to Dhaka in return for Bangladesh tightening up on illegal migration into Assam—an exchange that Sheikh Hasina’s representative and Speaker of Bangladesh parliament, Sharmin Chaudhury, will have been asked to convey to her boss. It will pave the way for the economic integration of India’s Northeast and Bangladesh with the Indian mainland economy —with transit rights and interlinked electricity and gas grids.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala, in asking for Indian development help for the landlocked country, will be tempted by the Bhutan model—of India building a string of hydroelectric projects on Nepal’s Himalayan watershed to light up that country, power its industries, and earn revenue by selling excess electricity to India.

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The creation of a unitary economic and trade bloc of South Asian nations and proximal Indian Ocean island-states is an obvious priority for the business-minded Narendra Modi, but security concerns that undergird any such arrangement will need special attention. Economic ties are fine, but there’s nothing like extensive military cooperation and tie-ins to forge strong bonds. In this respect, Maldives’ request—made by the government of President Abdulla Yameen Gayoom— for Indian help in constructing a naval base off its main island of Male has to be met, and all resources deployed to get this project underway in double-quick time. New Delhi cannot afford another Hambantota, when Colombo approached India to upgrade this port only to be told by Manmohan Singh that it couldn’t be done. It allowed China to step in and consolidate its presence in Sri Lanka.

Even less can India afford to continue ignoring Mauritius’ offer—made by the government of premier Navinchandra Ramgoolam—of its North and South Agalega Islands as naval and air bases on long-term lease, as the Defence Ministry under the unforgivably obdurate AK Antony did for the last eight years. Indian foreign policy has traditionally had neither reach nor bite. A forward military presence in the Indian Ocean could give it both. A similar presence in the Seychelles and Mozambique would draw the western and southern Indian Ocean areas up to the East African littoral into an Indian security grid. At a time when the Chinese South Sea Fleet is feeling its way around the Indian Ocean, New Delhi cannot restrict itself to its peninsular territory and remain unambitious seaward, or even landward for that matter.

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has emphasised a need for India to stay engaged with the successor regime headed by either Dr Abdullah Abdullah orAfzal Ghani in Kabul. This is a tricky bit of policy space to negotiate with Nawaz Sharif because Pakistan’s army remains distinctly uneasy about India’s presence in—and friendly relations with—Afghanistan.

Indian investment in the extraction of minerals, especially in the coal-rich Hajigak region and elsewhere in Afghanistan, and in other industries will only grow. So will its importance in India’s geo-strategic scheme of assured access to—and connectivity with—Central Asian countries through the Iranian port of Chabahar and the north-south rail and road corridors, parts of which are already functional, such as the Delaram-Zaranj Highway built by India.

Islamabad cannot easily be convinced that India’s expanding role in Afghanistan is benign and not a crafty design to get Pakistan in a pincer. There is one thing India can do to allay such Pakistani fears, but it is going to be resisted heavily by a vast majority of Indians and sections of the Indian Army fixated without rhyme or credible reason on Pakistan as a threat. New Delhi should reconstitute India’s war capability to obtain a single armoured- mechanised corps and several independent armoured brigades out of the present three strike corps, and transfer the excess manpower and fighting assets to form two offensive mountain corps, in addition to the one being raised, for a total of three such corps on the China front. Thus, diluting the Indian armoured threat that Rawalpindi is mortally afraid of will achieve three kills with the proverbial single stone: win Pakistan’s confidence enough to facilitate a genuine normalisation of relations, build up potent Indian offensive forces for operations on the Tibetan plateau as a deterrent to the Chinese army along the disputed mountain border, and strategically help establish India as a player in Central Asia.

Modi’s ‘ambush diplomacy’ has succeeded in breaking the ice and introducing him to his opposite numbers in other SAARC countries. The follow-on diplomacy will be a much harder slog.

[Published in ‘Open’ weekly, dated 30 May 2014 at http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/uses-of-ambush-diplomacy

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