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

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Maldives, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka | 11 Comments

Need for the Right Priorities

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

Narendra Modi, predictably, has begun his rule at a canter, strengthening his hold on the party machinery and putting in place a system, wherein the Prime Minister’s Office is the nodal agency in government to vet policy options and shoehorn choices for the various ministries.

In the over-bureaucratised Indian milieu, the Principal Private Secretary (PPS) to the prime minister is often the difference between success and failure of the government. In the new millennium, it was Brajesh Mishra as both PPS and National Security Adviser to prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who piloted the BJP government through its tenure. Mishra’s views were sufficiently in sync with Vajpayee’s, a fact enhanced by the basic trust existing between them for the PPS-NSA to act as PM in all but name. The decisiveness reflected in that BJP government’s policies mirrored Mishra’s definiteness of views and preferred strategies. His successor, T K N Nair, a Punjab-cadre IAS officer, in contrast, reflected Manmohan Singh’s tendency for bureaucratic waffle and prevarication and the Congress coalition government soon resembled a ship adrift with neither the captain nor his first mate having his hand on the tiller but both cupping their ears to hear orders shouted by Sonia Gandhi aloft in the crow’s nest! Modi installed Nripendra Misra, a stalwart civil servant, for the same reasons he had K Kailashnathan running his show in Gandhinagar—intimate knowledge of the bureaucratic maze, clean record, and reputation for efficiently implementing decisions.

Prime minister Modi’s emphasis on internal security naturally led to Ajit Doval’s placement as NSA. Doval, director of the Intelligence Bureau during L K Advani’s stint as home minister, was the designated NSA had the BJP won the 2009 elections. As a hands-on intelligence operative, Doval provides Modi with the advisory and oversight support he will need to translate into action his promise of targeted intelligence operations against terrorist/gangster outfits generally and specifically to haul in the underworld chieftain, Dawood Ibrahim.

Given multiple ministerial charge of finance, defence and corporate affairs, Arun Jaitley’s top priority is incentivising foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector, with modified labour and land acquisition laws, as the means to get a stalled economy going. The ostensible reason for his being hoist with the defence portfolio is because of Modi’s hope that he’ll quickly assess the financial situation, bring projected military expenditures on capital acquisitions in line with what’s in the kitty, and draw tentative red lines across procurement schemes deemed unaffordable, before he is divested of this portfolio. It would spare the incoming defence minister the need to make harsh choices or face criticism for junking this or that hardware acquisition programme.

Sushma Swaraj’s appointment as minister for external affairs is an anomalous development. Considering that Swaraj, an Advani acolyte, has no strong following in the party or at the grassroots level, saw herself as a rival to Modi, and never really warmed up to him before, during, or even immediately after the long election campaign, her being given charge of MEA suggests one of two things: MEA is not considered important enough by Modi, or he believes foreign policy can be micro-managed by the PMO, in which case it doesn’t really matter whether Swaraj or somebody else is minister. The latter seems to be the case, as was evident in the initiation and conduct of the “ambush diplomacy” with the surprise invitations to the SAARC heads of government and the successful staging of the bilateral talks at Hyderabad House, particularly with the Pakistan PM, when Modi’s obligatory riff on terrorism apart his personal relationship with Nawaz Sharif was established.

Obviously, obtaining a friendly neighbourhood, tying up the subcontinental and offshore South Asian states to the Indian economy with trade and commercial ties as a means of stanching China’s influence in the region ought to have high priority. But this policy has to be laced with steel. In this regard, it is imperative, for instance, that New Delhi quickly accept the longstanding offer of the Mauritius government headed by Navinchandra Ramgoolam of the North and South Agalega Islands in that archipelagic nation as forward base for the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force in the southern Indian Ocean. And landwards, India has to deploy a squadron of Su-30MKIs at the Farkhor base in Ainee, Tajikistan, to out-flank the Chinese Lanzhou Military Region centred on Urumchi in Xinjiang (or as the “splittist” Uighurs would have it, Eastern Turkestan). It is precisely the sort of moves that have been opposed by a strategically befuddled MEA and sections in Indian armed forces that the Modi PMO should now push. It will lend the otherwise toothless Indian foreign policy bite.

Of equal importance is the need to ratchet up strategic partnerships with countries in China’s vulnerable underside in Southeast Asia and off its coast—namely Australia, Taiwan and, especially, Japan. The prospective flagship defence cooperative venture is that of the Shin Meiwa Company proposing to produce its US-2 maritime surveillance flying boat in India in the private sector. Amitabh Kant, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion, visited Japan last month to advance the deal, which needs to be speedily finalised. Japanese military sources complained about the Congress government’s unwillingness to upgrade the joint and multilateral naval exercises, ruing the fact that MEA accorded “too much respect to China”. This, hopefully, will change with Modi pursuing a disruptive but sophisticated twin-pronged policy of facilitating Chinese capital investment in massive infrastructure projects, such as construction of world-class country-girdling road and high-speed railway networks—a Chinese specialty—and, concurrently, strengthening the strategic bulwark against China on its land and maritime periphery. And as for the United States: Washington has for long defined its relationship with India in overly transactional terms and treated Modi too disparagingly for New Delhi to respond other than in a matter-of-course vein to Obama’s overtures.

Modi had talked about merging MEA with the commerce ministry to constitute a super-ministry tasked primarily with promoting trade and economic cooperation. It isn’t clear why this far-reaching organisational innovation has so far been given a miss.

[Published in the New Indian Express on Friday, May 30, 2014 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Need-for-the-Right-Priorities/2014/05/30/article2252663.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Australia, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Japan, Military Acquisitions, Northeast Asia, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, US. | Leave a comment

Squandering an opportunity?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The invitation by the incoming PM Narendra Modi to the heads of government of SAARC states, including the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has unfortunately been turned into an occasion of high strategy by Islamabad with the reports emanating at the end of Thursday, May 22, that a final decision will be made by Mian Sahib by late afternoon May 23. He is obviously tugged in different directions. There is the more enlightened section of the Pak Foreign Office which is hoping their leader will not “squander” this opportunity handed on a platter for yet another new start to shift the relations to a higher. more mutually beneficial, plane. This view is backed by those in the trading community and industrial houses who believe they have lot to gain from access to the Big Emerging Market in India. And then there’s the Pakistan Army that finds itself facing a serious dilemma. It has invested much over the years in cultivating the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) as tools of asymmetric warfare, which it is loath to give up, or even to keep sheathed. On the other hand, it finds itself stretched on five fronts — battling the Tareeq-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in FATA and elsewhere in the tribal strongholds in the country’s northwest, fighting the resilient freedom Movement in Baluchistan, containing the situation on the Iran border from getting out of hand with Tehran’s warnings of military hostilities if Pakistan does not control Islamic militants from foraying across into its territory, dealing with the traditional animosity of Afghanistan on the other side of the indistinct Durand Line, which also hosts TTP guerillas seeking safe haven and will only be ratcheted upwards should Abdullah Abdullah be sworn in as successor to Hamid Karzai in Kabul, and then there’s the live-fire situation prevailing with India on the Line of Control in Kashmir.

Rationally-speaking, GHQ Rawalpindi’s best option would seem to be to permit Sharif to visit New Delhi to generate goodwill, re-start talks, and even get the relations moving in the trade and commerce sphere that both Sharif and Modi desire. However, even so level-headed a Pak Army Chief as General Raheel Sharif seems in two minds. The question is can Mian Sahib over-ride Pakistan army’s reservations and make the short hop to New Delhi anyway? If he does somehow manage this feat, the returns to Pakistan, its govt and its army may be far greater than any of them presently anticipate. There’s pressure on PM Sharif to do this also because, other than the Maldivan President, the Nepalese PM Koirala, and the Bhutanese PM, Karzai and Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa accepted Modi’s invitation with alacrity. (Sheikh Hasina’s previously scheduled state tour to Japan on May 26 provides her with legitimate exemption.) Nawaz Sharif will, in the event, be conspicuous by his absence should he not make it to Delhi, and miss out on the moment to forge strong personal relations with Modi at a time when the latter is ascendant and will potentially head the Indian govt for a long time to come.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Maldives, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Sri Lanka, Terrorism | 2 Comments

Watershed Politics

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

The results of the most fiercely fought general elections will be known by the day’s end. If, as expected, the Bharatiya Janata Party on the back of Narendra Modi’s tireless campaigning makes it anywhere near the magic figure of 272 seats in the Lok Sabha, it’ll be assured a smooth run in office, whichever other parties the National Democratic Alliance may choose to partner.

If NDA falls short—in the 210-230 seat range, the more amenable regional majors—especially Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and Navin Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, will put the Modi-led coalition across the victory threshold, rather than trust to the vagaries of the Third Front (TF) with such confidence and morale-sapping leadership aspirants as Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, and Mamata Banerjee. Moreover, because a TF government stitched together as an expedient will have a predictably short life, Messrs Jayalalithaa & Patnaik will be conscious of taint by association and how this could weaken them in their home ground.

To avoid this denouement is why the regional parties will take their chances with the NDA. It is better, they’ll reckon, to have a central government in hock to them in small and big ways, and which could be squeezed for financial subventions and other special treatment than to be left out in the cold for next five years. Indeed, given Modi’s track record of performance in government they may also fear a much stronger BJP, more entrenched in power at the Centre by 2019 and consolidated in their states and, hence, a tougher customer to deal with. Prudence, in the event, would dictate that they seek and sustain an early entente with Modi.

In fact, no matter what kind of coalition surfaces with BJP in the mix, Modi will lead it, and have the freedom to realise his agenda because this election has, in a sense, been a referendum as much on Modi as his agenda of small government, good governance, development, and of “India First” foreign policy. Indeed, Indian politics has reached a watershed. Henceforth, clean government and development will be the metric ruling parties whether at the Centre and in the states will be judged by. It also marks the beginning of the end of dynastic politics at all levels.

If the BJP is on the upside of the curve, the Congress party is sliding. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in their attempts to shore up the family firm harked back to the freedom movement. Except this is Congress party (Indira) not the Congress party of yore and its history begins only in the mid-1960s after Indira Gandhi cleaved the original party. Worse, its time in government has been characterised by corruption and misrule and populist, deficit-rocketing, schemes. The latter day variant of Indira’s “Garibi Hatao” (Remove Poverty) slogan is the conferment of rights on the people Rahul Gandhi boasts of. The paradox is a welfare state can only be afforded by a country with strong economy. In Sonia Gandhi’s dispensation, however, the private sector—the engine of growth capable of generating jobs and resources—was throttled.

Why do the Nehru-Gandhis have antipathy towards the private sector? Because they have not experienced normal life having been maintained in style all along by the socialist state. For them, perceiving reality as other than Lutyens’ Delhi is difficult. And the world the Nehru-Gandhis inhabit is one where the conferment of rights by law automatically converts into goodies people can tap.

Indira Gandhi relied on her “kitchen cabinet” of Left-leaners to assist her. Predictably, just when India had built up a semblance of an industrial base and infrastructure in the Fifties, and she could have done a Deng Xiaoping by releasing the pent-up energies of the free market and the entrepreneurial genius of the people, Indira turned sharply Left in 1966 because the US denied New Delhi a promised financial grant. Her fashionable Bloomsbury ideology inherited from her father hardened into Soviet-style socialist attitude culminating inevitably in a stab at authoritarianism with the imposition of the Emergency in the mid-Seventies.

The point is that Rahul, Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi are products of that Sovietised mindset, where few prospered except the nomenklatura—the ruling family and people close to it, who lived high and well behind protective barricades. This unreal world was reflected in Rahul’s exasperatingly hollow and naive speeches during the election campaign and in Priyanka’s emergence as a thin-skinned politician even as old family retainers like M L Fotedar honed their sycophantic skills with hyberbole, labelling the 21st Century as “Priyanka’s Century”. Not so fast, Pedro!

The Congress faces a dim future because while a worshipful media spared her third degree interrogation about what Modi cleverly called the “RSVP—Rahul, Sonia, Vadra, Priyanka” model of economic growth, she’ll have to address the Robert Vadra issue—and how a lakh of rupees was transformed inside a few years into Rs 300 crore and ownership of a large land bank, which if monetised could rake in thousands of more crores of rupees for the Family. She cannot refute the root-charge that Vadra secured the generous deals because he is Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law and, as in Indira’s days, proximity to power was translated by the canny Saharanpur native into commercial profit even as Family members were indulgent. With Priyanka possibly stepping in to save the party as demanded by Congressmen clutching at straws, Vadra’s deals will take centre stage, too. And who knows what other secrets will tumble out under media glare?

Priyanka’s dilemma is this: If she owns up to Vadra’s deals, she’ll become a political liability for her party, and the dynasty will have to fold. She has the option of discarding her husband, as her grandmother did Feroze Gandhi. Touted as the new avatar of Indira Gandhi such ruthless action could burnish Priyanka’s reputation. She may survive even if she’ll never be free of the stigma of corruption. Where would his sister’s ascent, with the Vadra impediment removed, leave Rahul? Well, he never had the makings of a politician.

[Published in the New Indian Express on May 16, 2014 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Watershed-Politics/2014/05/16/article2226919.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Internal Security, society, South Asia | 1 Comment

Modi’s ‘India First’ Agenda

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

Various ministries in the government of India are reportedly preparing for transition to a Narendra Modi-led BJP regime by getting policy documents ready for the incoming ministers to sign off on. In a similar vein our ambassador in Beijing, Ashok Kantha, jumped the gun by declaring there’d be no change in India’s China policy.

Such transition activity is explained self-servingly as permitting the new dispensation to “hit the ground running”. Actually, it is a way to entrench hoary policies the generalist civil servants are accustomed to purveying. But their attempt at ensuring the so-called “continuity in policy” pre-empts the incoming government from rethinking policies, setting new goals and objectives, and ringing in wholesale policy changes in accordance with Modi’s “India first” schema. The potentially incoming National Democratic Alliance ministers, therefore, need to be careful not to endorse any papers pending a comprehensive policy review and “house cleaning”. Otherwise, a Modi government will get locked into Sonia Gandhi’s policies.

Power transition should be handled in the manner it is reportedly being done with regard to oil where the BJP’s energy cell is active, with the prospective changes in policy being sourced to the soon-to-be ruling party, not babus who have no political stake in the new government’s policies, and are not accountable to the people for their success or failure.

This is to say that civil servants should be disabused of the notion that they are any part of policy making, something that weak governments with feeble prime ministers, post-Indira Gandhi, have failed to do. They need to be told to confine themselves to implementing the political decisions and to hue strictly to new policy parameters.

While Modi has raised expectations with promise of small government, good governance, and development, it is in the foreign and military policy fields where his “India first” doctrine is especially relevant. The phrase “India first” was originally coined by this analyst in 2002 in a series of writings culminating in a longish piece in the serious periodical, Seminar, in November of that year (http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/519/519%20bharat%20karnad.htm). It was frustration with the tendency of the BJP government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee to bend over backwards to please the United States that prompted it. Vajpayee’s term begot the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership, which led to Manmohan Singh’s catastrophic nuclear deal. National interest was grievously hurt and the country’s strategic options were curtailed. The “India first” precept advocated an unbending and uncompromising attitude to national interest as replacement for the soft, malleable, concepts that have animated policies to India’s detriment.

It was with a bit of proprietary pride then that I heard Narendra Modi talk of “India first” as his guiding principle. What Modi has said on foreign policy issues to date is down-to-earth and encouraging. His core belief that he’ll do whatever needs to be done in the national interest is a pointer. His view that India has to produce its own armaments is reassuring; that our diplomats should primarily promote Indian economic interests abroad is the sort of practical instruction that’s likely to fetch rich dividend and a task the foreign office should gear up for. Modi’s muscular thinking has been taken to mean that Pakistan should expect more steel in the Indian fist when, as he subsequently made clear, he expects to win over the neighbouring states with the means of trade and commerce. It is, however, his approach to China that will be the litmus test.

In building up excessively against Pakistan, India is left vulnerable against China. Modi will have to decide if such vulnerability is to continue. Pakistan is a lowly threat but consumes a lot of the Indian defence effort and resources. What terrorist-asymmetric threat it poses can be reduced, as Modi hinted with regard to Dawood Ibrahim, by resort to targeted intelligence operations, what Kautilya called kutayuddha (covert warfare). India’s making goo-goo eyes at Beijing, which has got away with nuclear missile arming Pakistan without suffering a tit-for-tat response, is incomprehensible. Passivity and inaction in the face of grave Chinese provocation convey the impression of a country that can be trifled with. Modi needs to rectify it as a first step in raising the country’s stock in Asia and the world.

But to get the country’s foreign and military policies on the right track requires articulation of an expansive geostrategic vision and iron political will, and appropriate strategy and plans. Modi will have to create his own brain trust. The trouble is the BJP has a flawed record in husbanding congenial talent. The proof is in the formation of the first National Security Advisory Board in 1998. It was an omnibus collection of disparate-minded people trawled from the strategic enclave, with no thought given to whether the thinking of those selected resonated with that of the BJP. That it didn’t was evidenced by the fact that it had persons who starred in the successor Congress party regime’s set-up. Among them were M K Narayanan—a manifest disaster as national security adviser (NSA), Sanjaya Baru, as media adviser, and a prolific “strategic affairs” commentator close to Washington who propagated the Congress government’s view that India should be part of “the political West”, which policy lost India politico-military standing and diplomatic leverage. A stalwart minister and Vajpayee’s confidante now admits that the latter’s government erred in not tapping the talent they had relied on when out of power.

The slew of retired civil servants and diplomats who have jumped onto the BJP bandwagon are of limited utility in this regard; long years in government rendering them incapable of generating fresh ideas to realise Modi’s “India first” agenda. After becoming prime minister, Modi should constitute a Special Policy Unit (SPU) attached to the PMO of the kind that Thatcher did in Britain in the 1980s to assist her in dismantling the socialist state and making that country more assertive. Separate from the more institutionalised NSA system, the compact, freewheeling, and bureaucratically unconstrained SPU can develop policy ideas for the PM’s consideration. The selected options can be followed up by NSA.

[Published in the New Indian Express, May 2, 2014 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/Modis-India-First-Agenda/2014/05/02/article2200416.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, United States, US. | 8 Comments

Abdullah Fatfoola

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Bharat Karnad

It is remarkable that Farooq Abdullah, minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, father of the Kashmir chief minister, Omar Abdullah, and son of the Sheikh of the same last name, is so full of himself and knows so little history, that he had the absolute gall to act the monarch of Kashmir — a sovereign who’ll take his state out of the Union, he declared, if the Indian republic fails to remain secular! Should we all tremble in our shoes, our hearts aflutter at the prospect of so losing Kashmir. OR, should he be shown his place, and told that the only thing that can get out of the Indian Union are those members of his family as would to chose to join him in exile — somewhere. Surely, there’s some place in the world who’ll take this quack (for indeed he is a medical doctor, unbeknownst to many, who hasn’t needed to earn a living when he was all along being kept by the Indian taxpayer to the style he’s now become accustomed?)! SO, this is what Article 370 has come to — an opportunity for every tinpot CM or his/her relative having the temerity to shake a fist at the Indian state.

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