The flop ‘S-doctrine’

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Optics are often as, if not more, important than the contents of foreign policy in an age of instant impact and political reverberations. Despite rendering seminal help and material assistance to the Mahinda Rajpaksa regime to eliminate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and close out the civil war in Sri Lanka, India finds itself on the outs with Colombo.

The Sri Lankan government and people had plainly hoped to use the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to showcase the country’s return to normalcy and the international mainstream, such summits being less important for what they achieve- which is usually very little- than because they give the host country the chance to preen itself on the world stage. With the event now robbed of its sheen and Rajpaksa denied his moment by an absconding Indian PM, New Delhi should brace for a payback with interest. China will, as usual, be the beneficiary. The CHOGM fiasco highlights the Congress coalition’s inchoate foreign policy and, for his role in it, undermines finance minister P Chidambaram’s credentials as PM to replace the hapless Manmohan Singh in an unlikely concatenation of future events.

If Manmohan Singh is remembered at all it will be for his personal qualities of servility and cravenness, his failure to push through the slate of economic reforms, and his uninspired views on what India can and cannot do in the external realm. Late in his tenure, the prime minister articulated the principles that have guided his foreign policy, which his former media adviser Sanjaya Baru, a trifle grandly, labeled “The Singh doctrine” (Indian Express, November 6, 2013).

Speaking to the heads of Indian missions, he said that the creation of “a global environment conducive to the well-being of our great country”, is the “most important objective”, followed by globalising the Indian economy, creating “stable, long-term and mutually beneficial relations with all major powers”, working with the “international community to create a global economic and security environment beneficial to all nations”, and forging connectivity with the subcontinental states. These principles came with the warning that foreign policy had to be configured not “merely by our interests, but also [our] values” with “democracy and secularism” helpfully identified as the values dictating policy direction and content.

With abstractions to handle-how is “well-being of the country” to be translated into a foreign policy metric, pray? -and improbable guidelines to hew to – would emphasizing secularism not require India to de-rate our relations with avowedly Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, say, in which case, how would the country cope with denial of access to Saudi oil and to Chahbahar, the Iranian entrepôt to Central Asia? – the audience of Indian ambassadors would have struggled mightily to make sense of this mushy presentation by the prime minister. It fuels the suspicion that Manmohan Singh doesn’t even understand the basics of foreign policy and diplomacy and the extent of practicability in this realm. What the “Singh doctrine” does do is bring confusion in its train.

Unsurprisingly, this “doctrine” without any delineation of national interests and any hints about the utility of military power, coercive use of force, or the emerging geostrategics that are tilting against India, seems entirely disconnected from the harsh reality of international relations where might is right. It presumes an ideal world in which interstate discord is absent as is interstate violence, and there’s no clash of national interests- as in a large, well-behaved, family- that cannot be conciliated. Thus, the injunction to craft “mutually beneficial relations with all major powers” assumes firstly that India’s national interests are aligned in the same way with all of them and to the same degree and, therefore, that China, for example, will not take amiss a security initiative with the United States. In a similar vein is the desire for a “global economic and security environment beneficial to all nations” -which, other than seeking to replace the United Nations is, in practical terms, a near nonsensical policy predicate. Has New Delhi, unbeknownst to the rest of us, taken the theka (contract) for the security of “all nations”?

Hearing such claptrap mumbled by Manmohan Singh in his usual low-decibel monotone, many of the envoys on the back benches would have dozed off, those in the middle rows tuned out, and those stuck in the front seats trying to look thoughtful, because transforming unimplementable rhetorical flourishes into actual policy measures is impossible business. No wonder, faced with such an exercise, “the foreign ministry and the foreign policy establishment” in the last decade behaved, according to Baru, as “a debating society” in which “everyone was holding forth on grand principles and no one devoting time or attention to getting things done the way [the Prime Minister] wanted” leading to a “wayward” policy. Did the MEA denizens have a choice, considering these “principles” read like a laundry list of dos and don’ts an international do-gooders’ society would happily own up to?

Meanwhile in the real world, India’s foreign policy is tanking. Bangladesh will be lost to the BNP-Islamist combo because Manmohan won’t shove Mamata Banerjee’s objections to the Teesta River Accord and the rationalisation of the border, aside. The Northeast will be lost to China because he won’t order the environment ministry under Jayanti Natarajan against taking a wrecking ball to the defence ministry’s plans for fast-tracking the construction of a border road network, and to Arunachal Pradesh’s plans for dams and hydroelectric projects to make it a prosperous, energy-surplus, state.

And MEA’s pigheaded refusal to permanently create an international shindig over reunification of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir with Jammu and Kashmir as the only unfinished business of Partition has ensured, moreover, that India’s claim to all of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir is eroding fast, what with the transportation links being erected by the Chinese at their normal breakneck speed through Baltistan to Chinese-occupied Tibet.

At this rate, the Singh doctrine will leave for a successor government a foreign policy cupboard as bare as the treasury (courtesy the UPA regime’s slate of wasteful and corruption-feeding populist schemes).

[Published as “Toothless foreign policy of PM” in New Indian Express, Nov 15, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Toothless-foreign-policy-of-PM/2013/11/15/article1891050.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East | Tagged | 3 Comments

Technically proficient value-add to ‘Stop wasteful military deals’

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Reproduced here is the in-depth, technically proficient, response by @ersakthivel published in the New Indian Express to my “Stop wasteful military deals”. I am so much better informed now after ingesting his incisive comments.
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IMHO the 200 Kg ballast must have been placed simulating excess weight component that will need to be added as new requirements arose which is a standard practice in any test flight program. For example if IRST needs to ne added to Tejas mk-1 . Then we can replace this ballast with IRST equipment . In the same way this 200 KG extra weight will also replicate the performance of MK-2 .Since in the same way it will simulate the fuselage plug to be added for MK-2 to increase it’s weight. SO he is not far off the mark when he says this. may be he did not give detailed explanations but it is more or less correct. Riaz Khokar in his critical article about Tejas mk-2 expectations also referred to this 200 KG ballast weight in tejas mk-2 and feigned ignorance of it. he should know any way that it simulates the excess weight that may be added in future if IAf asks for further additions.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 11:58

http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Stop-wasteful-military-deals/2013/11/01/article1866740.ece?pageNumber=3#commentsList

Since the many weight saving exercise were carried out already reducing the weight of the mk-1 close to a ton this ballast if it is still used in mk-1 will simulate the excess weight of the mk-2. Who did all the IOCs and FOCs for SU-30 MKI? The sukhoi guys? No. Even before the SU-30 MKI was finished as a product IAF put money into it based on the performance of base line version of Su-30 . Without getting so many OCs a squadron of less tested F-35 are already opertating. Also russian airforce is gearing up to introduce without insisting on so many changes and 2300 flight tests spanning 14 years , Just four or five prototypes of PAKFA are up in the air with older engines originally not meant for it. The new engine for PAKFA is yet to get certification. Then how can the Russian airforce introduce PAKFA next year with fewer than 1000 sub standard test flights with fixtures on the air frame and old lesser power engines on which it is running now?
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:01

SO the author is correct on this count as well. wiki states the Range 850 KM and ferry range 3000 KM for tejas MK 1. MK 1 can fly 2X850 Km =1700 KM . If MK 1 can fly 1700 KM than certainly MK2 with additional 40% fuel can at least fly more than 50 percent long distance. Since reserve fuel back up levels will be the same for mk-1 and mk-2 along with the fact it is the take off and sharp manoeuvres which eat up most fuel not cruising at a comfortable fuel burn ratio as per design. After all GE404 is a highly fuel efficient engine and GE 414 IN S 6 goes one step further and it is more advanced than the older engines on RAFALE. So MK2 will have close to 75 % of Rafale’s range in normal design load normal internal fuel condition in which most of the IAF missions are carried out.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:02

You can’t go lugging tons and tons of extra fuel (bullock cart level close combat performance config )into heavily defended PAk and Chinese air space defended by F-16 newer blocks and Chinese Flanker versions in the same way french are flying over next to no defence air spaces of male and Afghanistan. So even if IAF attempts to fly with such heavy external fuel tanks on the first blush of contact with defending fighters those fuel tanks will be dumped. Fuel capacity of 2 engine Rafale with a few more tons of extra empty weight is 4700 KG against the few tons lesser weight single engine LCA MK2 which has 3000 to 3400 KG of internal fuel. So for normal combat missions which demand high close combat performance with full internal fuel only tejas mk-2 will have almost close to the same range as RAAFLE. In addition tejas mk-2 has air to air refuelling in buddy mode as well . Mk2 can carryout 80 percent of the missions which Rafale can.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:04

And we have extra super Sukhois FGFAs to cover the remaining 30 percent. With the French already wiggling out of TOT commitments with “HAL —no good” certificate close to 30 billion dollar expenditure is a sheer waste of money on a redundant acquisition, if you consider the sky-high upgrading price for Mirage 2000 will repeat itself for RAFALE. Then we can operate close to 250 tejas mk-2 and 50 extra Super Sukhoi fighters which has complete TOT including engine in our hands. And last but not the least tejas mk-2 will have even lower wing loading with comparable TWR and a a ten percent higher top speeds of mach-2 meaning that tejas mk-2 has better designed air frame using the latest composite tech with close to 60 percent of it’s weight in composites as suggested by CEMEILAC. it will have the same long range BVRs and same powered ASEA radar with matching antena dia as RAFALE.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:06

Some people are misquoting the clean config RCS of tejas mk-1 as a third of mirage -2000. But the proper quote that can be read from B. Harry’s piece in “Vayu” on tejas is “Tejas will have a third of clean config RCS of the latest 4th gen fighters in design phase. When this comment was made only TYPHOON and RAFALE were in the works, not Mirage-2000. So with no canards and more aerodynamic and RCS optimization that will take place for tejas mk-2 along with far lesser physical dimensions than the TYPHOON and RAFALE you can rightfully expect tejas mk-2 to have far lesser clean config RCS than the RAFALE as well. Also the single engine of tejas mk-2 will release more than 40 percent lesser heat energy into the atmosphere. It means a substantially lesser IRST detection range as well. So for the close to 20 percent shortfall in range over RAFALE Tejas mk-2 has some very significant advantage over RAFALE in home air space defence as well.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:07
http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Stop-wasteful-military-deals/2013/11/01/article1866740.ece?pageNumber=4#commentsList

The ASEA for tejas mk-2 is also getting ready with foreign collaboration as well. And tejas mk-2 will always be upgradable with whatever longer range BVRs supplied in future from Russia for FGFA as well. As we are doing the avionics and radar integration on FGFA we can port these close to 200 KM range BVRs on tejas mk-2 as well with no hefty fees and least hassles. That’s what the test pilot Suneth Krishna said that tejas is a modular fighter easily upgradable in batches as all it’s design knowledge is here. The weapon load is never a problem we can operate 3 Tejas mk-2 for the cost of one RAFALE with far lesser per hour operation cost as well. That means for the same price we will have three RAFALE sized ASEA radars with three EW suits along with 21 pylons carrying close to 30 air to air missiles if dual rack launch pylons are added in future.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:08

So even though making a few mistakes like naming the HPT 40 as HJT 44 and mistaking the comments of french pilots as test flight comments the author is correct by and large. If at all the author mentioned the rejection by IAF of HPT-35 effort by HAL then there would be more questions to be answered. For more info on tejas mk-2 go to defenceforumindia tejas mk-2 thread
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 12:16
http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Stop-wasteful-military-deals/2013/11/01/article1866740.ece?pageNumber=5#commentsList

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Weapons, Western militaries | 21 Comments

Informed reaction on Rafale a/c to AVM Subramaniam’s response to ‘Stop wasteful military deals’

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Reproducing here the very well-informed reaction by @ersakthivel to AVM Arjun Subramaniam’s response article — “Ündermining national security” in New Indian Express at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Undermining-national-security/2013/11/07/article1876105.ece to my ‘Stop wasteful military deals’ NIE op/ed of Nov 1, 2013. It will help inform the interested public and advance the public debate and discussion on the Rafale deal.
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I want to know what type of brainstorming went on between IAF and HAL for decades which could not solve the fuel pump issues of HPT-32? And Why with base repair depots good enough to design and make a MMRCA class fighter and assemble a Pliatus level trainer , IAF cpuld not rectify the fuel pump issues of HPT-32 And why did Arjun Subramanium failed to mention about the HPT-35 which too was developed at the behest of IAf by HAL was not pursued with interest by IAF for close to a decade ? it was shelved because IAF did not show any interest. It was this decade long delay by IAF which did not approve the HPT-35 proposal from HAL which led to this sorry state pf importing Pilatus while designing tejas!!!!!!!!!! Ajai Shukla and many other writers have pointed this out in many blogs. It is not Bharat Karnad alone.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:12

In fact this sorry state of affair between HAl and IAF which led to the shut down of Marut (the GOI refused to pay a princely sum of Rs 5 Cr to bristol Siddley to develop a higher power engine for Marut , which latter led to the DPSA contract and induction of Jaguar)led to the creation of ADA to design tejas as a multi disciplinrry team of many labs across the country collaborating and succeeding on Tejas. So how can we justify the stalling of the efforts on Marut mk-2s engines for want of a princely sum of RS 5 Crs!!! lso every one knows that corruption and acquisition of hardware goes hand in hand in indian defence purchases.So you just can not accuse Bharat
Karnad of casting aspersions of the “sky high credibility of defence purchases” which were highlighted by TATRA truck scam, Agusta westland Scam and the recent scrapping of LUH purchase by Army. So in a decision of 20 billion dollars purchase in a democracy few inconvenient questions have to be answered.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:15

And the CLAWS [flight Control Laws] of LCA is top class and conversation between test pilots of India , france and Israel could have highlighted this. this is what Bharat Karnad implied when foreign test pilots praised tejas handling abilities, Kota harinarayna the designer of tejas has said that USAF test pilots remarked that the F-16 flies much better with tejas control laws. SO it is not uncommon for pilots to know a thing or two about Claws without even flying it from discussion with fellow pilots on few parameters based on the test flight points that were being opened up in flight envelope. SO it was no bunkum by Bharat Karnad. Jaguar deal is one of the worst scams in IAF, if you wnat to know the details please go to the following link called TKS tales wordpress
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:24

This is what TKS tales tells about the original jaguar before DARIN upgrade. All these problems were rectified by local talent in DARIN upgrade . The main source of inaccuracy in an inertial navigation system stems from the drift of the gyro reference platform due to unavoidable bearing friction and of course from manufacturing defects. Many technologies were tried out to reduce gyro drift. One of the techniques was to immerse the gyro assembly in a fluid bath reducing the apparent weight of the gyro and thus reduce friction and drift. This was known as a ’floating gyro’ system. The Idea was good but its execution was difficult. Fluid leak from the container, especially in hot environment, was a constant headache. Unfortunately, its performance on the field fell below the expected level. It was not accurate enough and it was very hard to maintain. When we became interested in the Jaguar as our potential DPSA, the performance of the NAVWASS was our main discouragement.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:26

Gradually, it had become clear to the vendors that though we were impressed by the Jaguar, we were not so impressed by the NAVWASS. BAe s sales pitch therefore got modified and an impression was generated that if we wanted an upgraded inertial system incorporated into the Jaguar, it could and would be done easily. Ferranti was, at that time, developing an inertial system based on their version of the dry gyro. Their platform named DINS1084 was on the Tornado. And this light , medium , heavy analogy of classifying the fighters based on weight category is not fit for the new multi role age. french are standardizing on the so called medium RAFALE with no light or heavy component and Russians have only heavies called Su-35 and PAKFA with no medium or light component. the US will have whole sale F-35 single engine fighter . So can any one classify it as medium or heavy or light?
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:30

http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Undermining-national-security/2013/11/07/article1876105.ece?pageNumber=4#commentsList

More by @ersakthivel:

The fuel fraction (percentage of weight of fuel divided by eight of the fully loaded fighter)is what determines the range of the fighter. The ferry range of all fighters like Mig-29, RAFALE Mirage-Tejas which all have varying weights is more or less the same.So for normal combat loads with normal fuel config they will all have normal ranges. Also a fully indigenous produced Su-30 MKI is already available for long range bombing. Then what is the need for medium range RAFALE which will have 10 or twenty percentage range advantage over tejas mk-2 at a huge forex outgo of 20 billion dollars? Also FGFA is slated to come in in a decade. Then what role will RAFALE do which can not be performed by combination of tejas mk-2, SU-30 MKI(upgraded to super sukhoi status) and tejas mk-2? So this medium class is totally unnecessary classification designed to fool the inexperienced political leadership and aviation enthusiasts.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:31

If more weapon weight is needed we can use two tejas mk-2s in place of one RAFALE if both have the same range .The real question is what does IAF gain by inducting so called 20 ton class RAFALE as a meium weight fighter ?The french are standardizing on on all RAFALE fighter force with twin engined 20 ton RAFALEs Meanwhile russians are standardizing on 30n ton twin engined PAKFA and Su-35, The US is inducting single engined F-35 in large scale. Unlike IAF the above mentioned airforces need to fly long distances to fight the enemy. It is not the case with IAF.Where most of the targets are well with in short range. And when it comes to air defence of Indian airspace tejas mk-2 will have no shortfalls compared to RAFALE on account of range or weapon load. Also work is already going on ASEA radar miniaturization and LRDE has fair experience in it.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:34

And we are no longer under crippling western sanctions so we will find partners on that count with no restrictions. Even RAFALE has just put on ASEA radar for trials. We don’t how fully developed it really is PAF is going for 120 light class Jf-17, are all these airforces buy any light medium or heavy fighter that is missing from their fleet from any third country? Certainly they won’t do such a stupid thing . Fuel fraction (weight of fuel/loaded weight for normal combat sorties in design weapon loads)determines the range not the fighter being named light or heavy. if tejas mk-2 has same fuel fraction as RAFALE it will also have th same range. Most probably it will end up ten to twenty percent shortage in range nothing big, Also we can employ three tejas mk-2 with 15 ton weapon loads with same radar diameter and long range BVR missiles of RAFALE for the cost of one RAFALE.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:36

So no shortage when it comes to weapon load. Infact tejas mk-2s will deliver double the weapon load with three times more sensor capability if costs are taken into account MMRCA contract originated as a proposal to buy 126 Mirage -2000 in the late 90s. To avoid the single vendor situation GOI asked it to be a global tender in 2004. Before that there was no long felt need in IAF for so called 20 ton medium weight fighter. tejas mk-2 will have at the most a twenty percent shortage when it comes to weapon load and range requirements over RAFALE. But ordering a few more squadrons of very low priced(because of the 100 percent indigenization) Su-30 MKIs in super Sukhoi versions or increasing the numbers of FGFA to by a few squadrons will be equal to having RAFALEs. Certainly there is no such thing that Su-30 MKi, Tejas mk-2 and FGFA combine can’t do that RAFALE can!!!
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:37 Reply to this Report abuse
If you spend the same 20 to 30 billion (considering high maintanece cost)in the two coming decades on such tejas mk-2 and and a few extra squads of FGFA or Su-30 MKI IAF can improve its attcaking capability in a substantial manner. We can have more than 300 fighters in such combo compared to just 126 RAFALEs for the same cost. Also the MMRCA contract was changed form life cycle cost based buy to per unit fly away cost mid way. And the winner Dassault which entered the competition knowing well that the HAL is to be its local partner is saying HAL is unfit for the job. if a a no experience private sector firm gets choosen by dassault as local partners then all the TOT norms go for a toss. The MMRCA was not an original need . It was born from the 126 Mirage-2000 buy proposal which was shot down because of single vendor situation by MOD in 2004 , thus it became MMRCA. If MOD promptly accepted the 126 mirage-2000 buy from IAF there would be no MMRCA.
Posted by ersakthivel at 11/09/2013 19:39

http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Undermining-national-security/2013/11/07/article1876105.ece?pageNumber=5#commentsList

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Cyber & Space, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, russian assistance, russian military, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Weapons, Western militaries | 2 Comments

Stop wasteful military deals

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Reduction of the Rs 4 lakh-crore fiscal deficit will require a drastic winnowing of defence expenditure programmes. The wasteful military procurement system that fetches, as it were, as much chaff as grain, offers obvious targets for excision. Among them the egregiously wrong-headed deals for the Swiss Pilatus PC-7 turboprop trainer and the French Rafale MMRCA (multi-role, medium range combat aircraft).

Consider IAF’s priorities: It bought PC-7s for $1.5 billion, an amount the Chinese Air Force spent to secure the entire production line from Russia of the latest, most advanced, Tu-22M3M strategic bomber! This Pilatus purchase, moreover, was approved by defence minister A K Antony at a time when Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Bangalore, had its new HJT-44 turboprop trainer up and ready. Brazening out such mindless splurges, Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne advised closure of the HJT-44 line to enable purchase of more PC-7s!

IAF has at most tolerated licence-manufactured foreign fighter planes but sought stubbornly to kill off indigenous combat aircraft projects. In the past, it buried the Marut Mk-II, the low-level strike variant designed in the 1970s by the highly talented Dr Raj Mahindra, who won his spurs under Kurt Tank, designer of the Focke-Wulfe fighter-bombers for the Nazi Luftwaffe and of the original HF-24 at HAL, buying the Jaguar from the UK instead. History repeats itself.

French and Israeli pilots who have unofficially flown the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) have gone gaga over its flying attributes. The Tejas will come equipped with an indigenous AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar — the heart and the brains of any combat aircraft, enabling it to near-instantly switch from air-to-air to air-to-ground missions. The Flight Control System (FCS) of the Tejas is so advanced, it can deal with the sort of turbulence in flight that its counterpart onboard the Eurofighter — supposedly technologically superior to the Rafale, plainly cannot, as per an expert familiar with the FCS in both aircraft. This deficiency nearly ended in disaster for the Eurofighter on several occasions but was not disclosed by EADS to IAF during the jockeying for the MMRCA contract. The larger, heavier, longer range Mark-II variant of the near all-composite Tejas, in fact, fills the bill of “MMRCA”. An LCA version of Tejas has already been flown weighted down with ballast to mimic the Mk-II plan-form. The fact that the Mk-II variant was coming along well was known to the IAF-MoD (ministry of defence) combo. So, how come the tender for MMRCA was not terminated midway?

The Mk-II’s chances were scuppered by IAF-MoD on the ground that Tejas was not operational. But the LCA has been prevented from entering squadron service after it obtained the Initial Operational Clearance (IOC)-1 last year, because of their insistence that IOC-2 and subsequent clearances be done by HAL rather than permitting the clearances to be obtained by the designated Tejas squadron, flying the aircraft, at the Sulur base in Tamil Nadu. The latter procedure will allow our fighter pilots to test the plane’s flight envelope and performance, and to provide feedback to designers — normal practice of advanced air forces inducting a new locally-produced aircraft. Further, rather than restricting the initial off-take to just 46 aircraft, MoD should order the full complement of 7-8 squadrons worth of Tejas to facilitate economies of scale and the farming out of work by HAL to private industry, thereby growing it. In the interim, additional “super Sukhois” could have been procured for a total force of some 70-plus of these planes, inarguably the finest combat aircraft now flying.

The fact is the original price tag for the MMRCA deal of $12-15 billion is set to balloon to $26-30 billion. Why? For one thing, having won the MMRCA contest, the French company, Dassault, doesn’t want to abide by the contract requiring the plane to be manufactured at HAL under license with transfer of technology (TOT). Dassault maintains it cannot guarantee Rafales made in India unless its chosen private sector partner, Reliance Aerospace, is tasked with its production. The arrangement with Reliance, however, is to have it import all of the most high-value assemblies and avionics as “black boxes” for the duration of the Indian production run, keeping over 500 French firms employing a workforce of 7,000 people, according to a French newsletter, L’Úsine Novelle, in the clover for the next few decades!

The real kicker here is the fact that while India will pay for full TOT — amounting to tens of billions of dollars — no meaningful technology (flight control laws and source codes) will, as in past such deals, ever actually get transferred. New Delhi as always will pay up, not caring whether India gets what it paid for or not and, even less, whether it will ever become self-sufficient in arms. It may be better to simply buy 126 Rafales off the shelf if the IAF deems it such a critical need, when it is not, rather than pay through our ears for technology we won’t get.

The conjoined Mk-II Tejas-Super Sukhois option will make Rafale redundant, and is the reason why those Indians who have pocketed French baksheesh (which totals a very hefty sum, indeed) will resist it. But for the country’s good, the best thing that can happen is that the Pilatus and Rafale contracts are immediately junked.

What about self-sufficiency that our politicians and uniformed brass keep yakking about? Alas, that’s only public speeches and posturing. When has the government ever insisted, or compelled the military to go with, a home-made product at the expense of a foreign item, and the armed services told that otherwise they would have to make do with nothing at all?

Militarily ignorant political leaders are easily stampeded into making capital acquisitions owing to public fear of a “growing gap” in aircraft, tanks, or whatever, generated with the help of a gullible media. Rather than laying down an iron law favouring indigenous hardware Antony, like his predecessors, has played into the institutionalised distrust of the Indian military of indigenous weapons platforms. IAF is merely the worst offender.

[Published in the New Indian Express, November 1, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Stop-wasteful-military-deals/2013/11/01/article1866740.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, Military Acquisitions, Relations with Russia, russian assistance, russian military, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Western militaries | 22 Comments

US boat on elint mission?

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The US boat, SV Seaman Guard Ohio, had apparently multiple missions. The arms drop to some nefarious Indian customers was discussed in the last blog. The other possibility, according to some experts who picked up the radio transmission of the boat, suspect a far more elaborate and strategic mission with the boat being equipped with powerful communications equipment able not only to eveasdrop on Indian naval (?) communications traffic but also to generate electronic intelligence (elint) on Indian missile launches that are planned in the immediate future, among them an Agni-IV, and Agni-V and the Nirbhaya 1,000 km cruise missile. Who knows, the equipment on this vessel may also be capable of, and was perhaps tasked to, try and jam the guidance system and otherwise subvert the planned test-firing profiles. In any case, truth would be known only if NTRO, NIA, with the assistance of, say, TCS were to take hold of the communications equipment on Ohio and, as the Chinese would do in such a situation, disassemble it to learn of its capabilities, and by way of a blueprint to reverse engineer the same.In any case, under no circumstances should this boat be allowed to leave Indian control, even if the men, who are not really important in the larger scheme of things, are repatriated. But we must, at a minimum, find out what’s in the innards of that ship and familiarize ourselves especially with the on-board communications/elint, missiule telemetry reading paraphernalia, and anything else we may find in it. It has trespassed into Indian waters, broke Indian laws. So, it is for us to learn what the ship was up to and do whatever needs to be done to gain knowledge of its electronics/elint suite. But will the Congress party govt at the centre and in Kerala show some chutzpah or, as is its wont, buckle under at the first sign of Washington’s ire?

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Missiles, Terrorism, Weapons | 2 Comments

Hank-panky by US ship?

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The case of the US ship ‘SV Seaman Guard Ohio’gets curious and curiouser.
Irrefutable facts:

This ship has been loitering in India’s proximal waters for, God knows, how long. It has a crew of 10, with a Korean member among them attempting suicide ere the arrest of the crew was underway, and a complement of 25 “guards” and a cache of 35 Kalashnikovs and 5,000 rounds of ammunition, enough to start an affray. An Indian Coast Guard ship intercepted Ohio on Sept 9, boarded and inspected it and gave it a clean chit, with an Assistant Commandant verifying this in a letter (that the TV channel News X flashed). Between that date and this vessel’s running out of diesel fuel necessitating clandestine and illegal replenishment inside the 12 mile Indian territory, when it was apprehended, it became an arms carrier.

The mystery:

The likely mission of the ship in these parts — (1) Influence the troubled presidential elections process ongoing in the Maldives by strongarm methods — an AK-47 pointed at somebody can get a lot of things done, certainly sway the course of the polls, (2) as planned, transfer the cache of arms to Naxals in peninsular India, the criminal mafia headed by the pestiferous Dawood Gang, or to the Islamist radical elements active on the west coast stretching from the Konkan region, to the Karnataka shoreline (remember Bhatkal is a coastal village) to the Coromandal in Kerala where the radicalized youth can create with even a smaller store of small arms, with the unloading set for a pre-designated point or, as propagated by certain ex-navymen (Commodores Ranjit Rai & Uday Bhaskar), that this ship was an innocuous “floating armoury” permitted by the International Maritime Organization to combat piracy, which doesn’t make sense because Somali pirate cartels, backed by big Western monies, simply do not pack the wherewithal to operate at these distances, or have the incentive to depart from their favourite hunting grounds around Aden, where the pickings remain rich.

All the above four missions impact India’s national security and this ship should have been trailed all along, and the CG vessel, once it picked up on Ohio, ought to have monitored its loitering in India’s extended sea zone to ensure it was not up to any hanky-panky, with the navy on its tail if it ventured Maldives-wards — none of which happened.

One hopes the Coast Guard actually deserves the encomiums heaped on it by the former Commodores, because there’s the possibility that the first inspection may have been on a truncated basis in return for some monetary or other consideration. Otherwise, the mystery deepens — how did the cache get into Ohio’s hold between Sept 9 when CG boarded it off Kochi and gave it a clean chit, and mid-Oct? The only way this could have happened is by air drop or mid-seas transfer from another ship. Which country can muster such capacity? Only the United States, with its Diego Garcia base permitting it to sustain activity such as the one by Ohio. The US role can be hinted at from the interest shown by the US Embassy and the British High Commission (owing to British nationals being part of the crew or guard group? isn’t clear) and the nearly 4-5 days between the forcible docking of the ship at Tuticorin and the arrest by the Kerala Police of the crew and its other passengers, wherein intense negotiations to release the men but keep the ship and the cache — no questions asked, were perhaps on. The reason Manmohan Singh did not strike the proffered compromise was no doubt because of the difficult political straits the Congress party regime finds itself in already, and any such release would have blown up in its face, immediately endangering both the central govt and the party govt in Kerala, and generally muddied the party’s prospects some more in the runup to the next general elections.

But what would be the US interest in arming insurgents and Islamist radicals operating in India? Well, a short answer — an internally unsettled India is more pliable.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, guerilla warfare, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, South East Asia, Terrorism, Weapons | 1 Comment

Short-sighted policy on China

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Trust Manmohan Singh’s Congress government to take an axe to India’s feet. This country has suffered from an absence of a strategic mindset for so long that decisions are taken these days without a thought to their ramifications on India’s own interests and options in the future. The latest manifestation of this short-sightedness is New Delhi’s making a capital case out of the sale of the Chinese ACP 1000MW pressurised water reactors (PWRs) to Pakistan, by charging Beijing with violating strictures in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) restrictions.

Why is this position hurtful to India’s interests? For several reasons: One, because we are trying to be more loyal than the king, acting as a guardian of the NPT—drawn up principally to keep India out of the weapons club—and which has been a thorn in India’s side. The Chinese sale does two things—it sets a precedent for India to sell its own 220-700MW PWRs to any country that wants it, especially on China’s periphery, on precisely the terms and conditions Beijing has set for the Pakistani purchase. Nothing stopped us all these years from peddling our heavy water moderated PWRs to energy-deficient states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America except lack of strategic imagination. Using our PWR technology as the cutting edge of an export drive would have energised and vastly expanded our nuclear industry, increased the skilled labour pool, stamped India’s nuclear presence the world over, and amortised the Nuclear Power Corporation’s debts, putting it on a self-sustaining growth curve. But because India is always a follower and not a leader, the Chinese sale will hopefully wake us up to pushing exports of indigenous nuclear products.

The second strategic reason to not oppose the Chinese reactor sale is the long-term interest in seeing a stable Pakistan. The reactors will address the severe electricity crunch there—the main cause for the industrial stagnation and rocketing unemployment in that country. It is in India’s interest to ensure Pakistani youth find gainful employment in factories and workshops, rather than picking up the gun for jihad.

Even as his government has made this strategic error, Manmohan Singh himself will soon be winging his way to Russia and then China, after returning from trips to the US and Southeast Asia. But having logged thousands of air-miles travelling to distant points on the compass, his exertions had no discernible impact except in terms of giveaways to big powers that the country cannot afford. Every time he has headed west, he surrendered ground in any country that wanted to fete him and in return receive goodies—usually multi-billion dollar contracts for high-value technological hardware (weapons systems, nuclear reactors and the like), and concessions such as on the fluorocarbon refrigerants and willful disregard of the 2010 Civil Nuclear Liability Act to please Washington, even as president Obama shrugged his shoulders at Indian concerns on the H-1B visas.

The lame duck Indian PM is now headed Moscow-wards followed by a jaunt to China. Due to Singh’s sojourns eastward, instead of transforming the “Look East” policy from a slogan into actual progress on the ground to restore the historical Indian presence in “Indo-China” by speeding up substantive security co-operation with local states and with Taiwan, South Korea and Japan farther east, owing to his spirit-sapping diffidence, India has been marking step. With recent foreign trips resembling tours superannuating heads of government departments and senior military commanders undertake as a valedictory drill before demitting office, Singh reaches China, one last time as head of government carrying giveaways to please Beijing in the face of provocations (a liberalised visa regime for Chinese visitors in exchange for stapled visas for Indians!). Then again, Chinese emperors have historically done as they wished, welcoming tribute from lesser states as their due.

India has been losing ground to a relentless and focussed China bent on minimising Indian initiatives in Central Asia and elsewhere, which last saw its stake in the Kashagan oilfield in Kazakhstan being sold to a Chinese company. Apparently unfazed, Singh is offering Beijing an easier investment route for Chinese infrastructure companies without discriminating civil construction firms building highways, ports, and airports where India could do with Chinese funds and expertise, and investment by the PLA-linked Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies and ZTE, which is avoidable. The telecom entry would be the gateway for Chinese cyber command to inject logic bombs, bugs, traffic monitoring and diversion software, to potentially gain control of the power grid, financial institutions, banking regimes, air traffic control and railway transportation and signalling systems, etc. and disable Indian national capability ere hostilities even begin. The Chinese have always relied on Indian foolishness to secure an edge, and now they have in Manmohan Singh a willing accomplice.

This context endows the PM’s consultations with the Kremlin with critical importance. Russia too fears the accrual of comprehensive power to Beijing, but finds the need to concert with China to contain the US and recover lost ground, inescapable. For Washington this is the nightmare of the Chinese monster the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger duo created in the 1970s coming back to stalk America. But Moscow in its efforts to recover some of its old status is reasserting its hold on the Central Asian Republics. Unfortunately, in places like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan central to Indian plans for pursuing its econo-military interests in that region, Moscow has successfully muscled India into a corner, pressuring these former Soviet republics to constrain Indian activity.

PM needs to tell president Putin that partnership with India is needed to trim China’s sails, reminding him of a sparsely-populated Russia being at the mercy of an unstoppable “demographic creep” by China, and about the vulnerability of the Russian military high-technology sector to Chinese theft and reverse-engineering. Moscow needs to be counselled against going overboard where China is concerned. The problem is how can Manmohan Singh be convincing when he has been in the forefront of buying peace with China by any and all means?

[Published in ‘the New Indian Express,18th October 2013, at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Short-sighted-policy-on-China/2013/10/18/article1841086.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, Cyber & Space, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Japan, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, nuclear industry, Pakistan, Relations with Russia, Russia, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Technology transfer, United States, US. | Leave a comment

Social reasons for army punch-ups

Posted on October 12, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

At one level, the punchup in Meerut yesterday between officers pressuring a reluctant trooper to box in an inter-unit competition resembles the constant goading and hazing of the unit bugler Robert Prewitt in the”boxing Company” of the US Army Division at Schonfield Barracks in Hawaii by Staff Sergeant Judson in the 1951 World War Two novel by James Jones –“From Here to Eternity”. Prewitt, an accomplished boxer who has sworn off boxing because in a fight he blinded an opponent, finally blows a fuze and beats Judson to a pulp. Perhaps, some such thing precipitated the fracas between officers and the men they command in the Sikh Light Infantry — constituted, it must be mentioned, of Ramgarhia or lower caste Sikhs.

This officer-jawan fight in Sikh LI was preceded by similar occurrences in elite armoured (16th Cavalry in the last incident) and artillery regiments. So, such things are not restricted to any particular combat arm.

A social analysis may throw some light on the fraying fabric of army order and discipline. The predecessor British Indian Army and the Indian Army right up to the Sixties and even Seventies divided neatly along class lines. The old landed gentry provided officers, and the soldiery came from the sturdy peasant stock. The JCOs (Junior Commissioned Officers) were a uniquely subcontinental institution the British invented to provide interface with the local mercenary armies they had recruited to their cause. To start with, the JCOs were from the upper echelons of the landed gentry, minor royalty, and suchlike, who with the underway Indianization in the wake of the 1920 Federick Skeen Committee recommendations (with Motilal Nehru and MA Jinnah as the two Indian members), were enticed with offers of Sandhurst appointments and subsequent service in the officer corps as King’s Commissioned Indian Officers (KCIOs). The cohesion of the officer corps was provided by the shared values and officer-like qualities the British inculcated in the Indian KCIOs, including loyalty to the British crown. These Indian officers also acted as a social buffer post-World War I during which Indian units served in Field Marshal Lord Haig’s Expeditionary Army in France and the Low Countries and experienced the horrors of the killing fields of Somme, Flanders, and Passchendale. The Indian soldier returned home after the war a lot more politically aware than when he was embarked, and more nationalistic — cognizant of the fact that he was fighting a distant war to protect the interests of a colonial overlord in faroff theatres where he had no intrinsic stake. This was the beginning of the end of the Raj — not Mahatma Gandhi’s fasts and similar stunts in the subsequent years — the rising political consciousness of the Indian jawan meant that the British could not anymore rely on the Indian Army to coerce the Indian people and thus sustain their Raj.

Once the British left, the KCIOs who took over perpetuated the British system of value and officer norms that centrally involved the stark differentiation between the officers and JCOs, and less so between JCOs and ORs (other ranks). This differentiation was not just in the standard of the Messes and living quarters, but even more in terms of the social traits and behaviour that put a premium on socially distancing officers from the men they led. The Colonel Blimp-ish qualities exemplified by the likes of Cariappa, the first Indian C-in-C, were at once a social and physical barrier of sorts. Such a system may have had its uses, but with the social composition of the officer corps changing starting in the 60s, the institutionalized distance between officers and men should have been reduced. It wasn’t and that’s the origins of the problem we have today.

The fact is post-Nehru and that generation the entrant level officers in the military at-large, not just the army, increasingly had fathers who had served as JCOs and who, in the manner of the “khandani pesha” (family occupation), wanted their sons to serve in their own “paltans” as “äfsar”. This process of a transitioning officer corps quickly accelerated until now when it has become virtually the norm. Not sure if the army keeps such records, but a good 60-70 % of the officers in the middle ranks up to senior colonel and brigadier levels are the spawn of former JCOs. This trend is going up.

Here’s what happens by way of social tensions in army units: Officers who were earlier looked up to as social superiors are now perceived as their own chokras, hailing from the same background as the JCOs and ORs, whose officer-like countenance, assiduously promoted in the training stage at NDA and IMA, is dismissed as so much affectation, of people like them putting on airs. So, when junior JCOs and ORs are ordered about, it is more likely they feel put upon, whence the increasing tendency for the jawan to reply with fisticuffs of his own especially if he is physically belaboured in any form. Once an incident is sparked off there is a sudden division between the officers and jawans, and the next thing we hear of is a violent kerfuffle.

Actually, the closing of the social-cultural gap between the officer ranks and ORs is a wonderful thing to happen and reflects the higher education and awareness levels of the average soldiery and thereby greater democratization of the army. The trouble is it cannot coexist with the differentiation aspects within the service, whence is created the problem of loosening cohesion all-round, within the officer ranks and between the officers and ORs. The less cohesive a fighting force the less well it’ll fight.

Compare the Indian army with its Pakistani counterpart where the officers still hail from the well-off sections of society — because there’s not much industry or private sector to absorb the employable youth, in that country. And the ORS still comprise hardy peasantry for whom the paltan is all. In the event, the Pakistan army has no reported incidents of this social kind. Or, peer within the Indian army itself — the regiments with lower educational entrance-level qualifications for the jawans in hill units, such as the Gurkha and Kumaon regiments, have fewer such tensions. Because the mostly near-illiterate trooper is happy to have a livelihood and thinks of the regiment as mai-baap and happy to serve it, rather than upset the applecart and fight with officers and seed problems for himself.

The solution is nowhere easy. A start may be made by eliminating the JCO ranks altogether. There’s really no need for this colonial-era contrivance any longer. It should be followed up by systemic incentivization of the ORs to be given remedial education and training for entry into officer ranks. This avenue is there, but the flow of men to officers via this route is not big. And the differentiation aspects will have to be addressed and speedily tackled, with the class-related distinctions done away with because they are the reasons social frictions fester and, like an unlanced boil, collects pus. This pus desperately needs draining.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia | Leave a comment

The Myth of Politicised Army

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The former army chief General Vijay Kumar Singh’s reaction to the calculated leaking to the press of an internal army report investigating the activities of the secretive Technical Support Division (TSD) during his tenure has created needless confusion about the military losing its apolitical sheen. This is patent nonsense propagated by those who know little about the workings of the armed forces, get easily alarmed, or have political oxes to gore. In counterinsurgency operations anywhere in the world, alongside the hard job of close-quartering and eliminating armed malcontents and ferreting out their cells, the fighting forces also run programmes to marginalise the insurgents, “win the hearts and minds” of the local people caught in the crossfire who, if not pacified and weaned away from the anti-national cause, would endlessly fuel it. The vast region in which Mao’s fish-like guerrillas swim has to be emptied of water by all means.

Such “hearts and minds” campaigns to promote what Singh has called “stability” and another ex-army chief Shankar Roychowdhury called “sadbhavana”, are “aid to civil” schemes and par for the course. The Army has always engaged in schemes in J&K and the North-east overtly to encourage youth to take to sports, for instance, and, covertly, to keep tabs on local politicians. There’s nothing remotely untoward, illegal, or underhanded about these measures designed to firm up the return of order and allow elected governments and civil administration to begin functioning and mainstream politics to take root. Indeed, based on historical evidence, an army not enabled to prosecute such actions will ensure the country fails in its counterinsurgency effort.

But combine a politically fraught milieu in the country and a military-wise ignorant Indian media receptive to any sinister spin given even innocuous events by motivated political players, and voila!, a storm in a teacup started by newspaper stories interpreting normal army formation movements as attempts at coup d’etat and covert programmes to keep the rebels on the backfoot in border states as attempts to destabilise elected regimes. Such revelations are, of course, politically embarrassing to the likes of Ghulam Hassan Mir, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and other Kashmiri politicians touched by TSD programmes. It upsets their delicate balancing act between not appearing as India’s toadies and not caring to be associated with the secessionist groups. However, the view emanating from the Manmohan Singh Government that General Singh’s disclosure spells trouble is a bit rich, considering the report was, in the first place, leaked by someone within it with the express approval of those at the highest levels of the Congress party, in the hope of derailing General Singh’s political plans.

Dark stories swirling around of political ambitions of armymen are not new. In the late fifties, they were the stock-in-trade of Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon. Following on Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s apprehension that General Ayub Khan’s imposition of martial law in Pakistan in 1958 might give his Indian counterpart ideas, the deviously paranoid Krishna Menon floated rumours of the upright General K.S. Thimayya pulling a similar stunt here. In the 1970s, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was hugely augmented because, it was said, Indira Gandhi desired an armed force under her control as a foil to the Army, which was laughable, considering the non-existent fighting qualities of CRPF.

But there is more to this brouhaha than TSD as an army chief’s private “dirty tricks” department. As a concept, TSD fits into the original Roman notion of the “praetorian guard” responsible for the safety of the commanding general. Then again, a loyal cohors praetoria is, in effect, constituted by every new armed service chief when he installs his favourites as principal staff officers at the headquarters in New Delhi to advise and protect him against the machinations of Ministry of Defence (mod) bureaucrats eager to snatch decision turf and sister services to grab military roles and a larger share of the defence budget.

It is possible TSD was predated by several covert operations units that were amalgamated under the V.K. Singh dispensation, with electronic eavesdropping on politicians in insurgency-affected areas being one of its legitimate missions. It is the fear of what the Army may have thus learned about their carryings-on which, perhaps, has led the Srinagar regime to get steamed up.

If TSD was aware of the behind-the-scenes stuff in Kashmir, the mod as the higher authority that the Army reports to was in the know too-reason why Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde is noisily demanding a CBI inquiry, not A.K. Antony. The Government’s ruse of leaking the report appears to have backfired: It cannot anymore use TSD-derived information about the National Conference government to keep Messrs Farooq and Omar Abdullah & Company in line. TSD was expediently disbanded but, one can be sure, other similar units will pick up the slack.

[Published in ‘India Today’ dated Oct 14, 2013 at http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/general-vk-singh-former-army-chief-j-k-politicians-bribe-omar-abdullah/1/313075.html%5D

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, civil-military relations, guerilla warfare, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Army, Indian para-military forces, Indian Politics, Internal Security, South Asia, Terrorism | 5 Comments

Giap the Great and thoughts on the Indian nation

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Perhaps, the greatest general of the 20th Century, Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese victor over, successively, the Japanese Imperial land forces, the French colonial army, the United States and, under his guidance as defence minister, the beating up of the invading Chinese PLA in 1979, is no more. He died Oct 4 in Hanoi at 102. Defeating one great power in a lifetime would be tremendous enough achievement; to lay low four world powers — all within a 40 year time span,is unimaginable military success. He was the steel behind Ho Chi Minh’s ideological silk.

Consider Giap’s reply to a question in a PBS interview (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/guerrillawars/giaptranscript.html) as to why Vietnam was the only country in the world to defeat America in war. “Speaking as a historian,” the military strategist and war planner non pareil and, right up to the colonial power France’s banning of the Vietnamese Communist Party and his exile to China with Mao’s fighting cadres, and his subsequent leadership of the first Vietnamese nationalist guerilla army, the Viet Minh, was a teacher of history with special interest in Napoleonic wars, “I’d say that Vietnam is rare. As a nation, Vietnam was formed very early on…. Why? Because the risk of aggression from outside forces led all the various tribes to band together. And then there was the constant battle against the elements, against the harsh winter conditions that prevail here. In our legends, this struggle against the elements is seen as a unifying factor, a force for national cohesion. This, combined with the constant risk of invasion, made for greater cohesion and created a tradition — a tradition that gave us strength.”

This is exactly the opposite to what happened in greater India — the Indian subcontinent throughout recorded history, at least from Alexander’s time (323 BC), where the distinct tribes and communities, instead of setting aside their differences and unifying against the invader by rallying around the locally powerful chieftain (Porus, Rana Pratap, Shivaji, Tipu Sultan, and, during the freedom movement, Subhash Chandra Bose) to overwhelm the external enemy and occupier, invariably and myopically intrigued against him,compromised with the invaders/occupiers, becoming willing collaborators, until ending up as demeaned subjects in a British colony. May be as a mongrel race, we are a hardy people but our survival instincts have eviscerated our will to fight, time and again prompting us to kneel rather than unite and firm up against the outsider. Here again the principles that have historically motivated the Vietnamese people to mobilize, unite, and fight are illustrative about what Indian peoples as a nation lack: “Unification above all”, “Victory above all”!!

One so wishes the Indian peoples and nation had displayed the grit and the sense of unity and purpose of the Vietnamese nation and people through the ages, which they never could, and never did. The awful thing is in the 21st Century, India still can’t.

It is this visceral antipathy to being dictated to by anyone and the undiluted fighting spirit of its people that has marked out Vietnam’s singularity and why, I have been advocating over the last two decades and more, that India should make Vietnam its strategic pivot — arming it, equipping it, with every strategic armament, including nuclear missiles and the Brahmos cruise missile, and anything else Hanoi wants, to keep China occupied east of Malacca, and off our backs. If we don’t have the guts to take on the Chinese — as the Congress govt of Manmohan the Silent has shown in the last nine years, let’s at least help a country that summons the will to fight and can be the outer tier of India’s security perimeter.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Geopolitics, guerilla warfare, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Japan, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, United States, US., Western militaries | 5 Comments