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

Nuclear effects of Agni-V

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

The Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), Hyderabad, along with the other project in mission-mode, Advanced Technology Vehicle (the nuclear-powered ballistic missile-firing Arihant submarine, SSBN), are the two jewels in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) crown. Under high-class chiefs R N Agarwal, Avinash Chander (recently promoted to head DRDO), and now G K Sekharan, ASL has rescued DRDO’s reputation, of course. But it has, with the second launch of the Agni-V intermediate range ballistic missile on September 16, also saved the credibility of India’s strategic deterrent with thermonuclear pretensions from being completely eroded.

But, first, why is India’s claim to thermonuclear status mere pretence? Well, because, Dr R Chidambaram, the one-time chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and, for the last decade, adviser on science and technology to the PM, despite being a scientist doesn’t believe in collecting empirical data! Along with strategic enclave stalwarts like the late K Subrahmanyam and the school of thought the latter spawned, he urged the Narasimha Rao government in the mid-90s, for instance, to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, arguing that the data collected from the single 1974 8-12 kiloton (KT) nuclear test was quite enough for the country to have an adequate deterrent and that India need never test again.

After the BJP government ordered the 1998 Shakti-series of nuclear tests anyway, and consistent with his previous advocacy, Chidambaram averred that the obvious malfunctioning of the thermonuclear weapon design tested in 1998 notwithstanding, India can rectify the flawed design and even update the weapons inventory by simply using computer simulation. By this standard, the Indian Air Force ought to operate combat aircraft entirely computer designed but never test-flown, and the army to induct an artillery piece that came out of a computer-assisted design shop but not test-fired. His unexplained and incomprehensible antipathy to nuclear testing has made a mockery of the country’s strategic wherewithal. On this issue, however, it is difficult to know where Chidambaram’s counsel ends and prime minister Manmohan Singh’s inclination to stick with the “no testing” central predicate of the nuclear deal with the US, begins.

Consider this: China has conducted over 80 tests to India’s six tests in all. It has advanced technology such as inertial confinement fusion (to replicate thermonuclear explosions in miniature) and a Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Testing facility (to simulate and study the implosion of an atom bomb triggering the combustion of the thermonuclear fuel), which India lacks. Chinese computing speeds will reach some 100 petaflops (million-billion functions per second) by 2015 while Indian super computers at present are at the 250 terraflop (trillion functions per second) level. With all these advantages, China has embarked on a new round of nuclear arsenal modernisation and US weapons designers have warned that without new tests the performance of American nuclear arms cannot be guaranteed. New Delhi, in contrast, has all but sworn off nuclear testing, whence its boast of the Indian deterrent featuring high-yield thermonuclear weapons in the 125KT-275KT categories risks an enemy calling India’s bluff and borders on foolhardiness. So, that’s the problem: An Indian 275KT fusion bomb may, by fluke, reach the full yield or, as is more likely, produce yields anywhere between the high figure and the fission trigger level of 20KT! It’s this appalling uncertainty about the effects of the Indian thermonuclear weapons that’s created a real operational dilemma for the Strategic Forces Command.

The ASL retrieved this intolerable deterrence situation somewhat with the accurate, lightweight, Agni-V missile. This Agni will eventually be all-composite, including the casing and rocket motors made of Kevlar-carbon-carbon, Guidance on Chip for terminal accuracy, and distributed communications nodes through the length of the missile to minimise wiring. As the two tests of this missile have proved, using the Russian Glonass GPS and the on-board inertial guidance system and ring laser gyroscope, 15-20 meter CEP (circular error probable — a measure of accuracy) at 5,500km range has been achieved. Moreover, armed with 4-8 MIRV (Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicles) warheads — a technology permitting a single missile to carry multiple bombs for dispersed targeting that has been a “screwdriver’s turn away” from being test-ready but whose testing has not been approved by Manmohan Singh, the Agni-V range can be extended to intercontinental distances.

In any case, even before this precision targeting capability was proved, official strategists trying to justify the test-moratorium began claiming that Agni missiles with single or MIRVed 20KT fission warheads will be just as daunting for any adversary, and that the strategic credibility and clout of India’s deterrent is, therefore, not in doubt. MIRVed Agni missiles do afford the strategic forces certainty of impact and versatility but 20KT warheads are not prime dissuaders.

Missile accuracy at extreme range is fine but it is only the high-yield, preferably, high-yield thermonuclear armaments that really matter. The sheer scale of destruction promised by a single incoming megaton (MT)-warheaded missile can be guaranteed to induce the worst sort of dread in, and impose immense psychological stress and pressure on, the adversary state’s leadership, something the relatively small yield 20KT bomb simply cannot do. In any test of wills, the country armed with the 20KT weapons will fold before a state with MT weapons, call off the confrontation and, whatever is at stake, accept a compromise on the former’s terms.

Then again, the Indian government has little understanding of conventional and, even less, nuclear deterrence when dealing with a powerful foe. In fact, India is so self-damagingly Pakistan-fixated on both counts it does not see the folly of training strategic weapons on a tactical-level threat. India is also an exception to the rule of nuclear weapons states nursing high-yield fusion arsenals. The standard issue warheads for the long range Dong Feng missiles being one megaton or 3.3MT, China can deter America. Weak-kneed Indian governments have not shown the gumption to resume thermonuclear testing to obtain a host of safe, proven, and reliable fusion weapons including the MT type to deter China.

[Published in the ‘New Indian Express’, Oct 4, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Nuclear-effects-of-Agni-V/2013/10/04/article1817217.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan nuclear forces, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command | Leave a comment

Peasant woman!

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

There’s no question but that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did refer to his Indian counterpart, idiomatically, as a “dehati aurat” (peasant woman) for complaining about Pakistan-supported terrorism to the US president. In the Punjabi context, if there are differences to be sorted out you handle it directly, man-to-man, not go running off, crying to a third party for justice. This is straight forward stuff that Narendra Modi picked up on. There are two aspects to this episode.

The first question is did Sharif thus describe MMS or not? Hamid Mir of Pak’s Geo TV and Barkha Dutt of NDTV breakfasted with Sharif when this little event happened. It is always fun for reporters enjoying the license to unconditionally quote politicians to alight on the most risque, sensational, or controversial phrase or thought. This was the intent no doubt for Mir to reproduce it on twitter — which is how it was revealed to the world and was used by Modi as a rhetorical hook to hang Manmohan on. Perfectly legitimate. With the Indian media — in the wake of the Modi speech in Delhi to a vast and enthusiastic audience in hundreds of thousands — pouncing on it, the desi reporter Dutt, suddenly realized she was in a soup. Why? Because Modi had also added that the Indian journalist hearing this insult should have, at a minimum, walked out which, of course, Dutt didn’t do. Now, what would any person who was in Dutt’s position do, if he/she discovered that her behaviour was attacked by Modi who might be next PM? You would quickly try and retrieve the situation for yourself by tweeting that, in fact, the Pak PM made no such offending remark in the first place, thereby shifting the onus on to the Pakistani reporter to back her and defuse the situation, or stick to his original tweet and be held responsible for creating a diplomatic-cum-political ruckus. Which’s exactly what the quick-thinking Barkha — who has been in other troubles (recall Radiia tapes?), did.

The more significant thing is the Indian government’s penchant during Manmohan’s tenure to run to Washington every time there’s a hint of trouble with Islamabad, asking Uncle Sam to discipline the unruly Pakistanis for creating some terrorist disturbance or the other in Kashmir. For God’s sake, how can you then turn around and ask the same US govt to not interfere in India’s internal or bilateral matters (with Pakistan)? This is the point behind Modi’s jibe that Manmohan entirely deserves Sharif’s insults because he puts up so effortlessly with lots worse from the Gandhis — mother and son every day of his stay at 7, Race Course Road. But that’s common knowledge.

Posted in Indian Politics, Pakistan, South Asia, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Walking the plank

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Rahul Gandhi’s vituperation against the Ordinance to save convicted members of parliament and helping them hang on to their seats is the equivalent of Prime Minister Manmohan, as the captain of the sinking ship of the Congress Party government, being prodded on to the plank. The question is will a man, who has shown a special facility for following orders, serving the Gandhi Family while maintaining a sphinx-like countenance, muster the necessary self-respect to jump off the plank. This analyst has found it hard to see any intrinsic merit in this man, and yet seeing him treated with so much brusqueness and contempt by the Congress Party’s budding political master, at once elicits scorn for the weak-minded and muddled person that Manmohan is, and pity for him. He knows he has long outlived his political utility, but being rudely shoved on to the sidelines must be something new for a man who has a great capacity for absorbing insults. I really believe that, despite everything, Dr Singh will carry on in his position — his basic babu/bureaucrat-instincts kicking in, to continue in 7, Race Course Road for another few months, rather than bring matters to a head. He will be prevailed upon by Sonia Gandhi to stay on — better to have a proven political cipher reduced to nothing as PM (who is adept at swallowing dishonour), than risk general elections alongside the state elections, because that would be to court a double blow.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Indian Politics, South Asia | 1 Comment

Politicising an apolitical military

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

A day apart, there were two contrasting views about the “apolitical” Indian military. Yesterday Lt Col CR Sundar, President Tamil Nadu BJP ExServicemens’ (ESM) Cell, emailed me a note sent off to others well in which he said, that ex-Servicemen, to quote him “should shed the veneer of being apolitical and take to directly involving ourselves in politics” and that BJP is deserving of their consideration because “of their nationalistic outlook, candour, integrity of showing equal concern to all religions and their unfailing support for the Indian Armed Forces.” His comment was apropos ex-Army Chief General VK Singh sharing the dais with Narendra Modi at an ex-Servicemen’s rally in Rewari, Haryana, Sept 15 called to demand “one rank, one pension”.

Then Col Sundar said “Monetary benefit is not everything” and that ESM should get involved in grassroots politics and stand for elections panchayat-level up. “Lawmakers such as MLAs and MPs don’t just happen”, writes the colonel. “Today’s councilor is tomorrow’s MLA. Today’s MLA is tomorrow’s MP. Only if we cultivate the grass root today can we have enough lawmakers to be able to change the laws where required and better enforce those that are existing.” The senior retired officers, he concludes, are simply “not smart enough to comprehend the possibilities.”

This morning in a Times of India op/ed former CNS Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) conceded the growing disrespect shown the Indian military as reflected in its “leadership [being] publicly excoriated and humiliated with regularity and snidely accused of disloyalty, by proxy, through media” for which he blamed the political class and especially the Defence Ministry bureaucracy. He, however, suggested that ESM keep off involvement in electoral politics because owing to their “umbilical” links to their respective services they may, he feared, end up politicizing the military “by osmosis”.

To better address ESM grievances and avoid these from being presumably parlayed into participation in active politics, the Admiral recommended that the Department of Ex-Servicemen’s welfare in MOD be headed by a retired senior officer and manned by ex-military personnel, which is an excellent solution.

But ADM Prakash avoided the basic theme underlying Colonel Sundar’s note and something that few people have seriously considered: Should ESM from a voluntary citizen army be content with merely voting for political parties of their choice and canvassing solely for additional monetary benefits in their retirement package, or should they as citizens get squarely into electoral politics and, hopefully, by a process of reverse-osmosis, clean up the stinking rat-hole that is Indian politics today? It is, of course, possible, even likely that former soldiers, sailors and airmen once in will succumb to the temptations and the lure of easy money available to persons in political posts. But, hearteningly, the record so far is of upright ESM being upright politicians! Consider the likes of Major General BK Khanduri, former Roads and Transport Minister in Vajpayee’s cabinet and later CM of Uttaranchal Pradesh. There was not remotely a taint of wrongdoing against his name, and did he not perform far better than cradle-to-death professional politicians? The upright and no-nonsense ADM Vishnu Bhagwat (Retd.) likewise got involved in Janata Party politics in his native Bihar.

The point to make is something larger. The ESM can no longer be on the sidelines and complain like everybody else that the current lot of corrupt and venal politicians is running India into the ground and ruining what remains of its prospects. They can choose to campaign for more than some extra rupees in their bank accounts at month-end by way of retirement dues; they can work to change the system from the inside rather than looking in and getting appalled by what they see by doing nothing about it.

An ‘apolitical’ military is a fine thing and so it should remain. But the pathological fear of the Indian military among the Indian political class and bureaucracy is unwarranted. This fear was institutionally seeded by Jawaharlal Nehru who apprehended the virus of army coups d’etat staged — the first time in Pakistan by General Ayub Khan in 1958, infecting the Indian military. Some fifty years later that apprehension ought to have been moderated by the political class, but it hasn’t been.

The fact is India could do with many more Khanduris and Bhagwats at the central level, and more ESM at the state, town, and village government levels, who by dint of character and inflexible values begin cleansing the system and righting the ship of state that is beginning to take a lot of water.

Posted in civil-military relations, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia | Leave a comment

Manmohan agenda to please USA

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Bharat Karnad

Prime minister Manmohan Singh canvassed furiously for almost a year for another state visit and a meeting with the US president. It is revealing that the Barack Obama administration initially showed little interest, not convinced that it needed to expend political capital hosting a head of an Indian government on its way out. But Singh’s insistence on a valedictory trip was persuasive because of the gifts he promised Washington.

Singh’s first trip as PM to Washington in July 2005 rode on the George W Bush regime’s geostrategic assessment of India’s importance in the unfolding strategic scene in Asia and America’s geopolitical desire to cultivate India as part of a hedging strategy against China. This was a situation tailor-made for New Delhi to extract an equitable deal in terms of easing US-led restrictions on commerce in high-technology and nuclear goods. Instead, it was Washington, exploiting the pronounced Indian desire for a rapprochement at any cost with the US, which imposed conditions on a strategically dim-witted Manmohan Singh dispensation resulting in extraordinary concessions as part of the nuclear deal. The bulk of the dual-use natural uranium-fuelled civilian Indian reactors were thus pushed into the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear safeguards net, and continuing with the test moratorium has ensured the flawed fusion weapon design cannot be rectified. India’s claim of high-yield thermonuclear weapons status in the event is a hoax. But it achieved for the US, temporarily at least, its long-standing non-proliferation goal of curbing India’s nuclear capability. However, the US hasn’t delivered on the quo for the Indian quid: India does not enjoy the “rights and privileges” of a “nuclear weapon state” promised in the July 8, 2005, Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement, and has not gained entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but New Delhi hasn’t complained.

Faced, moreover, with high deficit and unemployment at home, Washington has turned the Indo-US “strategic partnership” into an essentially transactional relationship with the nuclear deal being used to bully and badger New Delhi into buying high-value American goods. Worse, Obama has encouraged punitive legislative initiatives at home against outsourcing by American companies to India — even coining the pejorative “Bangalored” for it — and to limit H-1B visas to Indian software engineers, which will hurt the Indian information technology sector — one of the few still bright spots in the country’s otherwise bleak exports picture. Even the terrorism-related intelligence sharing has been turned into a mostly one-way street, with India benefitting little from it.

Any other prime minister faced with such evidence of bad faith would have been wary of dealing with Washington.But not our Manmohan Singh! He seems happy to be in a play scripted by Obama. Among the gifts he will carry to the US are (1) a “commercial contract” to buy Toshiba-Westinghouse AP 1000 enriched uranium-fuelled reactors, with the Indian monies reviving a comatose US nuclear industry even as the indigenous advanced pressurised heavy water reactor programme is starved of funds, (2) an undertaking, contrary to a cabinet decision, to replace cheap refrigerants used by Indian industry and military with expensive eco-friendly refrigerants that while ensuring windfall profits for a few US companies holding the patents will undercut the consensus agreement reached at the climate summits that Western countries will subsidise green technology in developing states, and (3) contracts for another $5 billion worth of military hardware (15 Chinook heavy lift helicopters, six additional C-130J medium-lift transport planes, 22 Apache Longbow attack helicopters, and 145 M-777 light howitzers) on top of defence deals of over $8 billion already in the bag.

It isn’t clear just how any ruse to obtain American reactors, in whatever manner Section 17 of the Indian Nuclear Civil Liability Act 2010 is interpreted, can empower the Nuclear Power Corporation to limit the liability of the supplier in case of nuclear accidents owing to faulty technology, which the Indian law expressly bars. Surely, an executive order can’t overturn Indian law or legitimate, via the backdoor, adherence to the Convention on Supplemental Compensation limiting liability to $300 million, as demanded by Washington. Any such deal, therefore, is headed for the Indian courts where it will be voided. But Manmohan Singh cares less — he won’t be there to face the consequences of the mess he has created.

As regards the newfangled refrigerants, what’s galling is the PM took this decision and signed the G-20 summit communiqué containing the stratagem to undermine the Copenhagen Summit agreement despite MEA’s warning that, besides hurting the Indian military forces, such a move would lessen pressures on the US to reduce carbon emissions. Indeed, it mirrors the manner in which Singh signed the July 5, 2005, Joint Statement with Bush that was opposed by Dr Anil Kakodkar, then chairman, atomic energy commission. For Singh, his trips to the US seem to be occasions to sell India short.

The Prime Minister’s solicitousness towards America may have many reasons, but two spring to mind. Firstly, as he himself revealed in his statement on the coal scam in the Rajya Sabha, the recent G-20 summit in St Petersburg and the like is where he is accorded respect as an economist and leader which he doesn’t get at home. The US has endowed his participation in such prestigious forums, moreover, with value less because of Manmohan Singh’s eloquence or in expectation of any nuggets of economic wisdom he might let drop — after all president Bush only half-jokingly confessed he couldn’t understand a word the Indian PM said to him in all their meetings! — but because Singh has served the US interests well.

This brings us to the second, more salient reason: Because no Indian government since 1947 has bothered comprehensively to articulate and grade India’s national interests, Singh has treated it as a floating value, and felt free to adopt Washington’s metrics to define India’s interests on critical issues. This policy stance, accompanied by American flattery and high-gloss diplomatic frippery Washington excels in designed to turn any Third World leader’s head, is something Singh apparently finds irresistible.

(Published in the ‘New Indian Express’, Friday, Sept 20, 2013 at http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Manmohan-agenda-to-please-US/2013/09/20/article1792977.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, disarmament, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Military Acquisitions, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., Weapons | 4 Comments