Modi worsens India’s doctrinal muddle

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The current time on the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is set at three minutes to midnight. Had there been such a clock for South Asia, it would have oscillated between four and five minutes to nuclear reckoning.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stopover late last year at Lahore on his return trip from Moscow had the potential to set a hypothetical South Asian Doomsday Clock back by a couple of minutes.

Even so, the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airfield demonstrates that the additional minutes gained between now and nuclear reckoning by the outbreak of India-Pakistan bonhomie may not be good enough.  

What needs to be done is clear: setting back the South Asian Doomsday Clock finally and for good. This would require bringing India’s emerging strategic doctrine i.e the organising principles and ideas on which national security and foreign policy are based  in sync with its military - defence and nuclear - doctrine.

The prime minister’s speech to the military brass gathered aboard INS Vikramaditya for the Combined Commanders’ conference provides a starting point for identifying the doctrinal disconnect that needs reconciling.

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Strategically, better relations are important from the point of view of South Asia being hostage to the success of the next set of would-be jihadis. For illustration, had the jihadis succeeded in destroying a few aircrafts on the Pathankot airfield, the fallout from the attack would have been markedly different.

Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor (NSA) forced on the back-foot by the controversial response, would have been left with little personal option than to recommend a hard response. An embarrassed government with little clue – judging from the ‘foot in mouth’ wrangle its defence and home ministers got it into following the Pathankot episode – would have seized war as the option, even if its foreign ministerruled that out only a fortnight ago.

Here Modi’s outlining of the military doctrine at the conference kicks in. He articulated it thus: “We need capabilities to win swift wars, for we will not have the luxury of long drawn battles.”

Little does Modi’s speech writer know that neither of these – ‘swift wars’ nor ‘long drawn battles’ – are in India’s interest. While long drawn battles are self-evidently unaffordable, ‘swift wars’ on that account are no more appealing, since wrapping up wars swiftly is easier said than done.

A potential scenario on the western front illustrates this. 

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If India generates a 1965 war like situation on the western front - in which its valiant forces actually crossed the Ichhogil Canal only to be called back - the denouement this time round would be different. It is unlikely that, Pakistan would give up the fight like it did in 1971.

It could instead be stampeded into hasty decisions. Pakistan’s foreign secretary has only last September officially let on that Pakistan would go nuclear with tactical nuclear weapons.

India’s possible nuclear response has been reinforced by Modi in his speech thus: “Our strategic deterrence is robust and reliable, in accordance with our nuclear doctrine, and our political will is clear.”

In effect, he promises retaliation will be in accord with India’s nuclear doctrine: ‘massive’ irrespective of the type of nuclear first use by Pakistan. Such an exercise of ‘political will’ by India’s Political Council of its Nuclear Command Authority would certainly be genocidal and since Pakistan has a lead on India in terms of warhead numbers, it would also be suicidal.

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The doctrinal disconnect has been brought out by the military advisor in National Security Council Secretariat, who writing in a Ministry of Defence think tank’s publication, Journal of Defence Studies (p. 61), says:

"If the nuclear shadow demanded war avoidance as a political outcome, the operational sphere attempted to keep alive the notion of victory despite the risk of mutual annihilation ... operational doctrines that are not nested in a realistic political context."

While it appears that Modi’s strategic doctrine is a product of his national security staff, he has inherited a military doctrine predicated on a ‘short war’. He acknowledges that there is much to be done. In his speech, he said, “we look to our Armed Forces to prepare for the future. And, it cannot be achieved by doing more of the same, or preparing perspective plans based on outdated doctrines....”

The problem is that his solution in the speech is based on ‘outdated doctrine’. The prime minister feels “our forces and our government need to do more to reform their beliefs, doctrines, objectives and strategies.” Rectifying the disconnect between strategic and military doctrines must be on in the busy Sardar Patel Bhawan, the site of the National Security Council Secretariat.

Clearly, India cannot resolve the doctrinal muddle alone, it has to do so in league with Pakistan. Doctrinal reconciliation is predicated on Modi keeping up the promise in his reference to “the NSA-level dialogue (designed) to bring security experts face to face with each other.” That the two NSAs met once again, this time in Dubai, is a positive sign towards this end.

Even so, Modi appears to hedge his bets. His caveat to his changed Pakistan policy is indicative: “we will test their intentions to define the path ahead ... But, we will never drop our guard on security and we will continue to judge progress on their commitments on terrorism.”

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Putting off foreign secretary talks suggests that India has not quite turned a corner. While Pakistan has taken action to rein in the Jaish-e-Mohammad it can be hazarded that its chief Maulana Masood Azhar would be back on the streets sooner than later, giving India another excuse to ease up on talks.

This is no way to push back the South Asian Doomsday Clock. Only doing so ensures that “the effort is worth it, because the peace dividends are huge and the future of our children is at stake.” There would be no future in case the next bunch of jihadis pushes the Clock across the midnight hour.

What is really driving India’s Pakistan strategy?

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Manoj Joshi is perplexed by India’s Pakistan strategy. 

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Though Joshi is right about India’s inability to effect a ‘favourable transformation in the behaviour of its adversaries through a mix of strategies’, he misreads the government’s intent. This misreading leads to his otherwise sustainable critique of the government’s Pakistan strategy.

This is the problem with most of the commentary that has attended the recent calling-off of talks for a second time in two years between the two nuclear-armed adversaries.

To begin by being charitable to the government, it can be argued that if the strategy requiring ‘patience and stamina’ has been tried  out since Rajiv Gandhi’s times, as pointed out by Joshi, and it has evidently not worked, it would not be sensible to persist with it.

This can plausibly explain India’s hard power approach to Pakistan involving largely its military and possibly its intelligence instruments. The strategy is to condition the military-intelligence dominated power structure in Pakistan with the explicit message that its ‘terror by proxy’ strategy will not work.

Simultaneously, India has networked with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif twice over – once in an invite to New Delhi last year and this time round in Ufa, indicating its willingness to attend the SAARC summit in Pakistan due next year. In doing so it is holding out an economic carrot to Pakistan’s business-commercial constituency.

Such a strategy is plausible in the conservative-realist framework of strategic thinking. Critiques that originate in the liberal-rationalist and the leftist-radical perspectives cannot but find fault with the strategy.

The differing strategic perspectives rely on different security referents – whether state centric or people centric - and consequently assign different weights to the instruments of state power: economic, political-diplomatic, military and intelligence and soft-cultural. These critiques can at best establish that India’s strategy is wrong-headed in its choice of referent, favoured instrument and strategy.

Whether it is also a wrong one can only be gauged using its very own coordinates, its rationale from within its perspective. Can it be argued that the strategy is wrong in the conservative-realist logic?

In a lecture delivered before he assumed his current position, the National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had indicated his preference for a ‘defensive offence’ strategy. From the choice of three – defensive, defensive offence and offensive – he favours the second. Assuming that Doval, now that he has spent a year in the chair as NSA, has put his strategy into operation, India’s declared strategic doctrine can be said to be one of ‘defensive  offence’.

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What should ‘defensive offence’ look like for India and does this match what India professes?

Firstly, ‘defensive offence’ was long abandoned by India in favour of deterrence at the next rung. India has since moved away from ‘deterrence by denial’, based on a strong defence and counter offensive capability. It has in this century switched to ‘deterrence by punishment’ with a shift to the ‘proactive’ and offensive conventional doctrine – the proactive strategy that is also called ‘Cold Start’ - and in its nuclear doctrine promises ‘massive’ nuclear punitive retaliation.

Since the new government fancies itself as distinct from its predecessor in its reliance and adeptness in the use of force, it cannot also be said that there is continuity in India’s strategic doctrine. The previous NSA Shivshankar Menon’s speeches suggested a liberal orientation, conveying its strategic doctrine of offensive deterrence. Since this government prides itself on being more aggressive, it is, therefore, not in the ‘defensive offence’ portion of the continuum as it imagines, but in the offensive part of it.

The offensive diplomatic action in cutting off talks twice over suggest as much. The government’s boast on its first anniversary was that it has cleared Rs 160 lakh crores worth of defence projects. Both the NSA and the defence minister have obliquely hinted at intelligence operations underway. At the level of ideation, military history is being rewritten – even to the extent of projecting what is widely regarded as a draw, the 1965 War, as a victory!

In other words, India is not on the ‘defensive offence’ as Doval puts it, but closer to compellence.

Two problems follow. One, India’s delusional self-image that is distinct from reality is likely leading it to launch actions that could prove counter-productive, since compelling a nuclear power is ambitious and risky. The second is in the impulse that is leading to such actions.

The impulse for such an ambitious undertaking cannot merely be ‘strategic’, defined in terms of an ‘ends-means balance’. It is instead grander, millennial. The well springs of this are not in rational strategy but in ideology, specifically that of cultural nationalism.

It is the marriage of cultural nationalism and hyper-nationalism that nests at the far edge of the conservative-realist perspective that best explains India’s Pakistan strategy. Therefore, strategic rationality cannot explain India’s actions such as cutting off of talks a second time round. Most commentators err in assuming this is so, making the prescriptions redundant.

Recognising that India’s new security paradigm is one of offensive-compellence is a precursor to bringing strategic rationality back into India’s security calculus.

DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE DOCTRINE

The seeds of India’s ‘tough guy’ image

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Early in June, retaliating to an ambush that accounted for eighteen of its comrades in Manipur, the Indian army struck two militant camps along India’s border with Myanmar killing an indeterminate number of militants.A day earlier, the central police and Jharkhand police claimed a rare success against Maoists when they killed twelve alleged Maoists. Of the seven identified casualties, six turned out to be youth with no criminal record.

In early April, the anti-red sanders smuggling task force of the police in Andhra Pradesh killed twenty alleged smugglers in what was later revealed to be a palpably staged ‘encounter’.

In the same week, the Telangana police killed five ‘Islamists’ in custody, in retaliation for the deaths of three policemen in an encounter with alleged members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in Nalgonda, an encounter that incidentally had also taken the lives of two SIMI members.

So, what do these otherwise unrelated incidents from various areas in India have in common?

The link between all three is the adoption of what is being termed as a doctrine of ‘disproportionate response’. 

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Accused of going to the press with unprecedented details of the Special Forces operations on the Myanmar border, media friends of the government have let on that it was by design, for ‘messaging’. Deterrence we are told requires ‘communication’ to the other side of ‘resolve’. This is best demonstrated, rather than merely said. What the instances recorded here have in common, therefore, is that they fall in the category of ‘messaging’ through ‘doing’ – the government’s version of ‘propaganda by deed’ - with deterrence being the purpose stated out loud.

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A doctrine has origin at four levels; these lie in a state’s strategic environment, the politics at the state level, institutional level dynamics within the state, and, finally, at the individual level in doctrinal entrepreneurs.

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The resonance of global strategic culture can be traced in its military doctrines. It readily borrowed from the US expansive doctrine of preemption as it was first trotted out by ‘Dubya’ Bush, with George Fernandes and Yashwant Sinha arguing that India had a more plausible case for preemptive strike against Pakistan.

India’s  nuclear doctrine of February 2003 emulated President Bush’s National Security Presidential Directive 14 of June 2002 in which he had explicitly extended nuclear weapons response to cover chemical and biological weapons use against the US. This put a caveat on India’s No First Use pledge, diluting what it trots out usually to prove that it is a responsible power.

Finally, India’s deep and growing Israel connection – now visibly flaunted in the visit of the Israeli defence minister – cannot but find doctrinal expression. Israel’s action in Gaza resulted in a Palestinian death toll 30 times higher than the Israeli casualties. The ‘disproportionate response’ inflection in doctrine can thus easily be traced to the influence of the current day drift in global strategic culture.

At the second level, that of the state, the receptive environment in India has been created by the return to power of the NDA, this time led by Modi. 

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The hyper-nationalist strategic plank has merged with the Hindutva worldview, resulting in a revision of India’s supposedly ‘reactive and defensive’ doctrine to one that is ‘proactive and offensive’ and now headed towards ‘disproportionate response’. In their view, it helps overturn a thousand years of humiliation and returns India to the front ranks of world powers. Besides, hopefully, the accompanying bombast will yield electoral dividend in the upcoming Bihar elections. ‘Acche din’ not much in evidence, national morale requires buoying by other means.

Within the ‘box’ of the state, is the bureaucratic level at which the military is increasingly salient. While a strong military reply to an ambush is entirely unexceptionable, traces of Americanism can be seen in its press statement: ‘any threat to our security, safety and national integrity will meet a firm response’.  It is not apparent from the statement whether the ‘safety and security’ refers to that of the state or the army.

This is suggestive of a psychological slip wherein the army’s concern for safety of its members – a post Vietnam American fixation - precedes that of its fellow citizens from whom a threat is perceived to emanate. It also completes the loop, tying the third level – organizational - with the first – international – in the military’s increasing interface with the US and Israeli militaries. The difference that seems to escape the army, however, is that these two militaries are not fighting fellow citizens.

Finally, there is the individual level, at which Ajit Doval, the National Security Adviser (NSA), figures 

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For the first time, Pakistan’s army has already expressed its annoyance with alleged Indian fingerprints over its Baloch predicament. It is no wonder then that though the army raids were in Manipur, the bombast was directed more towards Pakistan. It will not take ISI long to figure out that an opportunity exists for payback.

China has also figured among the alleged benefactors of the militants, identified by Mr. Doval way back in 2011. With two adversaries potentially advantaged by a downturn in security in the North East, strategic sense is to deny them a handle.

It was easy to see that the breakdown of talks with the NSCN (K) in April would have had military repercussions. It would have been strategic to keep the Naga negotiations on course. The previous government’s inability to cap a decade and half of talks after eighty rounds of talks is easy to understand, given its ineffectual record on almost everything else.

The current government relying on its nationalist credentials had intended late last year to wrap these up in eighteen months. Instead, it appointed a known sceptic of the talks, R N Ravi – former Kerala police cadre and IB colleague of the NSA – as lead negotiator.

India’s capacity to tackle any further unravelling of the cessation of operations processes can only be at the cost of its assiduously created mountain strike corps, that can willy nilly get sucked into counter insurgency even if intended for the China front. More significantly, it will be at a price that only the common man in the North East shall pay.

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India-Pak talks cancellation

Indo-Pak talks: Getting past the eyewash

http://indiatogether.org/the-real-reason-behind-india-pakistan-talks-being-called-off-op-ed

21 August 2014 

India summarily cancelled the late-August foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan, which were scheduled consequent to Sharif’s visit to Delhi for Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. This has come as a surprise. Since the ostensible reason given is that the Pakistani envoy in Delhi met separatist elements of the Kashmiri leadership against the counsel of the Foreign Secretary, the reason given only adds to the surprise, since such meetings are usually unremarkable.

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Power play

The foreign ministry can hardly be expected to be behind the move since it stood to gain by getting into the driver’s seat of the India-Pakistan process with resumption of talks. The resumption of talks earlier had also been led by the foreign secretaries. They had met in Thimpu in February 2011 after Manmohan Singh and Zardari had agreed to resume talks in a meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Thimpu in 2010.

That round of talks had been aborted in 2013 after the UPA government’s stupor in its second term was such that the political investment necessary to revive the process was rendered impossible in face of the border clash in January that year, in which an Indian soldier had been beheaded. This aborted precedent suggests the first explanation for the cancellation, namely, struggle between the two sides - those wanting talks and those against it.

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Strategic shifts

There are two further explanations. One is based on strategic logic. India’s deterrence in place against Pakistan is not of the order as to preclude proxy war. Its conventional rearmament is not complete as yet. For instance, avid military watcher, Rahul Bedi informs that its artillery arm is woefully short even to enable the ‘manoeuvers by fire’ as part of ‘cold start’ doctrine.

Further, Pakistan in late 2013 tested the tactical nuclear missile system, Nasr. These embolden Pakistan to up the ante in Kashmir. This long-anticipated juncture is now at hand since the US is readying to pull up stakes from the region soon. Therefore, it is not the right time for India to turn to talks since Pakistan would get the impression that this is from a position of weakness.

India has under the new government launched into a new programme of military upgrading. 

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These measures indicate that the pace of armament has increased. This is not only because the government is demonstrating more energy to distinguish itself from its predecessor, but also because it is shifting its strategic doctrine.

While Modi in his visit to Leh described India’s strategic doctrine as one of deterrence, India already has the ability to deter since in the same speech he also mentioned Pakistan’s movement to proxy war because of its inability to take Kashmir militarily. What India’s continued armament suggests is that India, unable to stop Pakistan’s proxy war, is determined to roll it back.

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However, even in such a grand strategic scheme, talks now would have bought India time to complete its rearmament since they would not have proceeded meaningfully in any case. For instance, even though India’s deterrence against China is falling into place slowly, with road building ongoing alongside raising of the mountain strike corps, India is engaging diplomatically with China. Its president is visiting New Delhi next month. Talks could have been a supplement on the Pakistan front too. The calling off of talks therefore does not have a strategic rationale.

The real reason: Man above the moment?

That brings one to the last possibility. It is in the person of the prime minister. Modi has been personalising governance. He was the face of Gujarat while he was at its helm. He is replicating that model of leadership in Delhi.

Not appointing a full time defence minister, Modi is himself keeping a keen eye on defence. He has already commissioned two naval ships, been to J&K twice over and visited BARC. He is to visit Siachen soon. His government has set aside money for the ‘one rank one pension’ scheme, which was approved but not implemented by the last government. He has given the go-ahead for the war memorial on India Gate lawns.

In this scheme of personalisation, there is no question of talks on Kashmir. India has already indicated it is an internal matter. Modi is looking at a culmination of his electoral victory in which the BJP gets within sight of Srinagar’s assembly in the coming polls.

It is a fallacy that foreign policy is based on external coordinates and strategic factors. It is, like most else, driven by internal politics, which in India’s case is currently entirely focused on the personality of the prime minister. Therefore, Pakistan’s attempt to foreground Kashmir in the talks needed to be repelled outright.

Modi through his war-leader act is relying on the army’s continued management of the status-quo in Kashmir. Hopefully, Pakistan’s inevitable challenge will not come as a surprise.

Modi's commitment trap

Modi forges a commitment trap http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=35885

" Party manifestos are useful but not the best start point for looking for a government's strategic perspective. Manifestos are somewhat tarred by the likelihood of being populist, intended as they are to garner votes. They understandably end up being 'all things to all people'. In India's case, as its strategic doctrine has not been articulated, it can instead be better gleaned instead by following national security related speeches. In the case of the previous government, in which the prime minister was famously silent, the government's strategic perspective was visible in the speeches of his National Security Adviser, Mr. Shivshankar Menon. His successor being silent so far, in case of the current government, the prime minister's speeches can be a useful start point. The last speech at Badami Bagh threw up some interesting highlights on what Mr. Modi's security outlook was shaping up to be. This time round, on his second visit to J&K since taking over his chair, his speech to the uniformed fraternity in Ladakh has already provided rich fare for primetime commentary. While prime time commentators have no doubt moved on to more immediate and pressing subjects, such as the sudden cancellation of India-Pakistan talks, it may be worthwhile to pause at the speech for a little while longer to see if it provides any clues as to why the cancellation. Even though it did create quite a stir at the 9-o'clock slot on TV, the prime minister did not quite say anything new. His website reports him as saying that a neighbouring country  (Pakistan was not named), having exhausted its ability to wage war, is instead resorting to proxy war and terrorism. This has taken more lives than war itself. India is committed to mobilize 'humanitarian forces' against the menace of terrorism. The fact is that Pakistan has exhausted the potential to change the status quo in Kashmir by military means. Cut to size in 1971, it went nuclear covertly. This by the early eighties provided it cover for proxy war, first in Punjab, and then, by end-decade in Kashmir. This is in keeping with the concept known in strategic theory as 'Stability/Instability paradox'. The concept has it that threat of escalation to the nuclear level, ensures stability at the conventional level. This opens up the sub-conventional space for proxy war. For tackling proxy war, in particular, its manifestation in a mega terror attack, Mr. Modi mentions two strategies: one is mobilizing 'humanitarian forces' and the second is military preparedness. The reference to 'humanitarian forces' is either poor drafting of his speech or translation of his words. It is unclear who these forces are. Maybe he means international players against terrorism, such as the US. So, this can be taken as reference to the diplomatic prong of strategy: isolate and compel Pakistan to change its strategy of proxy war. This is perhaps feasible in light of the US departure from the region. In exiting Afghanistan substantially by 2016, US reliance on Pakistan will be negligible. This reliance had ensured  that it intervened in 2002 to preserve Pakistan from conventional retribution by India after the parliament attack. Now, with little US interest at stake, Pakistan would be relatively vulnerable. However, the reverse is also true. With US pressure on it, Pakistan did clamp down on proxy war since 2004. Without US pressure, this could well escalate once again. And US will have little reason to clamp down again, leave alone the pressure points for this. Pakistan has taken care with plausible deniability measures to be able to distance itself from mega terror attacks. Its civilian government could truthfully say it had nothing to do with it. The military may point to rogue elements it cannot control, which has an element of truth. The international community may baulk at sanctioning Pakistan lest the extremists gain in power, as they would be better placed to profit from any downturn. The international community may look at the 'pull' factors such as unresolved territorial disputes, human rights violations etc. There may be those within the international community less inclined to sanction Pakistan, such as for instance the Gulf states for geopolitical reasons. China may not want to its cats-paw in the region go under. Therefore, India may end up going it alone, with much mealy-mouthed support from 'humanitarian forces'. In fact, for India's pains, it may end up putting the Kashmir problem, now on the back burner, back into the frame. That leaves India with the military prong of strategy. It is apparently girding this up as its fallback position. In case the diplomatic prong confronts Pakistani skepticism or obstruction, the conventional prong of strategy can kick-in. Firstly, this can bolster the diplomatic prong in that India's military preparations in the background will lend urgency to crisis diplomacy attending the aftermath of a mega terror attack. The international community, aware that India cannot end up once again only doing coercive diplomacy as in 2003; this may be the real thing. Therefore, it will feel pressured into reacting in real time with pressure on Pakistan to make the necessary noises as a first step and to take some placatory steps, even if not back track all the way. This would be good strategy, but one that can at best yield limited results. It can only be productive if India agrees to talk meaningfully. This is unthinkable since India's longstanding position has been that it will not negotiate at the point of a gun. A nationalist government such as Mr. Modi's is unlikely to go down this track. Therefore, diplomatic moves will be only enough to contain the crisis and set the stage for the next one, but not to roll back the problem. Secondly, the military prong can be deployed to administer conventional punishment. The air force has indicated a readiness, having drawn up a 5000 targets long list. The integrated battle groups of the army are ready, though it may use these selectively, perhaps launching only a few initially. The intention will be to convey a message that there is more to come unless Pakistan changes tack. The problem is that if this is a limited foray and even if there is more forming-up in the wake for delivering greater punishment, military-led Pakistan may up-the-ante itself. It may be pressured from its right wing not to play ball. This would prove escalatory. Even if India believes it has 'escalation dominance', meaning it can punish Pakistan militarily at both levels conventional and nuclear, the fact is that in the end, escalation cannot be ruled out. The strategic logic of the situation, that India would rely on to convince Pakistan to back down, is just as likely as not to be overtaken by the political logic within Pakistan. What emerges is that Mr. Modi's twin-track crisis strategy - diplomacy and military - is unlikely to yield result at the crunch. Pakistan's 'deep state', even without the strategic logic outlined here, would for ideological reasons fail to be impressed. This implies that sooner or later Mr. Modi will have to rely on his twin-track policy, found here to hold less water than Mr. Modi suspects. It is possible that the offer being made to Pakistan is simple: take it or leave it. The army in the chair there, the answer is predictable. Pakistan has already rejected the accusation as 'baseless rhetoric'. Taking cue, India has called off the talks. Perhaps, the speech was to manufacture a rationale for just such a juncture. The commitment trap Mr. Modi has dug up is certainty of trouble ahead. In this game of 'chicken', knowing Mr. Modi and his adviser, Mr. Dovel, won't, let's hope Pakistan's army blinks first!