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#3372, 5 May 2011
AFTER OSAMA - VII: SHOULD NEW DELHI ENGAGE PAKISTAN OR ‘WAIT AND WATCH’?

Firdaus Ahmed
email: firdyahmed@yahoo.com

In wake of the Osama killing, the hawks have carried the day in India. In pointing towards possible Pakistani complicity in harbouring Osama, they make the point that the Indian initiative of reaching out to Pakistan that is currently unfolding will fail. Their ‘I told you so’ discourse will likely result in a ‘wait and watch’ attitude by the government. This would lead to another year lost in South Asia.

This time around the initiative appeared more promising with the commerce secretaries agreeing on many encouraging measures ranging from petroleum products, electricity etc to the more important issue of MFN status for India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to be investing politically in his gut instincts. Reports were of the government having prepared its ground better by networking with the Pakistani army, later denied by both sides.

What will be the implications of Laden’s death? The major element forming the context is the end game in Af-Pak. The Obama plan of beginning pull out in July will gain momentum since the rationale for ‘hunting Osama’ does not exist any more. Ten years have considerably set back the al Qaeda. It has metamorphosed in a manner as to make Af-Pak irrelevant. The Taliban, the key player, has not suffered by Osama’s departure. Knowing the US may like a negotiated exit, they would drive a hard bargain. Pakistan would like to retrieve lost ground by backing them. This will ensure the dissipation of US triumphalism on the departure of Osama before the spring is out.

The point emerges that Pakistan has at best lost face. It will compensate by increasing its energy in protecting its interests. The US, with elections coming up and an economy that continues as a concern, cannot but placate it. The ‘wild card’ would be a terrorist reprisal in the US with Pakistani connections. This could disrupt the relationship, forcing the US to exit the region leaving behind chaos. That it could go this route is evident from its departure and the aftermath in Somalia.

What does this portend for India? In the Indian debate, the hardliners want to use this opportunity to pressure Pakistan. There is commentary on learning from the manner US conducts its business. They do not mind if the ‘wild card’ plays out to Pakistani detriment. It would leave India as the key regional power and in charge of containing the consequences. This holds appeal since it would give India a role in keeping with its stature.

If all else fails, this approach may be all that India has left. Currently, it may not be very useful since with US pressure found wanting it is hardly likely India’s would be more efficacious. Pressuring Pakistan through the intelligence game and heightening of military competition has not succeeded in conflict resolution. Instead, Pakistan has drawn down its nuclear cover more tightly with two quick missile tests, Hatf IX and Hatf VIII, over the last month. Debunking the realist prescription first is needed to eliminate it as an option. In any case, precedent of squandering India’s preeminence in the wake of 1971 does not inspire.

India must instead be attuned to the counter-intuitive likelihood of increased US reliance on Pakistan to bring about a face-saving exit from Af-Pak. In comparison, India’s cards in Afghanistan are not strong enough to impress. Its utility in reconstruction can be substituted by China. Its reach in the intelligence game and the strength of its proxies is comparatively weaker than that of Pakistan and is well short of its heyday in the Massoud years. Therefore, India must realistically appraise the relative power positions, and determine that it needs to work with Pakistan than against it.

This could help save Pakistan. Rhetorically India has accepted that this is in Indian interest. But its inability and unwillingness to see the peace process through indicates that it has not done enough to put its money where its mouth is. The realist expectation that they can handle the aftermath of a radicalized state in Pakistan is self-serving. A Pakistan in chaos is only good for majoritarian radicals and hyper-nationalists in India. India must tune into what its interests are.

Its aim is to get Pakistan to disengage with finality from Kashmir. The possibility of offering Pakistan political space in Af-Pak resolution in return for a quid pro quo on Kashmir is past. When the Af-Pak deal is through, Pakistan can turn its attention to Kashmir once again. Precluding such an outcome should impel Indian efforts.

On the internal front, India must instead proactively tackle Kashmir. In case it is unable to do so by networking with Pakistan due to internal political weaknesses, it must at the very least dispel the environment in Kashmir that enables Pakistani interference.

The analysis here that Pakistan has lost only face and not its position; which indicates that a ‘wait and watch’ policy spells inertia. Strategy, sensitive to evolving equations, calls for capitalizing on the stake of ongoing talks that India currently has in the fire.

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China in the strategic debate
Firdaus Ahmed.

27 April 2011 - China intruded unambiguously into Indian consciousness with its attack of 1962. Its nuclear test of 1964 further consolidated it as a reckonable threat. Its headstart in economic reforms by about a decade, finds India today playing catch up. It is uninspiring that the only significant aspect in which India expects to surpass China is population. Realising this, it appears that India's grand strategy choice is to be more circumspect in its balancing behaviour.

Whether this circumspection is evident in the details, however, is not very certain, given the tensions recently made visible in India's China strategy. The general in command of India's Northern Command has had to ventilate his apprehensions on the presence of Chinese across the Line of Control as being 'part of the string of pearls strategy. This formulation, around for long on the maritime front, has for the first time found mention on the continental front. In reaction, the Foreign Secretary indicated that details of the Army's concerns have been asked for.

This exchange was in the run-up to the meeting of the prime minister with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the BRICS summit at Beijing.

. There are two possibilities. One is that there is an element of design behind the commander going public with the Army's position. This could be as part of India's signaling strategy, in which it uses the Army to make a point without queering the negotiating pitch with the Chinese overly. From the Foreign Secretary's reaction, however, this does not seem to have been the case. Strategic finesse, of employing its instruments to make subtle points, is not characteristic of India's establishment.


Premature strategic assertion or muscular posturing is not in grand strategic interest since India needs more than a decade to consolidate its agenda of growth with equity.


The other possibility arises from a feature of the national security system - in which the Army, feeling left out, needs to make its presence felt if necessary, indirectly. In this case, a charitable view could be that the timing of the Army commander's comment indicates that he was not aware of the Prime Minister's then impending trip. Or that the timing of the remarks was to send the message to the establishment that the Army would like its concerns discussed at the meeting.

What this does indicate is that there are two schools in the ring, when it comes to India's China strategy and its follow-up actions. The first is a more nuanced policy in which India gains time to get its power indices in order. This involves building economic ties, deepening relations with the US and Asian democracies, and getting its triad into place over the decade. The ongoing reaching-out to Pakistan can also be counted in this school's guidance. A subtle distancing from the US is also underway lest India get caught up prematurely in the balancing game between the global hegemon and the challenger.

The second school advocates a more muscular approach to deter China over the interim. This involves military rejuvenation on the China front through force positioning and infrastructure buildup. It seeks a greater interface with the US, including military contacts. It plays up the 'two front' threat mentioned by the former Army chief and taken forward by the army commander, since the northern army quite naturally finds Chinese presence 'too close for comfort'. It does seem that the military is bucking the diplomacy-predominant and economy-centered China strategy.

It is at this juncture that grand strategy needs to kick in. While there is nothing wrong in the military maintaining its position in a democratic system characterised by bureaucratic pulling and hauling, for the military to have a voice within the confines of the system is better. Its understanding that it does not have adequate leverage is what results in its going to the media and the public. The advantage of an in-house discussion, even if no-holds-barred, is in the opposition being carried along once a decision, not necessarily one arrived at by consensus, is reached.

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This also caters for the possibility of preventive war that casts a shadow over the medium term. The expectation in realist circles is that the contention with China will only reach a culmination over markets, resources, political prestige and strategic space over the long haul. They therefore advocate an Indian build up over the interim as insurance.

Could China launch a preventive war in the interim to set India back in this race? Realists argue this is not possible in the current circumstances since China would also likely suffer a set back in relation not so much with India, but in terms of its project of parity with the US. Therefore, India is safe from a 'balance of power' point of view in case it were to arm in the shadow of the US, as it is proceeding to do currently.

The problem with such strategic advocacy is that it sets India up as a target for China in the strategic competition with the US. China would use Pakistan to keep India tied down over the near term. This will not amount to forging a nexus with Pakistan, since this can potentially also singe China. Therefore, the twin-front problem is myth making, more to justify the US tilt and for arms expenditure.

In case India were to be assertive, as realists think is necessary for deterrence sake, then the possibility of preventive war by China becomes a probability. The relative gains from such a contest would be in China's favour since it would enter into the conflict better placed than India in terms of military power. It is unlikely that the US could bail India out since it is already battling declining power and economic indices. Chinese confidence in preventive war can only increase as the two power graphs tend to converge over the medium term. Therefore, Chinese strategy would be to let Pakistan box in India in the short term and keep the preventive war option open for the medium term.

What does this imply for India's grand strategy in first place and at one remove its China strategy? Premature strategic assertion or muscular posturing is not in grand strategic interest since India needs more than a decade to consolidate its agenda of growth with equity. It follows that it needs a China policy that cannot stampede it into a premature confrontation with that putative superpower. The military needs to be brought on board both through appropriate organisational measures giving it a voice within the system as also persuading it of the preferred strategic direction.

Apparently this is already the case, with India Today describing the defence minister as 'lone dissenter' in his turning down the idea of Indian military representation in the headquarters of US theatre commands, among other measures to maintain military distance from the US. This indicates sensible balancing behaviour. The gains made in the meeting between the PM and Mr. Hu, that included agreement over a visit by a delegation of the Northern Army to China, is further evidence of successful unfolding of a strategy that can do without the unnecessary buffeting of bureaucratic politics.
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Milli Gazette

THE GUJARAT REVELATIONS
By Firdaus Ahmed
According to an affidavit in the Supreme Court by a senior police official, he was witness to the chief minister in Gujarat requiring the police to stay out of violence that he expected Hindus to inflict on Muslims in wake of the burning of the train bogie at Godhra. This was intended to ‘teach the Muslims a lesson’. The police had been somewhat even handed earlier, as a result the Muslims had apparently been emboldened. The lesson would help put a stop to communal violence they indulged in.

The chief minister has since been reelected and has acquired a reputation for being strong on development. There is also the claim that Gujarat has since been communal violence free. A Muslim educationist heading a leading seminary has been under cloud for acknowledging that Muslims do not face discrimination in Gujarat. A leading industrial tycoon is seen in an advertisement praising the Gujarat administration for speedily granting his corporation land for completion of a car project. India’s top actor is a state ambassador for Gujarat. The cop in question has gone on record accusing the Special Investigation Team probing the cases of violence on behalf of the Supreme Court of being partial to the chief minister.

Clearly, the chief minister has done well since for himself and evidently for his state. The question is can the subsequent record help over-shadow the previous record. This is consequential since the chief minister may have ambitions for ruling from Delhi, particularly since his political party is short on leadership with an impressive record.

The answer is equally clearly in the negative. Justice has not only to be done, but seen to be done. The chief minister would have to pay for his acts of omission and commission. But only in case these are proven in court. The problem is that close to a decade has elapsed since.

This means ample time has been available for records to be set right, assuming there is truth to the charge in first place. That the police officer did not blow the whistle earlier indicates the atmosphere of fear in the state bureaucracies. That his own senior has contested his claim brings out the atmosphere of connivance prevalent. This environment of fear is perhaps that gets the bureaucracy working and in its working bringing compliments, if controversial, for development for the state. There is also the possibility, given that the people have reelected the party that within the state apparatus exists a considerable constituency subverted to the ideology of the political party.

In the immediate aftermath of the carnage, the prime minister, of the same political party, could not follow through on his preference of asking the chief minister to go for violation of what he termed as the ‘raj dharma’. The chief minister in the event was saved by the union home minister accepting his narrative of the events in Gujarat. This ability to handle Delhi, no doubt, sent the message to people and officials in Gujarat of the power of the chief minister.

The climate of fear has been extended over time by the earlier killing of the home minister during the carnage, Hiren Pandya. There have been periodic reports of killings of some Muslims in encounters, now being increasingly challenged as fake encounters. These cumulatively have possibly lent the chief minister an aura of invincibility. This perhaps explains the higher indices on development reportedly been notched up by Gujarat. No one in the administration would want to fall afoul of such a ruthless man. It is said of the Emergency that the trains ran on time.

In other words, the ‘development’ that is attributed to Gujarat is not through means that are worth replicating. If these are good enough for the Gujarati people and their state officials, these are not necessarily replicable across the diverse land of India. In any case the controversy that greeted even the revered Anna Hazare’s references to the chief minister’s record on development indicates that the record on rural development is not quite what it is made out to be.

There are three indicators to the contrary about the state of affairs in Gujarat. Firstly, the persecution of Christians in the tribal Dangs district indicates that all is not well in rural Gujarat. Swami Aseemananda, the mastermind who has confessed to his involvement in the right wing conspiracy to malign Muslims through terrorist bomb attacks, had his ashram there in Gujarat. Second is that there has been little done for justice and resettlement of Muslims effected by the violence. This means impunity for the perpetrators and by extension accretion in the aura of ruthlessness of the chief minister.

Lastly, there has been the case of bomb blasts in Ahmedabad as part of the series of blasts in cities across India in 2008. The curious part of this case has been that the only place these were detected and reportedly ‘defused’ was in Surat. The obvious implication is that these have been planted there to implicate Muslims yet again. The less obvious but more significant implication is that this may well have been to take the scent off the elements who had actually planted these. No wonder that the Center has had to create a fresh agency, the NIA, to look at the blasts of questionable origin. The fear is that the intelligence apparatus is so penetrated by subverted ideology if not elements that a fresh agency is required to pursue the ends of justice.

It is therefore important to restrict the chief minister’s shadow to his home state. It is for the people there to realize who they have as their elected head. As for the rest of the people of India there is no way their sense of justice and propriety will allow them to countenance such a person as their political leader. Ensuring that this does not come to pass due to democratic miscarriage requires that the truth in Gujarat be pursued to its logical ends. More need to follow the example of the brave hearts as Hemant Karkare and the whistle blower, Sanjiv Bhatt.

If truth was to prove elusive still, then regretfully it must be acknowledged that this nation needs no better a leader than the chief minister as prime minister.

indiatogether.org

Long road still ahead
by Firdaus Ahmed

India and Pakistan are talking and playing. This is enough to make expectations rise, only to be disappointed once the realities catch up. A strand of reality that seldom finds mention is the reservations many in India have of rapprochement. Unless these are squarely met, reaching out done by well meaning prime ministers are not likely to get anywhere.

These reservations include, firstly, that Pakistan is not interested in repairing its relations with India. The Army in control there stands to lose and therefore would not like such an outcome. Secondly, business as usual cannot be conducted with those sending terrorists across. Thirdly, Pakistan is a stooge of China and consequently it will not be allowed to mend fences. There are more such arguments, all externally directed. These reservations can be taken on board and a strategy made to coopt, negate or prevail over these. That this does not happen, tells us that there is something more to reality.

An important part of this reality has been India's need to have an external 'other' out there - in the form of a hostile Pakistan. This holds up India.

There are several sectors, lobbies and forces that profit from the adversarial status quo. The Wikileaks being brought to attention by The Hindu, provide evidence. M K Narayanan's dismissal of the prime minister's soft corner for Pakistan is clinching on the good health of retarding lobbies in India.

Since the former National Security Adviser spent his working life in his own description to his American interlocutor who spilled the beans unintentionally as a 'spook', it can be inferred that the intelligence community stands arraigned against Pakistan. This appears understandable since they are conversant with the shady goings within their counterpart, the ISI. What is unsaid is the extent the ISI is reactive and between the two the extent to which the conflict ridden reality is firstly manufactured and secondly perceived.

Given the perception of reality fed by a motivated intelligence, it is apparently explicable that the military-industrial complex comprising the military, ministry and the technologists would prefer a tough stance. The justification of the defence budget is now not so much Pakistan, as China. However, as trotted out in late 2009, the 'two front' threat as the worse case scenario guides acquisitions.


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Stalwarts of the strategic community have made their names and their visages nationally recognised in Pakistan-bashing. Former foreign service and intelligence officers, easily recognised even when they are not named, have set the discourse. Finding a voice after retirement they are paying back Pakistan for perceived wrongs, such as the surprise at Kargil and Kandahar, that have blemished their careers. At least a few are senior denizens in the capital-based think tanks setting the agenda, and one operates from the deep south.

Finally, there is the tribe of cultural nationalists. Arun Jaitly's views on opportunistic use of the ideology imply that Pakistan and its actions are politically useful. Also in the same news report is reference to terrorism raising the conservatives' stock. This perhaps explains the need felt in certain extremist circles for 'black operations' implicating Muslims in terrorism perpetrated by majoritarian nationalists.

Until this dimension of the internal reality is understood and accepted, there is little prospect of movement in India's Pakistan policy. Clearly, there is no chance of taking these forces on. Efforts to do so would get the conservative formations and realists into a quasi alliance. Their counter attack would be to appropriate nationalism and claim that a sell out on defence of the nation is underway. The government weakened by corruption scandals since the run up to the Commonwealth Games can hardly be expected to take the plunge.

Pakistan on its part is unlikely to oblige with a game changing gesture, such as locking up Hafeez Sayeed, sending its ISI chief on an intelligence exchange visit to India or the Pakistan Army chief pulling back of his army for operations to the west. Consequently, the procedural track of talks will at best be on course. Nothing significant can be expected to emerge, leaving South Asia open to the next jihadi assault and its nationalist aftermath.

Even so the steps taken at the home secretaries meeting in New Delhi and that of the prime ministers in Mohali must be welcomed. But the meet of the foreign ministers due in mid year must be viewed realistically.

What is needed?

This can only be an academic exercise in light of forces stacked against the possibility of improvement in relations between the countries. Many peace strategies have been suggested and partially explored. These include revitalising institutions, opening up commerce and people-to-people contacts. As witnessed, these are either stillborn (e.g. SAARC), stymied (the Lahore bus diplomacy), or undercut such as by the paperwork involved in gaining a place on the Uri-Muzaffarabad bus. In any case, each of this is subject to rewinding at the inevitable crack of the Kalashnikov. Even the promise of generational change was belied in the Rajiv-Benazir bonhomie having fizzled out with the outbreak of violence in Kashmir. So the impending Rahul era is also without promise.

Hardliners self-interestedly offer two strategies. One is to resort to fisticuffs to bring Pakistan to heel. The second is to create such an asymmetry with Pakistan by outspending it militarily that it will drop out of the race, if not bandwagon. The problem with the first is that there is no guarantee that Pakistan will lose in light of its response options on the subconventional and nuclear planes. The latter neglects the Chinese interest in keeping Pakistan afloat. In short, both options not only have little prospect of success but more dangerously keep South Asia on nuclear tenterhooks.

Pessimistic but realistically, the only way out appears to be to be brought up face-to-face with the nuclear reality. The Japanese experience, twice over, will be sobering in such a circumstance. This implies waiting for things to get worse. Then they will get better with the peace strategies that are already present in the discourse applied in the aftermath. Peace mongers must keep their powder dry to strike at that opportune hour.

The key question is how to restrict the nuclear face-off to a flirtation rather than the real thing. It is strange that such a question needs answering even as the two states are seemingly set to pick up the pieces once again from where they left off at Mumbai 26/11.
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Getting A Peace Movement Going
by Firdaus Ahmed March 18, 2011 23:03


The unfortunate happenings in Japan can have a useful purpose in case the fledgling peace movement can acquire momentum. This is the time to move from an activist-centered program to a mass based one.

The events of Japan have had a catalyzing effect elsewhere. The PM has already ordered a nuclear safety recheck. Those opposed to nuclear power expansion in India, such as the CNDP (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace) have used the opportunity to drive home their arguments against such expansion. The Disaster Management Authority is no doubt studying the aftermath, even as it keeps relief teams on standby for deployment. Nuclear lobbies interested in the nuclear renaissance have been at work dispelling any aspersions on their stewardship of the nuclear program.
Missing in action is the peace lobby. Currently, they are double-hatted, also busy with fending of nuclear power expansion, particularly the Jaitapur plant. The unfortunate happenings in Japan can have a useful purpose in case the fledgling peace movement can acquire momentum. This is the time to move from an activist-centered program to a mass based one.
The back-to-back nuclear tests were the spark but there was no tinder. As a result there was little societal opposition. Instead the nationalist narrative took over, fanned later by the Kargil War. The nuclearists were sensible in blostering their doctrinal releases with due genuflection to disarmament, even as they shifted the goal posts from ‘minimum deterrence’ to ‘credible minimum deterrence’. Their dominance of the discourse since, relying on official power, has kept the peace movement in the realm of possibility and not quite a ‘happening’ field.
This is despite South Asia having undergone a near war and a crisis after Kargil. The nuclear race, if not an arms race, is one being run neck in neck, with a news report having it that Pakistan has ‘edged’ past India in numbers. In a variegated program, India remains ahead, having a nuclear powered submarine under trials and ballistic missile defence system retested recently.
The somnolence in the peace counter offensive owes to the movement lacking in escape velocity. The current juncture of the third blast in Japan’s atomic power station and Tokyo being downwind is an opportunity that must be suitably leveraged. Directly confronted with the sad images, people can imagine what they are in for in case the false god, deterrence, were to fail.
Japan has evacuated a 20 km radius around the plant. Since it was on the sea the displacement has been up to tens of thousands, others having left due to the tsunami. The Japanese being traditionally disciplined the images are of oriental calm in face of tragedy and challenge. Transferring the disaster template onto the Indo-Gangetic plain would be surely focus minds, given South Asian densities of population, levels of preparedness and suspect social cohesion.

While rightly the current focus of activists is on nuclear plants safety and the shortcomings in the Indian system, such as absence of an independent over-watch and safety audit body, there is a need to go beyond. The counter attack must move into terrain hitherto-fore considered settled due to hegemony of nuclearists.

Anticipating their arguments would be instructive. Foremost would be that India and Pakistan have always waged limited, virtually ‘gentlemanly’ wars that were at best, ‘communal riots with tanks’. Both states have an agreement not to attack each others nuclear assets, an agreement that has withstood the test of all the crises over the past two decades. Limited War entails avoiding targeting of possible nuclear infrastructure, lest it trigger a ‘use them lose them’ paranoia. In case of inadvertent conventional strikes on nuclear weapons, the weapons are unlikely to go off in sympathetic detonations due to safety features. What would result would at best be akin to a dirty bomb, limited to the danger zone of the chemical explosive. Besides, India has the NDMA in place etc etc.

The shortcomings of this position need to be brought out. Firstly, the wars were in an era when the shared heritage and memories were still fresh in memory. Ever since respective religion based nationalisms have made advent in mainstream political imagination and the consequences are yet unfolding in both societies. Secondly, while the treaty exists, its robustness in war is not known. The level of credence given to the treaty, particularly in the classified air force doctrine, is not known. As it is the list that is exchanged yearly of facilities is not in the open domain. Thirdly, the emphasis on firepower is evident from the number of FICCI and CII seminars on the theme and developments in missile field, particularly cruise missiles. Nuclear hideouts can figure either explicitly or inadvertently in such fire assaults. This could lead to radiation leakage from damaged weapons or worse, trigger nuclearised responses.

The leisurely pace of the peace process that could dispel such concerns stands explained in the Wikileaks releases made accessible by The Hindu. The lobby against normalization, in which, incidentally, also figures an erstwhile NSA, is capable of stymieing the PM’s best intentions. That many sections gain from such a status quo, including the nuclear lobby, accounts for its strength.

In light of this asymmetry, positional war needs being launched by getting not only masses but the middle classes, who stand to lose the most, on board. The counter needs to move from an anti-nuclear ‘coalition’ to a ‘movement’. It cannot be in isolation of such action in neighbouring states. In fact, only together can the counter prevail. The Japanese experience is the second, and possibly last, for learning.

http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/revisiting-intelligence-reform-3338.html

REVISITING INTELLIGENCE REFORM


The Outlook informs that a report on intelligence reforms is in the offing. The review is being done by a government think-tank, taking cue from the speech of the Vice President, Hamid Ansari. It has been ten years since the Kargil Review Committee instigated the ‘Gary’ Saxena task force report to the Group of Ministers, and the new report is timely and welcome.

The Rajya Sabha chairman had said at the annual RN Kao Memorial Lecture a year ago that “there is no reason why a democratic system like ours should not have a Standing Committee of Parliament on intelligence.” His speech then had come close on the heels of Mr. Chidambaram’s talk, ‘A New Architecture for India’s Intelligence’ at the Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture. Thus, political India made its intent clear that changes in both the internal and external dimensions of intelligence were impending. This was understandable since Mumbai 26/11 had indeed shaken up the security system. With reforms elsewhere in place, such as coastal security, it is the turn of intelligence agencies that seem to have failed yet again, after Kargil.

It is being authored by an intelligence ‘insider’, Rana Banerji. He made the news a few years ago as a leading contender for the top job in the external intelligence agency. The ideas he may have entertained and could not oversee may come up in the report, making it one worth looking forward to. Saikat Dutta (‘Ghosts who walk’, Outlook, 28 February 2011) writes that the whole gamut of intelligence function is being reviewed including recruitment, training, covert operations, the operations-analyses balance, financial accountability, ethics etc. Though no report can possibly recommend against opening up the intelligence domain to legislative oversight, the manner and extent of this recommendation would be its highlight, given the reservations about reform that may be in existence.

This article suggests the inclusion of a recommendation on ethnic, regional and community profile balancing within these organizations. The idea can be considered irrespective of whether the Equal Opportunity Bill under debate sees the light of day. Since no data exists on account of secrecy that understandably attends the intelligence function, that this aspect is less than optimal cannot be said outright. However, the possibility of certain subgroups not being represented adequately, such as Muslims and other groups from certain regions, cannot be discounted. The figures, albeit contested, provided by late Omar Khalidi, in his book Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India are representative. The remainder of this article argues why a greater representation of Muslims would be beneficial to the organizations in question and to national security.

There is a perception of Muslim under-representation to the extent of their numbers being negligible to minimal, particularly so in officer ranks, as revealed by Outlook in 2006. That there is no policy to this effect can be conceded, though the article had suggested that it was outcome of an ‘unwritten code’. It possibly owes instead to a lack of qualification and dearth of volunteers. The latter is also due to the self-reinforcing cycle of Muslims not applying under the impression that they would not in any case make the grade. Given this, there is a case for remedial action. While positive discrimination is not the answer, an open recruiting policy may help. Targeting Muslims through an outreach to the community, through its leaders, may be useful. The figures for police and paramilitary have registered an upward trend since the Sachar committee made this suggestion. At officer level initially, Muslims can be asked for as deputationists from other organizations, such as police and the military. That deserving Muslims would likely seize the opportunity can be seen from a Muslim topping the IAS last year and the Indian Forest Service exam this year. The Vastanvi episode indicates the focus on education and jobs in the multiple communities that together form India and the world’s largest minority.

Why is this necessary? Take for instance intelligence on the terror bombings which reveal the handiwork of majoritarian extremists. The refrain in intelligence input, magnified through the media, was that these were perpetrated by Muslims. However, the discourse in the Urdu press and in drawing rooms of Muslim households was to the contrary. It could thus have proved to be a timely line of investigation. At a higher level of abstraction, the domestication of the intelligence function is important for the plural, secular and democratic underpinnings of the republic. In case the character of the state is to be changed, it is the closed intelligence apparatus that would be the first target. Without checks and balances that pervade the system, these organizations lend themselves to such takeover. While democratic control of the military has witnessed much theorizing, the democracy-intelligence relationship has been neglected.

chowk.com

What Holds India Up?
by Firdaus Ahmed March 01, 2011 17:34

India has a pretty good rationale for not engaging with Pakistan. It can always refer to 26/11, the dastardly attack on Mumbai. It can follow up with reference to the slovenly prosecution of the terrorist handlers and that the chief mastermind, Hafeez Sayeed, walks free. It can draw up a list of such attacks ranging from Mumbai train blasts through the parliament attack in Delhi to the bombing of the Srinagar legislative assembly. That Pakistan has not rolled back terror infrastructure intending to reuse it when the time is ripe on the departure of the US from AfPak makes Delhi less inclined to follow up purposefully on its professed preference of seeing a friend in Pakistan. India’s position appears justifiable and owing to this there is little interrogation separating what it professes with what are its actual motivations.

There are at least two pieces of evidence as to what holds India up. The first appeared in the Wikileaks trove on US embassy officials writing up their information. A joint secretary in the external affairs ministry is stated as saying, "call me a cynic, but even if India were to lop off Kashmir and hand it on a platter to Pakistan, they would still find a reason to make trouble for us". In the official's assessment a deep historical and civilisational faultline divides the two states and could at a certain level make their differences irreconcilable.

The second is in the recall of Musharraf of the Agra summit in which he alleges that the two political leaderships were closing in on a formulation, but clinching of the deal was scuttled by a foreign service officer handling the Pakistan desk in attendance. In his words, "There was someone from the foreign ministry sitting there named Katju. He may still be there, he created a lot of hurdles." Interestingly, he added, "I told Vajpayee saheb before leaving Agra, today you and I have been both humiliated because there is someone above us, sitting above us who can veto what we decide." It is no wonder that Musharraf did not receive the visa for his speaking engagement in Delhi late last year in the immediate aftermath of this interview.

The two instances indicate that there is a section in India’s deep state that is not overly inclined towards Pakistan. The section that is possibly less hostile to Pakistan is less vocal. They have certainly be silenced after the gaffe in the wording of the Sharm es Sheikh joint declaration of 2009. The most vocal proponent, Mani Shankar Aiyar, is unlikely to gain any position of consequence, unsurprisingly because of his being an Indusphile.

In the two illustrations, hardline views of diplomats have been referred to. Diplomats are the least extreme. What the views of those in the intelligence agency are can only be imagined. These views have been formed no doubt after observing Pakistani ISI in action and therefore they are understandable. Nevertheless, that they would constitute a speed breaker if not a hurdle can be imagined.

Likewise, the Army can be expected to be averse to Pakistan. While it may not have an issue with engaging Pakistan, it would be concerned were there to be any semblance of concession as part of such reaching out. Its position on eminently negotiable issues as Siachen has been described by notable Indian civil-military relations specialists as a case of exercise of veto over otherwise eminently political decision terrain.

Within the strategic community are the vociferous Pakistan bashers, Indian equivalent of the combative Shireen Mazari. Ever on television and through opinion pieces they deepen suspicion. The government with limited political capital to begin with can then hardly invest in rolling back the tide as prelude to clinching a deal. It is no wonder then that India remains without a policy of conciliation.

It however has a policy of coercion under preparation. While all elements are not in place at the moment due to the military make over that coercion requires, it is slowly building up through acquisitions to the capability. That coercion will be offset by Pakistan relying on China, on nuclear weapons and on irregular fighters is a problem that will be contended with in due course. Presently, a strategy of restraint caters to tide over the interim when India will be able to follow through where it left off in Operation Parakram. This means that the future is an uninviting one.

If changes are to be made, then understanding India’s internal hold up is equally required. Forever attributing the road block to the self-interested Pakistan Army and its notorious ISI is limiting. The Pakistani deep state has its reflection in an Indian deep state. Indian policy makers, its politicians, are not in a position to overrule the veto this exercises on its Pakistan policy.

Pakistan needs to change for India to be more accommodative is an acceptable proposition. However, for India to have to wait it out till then makes it a reactive state and is unbecoming of its power credentials. India needs instead to bring about the change. This it can only do if it can internally bring about a triumph of the liberals.

This will require political investment, attention and staking of political reputations. The over-focus on relations with the US, the economy and now with corruption are keeping India from engaging with the substantive issue of poor relations with its foremost neighbour. It needs to refocus on the core issue. Just as Gulliver, India cannot expect to get anywhere if its neighbourhood ties it down.

Recognising that the problem is not entirely in Pakistan but lies within is the first step.

What if Pakistan implodes?

India would do well to consider its options in light of its national interests. Loose nukes are certainly a concern, but talk of taking them out is cavalier, and we must put the brakes on that.


28 February 2011 - Nuclear safety and security in the subcontinent have been among India's concerns. Recently, the National Security Adviser had this to say: "there is an increasing danger of terrorism spreading from those parts of Asia, like Pakistan and Afghanistan ... The security of nuclear materials and weapons in those same parts of Asia is another example of the sort of problems that we face." (Indian Express, "Towards a New Asian Order"). These fears have been around ever since the United States commenced military action in the region against terrorists and their supporters.

In international fora, the spectre of a 'failed' Pakistan, and the resulting threats to nuclear safety have been played down, generally, but they cannot be ignored altogether. The answer so far has been to pressure Pakistan to maintain vigilance, with the US providing more substantial material and technical support. With the assassination of Salman Taseer, the personnel reliability program has come under cloud. Various scenarios of Pakistan going under finally, although still far-fetched, have also gained life in light of uprisings in Arab lands.

Take out the nuclear weapons?

A government-funded think tank believes it has the answer to the development of such a threat. In its view, "in case there is ever a successful coup led by radical extremists with the support of disgruntled elements in the Pakistan army, nuclear warhead storage sites will need to be bombed so as to render the warheads ineffective. For this contingency, India must consider providing military and logistics support to the US and its allies" (see this link).

We only need to remind ourselves of Chernobyl, while mulling over this advice. Of the population of about six million in the affected area stretching from Ukraine to Belarus, an estimated 5000 died of radiation effects according to WHO figures. In a country of 175 million people with another 100 million or so Indians in close vicinity, the possible casualty figures are mind-boggling. In case this advocacy was part of internet cacophony, it could have been easily ignored. But coming from a military-linked think tank, it calls for closer scrutiny.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE indiatogether.org

The risks of intervention

It is readily accepted that India needs to intervene in some manner on the side of the besieged rational-secular element in Pakistan, in case the challenge of radicals goes beyond limits. But the scenarios for such intervention are also dismissed too quickly, since, as a noted Pakistan watcher Sumit Ganguly put it, "Pakistan is not Egypt". Nevertheless, this alternative is something we must discuss, lest the advocacy for intervention assume dominance by default.


In a country of 175 million people with another 100 million or so Indians in close vicinity, the possible casualty figures from an attack on nuclear sites are mind-boggling.

Assuming Pakistan slides into its oft-predicted but perpetually eluded 'failed state' status through a civil war, the Indian interest would be to ensure that the secularists in that country prevail. Towards this end India may choose to be supportive. However, the opposition can be expected to cash in on the backlash of that group associating with India. In case this backlash is more powerful than Indian exertions, the secularists are unlikely to be saved. It would be best, therefore, for India to keep any support it provides covert.

As for allowing other countries to use its national territory for more proactive uses, India must be prepared to end up as a 'frontline state' if it makes this choice. Given the dubious benefits of this distinction for Pakistan over two periods in the eighties and last decade, the price India would have to pay can be easily imagined. Those desiring a closer engagement with the US and Israel may not mind such a development, but the historical record is quite clear - countries have not benefited from an overly close asymmetric relationship with the United States.

A secular soft-landing

If the secularists find support within Pakistan itself, they could hold out for long against the Islamists, but in that case the civil war would be both brutal and prolonged. To some that is not such a bad thing - since keeping the instability restricted to Pakistan would be better than permitting its spread to the region in case of an Islamist victory. However, there is no guarantee of a secularist victory. That the secularists have themselves brought on such a catastrophe through policies such as ignoring land reforms, education etc. implies they are not necessarily the better side.

But staying out of Pakistan's affairs would have one benefit, in case the secularists are displaced. India would be better positioned to engage with the opposition, even if Islamist, in power. Engagement can help socialise the new regime, whereas efforts at containment are likely to make it expansionist in reaction. Reassurance may be a better strategy towards normalising the regime. This would serve the larger Indian interest in regional stability.

What does this imply for the crown jewels - the nuclear weapons? Taking them out of circulation may prove possible with the help of secularists guarding the facilities and assets. However, firstly such action can be expected to instigate fighting over their possession, endangering them further. It is better instead that the victor be allowed the spoils without turning the sites into dangerous battlefields. This way there would be greater hope of central and local authorities continuing control. Secondly, there is no guarantee of taking out the complete inventory. The threat from those remaining in the wrong hands would be considerably more. India, being closest at hand, would be in the line of fire, more so than the US or Israel.

India would therefore do well to consider its options in light of its national interests. That the US is threatened by loose nukes is certainly an international concern. The response to this threat is not necessarily through intervention, but by defusing the 'pull factors' that cause the threat, such as the violence of the Islamist opposition. American support for authoritarian regimes is as much to blame for this as anything else. If there is a message from the Arab revolt, it is that democracy is the best safeguard against radicalism. Preventing a collapsed Pakistan and ensuring its soft landing in secular hands is therefore a better strategy.

It is important to refute the irresponsible advocacy not only so that taxpayers' money is not ill-spent, but to prevent the group-think that may result from such ideas being posted as the 'only option'. There are always other options, if we choose to think first.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2011/jan/fah-partner.htm
Manufacture of a partner

31 January 2011 - With the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was fairly clear that Washington's covert operations in Afghanistan had inflicted a mortal blow on the Soviet Union. This arrival of the unipolar moment served as background to India's grand strategic shift, brought on by coincidence of the foreign exchange crisis and the era of coalition governments.

India's consequent availability as a potential partner attracted the strategic attention of the United States. In the two decades since, India has moved to a position of that country's strategic partner, serving as a counter-weight to China's growing influence in Asia. Also, in case Pakistan were to collapse from the ripples to its west, India may emerge as a 'frontline' state in various wars of the West's making. In part, this story of strategic convergence has been a collaborative effort between strategists in both states.

Prior to the 1990s, there was only the dependable Stephen Cohen as a credible South Asia watcher. His work on the Indian Army served not only those abroad, but also Indians, to understand themselves better. Thereafter, George Tanham, a longtime RAND policy analyst came to study Indian strategic culture, a study incidentally intended for the US Air Force. After speaking to several members of the strategic community - which was much smaller back then - he echoed their view that India lacked a strategic culture and attributed this, possibly reflecting some of his interlocutors' opinions, to the pervasive cultural - read Hindu - beliefs.

Stephen Rosen, at about the same time, reinforced Tanham's finding on the cultural roots of lack of India will to power, alighting on the caste system and divisiveness for India's strategic incapacity.

Interaction between visiting scholars and the mainly Delhi-centered strategic community in interviews, conversations and on the seminar circuit, served as a feedback loop, with the ideas of the strategic community defining how India was viewed and viewed itself. The strategic community used the opportunity to press its descriptive and prescriptive agenda. This principally consisted of viewing India as less ill at ease with the use of force, and consequently lacking in the institutional edifice necessary to exercise it. Their aim was a departure from Nehruvian antecedents for an assertive India.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE indiatogether.org

This had two consequences, both traceable to the tests quite easily. One was that under cover of the Chagai tests it conducted in response to India's nuclear bravado, Pakistan plotted and executed the Kargil intrusion. The after-burn of the operation to evict them from the snowy heights around the Line of Control led to landmark changes institutionally in India - in the direction that strategists had been demanding. The second was in the opening up of India to the US, and indeed, vice versa, of the US opening up to India - through the dozen meetings between Strobe Talbot, who had Clinton's ear, and Jaswant Singh, the leading strategic light of the BJP.

At about that time, echoes of the contest for shaping of India's nuclear capability can be witnessed in the writings of Ashley Tellis. His book on India's emerging arsenal was seemingly a reaction to India's Draft Nuclear Doctrine. The Draft, in balancing the input of nuclear-inclined members of the National Security Advisory Board, outlined an expansive nuclear agenda, if a wishful one back then. Tellis, by defining the emerging arsenal as a 'force-in-being', attempted to restrict it. His access to the nuclear establishment was not only because of his intrepidity but because using his work, the nuclear establishment attempted to shape India's policy to go further down the nuclearisation route.

The advent of the Bush era, the challenge of Islamism, the beginnings of global multipolarity and the rise of China by the early 2000s resulted in the growing strategic significance of India for the US. India, by then itself experiencing the beginning of rapid economic growth, was transferring the economic benefits into usable military power. The decade ended with India spending three times the amount on defence that it did at its beginning. This was impelled by the perceived failure of its attempt at coercive diplomacy during Operation Parakram, its military response to the parliament attack.

The changes were noted in strategic literature in Steve Cohen's Emerging India and C Rajamohan's Crossing the Rubicon. The Indo-US relationship climaxed with the clinching of the nuclear deal, spawning a cottage industry of strategic writings both for and against it. The fresh entrants were Indian academics returning after acquiring familiarity with the jargon and cliches of non-traditional fields as international relations and strategic studies in academic institutions in the west. The refrain of this younger generation reflects that of the diaspora and middle class, for an Indian seat at the global high table, finally and at long last.

The latest in this opinion and policy shaping interaction is Steve Cohen's third book of consequence, Arming Without Aiming. That the book is co-written with Sunil Dasgupta, indicates the increased intimacy of collaboration in the manufacture of India's strategic image and self-understanding. The book, as in case of earlier books by George Perkovich, Tellis, Paul Kapur and Cohen himself, has the last chapter detailing policy recommendations for the administration. This exemplifies the cycle in which the strategic community, using the medium of the US academic, prods Indian security policy in a direction that is conveniently advantageous for the US.

What is the wider implication of this observation?

Casting about for fresh foes and allies, the US alighted on India for the latter role. The exercise of soft power, through the academic conditioning described above, has helped ease India's movement from a position of skepticism of the US to one of an easy familiarity with it.

The ends of the strategic community in the creation of an India at home with power and its instrumentality have in the process been partially met. While Indian strategists exerted to make India a strategic actor worthy of its potential and weight, the US, for its part, needed a player aligned with its aims in the region. The convergence of interests and ensuing interaction nudged India on to the status of an 'emerged power' in Obama's complimentary words, in sync with the US and its allies.

Two candidate explanations present themselves for this development. The first is that it was an inadvertent convergence, with structural causes. This is the rationalisation. The second one, deserving of investigation, is that India's emergence was the superpower's project. Condoleeza Rice admitted as much in the US promising to make India in its own image. Cadences of Edward Said's Orientalism, discerned in the institutional and intellectual structures and processes of the engagement over the past two decades suggest this. Strategic India was first imagined and its imagination captured, with the help of those Said would term as 'native informants'.

The implications for security of India and its people are still to play themselves out, and if the unraveling of US allies in the Arab world is any guide, it may not be benign.
⊕

chowk.com

Pakistan: Divining a Way
By Firdaus Ahmed


Washington Post staff writers, Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung, inform ‘U.S. efforts fail to convince Pakistan's top general to target Taliban’ (31 Dec 2010). They write that, ‘In October, administration officials choreographed a White House meeting for Kayani at which Obama could directly deliver his message of urgency. The army chief heard him out, then provided a 13-page document updating Pakistan's strategic perspective and noting the gap between short-term U.S. concerns and Pakistan's long-term interests, according to U.S. officials.’ Since the document’s contents are privileged information, they can at best be surmised. The article attempts this and suggests what is unlikely to have figured in that document.

Strategy is usually thought of as being externally focused. However, there is a considerable role of internal factors, particularly in regimes politically beset. Strategy or prioritization of ‘ends, ways, means’ choices is not necessarily a rational exercise to meet external and internal ‘threats’. Strategic theory has it that strategic elites deploy strategy to also preserve their dominance in internal power structures. In the process, and secondarily, if external strategic ends are met then that would be ‘successful’ strategy. In short, strategy’s external dimension is at best a rationalization, utilizing the dominant understanding of strategy for plausibility. This is the case with regimes of uncertain legitimacy. Pakistan provides the best case study for this.

It is very likely the strategy paper Kayani handed Obama has the rationalization. The paper perhaps reflects Kayani’s earlier utterances on the India-centricity of Pakistan and its Army. It may explicate why Pakistan cannot act against the Taliban due to reasons of lack of public support and of troops. Troops are apparently required to dissuade India from ‘Cold Start’. Pakistan’s internal security and political stability being uncertain, Pakistan cannot open another front and hope to win. While US support would be behind Pakistan in any such action, the support itself could prove a liability by making the Islamist counter more potent.

The mysterious strategy paper, equally likely, is unlikely to have dwelt on the internal political angle. The strategy document, meant for US eyes, can be expected to present Pakistan’s Army as the ‘last bastion’. This way continuing largesse can be ensured, even if it comes with greater strictures and supervision of its use. Pakistan Army can then remain at the apex. This would be unacknowledged, not for reasons of deception, as much as Kayani himself being unconscious to the internal compulsions behind strategy.

Understanding Pakistan is seemingly easy. The Pakistan Army wants to remain atop the power structure and therefore has manufacture the Indian ‘bogey’ and is milking the threat of an Islamist take over of a nuclear armed state for its corporate purposes. This explanation hides a more disturbing reality, brought to foreground by two assassinations – one of Mohtarma Bhutto earlier and of Punjab’s Governor, Salman Taseer, now.

The less visible but more significant dimension of internal politics in Pakistan is dominance of an elite with a narrow feudal base. It has in its ranks the higher echelons of bureaucracy and the industrial elite. It has, through the medium of promotions into the elite nucleus of the Pakistan Army, coopted the brass. The privileges that this brings generals, makes the Pakistan Army protective of the power structure. The discourse on Pakistan, in its concentration on praetorianism of its Army, misses the fact that this is consequence of the very social structure of Pakistan. The assassinations have done more to reveal the elite-mass divide than social science.

The assumption that changing the Army’s hold on power would be adequate may prove wrong. The deeper social structure, rather than merely the ‘deep state’, requires change. The elite, both unwilling to forego its advantages and, equally, not knowing how to do so without upheaval, has only the security template as answer to the Islamist challenge.

This has reluctant support of apprehensive allies, interested more in stability than uncertainties of social transformation. They prefer the route of democratization, of expanding middle classes through increased education and economic opportunity. The program, being long term, amounts to slow suicide for the elites. It is no wonder then that it has not found any takers, with elites manipulating external support for own ends. The result is that masses are left with little political recourse than weigh on the side of a political opposition carrying the ‘Islamic’ mantle.

Since elites will not, and if past record is guide, cannot, be the vehicle of change, a ‘strong man’ could prove useful. The problem is with the Musharraf episode proving that there is no guarantee of a Kemal Pasha. External (read ‘Western’) support can only be provocative, mistaken for self-interested manipulation, making for a more energetic backlash. From Tunisia through Egypt to Central Asia, authoritarian regimes are in place, leaving little chance for a democratic opposition to substitute for the Islamist opposition. The Algerian case of the early nineties and Palestinian experiment last decade indicate that democracy will in the short term at least yield up Islamist parties. However, not accommodating to the change leaves the authoritarian regime in place and an armed Islamist opposition. It is arguable that the regime of Ayatullahs has not necessarily been worse than that of the Shah.

While Pakistan is not an authoritarian state in the same mould as the others to its west and north, it is poised on the cross hairs of Islamism. In case it succumbs to its ‘internal contradictions’, engagement rather than counter-revolution or containment is the answer.

However, at a minimum, Pakistan must persist along the long, hard route. And its supporters must not push it into a civil war. Prospects of this are not entirely dim. The US is supporting long term change in terms of funding civilian side, as the Kerry-Lugar bill suggests. General Petraeus is not insisting that Pakistan army carry out operations that could lead to destabilization through a vertical divide in the society and the military. He is instead relying on drone attacks in Pakistan and special forces operations in Afghanistan. What Pakistan needs is to remain on even keel. The Kayani strategy, handed over to Obama, seems to suggest that Pakistan may yet pull through. If its record on the precipice of ‘failed state’ status is any indicator, it may yet manage to evade the status.

ipcs.org

THE INDIAN ARMY: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES IN THE OFFING

The recent headline in a leading national daily, “Indian Army set for its most radical revamp,” is entirely believable. The article informs that “proposals include setting up of a Strategic Command, comprising of Army's offensive capabilities” which may be implemented as early as March 2010. The reorganization involves the “creation of a Strategic Command, under which the three Strike Corps would be brought together” as “part of the ‘transformation study’ done by a high-level team under Army chief, General VK Singh, when he was heading the Eastern Command.” The article examines this move in relation to India’s Pakistan policy and the inescapable fact of South Asia’s nuclearization.

India will reengage Pakistan after the long gap since July last year with their Foreign Secretaries meeting on the sidelines of a SAARC meeting in Thimpu next month. This will set the stage for talks between their Foreign Ministers during the first quarter of this year. The strategic changes in India would occur around this time. The message to Pakistan is stark. How will Pakistan react? Although there is no direct link between resumption of the peace process and military restructuring, this exercise has long-term implications for the peace process.

The implications for the peace process arise at two levels - overt and less visible. The overt message is that India is ‘upping the ante’ by establishing a capability for escalation-dominance. Pakistan, led by its Army, will receive the message that India now has an answer to the problem of proxy war. Pakistan would, in response, need to rethink its India strategy. The less visible message is that India has little faith in the peace process. These changes would prepare India for the worst case scenario in which it may need to credibly coerce and possibly compel Pakistan.

Bringing the strike corps under one command headquarters would bring synergy to India’s offensive capabilities, making them seem more potent when employed together. The headquarters enables this capability, although these strike corps can be deployed in the geographical commands, if required.

This capability harks back to the ‘Sundarji doctrine’, in which the strike corps was designed to slice Pakistan at its waist in a counteroffensive. During Operation Parakram, Pravin Sawhney and VK Sood reported that the three strike corps were deployed for this purpose in mid 2002, when they were co-located in the desert after the Kalu Chak incident. By making this capability more ‘doable’ through the creation of a strategic command headquarters, the Army seems oblivious of the nuclear dimension that is present since 1998.

The implications of the nuclear dilemma are of equal consequence. Currently, Pakistan has an unstated nuclear doctrine, that one observer interprets as ‘asymmetric escalation’. Most believe that its nuclear threshold is high enough to permit limited conventional operations, even at strike corps levels and up to a limited depth. This can be triggered by India’s strike corps operating together under a single command headquarters, which highlights the limitations in rationale of a single command headquarters.

The doctrinal trend has moved from the Sundarji doctrine to limited Cold Start offensives. Now, with Cold Start in cold storage, it is to a ‘proactive strategy’. This movement was broadly in consonance with the imperatives of nuclearization. The current reported moves amount to risking a nuclear showdown, which is a strategy that India can do without. It is a strategy that can be adopted in a war situation with one of the command headquarters, Central Command, for instance, playing a role. However, to establish a permanent strategic command headquarters will amount to keeping a sword pointed at Pakistan’s innards, given the message that India, with its offensive capability enhanced, would be able to continue operations even in case of nuclear first use by Pakistan.

Possible Pakistani reactions may occur at two levels – one, its peacetime equations with India and second, in wartime. If the nature of the Pakistani regime is any indication, it would first attempt to balance India. Pakistan could increase its reliance on the nuclear deterrent and its dependence on China. For Pakistan’s reliance on the Chinese, the Indian Army has a ready answer - ‘two front’ doctrine.

In conflict, this change indicates an expectation that nuclear deterrence will work. In other words, the proposed changes would require rethinking whether India’s nuclear doctrine is adequate. Since the conventional and nuclear levels are interlinked, changes in one cannot be considered in isolation from the other. The consequent changes in the nuclear doctrine are not known. However, could the tail end up wagging the dog?

Mr. AK Antony, who will have to take the ultimate call, needs to thus ask himself the question: “Does the proposed change meet India’s security interests?”

http://www.chowk.com/Views/World/The-Coming-Decade-of-Nuclear-Risk

See www.chowk.com for article below

The coming decade of nuclear risk

Four decades without war since 1971 is attributed as a peace preserved in part by nuclear weapons. By the mid-eighties both India and Pakistan had workable, if untested, nuclear weapons. By then, Pakistan was at war, if one by proxy. By the end of the decade there were two wars, one in Punjab and another in Kashmir. India too was at war, with itself. That the two states have not come to trade blows directly, despite Kargil, the Parliament attack and recently Mumbai 26/11, to some, is evidence of the nuclear peace. Will it persist through the coming decade?

If nuclear optimists are right then the coming decade should, unlike the preceding three, be most peaceful. Both India and Pakistan are poised at triple digit mark in warhead numbers. In other words, both can inflict unacceptable damage on each other. While India may believe that doing so is equivalent of assured destruction of Pakistan, it may be wrong to think that this would not be MAD (‘mutual assured destruction’). Both have evolving delivery systems. While Pakistan relies on missiles, India is working towards a triad with China as excuse. Both have a decade worth of experience with command and control systems. Pakistan has a head start and the dubious advantage of its military collapsing the three levels of war – tactical, operational and strategic – with the political in its omnibus Strategic Plans Division. Though smaller, it can yet prove to be David to India’s Goliath. Peace is to rely on this for longevity. Will it stand the test?

The immediate challenge will be posed by the manner Obama’s war unfolds. Having missed the earlier deadline of mid-next year, it has been reset to end by 2014. If all goes well, the opposition will expand the war in frustration and anger. If things go wrong, then the opposition will expand the war in pursuit of glory. The West, riven by distaste for the war, may disengage, perhaps as early as 2012 – a juncture dictated by US presidential polls. In case of Obama being a one-term wonder, a Republican Bush II could persist in the folly. In the four combinations possible, trouble lies ahead. For Pakistan, worse is ahead. What does this mean in nuclear terms?

The obvious is in the interest all sides will evince in nuclear weapons. With the US persisting in ‘going after’ them, the terror groups will go after nuclear weapons. The nuclear nether world can be expected to be active; with the ‘black swan’ event being the cataclysm waiting to happen. The second, of interest here, is in the regional impact of instability.

Just as they began the last one, India and Pakistan begin this one at odds with each other. The previous one began with the Kandahar hijack and ended at Taj Mahal Hotel. The current one finds India awaiting Mumbai II expectantly. Periodic terror alerts mean that terrorists need to be lucky but once and the state always. The odds are with the terrorists. No peace talks are on to prevent one. Without the peace process there is also no buffer, once the proverbial spark hits the cinder.

It must be conceded both state have not piled up cinder deliberately. India has tried to address ‘root causes’, but has been unable to go the distance. In Kashmir, it has reluctantly set the three interlocutors to work. It is pursuing the Sachar Committee recommendations in respect of alleviating concerns of its minority. It has placed the perpetrators of majoritarian terror on notice. It has investigated the leading political mascot of the nationalist opposition. It has attempted to reengage Pakistan, but found itself short of political capital to continue.

Pakistan for its part has been restrained in its provocation in Kashmir. It has attempted to cope as best as it can with the troubled western frontier. It has stopped short of risking civil war to placate the West or to give in to Indian demands to dismantle the ‘infrastructure of terror’.

While both states have gone some distance, both have also wilfully stopped short. And that gap could yet prove fatal.

India has replaced its unstated promise of ‘Cold Start’ with ‘contingency operations’ in case of another Pakistani provocation. This spells its comfort levels with its ability to react militarily. While this capability was being built up after Operation Parakram of 2002, ‘Cold Start’ was part of the smoke screen for deterrence. Retracting from it now, seemingly at the behest of the US to enable Pakistan concentrate westwards, indicates that it is a perfected manoeuver that can now be placed in cold storage. Pakistan, in its military exercises Azm e Nau over the summer, has also practiced its response.

Both sides stand confident. Readiness of both at the conventional and nuclear levels should spell mutual deterrence. Such confidence is dangerous. Such confidence impels continuation of their tryst at the subconventional level. It also impels the argument in favour of the military option next time round were push to come to shove. Under the circumstance, the nuclear backdrop can come to foreground in short order.

All it awaits is a trigger event. The two states have not done enough to preclude this. The difference between the original Cold War and that raging within the region is precisely this: existence of unaddressed flashpoints. The outline has been around for about a decade since the Agra summit. It would involve Indian accommodation and Pakistani abandonment of its chosen path of proxy war. India does not have the political will to follow through and Pakistan’s Army has not been singed by the terror backlash adequately.

Apparently it will take a war to prod both to senses. The one good to accrue is that it would be a sure way to bring about a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in South Asia. But, let’s be equally sure, it would be at a price!

www.indiatogether.org

The Army's right to its opinion

24 December 2010 - The right of the Army to voice an opinion has been defended by Minister of State for Defence, Pallam Raju. The background to his defence was Omar Abdullah's complaint to the Prime Minister on an Army press release of a day earlier. The press release indicated that the decision to remove certain bunkers from Srinagar did not have the Army's concurrence.

The press release had stated: "Though it appeared to be a well-considered decision, the latest incident has raised many questions. It may have pleased a few separatists and their handlers in Pakistan, but what about the common man in the Valley? Will the reduced security and visible absence of security forces raise uncertainties, fear and doubt in the minds of the population during the long winter ahead?"

The Army Commander has since apologised for the offending press release saying it was unauthorised. The press release has been explained away as the 'personal predilections of a junior officer'. Yet, the Army being a highly centralised system, it is likely that the press release on a sensitive subject would have been vetted in the Command Headquarters Information Warfare section. The Army Commander, in tendering an apology to the Chief Minister, has apparently taken responsibility, as a good leader must, and there the matter could rest. However, does the contretemps have any ramifications?

This case can be seen as part of the continuum of the Army's unease with the security implications of moves towards normalisation of the Valley. These initiatives include the reported dismantling of 20 bunkers, removal of 1000 CRPF jawans and contemplation of removal of the notification of disturbed areas from some parts in Srinagar. The latter was to presage the progressive withdrawal of the AFSPA from the Valley where the security situation made it feasible.


The Army, understandably focused on the military dimension of the security situation, has apparently missed the larger gameplan unfolding.

SEE FULL ARTICLE ON www.indiatogether.org

The Army, understandably focused on the military dimension of the security situation, has apparently missed the larger gameplan unfolding. It has two aspects. One is wider regarding AFSPA as law. Deliberations in North and South Block have focused on diluting its less 'humane' parts by either reframing it or incorporating the legal cover the Army needs into the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The Army Commander had earlier made his reservations on any dilution of the AFSPA, terming it a 'holy book'.

The second is of local significance, relating to the security aspect of the draw down in Srinagar. The Army had been called out in July for the first time since early nineties in 'standby' in case the agitations in the run up to the foreign minister's meeting in Islamabad got out of hand. Such a situation would have placed the Army in a delicate position, that it no doubt apprehends in case control over Srinagar by the central police forces is diluted.

With regard to the latter, the Army has the Corps Commander in Srinagar as the advisor to the Chief Minister in the Unified Headquarters looking after the Valley. His position, taken with approval of the next rung in hierarchy at Udhampur, has doubtless been taken on board in its decision making by the Chief Minister. In any case, Srinagar town does not have Army deployment and is the responsibility of the state police assisted by central police forces. The onus is therefore of the state, legally and structurally. Therefore, the apology was due.

But it does indicate a major perspective in the military. Outside the small print is the fact that the Army Commander is due to retire at year end. He can therefore choose to go the extra distance in firming up the military position. Army Commanders in the Indian system have considerable stature and power. This has proven disruptive at times in J&K, since the Army Commander curiously does not figure as the security adviser, though corps commanders, reporting to him, do.

That the Army has a right to an opinion is well understood. This enables it to perform its advisory function in a democracy. That it should voice its opinion is also useful - in providing access to its view for the attentive public. This helps make the democratic debate better informed. However, the question is whether it can voice it openly in a manner as to bring a policy and the policy-maker under cloud.

Watchful commentators, such as AG Noorani and Srinath Raghavan, are of the opinion that the military's repeated assertion of its position is an attempt to expand its role. Such views are based on the recent publicly-voiced position of the military by multiple personages at different occasions against deployment in Central India and against reformulation of the AFSPA. The point these critics make is that this ties down the policy maker's hands, since the politicians who make policy are often short of wide political capital, and would not like to be pilloried for going against professional judgment if things go wrong.

In the political process unfolding in the Valley, there is a need for calculated risks to be run to bring about a modicum of trust necessary for talks to proceed. Over a hundred youth have died in the summer agitations, and something substantive must be done to reverse this downward spiral. The slow and limited draw-down of visible security in Kashmir is part of this effort. The problem is that the Army is apparently not on board with this agenda.

This is a structural deficiency and a political gap that needs to be filled. The state government which is taking the initiative, backed by North Block, has only limited oversight over the Army, since the latter reports up its channel to South Block. Compounding this, the top brass of the armed forces is skeptical of political processes in general.

The Supreme Court judgment in the Nagaland Human Rights case against the AFSPA for the North East in 1997 had required that the armed forces maintain a relationship of 'cooperation' with the state when in 'aid to civil authority'. They are however outside the scope of authority of the state government. This means that the military is accountable neither to the state nor the Ministry of Home, responsible for internal security. It is instead accountable to the Raksha Mantri, who has no answerability for internal affairs. This divergence requires reconciling.

In the interim the onus is on the military leadership to navigate the structural deficiencies of the system by better formulation and articulation of the military's institutional position.
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ipcs.org
BLAST FROM THE PAST - THE VARANASI EXPLOSION

Varanasi was recently rocked by a terrorist explosion which targeted worshippers at the evening prayers ceremony at the Ghats. Two additional IEDs were recovered later. The Indian Mujahideen (IM), in an email reportedly sent from Mumbai, took responsibility for the attack. The ostensible reason was to avenge the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992; its plausibility was seemingly enhanced by the anniversary of the event only a couple of days earlier. Taken along with the bomb blast at the German bakery in Pune, it appears that India has not transited its past yet, despite the calm since 26/11.

That the IM are behind the blasts is the dominant expectation. Two recent headlines would indicate that the extremist group would like to claw its way back into reckoning. Recent media reports had it that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the events in Gujarat let off the Chief Minister for culpability in the events of 2002. The second was the earlier judgment of the Allahabad High Court on the disputed site in Ayodhya, splitting the land three ways. Extremists can be expected to have a grouse with both.

Pakistan’s shadowy ‘deep state’ can be expected to keep India off balance and seek to periodically remind it of its underbelly. A WikiLeaks-disclosed cable of a conversation with President Zardari post 26/11 shows him rationalizing the Mumbai attack as one that could not have been done without Indian collaborators. He hinted, referring to the Sachar Committee report, that India’s minority has reservations about India’s benign credentials, which may have led to some disgruntled Muslims lending a hand to the Pakistani terrorists.

The media, as is its wont, has latched on to the dominant discourse and furthered it. For the opposition to go after political dividend, both at the State and the Centre, can be expected. The government being on the back foot due to a poor political showing in Bihar and arraigned for corruption, would want to avoid opening up another front. Security analysts, sensitive to facts placed in the public domain by police, past commentary and their reputations, cannot be expected to chase after alternative explanations, termed ‘conspiracy’ theories. With the IM’s self-confession and Pakistan implicated by extension, there is little chance of all angles being explored. Therefore, the blast will be consigned as the handiwork of the IM, building up the notoriety of the group.

Nevertheless, revelations from ongoing investigations into the cases of terror bombings by majoritarian extremists by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) suggest that other candidate explanations cannot be ruled out. Earlier bombings by this terror group had been designed to implicate the IM and had succeeded in doing so till investigations revealed otherwise. The group is under considerable pressure, brought on by ongoing investigations identifying functionaries of the revivalist formations. The motive, if they are instead involved, could be diversionary. The other gain is to bring into focus a link, howsoever contrived, between India’s minority and wider global Islamist extremism as yet another stick to beat the minority with.

The domain of terrorism being murky and dirty, placing anything beyond their imagination is to give them undue credit. In their mind’s eye the political end justifies the means. In case this was minority-based, they were seeking to engineer a backlash - one not necessarily violent - that would then place them at the vanguard of ‘defence’ of the community. If numbering among the majority, discrediting the minority and the government would be two birds with one stone.

In the neoliberal scheme of things, the populace is too busy gainfully participating in India’s economic miracle. The expanded resource cake from the 9 per cent growth can be shared out in ending any perception of deprivation. A deprivation-alienation-terror link is made. Consequently the need is for statecraft that ensures social stability is maintained till the rising tide lifts all boats.

Periodic blasts prove that this is not enough. Action on three levels is required. At the international level, the impetus to radicalism needs defusing. The clash of extremisms emanating from Arabia between Wahabbism and Salafism has had a back drought thus far. With the war in AfPak set to continue till 2014, no end is in sight. At the regional level, the government could be more proactive on the Pakistan front. The July promise of a repeat meeting of the foreign ministers at the year’s end has not materialized. The sparring over the perpetrators of 26/11 continues. Reconciling with Pakistan has asymmetric benefits for India, including eased internal social relations.

In terms of internal security, it needs acknowledging that much has been done, such as acting on the Sachar report on the one hand and exposing majoritarian terrorism on the other. Much is also on the anvil, such as operationalizing the NCTC. The government can only do so much. It is for the majority and minority, in their multiple communities, to reach out to each other externally and deny intellectual space to extremism internally. One thing is certain: the media will be of little help.

THE DEBATE IN OBAMA’S WAKE

Obama helped India along in its search for greatness. During his visit, he reckoned India was a candidate for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Obama’s visit is being followed in quick succession by Medvedev, Sarkozy and Wen Jiabao. This owes not so much to the comparatively pleasant Indian winter, but to the percentage change in its yearly GDP.

Opinion is upbeat not only because of a selective view of the Indian reality but also due to perceptions of relative power. Europe is in trouble economically. The NATO, exhausted by Afghanistan, decided at its summit in Lisbon to leave by 2014. Declining populations in Russia, Japan, Europe and elsewhere and an ageing China are contrasted to India’s youth bulge yet to play itself out and its seeming energy. Manmohan Singh’s recent East Asia trip suggests that India’s strategic location is seen in fresh light as a check on a rising China. Obama’s visit, and his remainder itinerary across China’s periphery, can be read as an acknowledgement of this. The belief that India can now be an equal partner of the US can hardly be faulted.

Strategic commentary has it that this is in Indian interests since it would replicate the manner other great powers achieved such status. For instance, the Chinese first latched on to Communist Soviet Union and thereafter to the US. This assistance enabled China to get to its current position as the second superpower. India could also follow this route, using the proximity to the US for its own ends. India’s case as a potential great power cannot be pursued as a ‘free rider’. India would require lending a shoulder, alongside democracies in running the world. Since such reasoning is gaining uncritical acceptance, it could do with a critical once over.

Firstly, the analogy is stretched. In the period of US-China patch up, the dangers of the Cold War turning hot were well past, the last instance being 1962. China’s relations with the Soviet Union were also on the mend since the nadir of 1969. This is not the case with India since its border problem with China remains in the news. In case India was to weigh on the side of the US, it would complicate the problem by having the superpower competition figure as a factor. Also, local and regional problems would acquire wider ramification. This would endanger its growth path, sought to be benefited by such closeness.

Second, China, due to its closed system was an autonomous player in the relationship. India could instead end up a ‘junior partner’. Is this term merely a bogey of the political left? America’s relations with states that have been close to it, such as one closest to India’s western border, suggests that the embrace is certainly useful for some sections of the state and society. Even its allies have to suffer the consequence of dependence, such Blair’s Britain being inveigled into unpopular wars. Any tie up would have an internal political price. China could bear this due to its closed system. India’s internal deficits, particularly on the governance front, make this debatable.

Lastly, the Soviet Union was a satisfied power. Therefore, China did not get embroiled in great power games, including those that brought down the Soviet Union in the eighties. India would not have like luxury since the Chinese challenge is underway, best evidenced by its access denial strategy based on missiles and submarines. Even if the China front remains dormant, China would take care to keep India tied down on the other front by proxy.

Strategists bewail India’s lack of will to power. On that count, their analysis, in its focus on the structural, neglects the internal political and social consequence. A true appreciation of power - the staple for realists - would include being sensitive to India’s deficiencies and vulnerabilities. The structural level reasoning limits political choice and agency, making for poor strategy. Unless realists are countered in debate, their argument and dominance of the strategic community may carry the day, restricting India’s foreign policy choices.

Economy-centric neoliberals, in control of policy currently, find the neorealist logic appealing. Their case is that without growth, India’s internal contradictions would overwhelm it over time. Growth would be slower and will have indeterminate outcome. Closeness to the US may have a price, but worth paying in India’s interests such as access to high technology, investment, weapons etc. In any case, India is autonomous and in control. They iron out jagged edges in emulating the US in creating a regime of interdependence, such as through making China India’s largest trading partner.

India is ready for great power status, but not for great power games. How can it gain the former without the latter is the key question? To some it cannot be otherwise, in fact, being in the game is the sign of arrival. To others, India has been up there before and done it differently. It can be so yet again, even if to the disappointment of its self-styled strategists, middle classes and diaspora.

STRATEGIC COMMUNITY
Muddling along


30 November 2010 - India's 'strategic community' comprises two distinct circles with little overlap. One can be termed the 'mainstream' and the other 'alternate' (Kanti Bajpai). While the reference point for the former is the state, for the latter it's society. Consequently, mainstream strategists have an external orientation to their discourse, concentrating on high politics; the latter is more internal oriented. While one is enamoured of India's rise and place in the global order, the other is more sensitive to its vulnerabilities and inadequacies.

Their prescriptions too are understandably poles apart. The state, to which both their commentary is directed, has to play balancer, and ends up being at the receiving end of criticism from both sides.

The 'community' can be imagined as comprising sub-circles of intelligence, military, police, foreign and administrative services, and technologists. There are several academic policy-wonks, co-opted for their expertise or proximity with one or other sub-circle. The denizens of this intellectual realm, usually retired, have continuing links with their respective fraternity. This keeps them current.

Their utility for their sub-circle of affiliation is in projection of issues with the desired spin into the public discourse. This helps build a constituency for any changes that the respective bureaucracy of affiliation seeks. In this role they amount to a pressure group. The upside of this is that the debate is in the open domain. The downside is that it is susceptible to manipulation.

Many of the 'mainstream' stalwarts are tapped by the government on account of their reputation as resource persons or integrity for security-related input. The National Security Council (NSC) system enables formal access to this in the form of the multi-disciplinary National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) having more than a score experts charged with rendering policy advice. There is considerable jostling to serve on this since it facilitates visibility, perks and information access otherwise unavailable due to a closed security establishment.

This is the closest India gets to the revolving door system in the US in which experts, comprising academics and retired professionals, rotate between appointments in the administration with the change in parties running the government. The NSC Secretariat also hires a few experts at various bureaucratic levels. The quasi-governmental think tanks have similar billets. Gubernatorial appointments and Special Interlocutor are the incentive.

The 'alternate', no less strong, present and omniscient, is the conscience keeper of the nation. Perhaps Arundhati Roy is its most visible sword bearer. They are better represented in the faculties of universities. They have their set of think tanks, but there is little interaction between the two sets. They are not less visible though, since they are more articulate, have greater information available being outside the purview of the security establishment, and having several fronts to engage with in the broad ambit of economics and social science. Their input is directed more at the Planning Commission, the National Advisory Council and the line ministries. The Finance Ministry is perhaps the lone one accepting lateral induction of experts at various levels in the hierarchy, including the higher rungs, otherwise dominated by the IAS.


More familiar with the mufussil and tehsil from their early careers, senior bureaucrats reinforce the inward focus, to the chagrin of the diplomatic community and the military.
The government, comprising the politicians and the bureaucratic levels, has the task of integrating the input and facing the critique. This perhaps can be considered as the third circle, the security Establishment as the 'official' strategic community. The politicians are savvy about and sensitive to the internal front. Their competence and interest in the external front, the staple for the 'mainstream', is considerable less so. This leads to the criticism that the state lacks a strategic culture and will to power. Instead, it is indicative of the unacknowledged relative strength of the 'alternate'.

Power is exercised through the bureaucrat-controlled ministries. These are the preserve of the 'steel frame', the IAS. More familiar with the mufussil and tehsil from their early careers, they reinforce the inward focus, to the chagrin of the diplomatic community and the military.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/nov/fah-muddle.htm

The bureaucratic stranglehold over the police in particular, makes the retired police fraternity bitterly critical and with ample reason. The military veterans' community too considers the military yoked by the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence. This owes to the elite service presence in not only the nodal ministry but also its control over the finance ministry. The allied services play out their subordinate role with unwarranted zest, enabling a more pervasive control of the bureaucracy. The disadvantage is in a corroding steel frame unable to hold up the weight of a continent sized polity. This, however, makes for a balance between the 'mainstream' and 'alternate', that in other states is usually inclined towards the former.

While the democratic space is enriched by the resulting cacophony, the articulation of a strategic doctrine by the state is difficult. The political party running the government is averse to giving those disappointed by such articulation a target; therefore the absence of a strategy document on the lines of the Strategic Defence Review of the UK and Nuclear Posture Review of the US. This results in a listless strategic orientation to the state. Without explicit direction from the political class, the bureaucrats have greater discretion but without corresponding expertise. Thus contestation between the 'mainstream' and the 'alternate' has the unintended fallout of holding up the security policy of the state.

The upshot is that the security policy ends up as 'more of everything for all'. For instance, in the internal security front, the central police forces are set to expand by another 38 battalions over the coming decade, in addition to the expansion over the last decade that made the CRPF the largest paramilitary in the world. The Army too has raised three score Rashtriya Rifles units for internal security in the decade prior to that. Caught in the advocacy between development and police action, the state prevaricates in Central India, with Operation Green Hunt proceeding unacknowledged.

Likewise on the external security front, there are several militaries in the offing instead of an integrated 'joint' one. For instance there are mechanized forces; mountain forces for two theatres, North and North East; different counter insurgency forces for Kashmir and North East; an amphibious force; and nuclear forces based on triad. Currently, an 'out of area' capability is in the works, mistaking the rhetoric in speeches for policy, such as references by the prime minister or defence minister to India's interests ranging from Aden to Singapore.

The strategic community - or rather the three strategic communities - have a democratic function in enriching the open domain. There is no escaping the parochialism in the mainstream communities, nor the critical brakes applied by the alternate on India's great power aspirations. The 'official' strategic community's inadequacy, at both the political and bureaucratic levels, leads to the system 'muddling along' between bouts of activism such as in the reorganisation of higher structures after Kargil and of the homeland security turf in wake of 26/11.

It is worth pondering if the miracle of India is due to or despite all this.