india's brass

Opinion

India's brass: What the controversy misses http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=32003 By Firdaus Ahmed The movement of a particular file within the corridors of South Block is being watched very closely by partisans involved who then speedily convey its location to their acolytes in the media. The file's movement is expected to result in an announcement on nomination of General Suhag as the next army chief on Bikram Singh demitting office in end July. The defence minister has assured that all procedures will be followed. Media commentary has nevertheless served up yet another agenda item to divide the attentive public into two: those for the government or those against it, not only in general but also on this particular score. In the discussion the major point emphasized is that the military must not be politicized. It is interesting that both sides are using the same argument. Those on the BJP side suggest that undue haste in declaring the successor by the Congress-led government is to ensure that their nominee is in place. This would ensure a 'line of succession' forged by its pushing out of VK Singh from the chief's office a year before he was due to leave. The opposite view is that not nominating the next chief's successor timely would be to allow BJP to politicize the process by its possibly passing over Suhag as chief. Currently, the next senior in line is an army commander who incidentally is related to VK Singh. However, this is only the ongoing row. Anticipating the forthcoming row would also be in order. In the widely expected case of the government changing to one headed by the BJP what could likely happen will make the current controversy pale in comparison. If the BJP gets into power, it could consider overturning the announcement of the successor of the chief and undertake the same process yet again to arrive at a different name of successor. Procedurally it will no doubt be well taken care of by bureaucrats piloting the file past the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet; this will by far amount to greater politicization. By no means is this the only possible future. Firstly, the Congress may get cold feet and leave the appointment to the next government. Secondly, the BJP may not come to power and a third front or a Congress led minority government may have no problem with the changeover. Thirdly, the BJP may choose to stick out the tenure of the next chief. The latter is not impossible to visualize since the BJP may well be deterred. It would be blamed for politicising the appointment. If it appoints the general related to VK Singh, it could be fingered for favouritism, particularly since VK Singh may also be in the legislature by then. It may also be able to live with Suhag since Suhag would be on the defensive from the beginning under the impression that the government is averse to him owing to the controversy preceding his appointment. Compromised thus, he may be more willing to play along. The example of the sacking of Admiral Bhagwat in the initial period of the earlier BJP government could make him bow even where he need not. Even if it does not pressurise Suhag, as a professional he would be faced with a choice of complying or resigning. In case it does show Suhag the door, the BJP would reason that it is not so much politicising the brass as much as applying a necessary corrective to politicization by the Congress. Therefore, the possibility of a forthcoming controversy over the near term that is much worse than the ongoing one over the impending announcement of the chief designate is yet at an arms distance, though not remote. It can unfold as early as month end. However, the more significant point is not so much the personalities involved or the issue of politicization of the appointment of army chief. The latter while important in itself is more so because of the subsequent politicization could upturn the apolitical character and image of the forces. Even if in a hierarchical structure such as is the army, the chief carries much weight, the military's apex functioning is collegial with the major decisions being taken at the biannual army commanders' conference. Therefore, having a politicized chief is not enough to have critical mass in politicizing the army. The top order needs working on equally. A politicized chief serves a useful function in opening up the military for further politicization over time by enabling the conditions that make only those with right political credentials to rise in the hierarchy setting its political tone and texture as an organisation. For most part, the scope for politicization is restricted by the professional and technical content of the military's social function. Since by all accounts it is kept out of the loop on key decisions, it is not particularly worrying as to who gets to be chief. Most reaching the rank of army commander are of equal professional worth, so individuals are not of much consequence either. However, the significant issue is that the shift in grounding of professionalism of the military, from an objective to a subjective mode. Currently, the military is taken as exhibiting objective professionalism. This implies that its input to national security decision making is unbiased, frank and forthright. While it can be accused of having organizational interest clutter such input often, such as in the case of its input on Siachen or on AFSPA for instance, overall, the Indian military has been credited with practicing objective professionalism. However, the problem is that with the BJP coming to power, particularly if it is unencumbered by any coalition partners, it may prefer a subjective model of military professionalism. This is the critical issue that will face India and its military over the forthcoming BJP tenure, if it comes to it. It would be a tribute to the professionalism of the Indian military in case it survives the encounter with religious nationalism with its moorings intact. It has been hypothesized earlier by this writer that this may prove difficult in light of the nationalist subcultures waiting on wings for just such an opportunity to 'take over' as the dominant subculture and to eventually dissolve other subcultures, including that of professional and radical professional within the military. Subjective professionalism in a military implies an obedience that comes from imbibing the ideological predispositions of its civilian superiors rather than basing input on the objective coordinates of a situation. This implies that even if in olive green, the brass could well think saffron. Not only would the government have to bear the opportunity cost of an advice it wishes to hear, but also its consequences. To illustrate, even if retention of Siachen is taken as strategically sustainable, in the nationalist subculture this would owe not to the strategic coordinates of the argument, but for a 'weak' India to overcome its millennial strategic sloth and display its six-pack finally. Therefore, if an act is to be judged as politicization, a key criterion would be the intent and consequence. The unseemly controversy being raised is only partially about the ambitions of VK Singh, a BJP party candidate. It betrays an intent to take over what is widely regarded as a professional institution with an intent to subvert its professionalism from objective, to the extent it is, to subjective, that it has lately exhibited a potential towards (as pointed out in this column from time to time). The threat of politicization is not about a military taking over the government but the government's ideological orientation taking over the military. A possible future is that the military will no longer be a professional military of a secular state, but a religious nationalism inspired military serving a majoritarian state. However, by no means is this a 'done' deal yet. Considered against this yardstick, the Congress' move to get a new chief in place before it demits office, in keeping with the supposed 'chain of succession', is positively benign. It is a defensive maneuver out to protect the army from appointment of a political chief, who would then open up the army to right wing inroads. Consequently, the current controversy over the appointment of the army chief is but a symptom of a wider syndrome out to beset India that may manifest in the army as politicization, soon.

modi's kashmir

Second Guessing Modi's Kashmir Policy
http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=31013

By Firdaus Ahmed

Modi made two trips to J&K as part of his electioneering. Since J&K will at best yield up one seat for his party, this is unlikely to have propelled him to J&K twice over. J&K is useful for him to get votes elsewhere in India. In his speeches he mentioned two aspects that caught the headlines: one that he would continue Vajpayee's policy of humaneness; and second that he welcomed a debate on Article 370. This has largely attracted positive commentary. This article suggests that this is to be gullible.  It is true that Modi has not played to the nationalist gallery. But that is of a piece with his campaign strategy: keep his agenda under wraps in order not to have a front build up against him. This he has managed to do and the pundits have it that Delhi is his to take. It is clear that his neoliberal agenda that will probably put Manmohan's to shame, countenances a period of relative stability. This will enable visible economic gains and allow him the breathing space for legitimacy. Therefore, keeping the lid on Kashmir would be a practical thing to do.  By this yardstick, his reference to Vajpayee has already helped calm Kashmiri apprehensions. One aspect of Vajpayee's tenure was its reaching out to Pakistan. But it bears recall that not only was he rebuffed at Kargil by Pakistan, but more importantly he was not able to carry his own side along at Agra later. The problems Vajpayee faced have not gone away.  With Nawaz Sharif back at the helm and apparently stronger in Pakistan, he would be able to follow through with his realigning of Pakistan's India policy. He has not succeeded so far since he was dealing with a lame duck prime minister on the Indian side. Modi will be a more surefooted interlocutor and an opening up of the commercial and trade links in the neoliberal model can help take the relationship forward.  This expectation faces the challenge of a new front for proxy war opening up in Afghanistan. So long as the two states faceoff in Afghanistan, the relations can still progress. However, a spillover from their Afghanistan contest into Baluchistan and Kashmir can but be a step away. How they manage to avert the spillover will determine if they can mend fences to a degree.  A quiet Kashmir will demand its price for playing along. Modi will be more than willing to meet them half way. The logic will be less to do with Kashmir or external policy, but more to do with the changes in India's complexion that his tenure will seek. The measures to distance Kashmir from the 'mainstream', while appreciated in Kashmir, will have an underside for the rest of India in terms of colouring it a deeper hue of saffron.  The argument that India is for Hindus will ring louder in light of the Kashmiri Muslims being given their corner under the sun. Implications for the rest of non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims are self-evident. The refrain will be that the Muslims have got Pakistan and now they have been given Kashmir, so they had better behave themselves in their assigned role now on as second class citizens in a Hindu India.  The reference to Article 370 was perhaps a precursor. The BJP manifesto has echoed it promising revision. This will be in the form of reducing Kashmir to a rump state inhabited by its Muslims, in order that the same convergence between religion and territory inform not only in the remainder of J&K but also the rest of India.  This involves concessions to Kashmiris. So far several forces have been against any such ideas. For instance, any rethink on AFSPA was shot down by the army during the UPA tenure. The Congress forever fearful of its own shadow since the 1962 debacle allowed the tacit veto. Modi would have no such hangups. With Sharif assuring him on the Pakistani flank, he would be able to move with greater surety and alacrity.  The army can be expected to be quiescent since a government that wears its nationalism on its sleeve will be taken at its word, unlike the Congress government with its 'soft' image. Modi having built up an image as a 'strongman' will unlikely be seen as 'selling' Indian interests down the Jhelum. In case the army is less than forthcoming, its silence will likely be ensured by a move that Modi can be expected to take early in his tenure.  Using the Naresh Chandra committee recommendation for cover he will likely 'kick upstairs' the current army chief as permanent chairman chiefs of staff committee. Such a change had been rumoured recently. Modi will then kill two birds with one stone. He, with VK Singh possibly as an MP by then on his shoulder, can be rid of Bikram Singh, and thereby upset the much talked about chain of succession that was allegedly set up by the Congress government way back during the JJ Singh tenure as chief. Recall innuendos to this affect had surfaced during the VK Singh fracas over his DOB (date of birth). He would also be able to move in a general of choice, who may be a closet supporter. Since these moves will be reminiscent of the sacking of Admiral Bhagwat early in the tenure of the last NDA dispensation, it can be assumed that all state institutions will get the message and fall in line. After all, precedence exists of their crawling when they were merely asked to bend during Indira's Emergency.  Since the measures will be apparently in Kashmiri interest, they are liable to be mistaken for an olive branch. The positive reception will be used by Modi to dispel his anti-minority image and thereby set the stage for his more radical reset of Indian state and society. He may even pend these latter moves to his second tenure after assuring himself of reelection by 'solving' the two problems that plagued the UPA in its second leg: the economy and Pakistan.  Pakistan, taking a share of credit for gains made by Kashmiris, will walk away from the Kashmir issue, particularly if there is a tradeoff in which India eases up on Afghanistan and allows Pakistan greater strategic space in that direction. This is not unthinkable if the real motives of the religious nationalists are seen. These are essentially internal politics focused. With Pakistan bought off, Indian Muslims will be isolated in a phase in which they may be more willing to scout for external support.  In summation, Modi may just be able to pull off a success in Kashmir. The apprehension here is that it will be at a cost, that of India's secular crown. Though no case is made for holding Kashmir hostage to India's wider minority's future, such linkages forged in their mind's eye by forces that are poised to take over India. But only if the wizened voter will oblige!  (The author blogs at Think South Asia: http://www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in/) News Updated at : Saturday, April 12, 2014

modi on the security front

What will Modi do next?

http://www.countercurrents.org/ahmed110414.htm

http://indiaopines.com/modi-next/

Apr 11, 2014

The well known wisdom of the Indian voter can still prove opinion polls and media speculation drastically wrong. Just as in 2004 when the ‘India Shining ‘campaign cameas a cropper, Narendra Modi may yet bite the dust. However, it is worth anticipating what the BJP may set out to do on the security front if it manages to subvert the electorate by cobbling up an opportunistic coalition.The well known wisdom of the Indian voter can still prove opinion polls and media speculation drastically wrong. However, it is worth anticipating what the BJP may set out to do on the security front if it manages to subvert the electorate by cobbling up an opportunistic coalition.

Modi And Manifesto

Wisely the BJP delayed releasing its manifesto till the last minute to make sure that its contents would not affect the personality cult built up around NaMo. The manifesto has a few security related elements that are likely to vitiate societal, Indian and subcontinental security: the building of a temple at Ayodhya;introduction of the uniform civil code; the removal of Article 370; and the rethinking of the nuclear doctrine respectively.

But first is a look at Modi’s cryptic remark at the manifesto release function stating that his will not be a policy of revenge. This is a loaded remark and in itself carries an implied threat. He probably had India’s minority on his mind, hoping that his remarks will influence them to be milder in their voting patterns towards him and his party. Given the mobilisation within the Muslim community, he is unlikely to make headway. This will no doubt keep him for the 270 mark even if he does manage to cobble up a coalition. This will no doubt put him off further; making it is unlikely that he would spare even the sops usually spared for India’s largest minority by its secular state under the Congress.

A poor beginning as this will goad him on to addressing the bullet points in the BJP manifesto of concern to India’s minority. First would be completing the demolition agenda at Ayodhya of the early nineties in which he had earned his spurs as a pracharak. This will also be to keep his fellow Hindutva travellers busy while he gets on with the task of making India safe for corporate takeover, quite like he did during his long reign in Gujarat. The Sangh Parivar’s use of the temple issue to mobilise support for itself, will likely increase social tensions across India.

This will set the stage for the legislative manoeuvring that will inevitably attend introduction of the uniform civil code, a left-over from the BJP’s earlier stint at the Center. The supposed motivation for the bill of ensuring women’s rights will be used to further pressurise the minority. Pushing it to the corner will be useful to instigate the hotheads in the minority to mount a violent challenge that will then justify a resounding crackdown on its ghettos and strongholds.

The ensuing strong arm methods will be easier to swallow for the middle class bent on voting Modi to power to further its economic interests. Any reservations in some quarters will be smothered by a nationalist build up to remove Article 370. This will no doubt provoke a backlash in Kashmir, perhaps just as intended.The army, with its hands full restoring order then, will be too busy and well placated with the needed powers and military goodies, to bother as to what is being done to India’s polity.

Modi and Kashmir

Resulting troubles in Kashmir will easily be attributed to the resumption of the long predicted Pakistani mischief in wake of departure of the Americans from Afghanistan. This will ease the rethinking promised on the nuclear doctrine. The first casualty is expected to be the No First Use principle. Jettisoning it will not amount to much in itself, since in any case Pakistanis find it both less than credible and quite unnecessary in light of superiority of India’s conventional forces. But the advantage will be in buttressing Modi’s image as a ‘strongman’ and as a message to Pakistan to avoid provocation.

Using the opportunity for a nuclear reorganization, Modi could ‘kick upstairs’ the current army chief, Bikram Singh, into being India’s first permanent chairman of the Chief’s of Staff Committee. Recall that Bikram Singh’s bête noire is General VK Singh of ‘DoB’ (date of birth) fame, the BJP contender for the Ghaziabad seat. During VK Singh’s fracas with the government, the innuendo was that the chain of succession was manipulated by the Congress to get Bikram Singh into the chair. As permanent chairman of COSC he would be a general without an army. It will leave open the army chief’s chair that Modi could fill in with a candidate of his choice; thus undercutting the next one in the current line of succession, the vice chief General Suhag. These moves, reminiscent of the sacking of Baghwat in the early part of the BJP’s last tenure, will keep the military quiet while Modi goes about his India reset.

Way Ahead

There is a view that such fears are unfounded because Modi may wait till he gains a measure of Delhi. He is driven by an economic agenda. This will likely be upset in case he privileges security and gets internal security vitiated. Therefore, he  will bide his time, gain legitimacy with developmental work and then when he is set into his second term, he could reveal his hand. By then, if the economics works, then he would be better positioned with a middle class majority behind him.

This misses the point that he may strike while hot from his election victory. The Hindutva brigade may prove less than patient. He also has the earlier precedent to be wary off in which the BJP was swept from power after just one term. The economic reforms that promise to be more neo-liberal than Manmohan’s may require a dose of ‘nationalism’ for being administered on unwilling non-middle classes. This may compel an early resort to religious nationalism for stoking legitimacy and authoritarianism. There is also the argument that there are checks and balances in the Indian system that will prevent his doing a Gujarat in the rest of India. This neglects the precedence of Emergency in which the civil service crawled when it was merely asked to bend. In any case, of his moving either sooner or later, India is in for interesting times in the Chinese sense of the word.

Consequently, Modi’s security agenda would bear watch. Apprising ourselves now will be timely in terms of taking the necessary preventive measures, in particular ensuring a defeat at the polls. Relying on the good sense of the Indian voter is useful towards this end but democracy can yet be hijacked. So a final push of a warning such as this is necessary.

By Firdaus Ahmed

A NUCLEAR-FREE WORLD

Getting ‘practical’ on No-First-Use

PM Manmohan Singh’s plans to minimise nuclear risks, as articulated at a recent conference, revolves around formulation of a ‘global no-first-use’ norm. Firdaus Ahmed points to why a practical solution is less about global norms and rests more likely on issues closer home.

http://indiatogether.org/practical-steps-for-a-nuclear-free-world-op-ed

http://indiaopines.com/topics/blogs/

Inaugurating the Indian Pugwash Society and IDSA conference on ‘A nuclear weapons free world: From conception to reality’, the prime minister urged the world to move beyond ‘partial and discriminatory’ approaches and towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Excoriating Cold War thinking that legitimised nuclear first use, he called for an agreed multilateral framework involving all states possessing nuclear weapons.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE http://indiatogether.org/practical-steps-for-a-nuclear-free-world-op-ed

This is likely the very last call of the prime minister in furthering India’s commitment to a nuclear weapons convention. It is in line with India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine, largely adopted as India’s official nuclear doctrine, which had stated: ‘8.2. Since no-first use of nuclear weapons is India's basic commitment, every effort shall be made to persuade other States possessing nuclear weapons to join an international treaty banning first use.’ The Prime Minister was only fulfilling a doctrinally ordained commitment.

The position he put forth is consistent with India’s long standing nuclear perspective, an early articulation of which was in a 1968 IDSA monograph, ‘A strategy for India for a credible posture against a nuclear adversary’, anonymously authored most likely by late Mr. Subrahmanyam. The monograph maintained that legitimacy of nuclear weapons could only be abolished by foreswearing of their first use (p. 5).

Subrahmanyam went on to ensure inclusion of this in the Draft Nuclear Doctrine, that he is credited with stewarding through the large and opinionated first National Security Advisory Board that he headed thirty years down the line by making preambular reference to ‘the very existence of offensive doctrine pertaining to the first use of nuclear weapons and the insistence of some nuclear weapons states on the legitimacy of their use’ as constituting the premier threat (Para 1.5).

The idea is that once nuclear weapons use is considered illegitimate their eventual elimination will be closer. This would involve as a first step a constriction in the purpose for which they can be used, restricting this to only deterring nuclear weapons use. This entails adoption by other nuclear states that have other uses for nuclear weapons, such as to deter conventional attack, to move towards the Indian view that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear weapons. This switch in thinking enables moving towards No First Use, which once subscribed to by all would be the ‘global no first use norm’ referred to by Dr. Manmohan Singh.

But does this articulation constitute the ‘practical measure’ that the PM had in mind?

India has not been able to get its neighbour Pakistan on board over this in the past two decades. One of JN Dixit’s non-papers to Pakistan in 1994 was on No First Use of the capability, even though the two states were not overt nuclear powers then. Pakistan subscribing to a different perspective on nuclear weapons – that they are also to deter war itself – was unwilling to give up its nuclear trump card to checkmate India. And with good reason since it was then embarked on proxy war and wanted to deter India’s conventional military might being brought to bear on it for its temerity.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE http://indiatogether.org/practical-steps-for-a-nuclear-free-world-op-ed

This attempt at making India’s conventional advantage relevant once again in the nuclear era has had the consequence of making Pakistan more reliant on its nuclear card. Its restive nuclear trigger finger is best symbolised by the Nasr, a tactical nuclear weapon.

Though unpalatable and perhaps unfair to India, its position will inevitably be seen through the India-Pakistan lens. A plausible critique could well be that this is an attempt by India to defang Pakistan, thereby making its (India’s) conventional power reckonable. Ducking such arguments will remain difficult till India really wishes to finally get ‘practical’. Clearly, if India is serious on creating a norm, it would require first taking its neighbour along.

Here, one harks back to the debate of the early eighties that had Pakistan taking a leaf out of India’s book dating to 1949 by offering a ‘no war pact’ and India offering friendly neighbourly relations instead. The latter can bring about the former, even without a pact. With war ruled out thus, there would be no question of nuclear first use or no-first-use implying nuclear retaliation. Friendly relations are hostage to outstanding issues that need resolving. Therefore, ‘practical’ steps towards no-first-use begin closer home.

One of Subrahmanyam’s reasons for nuclear advocacy for India was that mutual deterrence was stabilising. Responding to General Sundarji’s invite to participate in the seminal postal seminar in the early eighties at the College of Combat which Sundarji then headed, Subrahmanyam wrote that Pakistan’s ‘inferiority at the conventional level will be compensated when mutual deterrence at the nuclear level is established (Combat Paper No. 2, p. 53).’ He believed that this would enable Pakistan reconcile to the status quo on Kashmir. Time proved him wrong, however.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEEE http://indiatogether.org/practical-steps-for-a-nuclear-free-world-op-ed

It would require making good on its offer of friendship. It cannot have Kashmir and eat it too. Dr. Manmohan Singh had the answers in his first term: making borders irrelevant. However, this got sidetracked by 26/11. Getting practical on No-first-use is therefore not so much about nuclear weapons and certainly less of norms at the global level. It is about conflict resolution closer home.  

Subrahmanyam’s answer in his 1968 monograph was that renouncing nuclear first use as illegitimate could be enforced by all states collectively retaliating against any state resorting to nuclear weapons. Since he was writing in the context of the Cold War, not only was such renunciation unrealistic for the conventionally disadvantaged West, but such collective action was incomprehensible. It is with good reason then that the PM chose to end his speech by vaguely referring to ‘verification’ and ‘political measures’.

The apprehension that arises is that with such renewed advocacy of the impossible, India may be creating the grounds for exiting its No-first-use commitment. When it blasted its way into the nuclear club, it had reasoned that this owed to no one listening to its call for nuclear disarmament. When no one listens to its No-first-use call, would India give it up?

Firdaus Ahmed
10 April 2014

- See more at: http://indiatogether.org/practical-steps-for-a-nuclear-free-world-op-ed#sthash.4lpjyAsn.dpuf

What Did Manmohan Singh Mean By ‘Disastrous’?

By Firdaus Ahmed

17 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/ahmed170314.htm
www.milligazette.com 16-28 Feb 2014
http://www.milligazette.com/print/issue/16-28-february-2014

Cyber space is filled with jokes on the prime minister and his silence. Therefore, when he does speak, he needs being taken seriously. In his press conference, itself a first time in his second term, he made the point that if his successor were to be Modi, it would be disastrous for India. The reasoning he gave also needs considering. He said that presiding over organised killings in the streets was no way to display strength.

What kind of disaster did the prime minister have in mind? The mention of ‘strength’ in the same breath is instructive. Modi will be out to prove his is ‘strong’. He is well aware that killings – not to mention the rapes - in Gujarat in 2002 have not served to establish that, as pointedly mentioned by the prime minister. The ‘need’ to display and project strength is peculiar to right wing extremists. To them, Hindus have been emasculated by a millennium under ‘invaders’. Their psychological need is to recover and demonstrate their ‘manhood’. This perverse ‘need’ prompted the rapes and killings in first place.

Modi’s playing Nero for the duration presented him, in their mind’s eye, as a strongman, creating the space for them to fulfil their ‘need’ and thereafter preserving his flock from prosecution. Modi’s quest to install the ‘tallest’ statue, of the original ‘strongman’ himself, Sardar Patel, is a psychological pointer. It is a separate matter that AG Noorani has demonstrated in his latest work on the ‘police action’ in Hyderabad that the Luah Purush was himself a Hindu nationalist, and through his unnecessary military recourse in Hyderabad, is not necessarily the only or best role model to follow.

India’s strategic culture has been evolving under the influence of change in its political culture. The latter has jerked towards the right ever since the Congress started flirting with religion since the early eighties. Its endeavour to take over the agenda of the right wing, by symbolic gestures all through the eighties such as visits to Vaishnodevi by Indira Gandhi and the opening of the Babri Masjid locks by her son, boomeranged. Unwilling to be outflanked by the Congress the BJP took up religious issues to attempt make out an unbeatable vote bank from the majority community, even as it accused the Congress of playing vote bank politics. A political culture trending towards Hindutva started impacting India’s strategic culture by the nineties.

This was evident in the strategic shift taking place over the post cold war period with India veering towards foreign and strategic policies changes, such as opening up to the US and to Israel. Strategic community veterans took the opportunity to make their pitch for a more assertive, if not a more aggressive India. This is best exemplified in their tutoring of an American visitor, George K. Tanham. He was from the think tank, Rand Corporation, and in India to make out where India was headed. They conditioned his report with their views that India lacked a strategic culture, owing to its supposedly Hindu cultural ethos that included a non-linear concept of time and non-violence that made it less receptive to having a strategic culture. The argument was that since it did not have a strategic culture, it needed to get one, particularly since it was surrounded by enemies in league with each other, Pakistan and China.

The principal theme thereafter has been that India is a reactive, defensive state. Its political leadership is known for its pusillanimity, with its current defence minister derided as ‘Saint Antony’ for tying down military modernisation with bureaucratic knots in order that another Bofors scandal does not erupt to set back Congress chances. The corollary in this strategic perspective that has acquired prominence over the 2000s is that India needs a dynamic, ‘strong’, leader. By this yardstick, the performance of the Congress princeling in his interview with the television strongman, Arnab Goswami, is taken as showing him as timid, with another set of internet jokes doing the rounds for to the effect of political advantage of the BJP. In contrast, the image of the contender, NaMo, is built up as a ‘strong’ leader, the messiah who will deliver India to the P5 table; deliver its comeuppance to Pakistan; and get China to back off.

The problem will be when NaMo gets to the chair and takes the opportunity to enact the leader that this strategic subculture wishes for India. Leveraging Modi’s rise, the denizens of this strategic subculture will take over the strategic policy space. Their input will be music to his ears. In his case it would be a commitment trap, since he will have to demonstrate to himself and his supporters his will-to-power, given the image built up for him by the likes of Vanzara, now in Sabarmati jail, over the graves of innocents such as Ishrat Jahan. Whereas his ideological predecessor in the chair, Vajpayee, blasted India into the nuclear club, he, having been foreign minister as early as the late seventies, was aware enough of strategic nuances to keep India out of a full scale war in Kargil and in the post parliament attack phase. A self-awareness of his limitations and knowledge of the deceit that goes into image building will push Modi over the edge into mistaking the political utility of image of a strongman to being a strongman.

With India’s growing power at his call and several ongoing arguments with its neighbours, ranging from a post US Afghanistan to who controls the South China Sea, Modi will create occasion to exercise the power. This is where potential disaster awaits India. Egged on by the strategic subculture that wishes India to exercise its military muscle in order to dispel the mistaken self-belief of an 'effete' Hindu culture, Modi may end up fancy himself as a regional warlord. In a region that has plenty of nuclear tinder, this can prove disastrous.

The prime minister did not have this in mind when he predicted a Modi tenure being disastrous. He was likely instead thinking about internal security and stability involving a strained relations developing between its majority and minority. That is also a likely outcome, since it is internal political capital that Modi would be chasing. He will try and conflate the external and internal ‘Other’ and presenting himself as the difference between Indian weakness and strength, he could well bring nuclear contaminated disaster on to India. It is for this reason that while it can be assessed that Manmohan Singh is largely right in his prognostication, here’s hoping for the sake of India, that he is proven wrong.

Firdaus Ahmed is a freelance writer on security affairs. His blog is Think South Asia:http://www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in/

NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

One gaffe too many

The slips in the use of words in India’s official nuclear doctrine may be inadvertent but, nevertheless, point to a worrying amateurishness in the domain, says Firdaus Ahmed.

http://indiatogether.org/gaffes-in-india-s-nuclear-doctrine-op-ed

17 March 2014 -

In his Subbu Forum Society lecture a year ago, Shyam Saran, Chair of India’s National Security Advisory Board, referred to the National Command Authority while talking of India’s nuclear command and control mechanisms in place. This would have been confusing for those who knew that India’s apex decision making authority in nuclear matters is the Nuclear Command Authority.

National Command Authority is incidentally the term Pakistan has for its nuclear decision making body. This can be explained away as a typographical error in Saran’s speech. However, if such errors creep into India’s nuclear texts once too often, there is a problem. This article makes the case that there is indeed a problem that brings into question India’s control of its nuclear weapons complex.  

The most glaring instance is India’s use of the term ‘massive’ in its nuclear retaliatory doctrine. The term ‘massive’ owes to ‘massive retaliation’ that figured in early Cold War history. The idea was that the US would reply with massive force, both conventional and nuclear, in case of Soviet military adventurism anywhere. The doctrine was over time appropriately modified to ‘flexible response’ in light of Soviet acquisition of nuclear retaliatory means to target the US national homeland.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE http://indiatogether.org/gaffes-in-india-s-nuclear-doctrine-op-ed

One criticism of the term has it that the official doctrine was adopted in the wake of India’s ‘redeployment’ of troops from their Operation Parakram positions on the border back to barracks. The stepping back by the nationalist BJP-led government was sought to be compensated by a stepping up of the nuclear rhetoric. That rhetoric should sear official doctrine is itself an indictment of the process of doctrine making, if not of the doctrine itself.  

Massive nuclear retaliation was promised by India in case of enemy ‘first strike’. First Strike in the nuclear lexicon is distinct from ‘first use’. Nuclear first use is the introduction of nuclear weapons into a conflict. One manner of ‘first use’ is in the form of ‘first strike’, defined as the attempt to degrade the enemy’s nuclear retaliatory capability to levels in which it is unable to mount a counter strike. An adversary need not resort to nuclear first use in a first strike mode always. Nuclear use in the first instance could also be lower order nuclear strike, such as tactical nuclear use.

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE - http://indiatogether.org/

However, for lower order nuclear first use or strikes with low ‘opprobrium quotient’, going counter value is avoidably escalatory, since the adversary would not spare India’s cities in counter retaliation. This strategic aspect apart, that should in itself lend pause to India’s nuclear retaliatory choice consideration, it is clear that India confused the term ‘first strike’ with ‘first use’.

There is little reason to do so since the term No First Use is a familiar one. Since ‘No First Strike’ is not used in such cases, there was little reason for India to adapt the term for its own purposes. That the phrasing of its doctrine was not cognizant of this distinction suggests a deficiency that needs alerting against.

There are other egregious errors that need recounting. Take what is regarded as the ‘central pillar’ in India’s nuclear doctrine: No First Use (NFU). While India wishes others to believe that its NFU pledge is without a caveat, this is not what the written word suggests. In the Draft Nuclear Doctrine, NFU was qualified by, and confused with, the negative security guarantee. NFU was not taken as applicable for states aligned to the state that resorted to nuclear first use.

There are no readily conceivable circumstances that required this qualification of the NFU and the negative security guarantee. It was akin to threatening Myanmar or Bangladesh with nuclear retaliation in the event that either was aligned with China in a conflict in which China used nuclear weapons against India. A second distant possibility is in case Afghanistan was to serve the purpose of enhancing its ‘strategic depth’ for Pakistan in a conflict in which Pakistan resorts to nuclear first use.

To its credit India excluded this phrasing from its 2003 doctrine. Nevertheless, its confusion between NFU and negative security guarantees continued. To its NFU policy, it added: ‘Non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.’ This is quite unnecessary since non-nuclear states cannot be expected to resort to first use in the first place.

Further, it ended up introducing another caveat to its NFU pledge: that NFU would be redundant in case of ‘major’ attack by chemical or biological weapons. This invited criticism that the circumstance was yet again difficult to comprehend, since all South Asian states and China were signatories to the comprehensive treaties banning both categories of weapons. If terrorists were in mind when India thought up this caveat, it was equally difficult to comprehend as to how it could retaliate against a state for the atrocity.

Criticism on this count by a foreign observer of India’s nuclear scene, Scott Sagan, was apt. He said that this was an instance of India aping the US that had at the time used the nuclear threat to dampen any thought in Saddam’s mind of going nuclear in case of US invasion. This yet again shows India looking outwards for its nuclear inspiration and messing up in the process. 

The uncertainty surrounding the nuclear doctrine is only compounded when its National Security Advisor, who heads the Executive Council and is secretary to the Political Council of the Nuclear Command Authority, makes similar mistakes. In his speech at the golden jubilee of the National Defence College in 2010, he restated India’s NFU as: ‘no first use against non-nuclear weapon states’.

As pointed out by Vipin Narang, a close observer of India’s nuclear scene, this was mistaken, since the NFU is a guarantee to states with nuclear capability and the ability to resort to nuclear first use, should they so choose. It is not NFU but negative security guarantees that are applicable to non-nuclear states. Though the speech writer can take the rap in this case, the fact is that nuclear doctrinal statements that are vehicles for deterrence related messaging cannot be taken lightly.

While all this does sound like nit-picking, the fact is that such mistakes – repeated and unnecessary – point to a worrying amateurishness in India’s nuclear domain. This is less liable to detection than the more visible problems with India’s submarine arm, evident from the three submarine-related accidents over the past year. The latter bring into question India’s ability to deploy and sustain a nuclear submarine-based ‘triad’, while the doctrinal gaffes revealed here detract from India’s presenting itself as a responsible nuclear power.

Clearly, India’s nuclear establishment could do with continuing scrutiny so that it does not add to the threat India is otherwise subject to due to its very location in a tough nuclear neighbourhood.

Firdaus Ahmed
17 March 2014

- See more at: http://indiatogether.org/gaffes-in-india-s-nuclear-doctrine-op-ed#sthash.EVTJn4Ir.dpuf

pathribal

Pathribal: Back in the news Firdaus Ahmed

" http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=28248 Kunan Poshpora and Pathribal will remain etched in any history of the Kashmir conflict. While the salience of the former (in the perspective of this writer) is a product of the information war that inevitably attends conflict, the latter is an illustration of the intelligence game that is an inextricable part of conflict. It is unsurprising, therefore, for Kashmir being the conflict zone of Pakistani proxy war and Indian counter-insurgency to have its recent history littered with such evocative names, quite like other such theatres of conflict, whether conventional or unconventional.  Pathribal is in the news for the army's exoneration of its members held for perpetrating the infamous Pathribal incident in which five civilians were killed and passed off as those who had committed the Chattisingpora carnage on the eve of Clinton's visit to India. Truthfully, the army states that enough evidence was not recorded to implicate the men. Recording 'enough evidence' could have opened up a Pandora's Box and therefore for the perpetrators to be left off is in a way only fair. Had they been after rewards and awards as is the usual explanation, they would likely have been nailed by the army. The army's letting them off suggests that there is more to the case as has been surmised by the circumstantial evidence over the past decade. The Clinton visit is critical to understanding Pathribal. India had blasted its way into the nuclear club and was temporarily in the dog housefor that with the United States that had a democratic dispensation which is usually more influenced by the non-proliferation lobby. The Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott talks had opened up space for India, even as Pakistan's support for the Taliban that was harbouring bin Laden was getting constricted. The Clinton visit symbolised this shift in American interests away from Pakistan with Clinton deciding to spend as many days in India as hours in Pakistan.  In the context of the visit, the security establishment decided to twist the knife by arranging the Chittisingpora incident in order to push Pakistan into a corner with the US, knowing that a democratic administration is usually more sensitive to human rights issues. Since the Sikhs had never been targeted before, it was to stretch credulity that Pakistan would be so strategic as to allow its proxies to perpetrate the massacre on the eve of Clinton's visit, particularly when they wanted to compete with India for US affections. No doubt, the US had in this case its own views, informed also by its links with the Pakistanis who would have fed it their version. Even within India there was considerable scepticism that then needed to be dispelled.  With their thinking murkied by an insurgency over a decade old by then, the security agencies thought it fit to cover their tracks. The execution of this at Pathribal was as ham handed as was the massacre at Chittisingpora. The tracks left by the army by killing innocents to pass off as Pakistani terrorists were easily uncovered by civil society agitation that incidentally led to deaths in firing of another set of civilians at Panchaltan. Given the second set of deaths, the incident became too difficult to consign into the several unresolved cases that have filled not a few of the unmarked graves across Kashmir.  The resulting investigation led to uncovering of enough evidence by the police to prompt a CBI investigation that yet again declared that the case was prosecutable. The army's protection of its members led to the Supreme Court declaring that the case be handed over to the army for military justice to take its course. The current recurrence of Pathribal in the news is the army's expression of inability to prosecute due to lack of evidence. They in fact go on to state that there is enough 'evidence' that the operation was a bonafide joint police-army operation.  Clearly, the military judicial process has not been as blind as the ends of justice require. It appears to have been cognisant of the context surrounding the case then and equally so of the current political, external and internal, juncture. As the Congress looks at elections it can do without the opposition gaining further traction than it has already demonstrated. The exservicemen lobby, that represents the military's political face, is also one that is increasingly vocal, cannot be ignored and is liable to put its weight behind the opposition strongman, NaMo, as General VK Singh's presence on the dais with Modi testifies.  Externally, the Pakistan relationship is not going anywhere any time soon. Manmohan Singh in his lame duck tenure cannot pursue what he promisingly set out to do in his first tenure. In fact, the assessment is that it would be downhill for sometime here on since the magic figure '2014' is in the here and now. With the statistics of last year promise a militarily feisty Line of Control this year too. Therefore, if the Kashmir security situation is likely to worsen, it would be a waste to emplace mitigatory measures now such as enforcing accountability for human rights violations. 'Demoralising' the security forces should not be done when they are about to be most needed yet again.  The shortcoming of this assessment need highlighting in that if the Taliban, and Pakistan at one remove, are out to retake Afghanistan on the departure of the US, it is reasonable to believe that they would like to keep their backyard quiet. They also will unlikely have the strategic resources to open up the Kashmir front simultaneously, after all after over half a decade of capacity building the Afghan security forces are unlikely to be a pushover even if Karzai is a pushover politically.  Therefore, while it can be expected that Kashmir will likely see more fireworks this year, it is hardly on account of Pakistani strategic design as much as a self-fuelling prophecy in which India, out to check Pakistan in Afghanistan through a proxy war, will see Pakistan revert to using its trump card. In fact if the procedural democracy soon to be worked in Kashmir were to be supplemented by substantive democracy through accountability then it could have dispelled the hurt in Kashmir that conveys to Pakistan that it remains ripe for meddling.  Accountability indicting Indians would also deflate India's diplomatic position that Pakistan is the root cause of the problem in Kashmir. It would put the AFSPA defence of the army into question. It would lead to an easing of the situation, heightening concerns of continuing army presence. This would bring up the matter of redeployment of the RR out of Kashmir and into Central India. Therefore, there are plenty of reasons not to expect justice to take its own course in the Pathribal case.  But most importantly, incarcerating a few soldiers is hardly just if those who ordered the killings are not brought to book. The chain of command does not stop at the army itself in this case. What the brass in the command chain could tell would go into the heart of the governmental establishment to include men in safari suits and dhotis. Going down this route would expose the underside of India's security establishment and its culpability in keeping Kashmir unsettled.  This explains why the army - and indeed the government - wants the nation to forget Pathribal. Now, if only the families and the activists would put on their nationalist cap and listen. Feedback at firdyahmed@yahoo.com

The next polls and beyond

Milligazette, 1-15 January 2014

Having lost in four states, the Congress is readying to pack its bags for vacating 7, Race Course Road, by May next. Its stalwarts, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Chidambaram, have both indicated that the divisions in polity are such that there is little chance of the next government sticking through the next five years at the helm. Aiyar therefore opines that the Congress could throw in the towel next year in order to ‘refit’ itself in a ‘break from governance’ for a subsequent meaningful try at the polls. Chidambaram, likewise, has suggested that the next elections will not throw up a solid majority. Maintaining that the current government is being hampered by pushback from the legislature and judiciary, he reveals that Indian democracy is undergoing a ‘churning’ at its ‘weakest point’ in its history.   

The open breast beating by the Congress in wake of their dismal showing is to be expected. It helps keep morale alive in that the Congressman is assured that even if the next polls are given a bye, the Congress can yet reposition itself – to quote Aiyar - as the ‘natural party of governance for the 21^st century’. While the Congress needs such self-consolation, the nation cannot be so sanguine. If history is any guide, the last time the Congress expected to return to power after vacating it in mid nineties, it was unable to do so for close to a decade. While the last time round, there was the sober and mature Vajpayee at the helm to keep the sangh parivar on leash, this time round, if and when the BJP gets to power, they are unlikely to restrain themselves.

Using government leverage they will position themselves for the long haul in order to reconfigure India in their image. It is for this reason that the complacency of the Congress cannot be allowed to seep into the nation and the forthcoming electoral fight by secular-liberal forces and minority interest groups must be taken for what it is and quite like the BJP and its affiliates are taking it, with a greater gumption than the ‘grand old party’, the Congress, has shown or is at all capable of showing.  

It bears recall that the Narasimha Rao government was beset with the same problems and lethargy at its term end as is the Manmohan government today. Quite the same fate administered it by the electorate then as seems to await the Manmohan dispensation. At the time, Shankar Dayal Sharma, had called upon Vajpayee to step in as leader of the single largest party. Vajpayee, seizing the chance, tried to cobble up a coalition.

Even as he did so he proceeded to order nuclear weapons detonation preparations to get underway in order to build a nationalist wave behind him. However, his initial stint lasted only thirteen days. It was in his second attempt that he used the nationalist gimmick of bombing his way into the nuclear club, alongside fighting a popular war in Kargil as a caretaker government, to insinuate the BJP into power that lasted a full term after the second elections.

The period in power was used to extend saffronisation of institutions and inveigle Hindutva into the national imagination. While Murli Manohar Joshi proceeded to rework education; other up front projects included a national commission to review the working of the constitution and the Vision 2020 document of the Planning Commission. Questions persist over the parliament attack that hanging Afzal Guru have done little to resolve. In the security field, India gave itself offensive military doctrines and a nuclear doctrine that even a change in government has not been able to dilute. The country barely managed to avoid being entangled in US’ Iraq quagmire by sending troops.

All this happened, despite Vajpayee generally having his heart in the right place. He reached out twice to Pakistan, at Lahore and at Agra. While the military there rudely overruled his interlocutor, Nawaz Sharif, by mounting a Kargil on unsuspecting Vajpayee, at Agra, a careful study by AG Noorani, informs that Advani exercised a veto. Advani also dispelled Vajpayee’s intent to take Modi to task over his lapse in ‘rajdharma’ in Gujarat.

The foregoing suggests that conservative politics is susceptible to capture by the ideological fringe. Two notable times this has occurred are in an outrageous way have been the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat carnage. In both cases the conservatives got away, claiming loss of control, rather admit to the conspiracy behind both. In both cases, the minority was target. If a Vajpayee in their midst could not remedy matters, it does not take much imagination to envisage the rightist turn with Modi at the helm.

The Congress perspective is that political ‘untouchability’ will keep Modi from gaining any support, even if as psephologists predict and the Congress fears, the BJP does turn out the single largest party. Complacency on this score can prove fatal to India as we know it. The gimmick of the atom bomb is precedence on the way a national rallying call can be used to cement the incumbent in power. Modi has already sounded the battle cry in his Sawai Madhopur rally in which he suggested a reopening of the Article 370 question. With the long dreaded Year 2014 round the corner, a deteriorating national security can serve as a convenient nationalist rallying cry. The middle classes that are behind NaMo can be expected to chip in to foster a greater acceptability of Modi across party lines. He will get off to a running start since he has the way chalked out by right wing think tanks and diaspora support that have contributed to making his campaign such as to survive even a Snoopgate.

This implies that far graver possibilities exist in the post elections future than self-exculpatory political commentary from senior Congress sources suggests. Modi can be expected to play to the gallery, even as he lets loose saffronites into the state and nation. Once assured of sustaining, he will create the ground for another round. This will see the sangh pariwar celebrate its centenary while in power at the center.  Clearly, Congress faintheartedness cannot be allowed to get infectious.