Saturday 5 December 2020

 https://www.epw.in/author/ali-ahmed

Articles by Ali AhmedSubscribe to Ali Ahmed

Eschewing and (Not) Manipulating Escalation

India’s unwillingness to tactically manipulate escalation makes its responses predictable and has led to strategic inertia most evident in the handling of the situation at the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh. The responsibility for this inertia primarily lies with the political leadership, but the...

Why India Did Not Go to War with China

India had the military ability to evict the intrusions in Ladakh or carry out a quick grab action of its own in the early stages of the crisis. Yet, it did not exercise the offensive military options. The explanation for such strategic reticence lies at the political level.

The Portentous India–Pakistan Escalation Dynamic

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Approaching Kashmir through Theoretical Lenses

The National Democratic Alliance government’s Kashmir policy can be analysed through the lenses of security studies and peace studies. Insights from these disciplinary fields could help gauge the implications of recent actions and suggest a possible different course.

Military Professionalism and Effectiveness

The military’s input to national security may be swayed by ideological winds if it loses its apolitical grounding. The government and military must thus maintain the status quo on civil–military relations.

The Modi Era

The influence of Hindutva in political culture on India’s strategic culture has been traced. It has resulted in a hardening of strategic culture with the bias towards the offensive also resulting from the military’s organisational culture that has been independently penetrated by Hindutva. But, a strategic doctrine of compellence is combustible, and the retraction of Hindutva from polity is a prerequisite for stability.

Putting India’s Land Warfare Doctrine in the Dock

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Army’s Robustness in Aid of Civil Authority

When the army is called in aid of civil authority, robust action taken by the army in a timely manner can prevent civil disturbance from exacting a strategic cost. The recent revelations on army inaction in the critical first 24 hours during the Gujarat carnage in 2002 are examined.

Modi at the Helm

Nuclear decision-making, when examined at the institutional and individual levels, suggests that India’s case is fraught with shortcomings. This adds to the complications for regional security, already present on account of Pakistan’s nuclear decision-making being military dominated. The aggravated institutional infirmities of India’s nuclear decision-making structures and the authoritarian tendencies in India’s primary nuclear decision-maker, the Prime Minister, heighten nuclear dangers in future crises and conflicts.

The Doval Scorecard

As the ruling party at the centre, the Bharatiya Janata Party, contemplates the forthcoming national elections, its record on national security warrants a review. The key player in crafting and implementing its national security strategy has been National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. An examination of Doval’s record over the past four years reveals that his principal contribution has been in facilitating national security interests to be held hostage to the electoral calculus of the Narendra Modi–Amit Shah combine.

The Missing Muslim Army Officers

The representation of Muslims in the army officer corps, at around 2%, is abysmal in contrast to their percentage in the population of India. Diversity is also compromised in the army, with over half of army officers hailing from a handful of north Indian states. This deficit of diversity along social and geographical lines has negative implications for the army’s apolitical and secular credentials.

The Kashmir Charade This Winter

The ill-planned and hurried appointment of an interlocutor for Kashmir by the government, supposedly for a sustained dialogue, does not suggest that the government is serious about resolving the Kashmir conflict. The initiative, however, appears to want to hold the United States at bay, which needs India and Pakistan talking to safeguard its Afghan engagement. The interlocutor’s mission will likely turn out to be yet another wasted opportunity in Kashmir

 

Articles by Ali AhmedSubscribe to Ali Ahmed

Dilating on a ‘Half-front War’

The reference to a “two and a half front war” by Army Chief General Bipin Rawat is critically dissected. The “half front” apparently covers large tracts of India and a significant number of its marginalised people. The thought of a war on the half front, as conjured by this term, needs to be controverted outright. The army’s imagining of such a war and preparation for it is questioned.

A Disjointed Doctrine

The recently released joint doctrine of the armed forces outlines the manner in which they expect to fight the next war. Though the doctrine suggests “decisive victory” is possible, it bears reminding that the closer they get to this the closer would be the nuclear threshold. Since the doctrine does not dwell on the nuclear level, it cannot be said that the doctrine makes India any safer. However, the doctrine’s take on civil–military relations is far more interesting.

Corrosive Impact of Army’s Commitment in Kashmir

The army has had an extended deployment in Kashmir. While it has enabled operational experience for its members, there is a danger that the advantages of this can make the army acquire a stake in the disturbed conditions. This makes the army part of the problem in Kashmir. Its deployment is not without a price in regard to the internal good health of the army.

India's Strategic Shift

In abandoning strategic restraint in favour of strategic proactivism, India is transiting from a strategic doctrine of offensive deterrence to compellence. This is not without its dangers since the military doctrines of India and Pakistan are presently coupled in a volatile way. Moving towards proactivism makes them altogether combustible. This makes the strategic logic of the shift suspect, prompting speculations as to its inspiration.

War and What To Do About It

A case for the peace lobby to continue its engagement with anti-war issues, even in times of relative peace. The military doctrines are geared for a quick war, resulting in shorter crisis windows. Therefore, keeping the public informed and capitalising on such preparations for ensuring moderation in strategic decisions in crises and war can prove useful when push comes to shove. This would be an uphill task, but inescapable for war avoidance and limitation.

Nuclear Retaliation Options

The debate on nuclear retaliation options has been hijacked by realists, with even the liberal security perspective marginalised. Engagement with the issue by nuclear abolitionists is called for, lest the impression of a consensus develops around the realist offering of "unacceptable damage" that promises nothing but genocide, a global environmental disaster and national suicide in its wake.

Yoga as a Prelude to Politicisation of the Military

Drawing on the news reporting of the army's association with Ramdev's organisation for yoga training, a discussion on the potential and possibility of politicisation of the military with Hindutva philosophy.

No First Use Nuclear Policy

That India's No First Use policy is under threat of the axe in any future review of the nuclear doctrine is apparent from the election time controversy over the mention of a nuclear doctrinal review in the manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The reference - subsequently toned down - was possibly an attempt by the conservative party to live up to its image as a strategically assertive replacement of the Congress Party.

 


 

https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/48/strategic-affairs/eschewing-and-not-manipulating-escalation.html

Eschewing and (Not) Manipulating Escalation

India’s unwillingness to tactically manipulate escalation makes its responses predictable 

and has led to strategic inertia most evident in the handling of the situation at the Line of 

Actual Control in Ladakh. The responsibility for this inertia primarily lies with the political

leadership, but the military top brass also shares this responsibility.

 

On 7 November, at the 60th anniversary observance webinar of the National Defence 

College (NDC), New Delhi, Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat expressed worries 

on the possibilities of escalation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), saying, “border 

confrontations, transgressions and unprovoked tactical military actions spiraling into a larger 

conflict cannot be ruled out” (Pandit 2020). He had averred to similar dangers a year ago 

but in relation to the Line of Control (LoC), when he said, “The situation along the LoC can 

escalate any time. We have to be prepared for the spiraling of the escalatory matrix” 

(Times of India 2019). Rawat’s fears were expressed in the context of Pakistani border 

action teams actively supporting last-minute infiltration attempts prior to the usual winter 

respite in Kashmir. A year on, the LoC witnessed a significant spike in firing over the Diwali 

period this year.

 

Escalation dangers can be seen in Pakistan’s strike back after the Indian surgical strike 

at Balakot, launched in response to the Pulwama terror attack in February 2019. Apparently, 

Pakistan’s aerial counter was so provocative that India had prepared to retaliate. Recent 

internal political salvos between the government and opposition in Pakistan reveal that the 

Indian preparations caused the Pakistani army chief and its foreign minister considerable 

apprehension (Economic Times 2020). In the event, Pakistan pre-empted the missile strike by returning the Indian fighter pilot downed in the aerial dogfight over the LoC, short circuiting what Prime Minister Narendra Modi later colourfully depicted as could well have been a qatl ki raat (night of killing) from missile strikes (Asian Age 2019). That it would not have been a one-sided qatl (killing) is evident from Pakistan reportedly readying three times the number of missiles in a counterstrike (Miglani and Jorgic 2019).

 

As for China, its Ladakh intrusions suggest that it has a measure of India’s sensitivity to escalation. Its incremental intrusions began with cutting off Indian patrolling in Depsang sector in April, before intruding along the northern bank of the Pangong Tso in May. India, fearing escalation if it took the more robust action of either evicting the Chinese or taking equivalent territory in real time elsewhere, settled for mirror deployment, leading by the onset of winter to some 30,000 troops being deployed in Ladakh. Its occupation of Kailash range, south of Pangong Tso in end August, though depicted as a vigorous response, was limited to securing unoccupied heights on its own side of the LAC. The much-touted tactical action, which is certainly a remarkable martial feat, was at an operational cost. India lost both an opportunity and an avenue of approach to offset Chinese intrusions elsewhere.

 

Unwilling to Escalate

 

Escalation thus appears to loom large in India’s thinking, resulting in both adversaries taking advantage of India’s sensitivity. Pakistan, a relatively weaker opponent, has exploited Indian escalatory concern by restricting India’s options to lower-order, sub-conventional-level surgical strikes. At this level, there is a degree of equivalence where it seeks to give as good as it receives. Up the proverbial escalation matrix, it has matched the Indian doctrinal movement. Even as India firmed up its Cold Start doctrine of swift, conventional punishment for terror incidents, Pakistan has adopted a new doctrine, namely “new concept of war fighting.” For good measure, it brought to the fore the nuclear card in its operationalisation of full spectrum deterrence, with the tactical nuclear weapons at the vanguard and keeping a step ahead of India in nuclear warhead numbers.

 

China, for its part, has thrown the onus of escalation on to India. In its turn, India, convincing itself that the escalation advantage was with China, owing to its comprehensive national power, allowed China to get away with territorial gains. When challenged by the intrusions, India instead settled in favour of prudence over risk-taking. Even while experts argued that it is not the cumulative power that matters as much as the power that can be brought to bear at the point of contact at the end of a long line of communication in Ladakh (Menon 2020), India took the counsel of its fears and decided on talks as the route for an expansive, if unrealistic, aim of a return to status quo ante. The rounds of talks—that at last count included eight at military level, three at the level of the diplomats in the working group, three ministerial level talks, including a telephonic conversation between the two special representatives—have neither brought down troops to more hospitable altitude levels nor lessened their numbers in Ladakh.

 

Escalation concerns dominate Indian considerations on the use of force. Its military power is hobbled by self-deterrence brought on by an interpretation of escalation as inevitable and uncontrollable. Contrast this to the Pakistani and Chinese approach to escalation concerns. Pakistan has deliberately exploited the possibility of escalation. Not only did the landward surgical strikes not prevent the major terror incident at Pulwama, but the aerial surgical strikes, already debilitated by their inability to hit the target, resulted in a setback to India in the dogfight they provoked. An outcome has been Pakistani psychological ascendance, which the subsequent information war has not quite obscured.

 

Against China, over the years, India settled rather tamely in the initial stages itself, for deterrence by denial, where deterrence by punishment might have been warranted. India’s doctrinal shift in the decade prior was from deterrence by denial to deterrence by punishment with precisely such intrusion scenarios impelling the shift. The mountain strike corps was to be the vehicle. Since the financing of the strike corps progressively stalled, the army shifted last year to innovating, with integrated battle groups for a reconfigured, if truncated, corps. It innovatively flexed its muscles in Exercise Him Vijay, held in Arunachal Pradesh, even as Chinese premier Xi Jinping landed for the Chennai Connect dialogue at Mamallapuram (Peri 2019). Even so, when push came to shove in Ladakh, India was either unprepared or unwilling to shift to its newly minted and practised doctrine. This is reminiscent of India’s Cold Start doctrine lacking teeth in the wake of the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack.

 

Prime Minister Modi, in his Diwali address to troops at Longewala, explaining India’s strategic reticence, had this to say: “Today the strategy of India is clear. Today’s India believes in the policy of understanding and making others understand. But if attempts are made to test us, the reply they receive is intense” (Free Press Journal 2020). While it is true that India has been “tested” by both adversaries, it is difficult to see from recent strategic developments that India’s reply has been “intense” against either of them. India’s unwillingness to chance or inability to manipulate the escalatory threat led it to rely excessively on dialogue as substitute, even where force is manifestly warranted as and when territorial integrity is at stake.

 

Self-deterrence

 

Escalation is intrinsic to the use of force, prompted not only by the usual play of chance and the fog of war, called inadvertent escalation. This impelled the Clausewitzian concept of Absolute War or war’s tendency to spiral (Walzer 1977: 23–24), if untrammelled by political control and the constraint of friction. Consequently, it is reasonable to be wary of escalation and especially so in a nuclear dyad such as India respectively finds itself in with its two adversaries. The very first dictum put out early in the nuclear age by Bernard Brodie (1946: 76) remains applicable: “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.” However, the danger is in over-learning, for it opens up a state to the fear of escalation, eroding its will to use force. Thomas Schelling (1967: 142–43) conceptualised the manipulation of the dangers as follows:

It is in wars that we have come to call “limited wars” that the bargaining appears most vividly and is conducted most consciously. The critical targets in such a war are the mind of the enemy … the threat of violence in reserve is more important than the commitment of force in the field.

 

Escalation is thus Janus-faced, a threat that also provides a strategic opportunity. India’s strategic problem therefore is not to allow self-deterrence to a degree that the use of force where warranted is negated substantially. Further, the collusive “two-front” threat, while in the realm of possibility, is not in that of probability. Nevertheless, it has been repeated so often that India has begun to believe it, further constraining willingness to resort to force.

 

The reticence to use force stemming from self-deterrence requires explaining, particularly for a government that projects a muscular strategic approach. A case for ‘‘strategic patience’’ is currently being argued. Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar (2020), in his new book, lays out the narrative thus

We need to cultivate the strategic patience … Use of force must always be the considered option, never the first one …. Major nations have multiple weapons in their armoury and blunt instruments are usually the least productive. But efficacy aside, the imagery is no less significant. Those who casually advocate application of force abroad do damage. Such actions, as the instructive epic (Mahabharat) tells us, are an option reserved for imminent danger or serial offenders.

 

While this is explicable for the ‘‘application of force abroad,” its utility is somewhat diminished when a state faces loss of territory, a core characteristic, that elevate such threats to constituting an “imminent danger.” China’s record of salami-slicing over the past decade makes it count amongst ‘‘serial offenders.” Also, as the ‘‘imagery is no less significant,” Indian reluctance to use force nevertheless is at a reputational cost. To overplay its securing of the Kailash range to compensate may have had internal political utility, such as in the fig leaf it afforded the government from questioning by the opposition in the recent Bihar election campaign, but the limited significance of the operational level manoeuvre just ahead of the defence and foreign minister level talks is evident from its inability to compel China to blink.

 

The narrative that India stared down China by preventing it from chewing off more than what it already has is being played up. This year’s Vijayadashami address by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) supremo, Mohan Bhagwat, said that, “Bharatiya defence forces, government and the people remained unfazed and responded sharply to this attack. This example of a strong resolution, exercising self-respect and bravery has stunned China” (Bhagwat 2020). Such self-congratulations undergrid his Jaishankar-reminiscent prescription: “Rising above China economically, strategically, in securing cooperative ties with our neighbours and at international relations” as “the only way to neutralise those demonic aspirations” (emphasis added; Bhagwat 2020).

 

Strategic Inertia

 

At the political level, the policy of dialogue has been exposed at its critical test against China. Not only was the “Wuhan spirit” vacuous, but the talks have been infructuous. The strategy of patience—to hold one’s horses till comparative comprehensive national power enables an Indian military response—ends up but as an alibi for doing nothing. The intensity of the information war that sees India manufacturing favourable military history is testimony to the fact that it knows it has something to hide.

 

Since the political level supersedes the strategic, a top-down cadence is visible in Bipin Rawat’s usual media interventions. His hyping up of escalation possibilities, including a collusive two-front threat, seemingly allow India to weigh in on the side of pragmatism and prudence. In the midst of an economic downturn and a pandemic, it would not be sensible to be off to war reflexively. But then, it is ostrich-like to determinedly avoid a war when warranted, especially since models of war are available that eschew escalation, even while manipulating it.

 

Rawat, familiar with the spectrum of war, knows that war is not necessarily Total War, else the Limited War concept would not obtain in strategic theory. Clausewitz (2008: 7) wrote that,

War can be of two kinds, in the sense that either the objective is to over throw the enemy … or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiations.

 

In a nuclear dyad, only the latter, limited form of war, is possible. Indian military thinking has an exaggerated impression on the inevitability of the latter turning into the former, apparently bought into by the political level.

 

The past year revealed that either the Indian military lacks expertise in the art of strategy in terms of manipulating escalation to one’s advantage or it did not press the political level enough to allow it to prove its credentials. If in the case of the latter it was denied the opportunity, there has been no resignation from its upper ranks to prove that it pressed fulsomely to exercise its professional expertise in the national interest. Consequently, the onus for strategic inertia in Ladakh does not rest at the political level alone, but also with the brass in its compromising on its advisory and representational role.

 

References

Asian Age (2019): “Going to be ‘Qatal Ki Raat’: PM Warned Pak during Abhinandan’s Captivity,” 21 April, viewed on 30 October 2020, https://www.asianage.com/india/politics/210419/either-i-will-be-alive-or....

Bhagwat, Mohan (2020): “Address by Param Poojaniya Sarsanghchalak Dr Shri Mohan Ji Bhagwat on the Occasion of Sri Vijayadashami Utsav 2020,” RSS website, 25 October, viewed on 15 November, https://www.rss.org/Vijayadashami_Speech_2020_Eng.pdf.

Brodie, Bernard (1946): The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

Clausewitz, C von (2008): On War, B Heuser (ed), Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

Economic Times (2020): “Pakistan Army Chief’s ‘Legs Were Shaking’ as Shah Mehmood Qureshi Said India Would Attack,” 29 October, viewed on 6 November, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/army-chief-trembled-fo....

Free Press Journal (2020): “India Believes in Policy of Understanding and Explaining: Modi,” 14 November, viewed on 15 November, https://www.freepressjournal.in/india/india-believes-in-policy-of-unders....

Subramayam, Jaishankar (2020): The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World, New Delhi: HarperCollins India.

Menon, Prakash (2020): “Political Will and Military Power,” Deccan Herald, 12 August, viewed on 4 November, https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/comment/political-will-and-military....

Miglani, Sanjeev and Drazen Jorgic (2019): “India, Pakistan Threatened to Unleash Missiles at Each Other: Sources,” Reuters, 17 March, viewed on 1 November, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-crisis-insight-idUSKCN1...

Pandit, Rajat (2020): “Confrontations on LAC Could Spiral Into Larger Conflict: CDS,” Times of India, 7 November, viewed on 15 November, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/lac-crisis-cant-rule-out-borde....\

Peri, Dinakar (2019): “Army’s Mountain Strike Corps to Conduct Exercise in Arunachal,” Hindu, 11 September, viewed on 15 October 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/armys-mountain-strike-corps-to-co....

Schelling, Thomas (1967): Arms and Influence, Washington, DC: Stimson Center.

Times of India (2019): “Situation Along LoC Can Escalate Any Time: Army Chief Bipin,” 18 December, viewed on 30 October 2020, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/72872824.cms?utm_source=c....

Walzer, Michael (1977): Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, London: Basic Books Classics.

 


Saturday 17 October 2020

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1gl4QibiF0

CISS Webinar on 'India’s Growing Strategic Capabilities: Dynamics and Consequences'

See from 45 min mark,1h 3 min mark and 1h 30 min mark. 

Thursday 15 October 2020

               https://ciss.org.pk/ciss-webinar-on-indias-growing-strategic-capabilities-dynamics-and-consequences/          

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES

INDIA’S GROWING STRATEGIC CAPABILITIES: DYNAMICS AND CONSEQUENCES

To begin with a brief Clausewitzian theoretical recap, that politics supersedes the strategic sphere.

Strategic theory has at the top of the intellectual pyramid political ideology.

Political ideology, when combined with constitutional verities, strategic culture, strategic circumstance etc, informs strategic philosophy at the next lower rung.

Strategic philosophy determines strategic doctrine.

While political ideology may be found in party manifestos, a national security white paper articulates the strategic philosophy and sets out the strategic doctrine.

The overarching strategic doctrine is translated by down-stream national security doctrines, such as the nuclear doctrine, and more narrowly, military, joint and service specific doctrines. 

Political ideology varying from radical on either end can vary from liberal to conservative.

Each has a counterpart strategic philosophy: offensive realism or defensive realism. While radical ideology lends itself to offensive realism, conservative and liberal ideologies can settle for either offensive or defensive liberalism.

Defensive realism is the husbanding of enough power to fulfil the ends of state and societal security, whereas offensive realism is to nurture power for its own sake, and, in addition to security, for other purposes such as for prestige.

The strategic philosophy determines the bias in strategic doctrine ranging from defensive, deterrence, offensive and compellence. 

With that as theoretical prelude, I will confine myself to Indian political developments, their strategic implications and their meaning for nuclear doctrine.

The principal feature in Indian politics over the recent past has been the firming in of the right wing at the helm of the state. As the government’s self-advertisement goes, it is a markedly different one from its predecessors. This self-confessed difference is important to register.

The political philosophy informing the Indian state is that of Hindutva. The reelection of the nationalist party last year led to its self-confidence in furthering its national transformation agenda.

What then are the strategic implications of Hindutva?

It is yet again an oft-reiterated self-advertisement of this government that it is offensive, proactive, muscular and strong-on-defence. It usually points to the ‘surgical strikes’ as evidence.

Theoretically put, it can be taken as a philosophical shift from defensive realism to offensive realism.

In terms of strategic doctrine, India’s subscribing to offensive realism means that it is now at the offensive segment of the defense-compellence continuum.

National security doctrines - that include military and nuclear doctrine – can therefore be expected to reflect this bias.

This is easy to see in conventional military doctrines.

The ‘Cold Start’ doctrine (CSD), as the name suggests, is an offensive one. The last army chief at long last publicly took ownership of the doctrine. The media from time to time carries reports of its ongoing operationalization of CSD, such as creation of integrated battle groups etc. 

What of the nuclear doctrine?

Whereas the nuclear doctrine has remained unchanged from its adoption in 2003, there are pulls aplenty for changing its critical pillars: No First Use; the balance between ‘credible’ and ‘minimum’; and the nature of retaliation.

To briefly mention two interlinked developments: the discussion around the NFU and the direction of technology.

Technical developments make feasible a move away from NFU.

The technical developments open the possibility of a counter force posture and thereby a potential move to first strike.

However, the professed nuclear doctrine remains unchanged making assertions on such a movement speculative, even if this is informed speculation.

That the official nuclear doctrine remains frozen could mean either of two things: one, that it has not changed or, two, that transparency - that doctrine promulgation itself suggests - is now replaced by ambiguity.  

It is easy to infer that with a changed political ideology, strategic philosophy and strategic doctrine there would be a change in nuclear doctrine.

The current nuclear doctrine informed as it is by ‘deterrence by punishment’ is already in the offensive deterrence segment, as against defensive deterrence in which is located deterrence by denial.

Further, the nuclear doctrine is not so much for deterrence alone.

The earlier conception was that nuclear weapons are to deter nuclear weapons use against India.

However, India’s nuclear doctrine adds ‘against Indian forces anywhere’. Thus, the nuclear doctrine is also being used to expand the scope for conventional operations.

Consequently, the nuclear doctrine is beyond offensive deterrence and bordering on compellence.

What are the strategic implications?

While the government is self-congratulatory on its muscular record on defence, I offer a moderating perspective.

Let’s take the ‘surgical strikes’.

The Pakistan army brushed off the surgical strikes on land. There was much ado over the effectiveness of aerial surgical strikes.

This means that while India may be quicker on the draw, it is wary of escalation.

Its response to the Chinese intrusions has also been rather reticent.

The explanation to the counter-intuitive continuation of ‘strategic restraint’ – the strategic doctrine of its predecessor - by this government lies at the political level.

The ruling party has an aspirational, transformation agenda. This is largely in the internal domain, a make-over of India. It is currently in the consolidation stage. It can afford to do without escalatory diversions in the external plane.

It hopes to reinforce deterrence against diversions from outside by projecting doctrines that are more offensive in content than actual. This projection of muscularity outside also has an internal utility, of consolidating Hindutva.

Thus, the change in doctrines is a work-in-progress. As Hindutva definitively takes over Indian political culture, India can be expected to self-consciously change doctrines.

India’s transformation to a majoritarian democracy is not assured. Covid, an economic downturn and the Chinese have upset the applecart somewhat.

Thus, a persistence in the doctrinal status quo is likely. A continuity in strategic restraint is foreseen. 

In the end, to get back to the topic – “India’s evolving nuclear thinking: Motives and strategic underpinnings”.

India’s evolving nuclear thinking is currently aspirational since its political motivations in Hindutva are now under consolidation.

However, the two are mutual constitutive. Nuclear doctrinal shift will help consolidate Hindutva as much as consolidation of Hindutva midwives a new nuclear doctrine. 

As to what might happen on Hindutva’s dominance of political culture is an open - and intriguing - question.