India
needs a national security doctrine for furthering jointness
The absence of a national security doctrine is much lamented. The necessity of a strategic doctrine being rather obvious, here an additional argument is made that India’s efforts towards jointness can potentially be stepped up in case informed by a national security doctrine.
India’s civil-military
relations are such that the military is left out of the policy
loop
but, almost as though in compensation, is allowed doctrinal and operational
space. However, the three services - like the proverbial blind men of Hindoostan
examining an elephant – end up appraising war through the prism of the
respective domains - land, sea and air - each is predominant in. A Chief of
Defence Staff (CDS), being first
among equals, is not empowered enough to adjudicate.
Some of the areas that
have emerged in India’s recent fledgling steps
towards jointness can be illumined by an authoritative and a suitable referent.
A national security doctrine can place ideational tensions – controversies if
you will - that have emerged in the jointness debates in perspective; thereby,
assisting the armed forces to take the next doctrinal and structural steps
towards jointness with alacrity.
The
story so far
General Bipin Rawat was
tasked
to further jointness, simply put as conducting military operations with an
‘All-for-one and one-for-all’ approach. There are two lines for bringing about
change towards jointness: doctrinal and structural. The former approach builds on
the periodic doctrinal
products of the military, including that of the HQ IDS that
have dealt with joint
doctrine. Structural change could then follow. Hampered by
non-availability of a higher-order doctrine, General Rawat privileged structural
change as precursor to a meeting of minds over jointness.
Pushback
on Rawat’s visualization
of front-specific integrated theatre commands was quick. The Indian Air Force (IAF)
has long held that the numbers of squadrons and aircraft were limited
in relation to the scope of wartime operations. Their employment philosophy
has been centralized control-decentralized execution, taking advantage of characteristics
of air power afforded by air space: speed, flexibility and versatility. Were
joint theatre commands to come up, it would add to procedural tedium, with turf
battles decreasing responsiveness and heightening uncertainty that attends
military operations.
As part of the debate, Rawat
- perhaps inadvertently - sparked off acrimony with candid expression of his
view that in a border conflict, the Air Force had a supportive
role,
likening the Air Force with support arms as artillery. On their part, an air
power strategist
argues that, “the IAF must be able to degrade and delay PLA … carry out
interdiction of communication lines ranging from 150 km … fight to create and
maintain a favourable air situation over a limited area … revisit all the
classical roles of offensive airpower within a limited war framework.”
Alongside such support
for the army’s operations on land, the
Air Force bids for continuing relevance as a strategic player, that - acting
jointly - can deliver war
winning advantages and outcomes. Not oblivious to
developments in air power, it maintains
that its roles of taking the war to the enemy through ‘parallel
warfare’, comprising, inter-alia, an offensive strategic
air campaign and counter air operations, must inform war strategy.
Similar in kind was the
controversy in relation to the Navy. CDS Rawat favoured
a sea-denial capability predicated on submarines, while the Navy
plugged
for a carrier
battle group based sea-control
capability. Its maritime
strategy places sea control as the ‘central concept around
which the Indian Navy will be employed’ for ‘strategic effect’. Naval strategists
argue that in a conflict provoked in the Himalayas by China, India could take
recourse to pressurizing
China in the maritime domain. India must take advantage
of India’s strategic location in relation to the sea lines of communication and
bottlenecks in the Indo-Pacific.
Matters
for inclusion
A national security
doctrine can not only dispel such ‘controversies’, but also preempt other doctrinal
disagreements. From the debates is visible thrust towards conflict limitation.
As the controversy involving the Air Force indicates, with air power pitching
in, vertical escalation has to be reckoned with. Likewise, a maritime answer to
a possible predicament posed by China in the Himalayas - of geographical
expansion into the maritime domain - spells horizontal escalation.
Escalation implies more
resources sucked in and higher political stakes. It has intrinsic dynamics that
inevitably impact the bounds of a war originally intended as a limited one. However,
acquiring capabilities that carry the war to the enemy enables being undaunted
by the manipulation of the threat of escalation by the other side. This helps
with deterrence, since an enemy would be doubly wary of taking on an adversary with
human, physical and conceptual elements primed for escalation. Limitation
implies having the capability for it for deterrence sake, but refraining
deliberately as a policy choice.
Thus, there is a
tension between war-fighting and deterrence, the capabilities and readiness for
demonstrating either being much the same. The build-up of capabilities leads to
an interstate contestation under a ‘security
dilemma’, in which military related actions of one state are
viewed as a threat and matched by the neighbour. This plays out in peace time as
arms racing.
Capabilities are obtained
over time and at a steep cost, in addition to a hidden opportunity cost.
Weighing between the short haul preparedness and preparation over the long
durée is required. Further, cultural change necessary to internalize
makeovers takes longer.
Finally, the untimely departure
of the protagonist of the process, General Rawat, and delay
in the appointment of his successor indicates the salience of the triple-hatted
CDS. Left untouched
by Rawat was the command and control arrangement. India can neither revert to
the British era commander-in-chief model nor can the CDS as Permanent Chair of
the Chiefs of Staff Committee run a war by committee.
Though the Services
have been tasked to submit studies,
the bottom-up approach can do with some direction from top. These are issue
areas that the Services would require political direction on. Instead of a
blue-ribbon commission on defence reform, India has had a succession of
committees since the Kargil War as substitute and has implemented many of the
conclusions reached. A national
security doctrine is an essential next step.
The
government needs stepping up
Doctrinal conundrums do
not necessarily have a ‘right’ answer. This necessitates political engagement,
with politics as ‘the art of the possible’. A strategic doctrine defines the
place of use of force in the broader national scheme. The policy maker can use
the document constructively to elaborate on vexed issues holding up jointness. Further,
the political master must follow-up by lending imprimatur to a joint doctrine
and structures that emerge thereafter.
A government distinct
in the way it approaches defence has an additional onus to be responsive on
this score to calls from the strategic
community. Political dividend
is a low hanging fruit. National security reform with the national security
doctrine as a central agenda item should figure in the creation of New
India.
There is no dearth of
draft afloat on such a higher order doctrine. In run up to the last elections,
the opposition
had articulated a national security strategy. Lately, even Pakistan
adopted a human security-centric national security policy. Press reports
have it that the National Security Adviser-led Defence Planning Committee,
tasked with writing up the strategy, has a draft.
Even if the main
document is kept confidential, as with the nuclear
doctrine put in the open domain through a press release, it
can be given out in an abridged form. The impending appointment of the next
CDS
provides an opportunity, with the Azadi
ka Amrit Mahotsav as appropriate backdrop.
