Stalking the brass hats for clues on ‘fusionism’
https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/stalking-the-brass-hats-for-clues
Departures from the normal have been coming in fast and furious lately. The latest instance is in the army’s think tank providing a forum for Tejasvi Surya to speak at a youth event inaugurating it’s month-long annual flagship program.
Interestingly, there is no reference to this on its website. It had earlier collaborated with Republic TV, the doyen of godi media, on a forces’ conclave.
What was incipient three decades back is now quite in the open.
Thirty years back at a Republic Day event at Shivaji Park, the arrival of Thackeray - of the then-in-recent-memory Mumbai riots infamy - on the invite of the southern army commander - witnessed fellow commanders of sister services walk off.
Thus far, such instances tending towards the new normal were highlighted as trends. Earlier it was important to apprise the military of the trajectory of its actions, with an intention to embarrass it into course correction. Now it would only be wasted breath.
Clearly, the time for calling out the military for departures from professional distance from political sphere is now past. Now, the ‘new normal’ is the reality.
The onset of the new normal can be seen a press release on a southern command exercise. Its first sentence atypically quotes yet another forgettable prime ministerial acronym.
The exercise itself appears a leaf out of Pakistan’s 1965 playbook, a diversion towards Kutch from the primary theatre to the north. Unseen, it hides the aim-plus of providing military deterrent cover for a crony capitalist’s oil refinery – at centre of the Indo-American bust-up over Indian refining of Russian oil - in close vicinity.
In contrast, the first tri-service amphibious exercise was held some four decades back. That exercise entailed a last-minute change in planned location from the eastern to western seaboard, with the lead planner presenting the exercise duly rewritten up within two days to the chiefs of staff committee, headed by Admiral Tahiliani. No hype, only professionals engaging quietly with their mandate.
Hype is characteristic of the new normal. Hype is the complemented by serving of police summons to those who pop the question: yeh kya ho raha hai bhai?
Hype five months-on since the four-day crisis, Op Sindoor, brings up a clue on the status of fusionism: whether Bihar elections are the impulse?
The latest media salvo has the army chief acceding to a choreographed return-of-the-war-hero civic reception on the tarmac upon his arrival in his hometown. Since an air force plane provides the backdrop, presumably his was an official trip to some obscure military post there; Rewa not being known as a consequential military station. The notion of conflict of interest being alien in general, it is best to leave it at that.
Even if we are to ignore the prominent role of a brahmin in the welcoming party as part of the new culture of that ruling-ideology dominated state, it would appear that the army chief genuinely believes info-war spiel.
And if we are not to ignore the brahmin in the welcoming ceremony, then the army chief is signalling, as is his wont going a step further than a predecessor in that such visits are now boldly in uniform, his is a bid for elevation mid-next year as chief of defence staff.
Fusion can only be taken further if believers are in the chair. This entails auditioning by self-selected candidates to unseen national security minders ensconced in locales ranging out to Keshav Kunj.
It appears that the regime’s rewiring over the past decade of the military is complete. The regime finally has the military it wishes for. Fusionism, called for by the chief of defence staff (p. 44), is in hand.
General Chauhan defined it as the infusion into the military of political ideologies rather than merely a collaborative interface with civil structures for the optimal utilization of national resources for securing the nation.
When the fusion of other agencies is already self-evidently complete, it is only incumbent on the military bandwagon. In any case, in an authoritarian milieu, its leadership cannot be expected to be martyr.
What does this imply for the defence of the realm?
The regime has indicated Op Sindoor continues and the army chief has claimed Op Sindoor 2.0 is ongoing, and only up until recently, the regime had placed India also at odds with a far mightier neighbor.
Such a strategic circumstance suggests that it must wish for a thoroughly professional military and fusionism enhances professionalism somehow.
Fusionism implies the apolitical plank of the military has withered. As for secular, the army chief’s rather visible temple going does not hold out much promise. Since being apolitical and secular are indicators of professionalism, perhaps the regime is sanguine with merely a professional military, so long as it is ideologically fused within it.
In other words, the lack is compensated for by the compliance that ideological fusion implies. Such militaries are not unknown, such as in present-day China, and precedence of their efficacy exists even among great powers, such as Stalin’s Russia that beat another military of equal worth and with similar structural links backward to a genocidal autocrat, the Wehrmacht.
To Huntingtonian purists that might be sacrilege, but a military apex fused with the regime allows for subjective civilian control of the military (p. 80). This may not be as facilitative of military effectiveness in a democratic setting as its opposite, objective control (p. 83), but for the regime’s purposes it suffices.
In any case Huntington’s model did not dwell on military effectiveness as much on the manner of its subordination. Also, in any case, a plural, civic democracy is under replacement by electoral autocracy and cultural nationalism.
Arguably, since there is no existential threat to the country, the premium on military effectiveness can be downgraded, at least temporarily till atmanirbharta plays out in full by mid-next decade or so; with the Sudarshan chakra dome taken as milestone.
India has not only generated at long last a two-front dilemma for Pakistan, but thanks to the advent of Trump II has also cozied up to China lately.
In regard to the latter, disengagement is done with – reportedly at a cost in territorial concessions kept from the voting public. Follow-up de-escalation may not be on the cards at all.
As regards Pakistan, the prime minister, assuming Op Sindoor was ‘war’, says, ‘the remarkable coordination of all three forces forced Pakistan to surrender so quickly during Operation Sindoor.’ That Trump’s self-touted intervention - for sure on the Pakistani side - belies this narrative.
Notwithstanding this, the illusion must be kept up for electoral purposes. It’s a separate matter that just as Op Parakram was mildly wrapped up, so might the successor Op Sindoor 2.0 fizzle away after the Bihar elections.
On internal security, over one-fifth of Modi’s Diwali speech aboard an aircraft carrier lauded paramilitary operations in Central India, which in a telling slip of tongue he described as, “war (is) fought within one’s own land.”
When the prime minister himself holds that the war was against “misguided youth who once carried 303 rifles,” its incomprehensible how, “one day, volumes will be written about how this form of internal guerrilla warfare was handled. The world will study how Bharat’s brave forces destroyed Maoist terrorism through their valour and strategy.”
This, when he added that forces have, “nearly eradicated this 50-year-old scourge in the last 10 years, they have succeeded in about 90% of the cases.”
Since this sounds suspiciously like a premature declaration of victory, quite of a piece with the exultation over Op Sindoor, no patriot could wish it the fate of a more famous declaration of victory from the deck of another aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln.
The speech at sea extolling men in khakis to sailors betrays not merely persistence of a continental mindset, but ignorance of the sociology of armed forces; specifically, ignorance of the universally held disdain in militaries for the paramilitary.
Incidentally, the speech had 10 hails for bharat mata, 9 vande mataram chants and 3 cheers for the victory of Chhatrapati Shivaji – and numerous unmilitary outbreaks of on-cue clapping.
Evidently, the speech writer suffers from a mistaken belief that sailors – and wider soldiery - are enthused by calls to nationalism. Little does he know that it is primary group cohesion and the concept of ‘naam, namak, nishan’ that drives the Indian military.
Staying with the domestic front a little longer, there is seemingly no longer any need of the army – as was the case three decades back. An exasperated army chief’s media outburst on being called out in aid to civil authorities had resulted in a stricture from the defence minister.
Today, the alacrity in Delhi riots’ case suggests that the police is even capable of pre-empting regime change, as it has read up on the “the international theory developed in the past few years [that has] termed these kinds of organised/sponsored protests as ‘regime change operation(s)’.”
Presumably the showing in Central India has validated the coming of age of the men in khakis. This is a longstanding requirement set by a Kargil Review Committee Task Force and the follow-up ministerial committee.
Dissonance on achievement of this threshold cannot be permitted by a closer look at the happenings in Manipur or Ladakh and the unsustainable and unconscionable status quo in Kashmir. And resolution of India’s oldest insurgency, in Nagaland, has been deftly kicked down the road.
Reflexively, it would appear that fusionism entailing a dilution in military professionalism does not secure India. However, such a conclusion is when security is viewed in the traditional lens.
Instead, India’s giantism is its external security guarantee. This dilutes the military’s centrality. Consequently, the military can be trifled with to the extent of enervation of its professionalism.
Instead, regime security is the appropriate security referent. The regime’s ambitious ideology-ordained course necessitates the military keep in step. For this fusionism has been thought up and subscribers suitably positioned.
This facet of the ‘new normal,’ a term otherwise referring to India’s supposed strategic shift, implies the strategic gaze must now fixate less on the military’s pliability but rest on the meaning of the regime’s ideology-inspired portentous next steps for national security.
