https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/india-a-strategic-audit-does-not?sd=pf

India: A strategic audit does not really matter

India, long a power in its own right, has been reckoned as an emerging great power. In Barack Obama’s words of the mid 2010s, "India is not simply an emerging power, but a world power." Perhaps that was a bit of over-the-top diplomacy on Obama’s part, trying to pull India into his ‘pivot to Asia’ reconstruct of United States (US) strategic policy. The pieces of that policy, that involved a shift of focus on a central strategic balance in Europe to the Indo-Pacific, are only now falling into place. Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine could have potentially put the clock back, that it has floundered, has fortified China as the principal and implacable challenger to the US’ interests and hegemony.

India, playing along to the extent its multi/pluri-lateral foreign policy provides it leeway, has a foot in both camps. Its locational advantage gives it some eminence as a potential frontline state in the new Cold War. Wooed by both sides, India also has a sense of self-importance. However, its pronounced bias towards the US-led one makes of it a subordinate partner. Condoleeza Rice’s public promise once to make India a great power, prematurely let the cat out of the bag.

India: Not quite a great power

What’s certain is that India is not a great power. While this could once be qualified by the caveat ‘as yet’, today it is a far shot. Its development indices are not up to it. Absent checks, India’s A2 policy, aping zaibatsu and chaebol, is crony capitalism run rampant.  The threat to democracy is evident from the bid of the ‘deeply overleveraged’ Adani group, on behalf of political mentors, reaching out last week to stifle the lone outpost in India today for free media. Also, from the government’s fudging of the statistical score-card, it is unclear that India can get back as an economic race horse any time soon.

Significantly, it is regressing on state formation – with institutions hollowed out - and nation building – with its social cohesion in question. A critical viewing of the latest Aamir Khan hit, Laal Singh Chaddha, tells as much. The fact that Khan takes care to circumnavigate the ‘malaria’ being spread by Hindutva and uses the usual Muslim-denigrating tropes – such as Muslim mafia’s control of Bollywood - to advance the film’s narrative is a giveaway. The very intelligent artist that he is, Khan tacitly messages that the times are unsuitable for the movie to refer to, for instance, the most significant incident of this century (as it has turned out): the Gujarat pogrom.

Clearly, soft power based on democratic values has been traded for an authoritative profile for its leader, appropriately viewed elsewhere as authoritarian. The national security implications of the democratic deficit have elided strategic commentary. The silence itself indicates this as a area of concern. An instance is the absence of discussion on the national security fallout of a pet project of Hindutva: the National Population Register and its implications for Muslim India.

India persists with a single-point foreign policy fixated on terrorism – at a time when terrorism has been roundly defeated – makes its contribution to forums - as most recently by the defence minister at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - two-bit (do kauri) worth. India’s foreign policy resources that are notably slim in relation to its size are inordinately invested in placing notables onto the terror list in order to embarrass terror sponsor Pakistan and Pakistan sponsor China.

This tells something of the regime’s national security system in which the fixations and expertise of its national security adviser pervade both defence and diplomacy, making it an intelligence-predominant one with the attendant pathologies that can be expected to go with such an arrangement. Since information access and institutional billets are now controlled by this cabal, there is little incentive for the media to expose or veteran fraternities to feed policy.

Consequently, India’s contribution in the Security Council during its ongoing non-permanent membership has been pedestrian. In keeping silent on egregious Russian violation of international law, it has traded its vote on normative issues for oil. At the fag-end of its two year tenure, for the first time it voted against Russia in a procedural vote allowing the Ukrainian president to address the Council virtually. The war dragging on into its sixth month, the Permanent Five cannot alone be blamed.

India: A regional power?

Even as a regional power, India’s credentials are in doubt. India has been an insignificant player in the most prominent regional conflict through the two-decades of the conflict’s duration, Afghanistan. At one time it had only biscuit distribution to Afghan school children to boast of. It has been a non-entity in the end-game there. Though it had two years to reach out to the resurgent Taliban, it scooted past a closing door. Retracing its steps now has lost India’s voice some four years.

It continues to be absent in addressing the crisis in Myanmar, though its resolution is central to India’s Act East policy, that is part of its Indo-Pacific policy package. It is checkmated by China in its own backyard, the latest episode being the docking of a Chinese surveillance ship in Sri Lanka over India’s objections. Bangladesh has risen economically with little Indian buoy. Bhutan is on its own trip in engaging China, though India claimed to have staked out Doklam on its behalf.

Militarily, its military actions – ‘surgical strikes’ on one side and defence of territory on the other - have been less than enthusing. Though faced with a Chinese intrusion - at the most remote part of its land frontier - India chose to use its military for talks across a table, rather than on the battlefield. An occasional ‘tu-tu-main-main’ does little to embellish India’s power credentials, even if China deigns to reply or open a round on its own. The latest is India’s lite take on the Taiwan crisis – after over a week of dithering - being followed by Chinese decrying Indian military exercises with the US in vicinity of the contested boundary in the central sector.

On the Pakistan front, with a putative two-front challenge manifesting in the Ladakh intrusion by China, India speedily calibrated its west-oriented military power. This buries the unwritten strategic posture dating to the seventies that in case of two-front war, India would first prevail quickly in the west and then stall China in the east. Now, India appears to be settling for defensive deterrence on the Pakistan front and the traditional deterrence by denial against China.

Though the home minster only this week said that troubles in Kashmir owe to Pakistani proxy war, infiltration figures show the notion up as an effort at passing the buck. Instead, that Pakistan has not upped the ante in Kashmir. Pakistan’s internal focus and stabilizing Afghanistan, keeps it from exploiting the diluted deterrence. Secret talks have kept it placated, indicating that they have expectations from the evolving situation. If unmet, with conventional parity now the order, the future could see a shift in Pakistan’s posture depending on how India plays its Kashmir hand.

Pointers are that Indian hawks will aggravate matters in Kashmir by trying to manipulate the vote, but not in the gauche 1987 mode. Their latest sleight-of-hand was in trying to get voters onto electoral rolls through the back door, by including security forces’ members and outsider labour as voters. An fertile ground prepared by misconceived policies cannot but see Kashmir keep India tied down to South Asia indefinitely.

At the cusp of great power

It is apparent that over the last eight years the reasonably-credible legacy of the much-disparaged previous government has been squandered. In wake of the 26/11 decision by India not to respond militarily had been assiduously used through the subsequent years to do down the then government’s strategic posture. That spurred the government on to revisit its strategic posture, agreeing – if reluctantly – to countenance a ‘two front’ threat. By when it departed it had agreed to a mountain strike corps and beefed up the eastern theatre with two divisions. Patrols on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) visited points that have been placed off limits since 2020. It had sufficient political capital with Beijing to have it revert to status quo ante in Ladakh after the Depsang incident in 2013. In contrast, India has suffered repeated intrusions in the tenure of the current regime – one when the Chinese president was sitting on a swing at the prime minister’s home state.

On the Pakistan front, it shifted to an offensive posture, from the traditional one of offensive deterrence. A national security adviser of the period informs of contemplating a first strike. The circumstance of this would only have been one created by a successful conventional offensive, instigating Pakistani to ready nuclear weapon in a first use mode. This indicates India’s as an offensive strategic doctrine. The Line of Control was occasionally active, with an army chief extolling aggressive tactical level commanders. From the highpoint of unrest in 2010, Kashmir reverted to quietude – without the suppression that now goes with the term.

National security institutions received a structural boost after 26/11. National security debate was at its zenith, with the government at the receiving end. Two episodes of civil-military tension arose, only one of which was militarily relevant (the resignation of a naval chief over non-delivery from the civilian side of the support necessary to keep the submarine fleet seaworthy), though the second one (of the army chief wanting to keep 4, Rajaji Marg, within the family) is the more famous. Today we see what a commentator avers to as ‘politico-military collusion’.  

On foreign policy, that government too had its ‘Howdy Trump’ moment in Manmohan Singh expressing India’s ‘love’ for Bush Jr. Even so, its performance in the Security Council was more credible, as the book by a minister in the current government - who was India’s permanent representative at the horse shoe table - testifies. Though it abstained on the resolutions that tarnished the UN’s flagship role back then -Responsibility to Protect – subsequent events proved it apt in its critique. Today its voting behavior contradicts its rhetoric on critical concerns that constitute the normative center of gravity of the UN: non-aggression against political independence and territorial integrity of a state.

There was one blemish to internal security. The government, mindful of the Hindu vote bank being manufactured by supporters of its right wing challenger by using terror perpetrated under false flag operations, was unable to find the gumption to turn the tables on it. It allowed the provincial government under Modi to wiggle out of culpability for the Gujarat pogrom under cover of a judicially appointed Special Investigation Team. It did not follow up on the killing in a black operation of Hemant Karkare, compensating by awarding him an Ashoka Chakra. How this subterfuge led to his widow’s death from brain haemorrhage is easy to see. 

This was perhaps out of sensibility for the grandeur of the State. It did not want the State to be besmirched if the truth on both counts spilt out - that elements of the State were participant in the pogrom and partially constituted the ‘deep state’ lending a shoulder for the black operations perpetrated terror. It gullibly hoped for a trade-off in the right wing playing by the rules in exchange for being let off. In the event, it turned out misplaced solicitousness, besides being a historic misreading of Modi’s character.

The slide ever since

Modi’s vaulting ambition was better read by the fierce capitalist forces it had unleashed in a previous avatar in the turn to neo-liberalism. These were now both funding and riding the ‘Modi wave’ to power. The marriage of capital with obscurantism has proved hardy ever since, and isn’t done as yet. Current-day Enforcement Directorate raids and toppling of state governments by moneybags has portents of worse to come. The combine can do without democratic urges, the thirst for freedom quenched by Azadi ka Mahautsav jamborees and visions for the future satisfied by the mirage of Amrit Kaal. 

The internally-directed information warfare agenda does not allow a decent measure to be taken of India’s strategic deficits accumulated since. Strategic analysts deployed to turn out hagiographies of Modi and his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, should be named and shamed for letting their clients, the attentive public, down. Critical analysts, such as redoubtable Gautam Navlakha, have been jailed on trumped-up charges based on insertions of ‘evidence’ into personal laptops by information warriors from the intelligence fraternity. Movies are being churned out - funded from an unaudited intelligence budget - fudging contemporary history, even as some others purvey a politically charged version of more remote history.

It befuddles how nationalism can be inspired by lies, which suggests that the effort is more for enabling a cult status for Modi transferable into votes. A like status for the adviser too is the price for misdirecting tax-payer monies. The tradition of relying on self-regulating intelligence czars set by Indira Gandhi in her reliance on Kao – subject of hagiographies as part of the same perception management exercise - has been self-interestedly maintained.

The initial years found Prime Minister Modi globetrotting. His bear hugs were packaged as India’s moment of arrival. However, from a profile of ‘reformer-in-chief’, it went on to be ‘divider-in-chief’. Modi counts among the world’s authoritarians. India is only notionally a democracy, forcing an opposition leader to observe that with institutions in the bag, votes are easy pickings. Hyping yoga cannot compensate for such loss in soft power and advocating Hindi as a UN language cannot win any friends, especially when there is no consensus on Hindi back home.

Strategically speaking, running with hares and hunting with hounds is now the able handiwork of the ever-dapper minister, Dr. Jaishankar. The information war cover provided by keyboard armies ensures that every twist is justified as prompted by national interest, be it Modi being feted by Nawaz Sharif at Raiwind or ‘katti’ with Pakistan after the entirely predictable Pathankot attack. Diplomacy absent, intelligence-led secret talks with Pakistan and the military in the lead with China, begs the question how the Ministry of External Affairs justifies its budget.

Doublespeak persists with the foreign minister insisting that the LAC is not normal, while the defence minister persists with the ‘no intrusion’ line from his prime minister’s ill-timed all-party meeting at the snow-balling in the Galwan incident of the underreported-till-then Ladakh crisis. Information denial and manipulation with an intelligence hand at the rudder is now a fine art. Directed at ensuring political consolidation of the reigning ideology, Hindutva, and its presiding deity, Modi, it is abuse of the professional ethic and tax payer money. 

An instance is hyping of the China threat as one needing warding off by soldiers in the tens of thousands. Though India has the power - husbanded over the past 12 years since India’s own pivot to the China front in a genuflection to its patron US’ shift then - it is unable and unwilling to use it. This reveals a political-strategic infelicity - unfamiliarity with the use of force short of war and limiting war in case of escalation. Making a virtue of a necessity, social engineering through the Agnipath scheme is part of the cost borne by the army, besides the reputational hit.

Equally importantly, the policy choice is myopic in its jettisoning of environmental laws in the cutting strategic roads on the fragile Himalayas. Future generations inhabiting the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin will bear extreme weather events, plus water scarcity from receding glaciers. There is absolutely no attention to environmental aspects of strategy, a field that must be added to the traditional strategic factors: operational, social, economic, political, technological, legal and logistical. Innovation cannot come from a national security establishment which has ideological conformism as leitmotif, judging from the two successive military advisers appointed (the earlier one is now quasi-Chief of Defence Staff). Upping of its budget – a thrice-over hike in 2017 – is only retrospectively understood to have been for the Pegasus that - as events turned out - was for waging war on democracy. Its success is apparent in the Supreme Court - a tangential victim – passing over the matter under the ‘doctrine of sealed covers’.

India not a power in a theoretically sustainable sense

Detoxification appears a surmountable problem in relation to the set back to democracy that the strategic establishment has wrought by its complicity in and silence over Hindutva. It is not the primary national security threat as the princeling rightly, though confidentially, had it once. Instead, Hindutva is the national interest. Re-crafting national interest entails retrieving political culture. Since the other political parties are sent scurrying by gimmicks as revdi and scattered by ‘lotus operations’, there is little hope of rescue of the Constitutional scheme. The upshot is that power is not of consequence externally as much as internally. Internally, the field is conquered. Hindutva consolidated, awaits another electoral sweep for culmination in a revamped Constitution, helpfully already written up in Kanpur by a set of saffronite seers.

In conclusion, a strategic audit of India traditionally envisaged is inapplicable. The problem is similar to that of appraising Hitler’s war-time strategy: Should he have attacked Russia even as the west held out? Should he have gone for investing Leningrad and Moscow or raced for the oil in the Caucasus? Should he have exhausted his military power on untenable frontlines on the Russian front when he could have pulled back to defensible lines?

What this rumination prompts is that though there is a precipitous drop within a mere decade in India’s credentials as a power – from cusp of great power to a questionable regional power – it is inconsequential. In the Hindutva scheme, external appearances only matter to the extent as to how they are received in the domestic space. Domestic perceptions can be managed adroitly; therefore, ratings on power – especially when negative as with other indices as freedom of speech, human rights, economy etc - are passé. The regime’s paradigm dominance compels even a strategic audit as this to bow to its diktat: What matters is Hindutva firming-in; all else, piffle.

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/tupolevs-and-the-place-of-nukes-in

Tupolevs and the place of nukes in India’s grand strategy

Note: The news is unconfirmed, with one informant saying that the former Air Chief was misquoted. Even so, the analysis stands.

In its typical style, India’s regime pulled a rabbit from its nuclear hat. It’s reportedly going in for six Tupolev strategic bombers. The unveiling was in a curious manner, a former Air Chief going public with the news at a conference. But as is its habit, there was no preceding discussion on the move. Even India’s leading nuclear hawk, Bharat Karnad, who has long advocated such moves, was also pleasantly surprised at the conference.

It seems India’s Strategic Planning Staff of (SPS) is in full gear. But the SPS can only propose and presumably does so with a strategic rationale. Acceptance of an SPS proposal at the political level can only genuflect to strategy. It is informed by political parameters that, in India’s case, do not all necessarily have external, geopolitical stimuli. The impulse behind the decision therefore cannot be sought in looking at power equations and how the next war might play out, as is the wont of strategists. Instead, in India’s case, it must be seen against the principle political project of the regime: the consolidation of Hindutva.

India’s grand strategy

India’s grand strategy has so far eluded strategists. Their excuse is that it has not been written down. To critics, this is because it does not exist. This helps the strategic community to pussy-foot round the elephant in the room for some 100 years now: Hindutva. Strategic vocabulary, largely a product of rationalist-modern conception of state as a social contract centered on the Constitution, cannot easily accommodate an identity-based idea of the Indian nation. The National Security Adviser (NSA)-led Defence Planning Committee – mandated to write up the national security strategy - cannot admit to this as impulse, since identity is seen as infra-dig in a rational-modern undertaking. Personal politics keeps NSA Ajit Doval from taking cue from Foreign Minister Jaishankar’s helpful rumination on ancient well springs of Indian strategic philosophy. So, India’s grand strategy eight years into the Narendra Modi era, notwithstanding the regime’s boasts of being strong-on-defence, is still under wraps.

For our purposes here, even as the charade continues, the grand strategy can arguably be inferred from the strategic actions of the regime. In its first term, the regime went about consolidating itself in power, in order that it could propagate Hindutva, its ideological fount. It sought to set the external environment in a manner as to not upset its internal aim. Its second tenure sees Hindutva as the dominant political philosophy in political culture. External stability is prerequisite to ensure longevity of and deepening of hold of this political philosophy over Indian minds.   

Having set the internal house in order with the political (and partially social) dominance of Hindutva in the run up to and winning of the 2014 elections, the regime in its first term shifted to strategic proactivism. Its excuse for strategic assertiveness was that its reaching out to Pakistan not having met with due regard, left it with no recourse. Recall Modi’s visit to Sharif’s home was spurned in the terror attack on Pathankot airfield.  

Soon enough it was disabused of its illusions over strategic assertion by both neighbours. Not only did Pakistan strike back within 48 hours of Indian aerial surgical strikes, but drew blood in aerial combat as it did so. Modi was reduced to rhetoric, referring to nuclear weapons as not meant for ‘diwali’. As for the China front, he publicly dissimulated on intrusions in Ladakh, hoping his sway over the discourse would carry the day. In the event, talks have traded Indian operational space for the Modi dispensation claim of staring down the Chinese. Its deterrence bid having drawn a blank at Doklam, there is a turn to strategy: to one of appeasement.

As things stand, there is quietude on the Pakistan front. With Pakistan preoccupied internally, recently revealed secret talks have not been taken to their logical conclusion. Pakistan is holding out to see developments in Kashmir, namely, elections and reversion to the India-promised statehood. India developed cold feet in Kashmir – after the Gupkar signatories upturned its Kashmir strategy in local level elections. Unsure that electoral chicanery – by manipulation of the assembly constituencies by a demarcation commission – will gain the regime a puppet in Srinagar, India is held up on elections.

Against China, an interminable round of military talks continues, supplemented with working level diplomatic talks designed to go nowhere. The Special Representative – who is the NSA – and the defence and foreign ministers have studiously kept from taking the talks forward. The regime, despite its parliamentary majority, is unwilling to invest politically in border talks. Their scope is now to retain the post-intrusion status quo, while dressing it up internally as a partial - for now - return to status quo ante. China is reportedly building infrastructure on talks’ process-conceded Indian land, but official prevarication continues.

Almost as if messaging both neighbours, India has shelved its strategic proactivism of the first term. Not only has the Chief of Defence Staff appointment been kept unfilled for unconscionably long, but a newly launched scheme – Agnipath – has been thought up to scupper the military. The military is kept introspective with reforms (integrated theatre commands) and an offensive turn (integrated battle groups (IBG)) taking their leisurely pace. Only one offensive IBG has been conjured up on the Pakistan front since the concept was envisaged twenty years ago as part of Cold Start doctrinal thinking. Its forces are kept operationally deployed in a supposedly deterrent posture on the China front, though doing so interminably will lead to a tiring out in the middle term. It’s going in for reducing the Army’s numbers, can only attenuate this problem. 

What we see is a dilution in strategic posture on both fronts. This is of a piece with a policy of appeasement. Appeasement having a bad press, it is obfuscated over by initiatives as the currently ongoing exercise with troops of the United States (US) and, in a first, talks with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Appeasement is projected as temporary, to tide over India catching up with China’s head-start of some 10 years and to end the ‘two front’ problem by having the failing state, Pakistan, fall off the equation. The interim is to be used to build up muscle power – (Rafale, air craft carrier, S-400, nuclear powered and armed submarines etc) and its projection capability through, for instance, road building and jointness. By end decade, a self-confident India could then credibly fend off China. Evidently the Ukraine example of taking down a formidable foe happened rather too late for India to emulate. ‘By not losing, Ukraine wins’ is a concept of victory subscribed to by underdogs. India – a civilisation at par with China – cannot see itself as underdog.  

The external prong of strategy allows for breathing space to consolidate Hindutva internally. Having seen what a mere intrusion could do – be it in Kargil or Ladakh - Hindutva cannot countenance instability resulting from issues with neighbours getting out of hand. Modi would prefer to forego an Indira moment (1971) rather than chance a Nehru moment (1962). Military resort being intrinsically of uncertain result cannot be hazarded. Therefore, war avoidance is best.

Deterrence and appeasement are two strategic options that furnish such an aim. Deterrence having failed, appeasement is the default option. It buys time for Hindutva – through gimmicks as Agnipath – to militarise Indians, enabling internal balancing. Alongside, external balancing is by taking on Pakistan’s hitherto role as rentier state, offering India’s strategic location for the US for use in its faceoff against challenger China. Deft diplomatic footwork is expected to keep the strategic pot from boiling over.

Locating nukes

This rather long introduction is to help situate nuclear weapons in India’s strategy. The current storm in the tea cup is the reported intention to acquire the Tupolev 160 for the role of a strategic bomber. An ability to threaten China’s eastern seaboard would stay Beijing’s nuclear hand. Having both the nuclear and conventional advantages, China has escalation dominance.

A serving Indian colonel, writing for the website of the Army’s think tank, bids for counter value targeting by India for deterring China. He advocates that India, “(A)dopt a ‘Conditional First Use’, nuclear policy which would permit India to launch its counter value nuclear strikes if the casus-belli of Indian Redlines are crossed.” Intriguingly, his very next point rides on the back of a Herman Kahn quote: “holding the enemy’s population centres as intact Hostages can guarantee survival of own population centers.” With this, he contradicts himself, in that if India is to go counter value at first blush, then how are cities held hostage? Cities can be held hostage if India does not go in for counter value targeting on its invoking the ‘conditional First Use’ when China trips up a trip wire. The author predicates First Use with ‘conditional’ as he appears shy of calling for ‘first use’ right off. No First Use (NFU) has been India’s virtue signaling for close to a half-century. Jettisoning it is not easy for the colonel. All first use is ‘conditional’, even a ‘bolt from the blue’ first strike – conditional on, say, a closing window of opportunity. In any case, India’s NFU has been undercut by at least two defence ministers, who sit in its Nuclear Command Authority.

What’s intriguing is advocacy for first use to be massive (counter value or the going after cities, and, if Karnad is persuasive, dams). It would expose India to counter strike of more grievous proportion. This blindsides India’s vulnerabilities. It is implausible that the incomplete-as-yet acquisition of the S-400 and nuclear defences, that rest on the defence research organization’s tall claims and tunneling in environmentally vulnerable mountain zones, can assuage these concerns.

Nuclear thinker, Ashley Tellis, in his latest opus for the Carnegie think tank, writes that despite nuclear developments across the board in Southern Asia, India largely maintains its nuclear doctrine of deterrence by punishment, predicated on NFU and punitive retaliation. However, both have come under cloud. As per the preceding NSA, India contemplated the launch-on-warning option, that, to a couple of strategic hands has first strike proportions. Tellis informs there is not only doctrinal flexibility but also operational capability for proportionate retaliation. Even so, he flogs his quarter-century old thesis of the Indian deterrent being more of a force-in-being.

However, there is a sound perspective that the deterrent is more readily usable and in a war fighting mode informed by deterrence by denial. Pakistan has broadcast its deterrence by denial philosophy, which when matched with India’s deterrence by punishment promises escalation. Since India has more to lose and Pakistan – having little - has little to lose, escalation dominance is not necessarily in India’s favour. Against China, it would be fool hardy to provoke higher order exchanges from a position of disadvantage. India too has much to lose, therefore cannot replicate Pakistan’s gung-ho attitude to wrest escalation dominance from China.

Escalation dominance is not about equations alone, it’s also judgments on moral strength. What stays the hand of a decision maker is the assessed degree of hurt received, even if what makes a finger itchy is the degree of harm that can be inflicted. The hurt-harm calculus is central to escalation dominance, more a moral than a material factor. In India’s case it must be seen against the Hindutva project, central to the regime’s grand strategy.  

Returning to the Tupolev

Tellis’ thesis on Indian nuclear conservatism – sticking with a doctrine beyond its sell-by date - better explains the acquisition of the capability to inflict punitive retaliation that is conferred by the Tupolev. The regime is tacitly revealing a capability to hit mainland China. The capability is questionable since a nuclear package would require half of India’s Air Force to see it through to target. The force package for the Balakot strike and the response to Pakistan’s Operation Swift Retort indicate as much. Losing the Tupolev enroute – the defence-offence game always being of indefinite outcome – would be equivalent to losing the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales. Therefore, its fit with the regime’s grand strategy is a better way to figure out what it really means.

There is little threat of the two sides coming to meaningful blows. Post-spring 2020, China is satiated, having never claimed Ladakh beyond its 1959 claim line. It has kept up a notional claim to ‘South Tibet’, but having vacated it in 1962 has left the difficulties of its  defence to tie India down. Evidently, Tibetan territorial interests only instrumentally drive the Chinese. In any case, Indian deterrence, regurgitated with two divisions, has held up. India is not about to precipitate matters in light of its switch to appeasement. Its plurilateralism allows cover for engaging China, with trade hitting record highs as is the adverse trade balance. Even Chinese provocation of the levels that obtained in Ladakh could not budge India from strategic restraint, a term associated with the preceding, Congress-led government. This suggests that with hostilities remote, it is possible for India to remain in the game by projecting a capability to take on China. At upper rungs of a nuclear ladder this will only remain untested, a bluff not about to be called.

Apologists might have it that India was unable to respond with gusto in Ladakh on account of force asymmetry. It was hobbled by escalation dominance in Chinese favour. Were India was to have forcefully pushed the Chinese out, conventional escalation – horizontal and vertical – might have ensued. If India was to compensate by asymmetric escalation, it would still have been shy of escalation dominance at the nuclear level. Self-deterrence would keep it from going nuclear at its lowest rung – tactical or operational level nuclear first use. The ability of China to withstand escalation pressures had to be whittled by acquiring an ability to render China’s urban heartland insecure. Geography has given India a poorer hand, with its Gangetic heartland being within sight of the Tibet plateau, site of Chinese missiles. In contrast, India’s ballistic missile submarine force is taking time to gain potency. It’s doubly short: of boats on patrol and ballistic missile range. Its land based ballistic missiles need complementing with an air delivery vector.

This is where the Tupolev comes in. A fledgling strategic triad duly reinforced in one medium – in this case air – helps ward-off self-deterrence, enabling reaching for nukes are lower rungs of the escalation ladder, commensurate with the trip wire crossed. A deficit in escalation dominance at the conventional level, that apparently prevented India from responding adequately to the Ladakh provocation, seemingly stands addressed by enabling India to countenance asymmetric escalation and deterrence by denial. At lower nuclear rungs, the match is relatively equal since any exchange would not involve several iterations, either being discontinued on better sense prevailing or escalating to consequential exchanges prior to either of the two expending their respective nuclear armoury designated for that level. Thus, India can checkmate China.

Politically, when the bluff is not going to be called – appeasement having made it more remote - it’s easier to trade on it. An internal political dividend is the offing. The regime can tacitly present itself as weighing-in in the Chinese weight category, matching it at the higher end of the nuclear ladder. The timing of the annoucement suggests a need to dispel the critique that India might fall military to China within a mere ten days. At the organizational level, since this puts the Air Force closer to pole position in the strategic triad stakes, prosaic reasons can also be at play. It gives the Air Force some reason for bluster, as sweetner to fall in line with the theaterisation concept it is reluctant to sign up to.

Factoring in grand strategy

For Tupolev like acquisitions have a strategic rationale, this is not what carries the day. Just as in the US system, the predilections of the military industrial complex and inter-service bureaucratic politics cannot be wished away, in India, strategic calculations provide rationalizations while the impulse behind strategic moves must be sought elsewhere. In India, this is in viewing the move in relation to the regime’s pet project: Hindutva. Moves that further the project have political backing. Therefore, strategic rationale must be complemented by a political level perspective to understand India’s strategic moves. Here the case study was of the Tupolev. The approach of factoring in grand strategy can serve as a model to holistically view other and future strategic moves of the regime.