From the archives, 5 May 2003

THE ‘PATHOLOGY’ OF INFO WAR

Info War is a leading ingredient of the RMA currently underway. Since the RMA is largely technology driven, doctrine lags a step behind. The Indian army is also subject to this phenomenon and is its wont is coping professionally. However, there is a somewhat narrow focus on the issue encompassing only its technical and doctrinal dimensions. Owing to sociology being relatively marginal to military studies and thinking, its searchlight has not been turned on the issue. As a result the RMA, and Info War in particular, are not addressed in their entirety. While this author considered the sociological aspects of RMA in a previous issue of the Pinnacle (Sep 2002), this article brings to bear similar sociological scrutiny on to the issue of Info War. The aspects covered in the current study of the evolution in war fighting are the nature of the impact on the battlefield and the manner the new technologies and techniques can be harnessed in a conventional battlefield with a nuclear backdrop. What the field of military sociology can inform us on is the nature of the impact on areas to the rear of the combat zone and the limits of usage of these techniques. This article attempts to derive insights on Info War through the prism of military sociology.

The effort is restricted to the examination of the implication of one specific dimension of Info War, namely, the limits of use of Info War techniques in influencing the domestic info-sphere. Erstwhile ‘propaganda’ has acquired impetus since the onset of the communication revolution. In its renewed emphasis its very name has changed to Public Affairs or Civil Affairs in order to purge it of the negative connotations that the term ‘propaganda’ has acquired. Given this negative aura, it is seen as suitable at best for direction against the adversary. Even when so directed it requires a subtlety that changes its very nature to something better encompassed by the term Info War.

The recent deepening of democratization, called Third Wave of Democratization by Huntington (the first being the Western States, the second comprising the newly liberated coloinies, and the latest one being consequent to the collapse of the Communist block) has led to a heightened importance of public support for state indulgence in conflict. It is no longer a matter of unilateral exercise in sovereignty by governments. It requires popular ratification. Witness the anti-war demonstrations across the globe, particularly in the national capitals of states forming part of the Coalition of the Willing. Thus, states generally feel the need for the use of Info War techniques to influence the public opinion in such a manner as to make it supportive of the military in general and of in-conflict military action in particular.  The chief lesson of the Vietnam War of keeping domestic opinion sufficiently supportive of war, is too obvious to reiterate here. India’s experience with the IPKF in Sri Lanka only served to reinforce this lesson.

 

Given the nature of the relationship between the Clausewitzian trinity – the State, the Military and the People - in a democratic state, this use of Info War techniques to influence the domestic info-sphere clearly requires deliberation. Since this is the domain of military sociology, its corpus of insights has to be turned on the issue. This article attempts this with the aim of discerning the limits of the manipulation of the information in the public domain. The threshold it seeks is one beyond which manipulation would be to the detriment of the democratic basis of the triangular relationships. It follows that first must be established the necessity for such a study. Thereafter must be ascertained what constitutes the democratic balance between the Trinity. From this can be derived the Laxman Rekha beyond which democratic health of polity is likely to be encroached on by the pursuit of effectiveness in conflict.

The Previous RMA’s

The current RMA is but one of a chain of periodic upsurges in military art and science. The Toffler’s count three such revolutions, namely, the onset of agricultural age warfare; industrial age warfare; and lastly the ongoing info-age war.  Industrial Age warfare of the modern era, witnessed at least three such revolutions. These include the sociological revolution in the Napoleonic era that brought on the age of mass armies; the technical one resulting in the mechanization of war; and lastly, the nuclear revolution that changed the role of military force from war-fighting to war-deterring. The present RMA heralds the post-modern age, and therefore reflection on it is partially a matter of crystal ball gazing. Nevertheless, certain lessons from past RMAs are of instructive worth in so far as understanding the current one is concerned.

The first lesson is that, despite the catchy name, a military ‘revolution’ is incremental and spread over time. For instance, the democratization of war in terms of use of mass armies that began with the French Revolution reached its culmination only in the First World War. The mechanized battlefield that made its first appearance in the First World War reached its zenith only in the ‘Hail Mary’ maneuver of Swarzkopf. Though the Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped in 1945, nuclear war doctrines and theorizing are still evolving.

The second lesson is that the effect of the revolutions on conflict outcome is not dependent on the level of adaptation to or proficiency in the same. Of interest in this regard is that eventually Napoleon was exiled to Elba; the foremost proponents and practitioners of mechanization, the Germans, lost their war; and, lastly, nuclear weapons self-deter as much as they deter. In short, revolutions play themselves out in the refinement of the techniques and the adaptation to the same by the adversaries with equal felicity. The Concert of Europe against Napoleon, the Allies against the Axis powers, and the Soviet Union redressed the initial asymmetry they were faced with.

The salient lesson, however, of the modern age is that of democratization of war. The say of and participation of the society in decision-making and war waging has increased exponentially. Witness the Vietnam and Afghan War experience of both sides involved. This is also applicable to internal armed conflict, as evident from Russia’s handling of Chechenya. In both the Gulf Wars, though Coalition military superiority was stark, the effort to gain and retain popular support was treated as a major Focus of Effort. In other words, the military - ‘hard’ - component of power is of declining significance in relation to ‘soft’ power with respect to the outcome of war. 

The point is that military proficiency or effectiveness cannot be defined by, or confined to, professional-technical competence alone. In short, the most technically skilled army in Info War techniques is no more likely to win than lose, if it is to focus, as most armies are now doing, only on the ‘hard’ side of Info War. There exists a ‘soft underside’ that has not attracted like attention, and may yet prove an Achilles heel. This article proceeds to examine this clinical condition that it terms the ‘pathology of Info War’. Synthesizing the lessons above: Info War is here to stay; the relative importance of the hardware component of it does not justify devotion of the present fixation on it; and, lastly, since Info War directly affects the democratic basis of the Trinity, it requires a non-traditional inter-disciplinary scrutiny.  

The Trinity

The traditional heuristic on this is in terms of two concentric circles with the military forming the central-core circle; the state being the next concentric circle subsuming the military; and the outer circle being formed by society. However, sociology tells us that this is an unwarranted simplification. A truer depiction of reality is a relative displacement of the three circles in the form of three overlapping circles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Democratic health can be discerned by a look at two sides of the triangle: the state-society, and the state-military relationship. The state-society relationship is what is generally addressed in such considerations, and therefore the familiar ground will not be traversed here. The second relationship is the academic concern of military sociology and is relevant to our discussion.

The famous Huntington thesis is that objective civil control is the characteristic of democratic civil-military relations. In this relationship, the military is permitted the requisite autonomy for professional exercise of its social responsibility of providing the service of security. The military is thus an instrument of the State to be used for its political purpose as envisaged by Clausewitz.

However, there is a school of thought that the military is a representative of the people - ‘the military belongs to the people.’ This brings to fore the third side of the triangle. Popular support is necessary for morale, and at one remove combat effectiveness, of the military. The contrast between the Indian army’s Sri Lankan and Kargil experience testifies to this.

It is this necessity that leads to the possibility of the manipulation of information in the public domain by the military using Info War techniques and mechanism. The legitimacy for this is lent by the fact that such manipulation is seen to be in the national interest as it is meant to increase combat power. Therefore, the importance attached to the requirement of the military’s media interaction being in conformity with the larger governmental policy on public information.

The Laxman Rekha

There is one aspect that necessitates reflection on the democratic threshold of Info War directed at a domestic audience.  This has institutional origin. The first is the aspect of the ‘military mind’. The military is, of necessity, a conservative institution. The ‘military mind’ emphasizes the ‘worst case’ scenario, prioritizes capabilities over intentions, and emphasizes in-being military power over social and economic power that can be accessed only over the longer term. Thus the military has an inbuilt propensity to focus on ‘threats’, which has the downside of resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Second is the aspect of ‘institutional interest’. An insight from management studies has it that there is an inherent tendency of institutions to further and protect their corporate interest. Doing so does have useful fallout in terms of garnering resources for the accomplishment of the mission.  However, constant self-monitoring by the leadership is called for to see that pursuit of corporate interest does not turn unilateral and arbitrary or that corporate interest is not mistaken for ‘national interest’.

It is these two aspects that are of significance to the ascertaining the limits of military-society linkage unmediated by the state. There are two points of concern in this regard. First is the danger is in the military impinging on governmental prerogative by taking its case or position on an issue to the people through the media, either overtly (directly) or covertly (indirectly). This could result in the pressure on the government from the environment to be responsive to the military perspective. By using such extra-procedural means, the military would be behaving in the manner of any lobby or pressure group. Such behavior is not unknown and is not entirely illegitimate in democratic polities elsewhere, not excluding the USA. However the danger is the pursuit of unilaterally defined corporate interest. The determination of the context and the scope of the military’s autonomy is a governmental privilege, mediated in the Indian system by a generalist bureaucratic ‘steel frame’ between the itinerant politician and the professional military. 

Second, and more importantly, is with respect to the former point of institutional ethos. In a democratic society, political formations are in contest for the electorate’s blessing. While conservative political parties are inclined to pay heed to the military’s perspective on security, liberal and leftist ones are generally skeptical not on account of aversion to the military sphere but more on account of the implications of the military budget on the social sector that they would prefer to privilege. Thus the military may unwittingly lend its viewpoint for use as political capital. This could eventuate into a quasi-alliance, in that the conservative parties may be more amenable to subscribing to and furnishing the military with what it deems necessary. This has implications for the democratic basis of polity.

This begs the question as to what must then be the Laxman Rekha? It is without argument that the public has to be knowledgeable of the military’s position. It is also accepted that the military may at times require manipulating information in the larger interest of not hurting its combat potential. In short, media interaction, expertly done through application of evolving info doctrines and techniques, is inevitable. The point is to keep this within democratic bounds.

The first measure in this regard is to develop sensitivity to this aspect at the operational and strategic level through doctrinal reflection and education. The leadership will have to vet its motivations and its information input to the public so as to preclude any contamination by corporate interest. It will have to ensure that it is not inadvertently made into a political player or football. Second is a requirement for the media to develop independent expertise in military matters in order to ensure that its commentary is credible and conveys contrasting points of view with equal credibility. Lastly, the political decision maker and the bureaucratic intermediary would need to filter the military input sympathetically so as to preclude resort to indirect means. This can best be done by coopting the military into apex security decision making structures, the prelude to which has been done by the establishment of the NSC and the NCA. The benefits of the exercise need now to be extended to the MOD. 

Conclusion

The pathology of Info War lies in inattention to the insights facilitated by military sociology. The new tool in the military repertoire - Info War doctrine and techniques - influences the aspect of democratic balance in the trinity. The strategic community has not adequately addressed this aspect. Its reflections on this would help the military do so, since the military is not as conversant with the non-traditional fields from which such insight can be derived. This is important as the limits of new fields of war-fighting or of waging peace need the military’s professional consideration. It is another matter that the government may choose to delude its public as to its intent and actions - witness the propaganda offensive of the Coalition of the Willing on Iraq’s WMD in the run up to the Gulf War. It has come to light that a key element that influenced the support of the US Congress for the war was a forged document implicating Iraq in importing uranium shipments from Niger. The onus of such decisions must rest squarely with the political decision maker, with no unsolicited input emanating from the military. Military ethics, defined here by the proverbial Laxman Rekha, must serve as a ‘watchdog’ in terms of application of Info War strategies and techniques to the repertoire of measures under taken by the military of a democratic state in furthering its societal obligation.

 

                                                                             

Unpublished article - June 

Information war as India’s default strategy
(abridged and updated)

Introduction

The current day India-China faceoff in Ladakh that has exacted a toll of 20 Indian soldiers has put into spotlight the phenomenon of control of information by the state for its ends. This article examines this in an India-Pakistan context, highlighting that information operations directed by the state at the citizenry is now almost a default state strategy. The article focuses on implications for democratic control of the state, the agent, by the principal, the electorate, in a democracy. If the state manipulates the information domain in a manner as to impact enlightened understanding of citizens of their choices and options, including those that impact electoral verdicts, such manipulation in terms of its extant and extent needs examination.

Information war as default strategy

Though China is the new primary threat, power asymmetry compels placatory behaviour, such as settling for talks with an unattainable aim of reversion to a status quo ante in Ladakh. Compensating for and obscuring this appeasement, would entail greater vigour, if not aggression, in pursuit of strategies elsewhere.

Counter intuitively, in democratic India, information operations must be acknowledged. The famed troll army of the ruling party is well known. The trolls succeeded handsomely once before when the economic downturn that foreshadowed elections was papered over by recourse to the Pakistani bogey in the Pulwama-Balakot-Naushera episode, allowing Modi to sweep back into power. Therefore, for it to be a strategy in the repertoire of the regime is sensible from regime stability and perpetuation point of view. The diversionary drumbeat keeps attention away from significant national priorities, such as the lockdown brought-on migrant crisis and the tanking-in of the national security edifice in face of the Chinese challenge in Ladakh.

That it is a preferred strategy can be seen from the manner it has approached the two crises this year, COVID-19 and the one with China in Ladakh. Tactics in the COVID-19 diversionary strategy were the beating utensils, lighting lamps, showering petals on hospitals from helicopters, aerobatic displays with no spectators under lockdown conditions and band concerts in hospital silent zones. From the Ladakh crisis, an example is the alleged number of Chinese casualties, put at a tidy 43, by intelligence sources, to reassure Indians that India had the upper hand in the Galwan skirmish.

The pre-COVID-19 and pre-Galwan incident targets are ready on hand: Pakistan, Kashmir and India’s Muslims. The regime’s self-congratulatory list of ‘achievements’ inevitably comprises three points, indicating the collapsing of the three targets into one: the triple talaq bill; rendering Article 370 vacant; and surgical strikes. India’s favoured Kautilyan framework, has Pakistan as the external abettor of an internal – Muslim-centric - threat, considered as most dangerous.

There is a pre-existing decades-long narrative of the Indian Muslim minority as an internal security threat in Hindutva canonical texts. The Indian Muslim as target of the narrative acquired further impetus under conditions of the COVID-19 lockdown; the Tablighi Jamaat episode is evidence. Take for instance, an example is of an article on bio-warfare on the website of a military think tank under the headquarters reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, the Center for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Seemingly innocuously timed with the Tablighi Jamaat episode, the article egregiously notes, “the terrorist with fidyan (sic) mind set on getting infected will try spreading it to the target groups by intermingling with them….He however, may take care not to infect the group / community whose support or sympathy he continues to seek in achieving his larger aim (Sharma 2020).” In another instance, the Kashmir police’s director general implausibly averred that Pakistan was sending in COVID-19 inflicted to spread the disease in Kashmir. Though not as explicitly, the corps commander in Srinagar also made a similar allegation.

In relation to Kashmir, information war is the much-in-evidence complement to security operations internally. Take for instance Ram Madhav’s view that, “the people of J&K decided to give the new status a chance. That is the reason why the region has been largely quiet in the last nine months. The detractors would attribute this calm to the excessive presence of security forces and arrests of leaders.” The heavy deployment of troops and COVID-19 are competing explanations why, “people are not on the streets pelting stones and shouting azadi.” That these do not find mention is dead give-away of the information war underpinnings of his observation, that papers over the intensified operations there accounting for some 100 militants this year.

Ram Madhav also attempts to portray normalcy, writing, “The most significant change that has been brought about by the Narendra Modi government was to stop looking at Kashmir from a Pakistani or a terrorist prism.” Evidence of information war obfuscation is in the next steps he projects: taking back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for fulfilling the Akhand Bharat concept. Information war is to distract from the reality within, targeting concerned Indians as much as India’s external interlocutors distressed by human rights violations.

Information warfare targeting citizen-voters will likely continue to divert attention from the uphill economic battle ahead. Policy missteps, such as the return of migrant labour to home states, will need obscuring, as will the differentiation in the shouldering of the pain of recovery in favour of the corporates as against the masses. The ongoing scapegoating of Muslims, including calls for an economic boycott, can be expected to worsen. Marginalising the minority, a prerequisite for normalising a non-secular, ‘Hindu India’, requires intensification of information war. The ramifications have heightened in light of the set back to the regime in Ladakh, requiring greater diversionary operations, and therefore, the probability of an intensified focus on scapegoating an existing target, India’s Muslims including Kashmiris.

Implications for democracy

The reservation here is that what is good for the right wing is not necessarily good for the country. Even though in the constitutional scheme a democratically elected government can exercise its mandate of setting the national agenda, it cannot be taken as self-evident that it would do so in the national interest. Instead, political interests prevail in national policy and decision-making, in this case, the need for a majoritarian hold on polity and governance in perpetuity.

India’s Pakistan strategy has little to do with the arguments of Realists: that strategy determinants are balances of power and the constellation of forces and threats. Instead, the under theorized perspective, that national security strategy emerges from internal wellsprings in domestic politics, is pertinent in India’s case. Factors in the external environment, such as an inimical neighour, Pakistan, at best provide a rationale for strategies that are instead predominantly internally motivated and directed, with the dividend also being sought in the internal political domain.

In strategic circles, there is a marked absence of sensitivity to the primary internal security threat faced by India - Hindutva extremism - that has hollowed out national institutions. For instance, a security think tank lists only Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremism, as internal security challenges. Since Hindutva extremists are not listed as a threat, and, instead, what Hindutva extremism takes as threats constitute the internal threat perception. The agenda of the security discourse is thus a doctored one.

Whereas for Pakistan, information war is largely external-foe centric, in the Indian security discourse, purveyed by a subverted media suitably embellished, the external and internal foes are increasingly being collapsed into one: Pakistan and India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. This makes the Indian information war more dangerous than the one conducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The targeting of Indian citizens, through a pliant media, with information war is not in the national interest but is in the interest of the right-wing political formations.

Finally, examples abound of instruments of state being appropriated as information war conduits. In instances akin to propaganda by deed are the manner the investigations and prosecution proceeds against Muslim activists in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and, in relation to leftists, in the Bhima Koregaon case. In the latter, the information war gambit, that some were in a conspiracy to kill the prime minister, is stark.

Conclusion

The stakes of falling to information operations of the state’s instruments are high for India. It can imperil liberal democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, federalism, unity in diversity and its freedom and equality. A check on the ruling formation’s agenda from within the government is unlikely. There is little incentive for a government with a parliamentary majority and an agenda for national transformation into a majoritarian state, to change course on ways and means that have yielded political dividend so far. Citizens as enlightened voters must reckon for themselves whether they consent to continue as targets of information war. If not, then they need to use their vote appropriately to push back.