http://www.indiandefencereview.com/india-needs-a-national-security-doctrine-for-furthering-jointness/

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. 

 

 http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/defence-reform-jointness-and-command-and-control/

Defence reform: Jointness and command and control

The story of General Rawat’s efforts as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to infuse critical velocity into the military’s jointness process is well known. Empowered by the amendment to the Allocation of Business rules that called for the CDS to facilitate ‘restructuring of Military Commands for optimal utilisation of resources by bringing about jointness in operations, including through establishment of joint/theatre commands,’ General Rawat proposed a prototype model of jointness.

In the main, the prototype had front-specific theatres, with the landward theatres facing Pakistan and China respectively and a maritime theatre. These theatres would be the provenance of joint Integrated Theatre Commands (ITC). There are also to be joint functional commands, such as for logistics and training.

The genesis of the front-specific ITC is in the ‘two-and-half-front’ dilemma. The prototype copes with the two-front challenge by delegating operational responsibility on each front to respective ITC, while the ‘half-front’ – short hand for Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir - has the Army’s Northern Command continuing its counter insurgency role, besides coping any collusive, China-Pakistan, threat.

The command and control conundrum

The command and control issue over front-specific ITCs poses a conundrum as to how the chain of command will be configured. Though this has received attention, with two options finding mention, there has been no authoritative conclusion to the debate so far.

The first is modeled on the US system in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff body is in an advisory role to the defence secretary, who has command authority over the ITC equivalent formations, their Combatant Commands. In the case of China, that also has theatre commands - with its Western Theatre Command facing India - the command authority vests with the Central Military Commission (CMC).

However, the suitability of both models for the Indian system is suspect. Here, the CDS is the principal military adviser to the defence minister and the government. Even with the advice of the CDS, a defence minister with limited domain knowledge and assisted by a bureaucracy with a known deficit in strategic expertise would not be able to exercise command authority adequately, while there is no equivalent of the Chinese CMC.  

The second option is that the Chief of Defence Staff system (CDS) could be suitably modified with the CDS in his capacity as Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (PC COSC) taking on command responsibility. This too would not fit in with India’s civil-military relations since the CDS would be inordinately powerful, as was the commander-in-chief during the pre-Independence era. India’s civil-military relations have moved on considerably since, subordinating the military to the civilian political sphere.

Instead, conceptualizing and structural change towards geographic ITCs is a way forward. This would enable respective Service HQs to retain operational authority - as hitherto - over operations in the medium of respective responsibility: land, sea and air. This continuity on two counts - geographic commands and command authority with the Service Chiefs – makes for acceptability of this way forward.  

Tackling the conundrum

Geographic theatres of operations have figured among the lessons of past wars. For instance, instead of one front-specific ITC against Pakistan, there could be more number of geographic ITCs along the front. In the 1965 War, one field army, the Western Command, looked after the western theatre. The 1971 War witnessed two field armies on the western front, with the Southern Command looking after the southern stretch of the front. After the 1971 War, the Northern Command was added, making for three field armies deployed. The Operation Parakram experience led to addition of another field army, headquartered at Jaipur. Likewise, the China front saw the creation of the Central Command after the 1962 War and the Northern Command taking over the Ladakh sector on its raising after the 1971 War.  

Likewise is the case with the maritime domain, where three theatres are possible to envisage: one each astride the two seaboards and the Andaman and Nicobar Command. A configuration with more number of ITCs relegates the front-specific ITCs favoured in the prototype. To the extent the Chinese move to a front-specific command facing India has been inspiration for the prototype, it needs adapting to the Indian genius.  

Even so, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) reservation on ITCs needs being factored in. The IAF finds it inadvisable to parcel out its limited numbers of multi-role aircraft to ITCs. The higher the number of geographic ITCs, the keener rings the IAF’s critique.

This can be reconciled by having the IAF delegate its counter surface operations role to the ITCs, with the inescapable minimum number of platforms under respective ITC, with the caveat that the Air HQs could allocate assets out of the ITC jurisdiction when necessary. The military jargon spelling out the distinction in the arrangement is ‘under command’ and ‘under operational control’. The ITCs would have only the latter authority over air assets seconded to them. Currently, the IAF’s regional commands locate an Advanced HQ with the field army HQs for liaison, joint planning and coordination. An ITC HQ would have this appendage merged into.

The IAF would retain its counter air campaign and strategic air campaign roles that it could exercise through dedicated functional air commands. Thus, the Air HQs would also have three functional commands, including the air defence command, reporting to it.

The CDS would additionally have authority over capabilities in the other domains significant in grey zone war, visualized as the future of war: space, cyber and Special Forces. HQ IDS could have its operations directorate enhanced to service the COSC.

The Strategic Forces Command (SFC), also a joint command, has a reporting line to the PC COSC. Since the CDS is the principal military adviser also to the government, the 2003 nuclear doctrine could be suitably updated to include him in an advisory capacity in the Political Council of the Nuclear Command Authority in tandem with its secretary, the National Security Adviser (NSA). Alongside, the mandate of the CDS must include a mention of his nuclear advisory and, if added, command responsibilities. The latter will remove the current anomaly in which the commander SFC receives his operational orders from an unelected civilian, the NSA, an arrangement without parallel elsewhere. If the PC COSC figures in the Political Council, he can receive the orders directly from the civilian political leadership and be responsible for its execution.

The government needs to step up

This variation to the prototype is in keeping with India’s civil-military relations. The jointness process is currently paused, with the Services having been asked to provide studies on how each contemplates next steps in and outcome of the jointness process. These could do with suitable political guidance through authoritative means as an updated Raksha Mantri directive or release of a national security policy. The fortuitous changeover of the CDS provides an opportunity for the government to step up on defence reforms.

---

Note: The CDS' nuclear advisory responsibility has been explicated in the press release on appointment of the CDS. He, as Permanent Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, is the Military Adviser to the Nuclear Command Authority. Here the argument is that he must also have command authority over the SFC.