Dangerous strategy

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/dangerous-strategy/216492.html

In his inaugural statement at a seminar on nuclear security at a think tank in Islamabad, the Nuclear Development Adviser to Pakistan’s National Command Authority, retired general Khalid Kidwai, made sure to get the deterrence message across to India.

He warned that ‘Cold Start or no Cold Start’, Pakistan’s adoption of ‘full spectrum deterrence’ had brought  about ‘retention of strategic equilibrium in South Asia’ by seriously neutralising any propensity in India for the ‘use of the military as an instrument of policy’.

For their contribution to ‘peace and stability in the region’, he was inclined to echo the title of a book on India’s nuclear weapons by Raj Chengappa, calling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, ‘weapons of peace’.

Is Khalid Kidwai right?

On return from Islamabad where Sushma Swaraj had gone for the ministerial meeting of the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan, Swaraj in briefing parliament acknowledged as much, saying: “war is not an option”. Whereas she did not specify why this was so, the nuclear factor also figures among other reasons to avoid war, such as the economic one.

Since both states are close to embarking on a ‘bilateral comprehensive dialogue’ brokered by Swaraj during her Pakistan visit last December, it would appear that Khalid Kidwai is at least partially right. However, since the promised dialogue has not taken off three months on since its announcement indicates the pitfalls.

The terror attack on Pathankot airfield early in the year resulted in the foreign secretary talks scheduled for mid January being postponed. Even if talks finally take off in wake of the visit of the joint investigation team from Pakistan to the site of the terror attack in Pathankot, the hiatus indicates a continuing fragility that cannot be wished away.

This is compounded by India’s Pakistan strategy, likened by a former Indian ambassador to that  country as ‘manic pirouetting’. Since the strategy is controlled by National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, his views are worth probing.

Immediately prior to parliamentary elections in which Doval had a major hand in generating the Modi wave, Doval laid  out his strategic world view at a talk in Sastra University. He called for a shift from a defensive strategy to one of ‘defensive offence’. Since this was not an offensive  strategy, the nuclear threshold was not of consequence. He preferred ‘intelligence led’, ‘covert’, operations to military action against Pakistan’s ‘vulnerable’ areas, such as its ‘internal security’.

Deeming ‘strategy without tactics is noise before defeat’, it can be expected that Doval as NSA is practising what he preached. Pakistan’s recent nabbing of an alleged Indian spy, former naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, is perhaps evidence of this.

Alongside, in another preview of his Pakistan strategy, Doval as head of the Vivekananda International Foundation had instigated a press statement by 41 members of the strategic community. The statement had effectively tied down UPA II from contemplating a resumption of talks with Pakistan. It called for terrorism as being the sole agenda of talks.

Today the promised ‘comprehensive bilateral dialogue’ continues in abeyance, held hostage to terrorism. This explains Sushma Swaraj’s briefing to parliament: “We have decided that through talks we will resolve the issue of terrorism as talks is the way forward so that the shadow of terror is removed.”

The upshot is that India’s Pakistan strategy appears to have two prongs. One is to condition Pakistan to its underside by exposing it to Indian intelligence operations, while engaging in a dialogue restricted to terrorism.

The strategy is not without its dangers.

Firstly, while Indian interests are sought if not quite met this way, over time Pakistan’s national security estabishment’s interest in the dialogue  would lag. It is currently not averse to Sharif’s outreach to India that relies on personal equations reinforced with Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi’s brief stop over at Sharif’s Raiwind residence. However, a status quo in India’s favour could prompt counter action by the Pakistan army to once again use its tried and trusted instrument, the ISI.

Secondly, the Pathankot terror attack and Pakistani NSA’s tip off to his Indian counterpart of infiltration of ten terrorists on Mahashivratri eve into India suggests that terrorist forces can act autonomously. They can trigger off another crisis by a mega terror attack.

During his Sastra University address, Doval had weighed in favour of an intelligence driven response to 26/11. In effect, the intelligence game would now heat up, increasing propensity for either side eventually going military. It is then that the nuclear threshold, so cavalierly dismissed by both Doval and Khalid Kidwai, would kick in.  

Given such escalatory possibilities, the contrasting policies of the two states appear delusional. Whereas Pakistan loses no opportunity to  foreground nuclear dangers to reinforce deterrence, as done most recently by Kidwai, India for its part has taken care to omit any mention of nuclear weapons in relation to military exercises since 2013.

Foregrounding nuclear dangers thus continues to be important, if only to compel the two states to remain at the table. 

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Another India-Pakistan Upswing In The Offing?

Saturday, March 19,2016

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/5/7183/Another-India-Pakistan-Upswing-In-The-Offing

The meeting on 17 March in Pokhara between Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and foreign policy advisor 

to Pakistan’s prime minister, Sartaj Aziz, filling in as Pakistan’s foreign minister, heralds yet another prospective 

upswing in the relations between the two states. Swaraj accepted the Aziz conveyed invite for Mr. Modi to visit

 Islamabad for the SAARC summit in the later part of this year. The two prime ministers could meet even earlier,

 at the Nuclear Security summit in Washington D.C. The joint investigation team into the Pathankot airfield terror

 attack is set to begin work by month end.

Relations appear to be back on track after being derailed by the terror attack in Pathankot. However, in light of 

the earlier flip-flops in India’s Pakistan policy - characterized by one perceptive observer as ‘manic pirouetting’ -

 Mr. Modi’s trip to Islamabad is not a done deal yet.

As at previous junctures, this one too shall attract speculation as to whether this is a sustainable upswing or 

yet another mirage. Influence of internal politics with elections looming in Assam and Bengal is a candidate

 line of inquiry.  Deeper still is whether Hindutva philosophy contaminating strategy today can at all countenance

 equable ties with Pakistan. However, a robust answer will likely prove elusive.

For a better understanding of India’s Pakistan policy, there is one almost forgotten vantage point: the

 9 August ‘Press Statement on India-Pakistan Relations by Members of India’s Strategic Community’. 

Forty one denizens of Delhi’s seminar rooms signed up to a statement brokered by the Vivekananda 

International Foundation, headed then by current day National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval.

The statement had put paid to Manmohan Singh’s dream nurtured since his UPA I stint of making a 

path-breaking trip to Pakistan. UPA II, already in doldrums by then, preferred not to chance the forthcoming

 elections on the altar of India-Pakistan relations.

The statement if not quite Mr. Doval’s brain child, had him signing off on it. As India’s national security minder 

and old Pakistan hand, India’s current Pakistan policy therefore can be credited to him. What he endorsed then

 therefore affords being dusted up for review to see if it might have clues as to his mind. His policy advice 

then was:

India should show no anxiety to hold a dialogue with Pakistan, keep a steady focus on the issue of 
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in any conversation that takes place, abjure language that equates our
 problems with terrorism with those of Pakistan, and take Siachen out of the basket of issues …

The logic given was that Pakistan’s military held the reins, even if there was a new placatory civilian government

 in place headed by Nawaz Sharif. India consequently was better advised to – in the words of the signatories 

– ‘impose a cost on Pakistan for its export of terror to India, and thus change the cost-benefit calculus of these 

policies and actions.’ Towards this end, a ‘proactive approach’ was thought as able to ‘yield us much better 

results than those garnered by policies of appeasement which have regrettably been pursued by us for years.’

This amounts to a blue print for the still-young Modi era. India has indeed been ‘proactive’. Diplomatically, it has 

reached out to Nawaz Sharif, best exemplified by the invite to Mr. Modi’s swearing in and Mr. Modi’s dropping in

 at Sharif’s Lahore farm house last December. The National Security Advisers have met twice over. Pakistan has

 been kept off balance with foreign secretaries meetings also having been either cancelled or postponed twice

over too. The sole agenda in the stillborn dialogue is terrorism, as anticipated in the statement.   

Militarily, India upped the temperature on the Line of Control since October year before last. With the message

 hitting home, it has wound down the pressure lately, though the heads of military operations have yet to meet as 
thought up in the Ufa meeting between the two prime ministers. On the intelligence front, the ‘game’ is clearly on, 
with India – if Pakistanis are to be believed - giving as good as it receives both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.  

The idea appears to be to soften up Pakistan’s military, expose it to its own underside and the age old dictum:

 those who live in glass houses must not throw stones at others. Alongside, the line of strategy directed towards 

Nawaz Sharif is at best to incentivize Pakistan and at worst to divide its national security elite.

Since this dual pronged strategy is in play with the hard and soft lines alternating, it is confounding to Indian

 observers, predicating their analysis on the values of predictability and consistency. For its part, Pakistan’s 

decision making elite at the receiving end appears unfazed. It is making gains in its counter terror operations.

 Its proxies the Taliban have reemerged in Afghanistan. It is able to launch pin prick terror attacks against India 

at will. Its nuclear trump card is well into three digits in terms of warheads. It is heartened by India’s foreign

 minister - sensibly - ruling out war as an option. The military is not averse to using Sharif as foil.

It is unlikely that India’s hyper-nationalism inspired strategic community would find these comfort levels of 

Pakistan at all enthusing. It spells that Pakistan’s military has not been sufficiently battened down nor a 

division created within Pakistan into pro- and anti-India camps. Consequently, Mr. Modi’s pirouetting can 

be expected to continue under direction of Chanakya II, Mr. Doval himself.

The problem – nay, danger – with the strategy is that it has not thought through what it considers sufficient

 punishment of Pakistan. Hindutva infected, it would unlikely settle only for appeasement by Pakistan, when 

only Pakistan’s capitulation or going under will do. Clearly, the strategic ‘community’ needs to once again get

 together to draft a fresh statement to help bail Mr. Doval out. 

Yoga as prelude to politicization of the military

http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/11/commentary/yoga-prelude-politicisation-military.html

Unedited version

This January, 250 army men of Western Command attended the Yoga Teacher's Training Course organised by Ramdev's Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar. They are the first lot of 1000 yoga trainers who are then to return to barracks and conduct yoga for troops. That the media finds this association between the army and Baba Ramdev’s outfit as news worthy suggests the link needs further query.

The aim ostensibly is to de-stress the army in cantonments in Western Command’s peace stations before they return for yet another tour of duty in some or other counter insurgency area or high altitude picket.

Superficially, this is for the good in so far as physical and mental fitness goes. The army has figured in the news earlier for the wrong reasons: soldier suicides, fratricide and affrays between officers and men. Among the enabling conditions for such avoidable incidents is stress. Yoga is meant to mitigate such stress.

Yoga caught on in the military long before the three chiefs along with a brigade of Delhi based troops lined up behind the prime minister on the Raj Path for yoga last June. It has been in practice for about a decade, with the army turning its attention to the psychological scars of countering insurgency once the situation in Kashmir started stabilizing mid last decade. Art of Living had also made an advent at about the same time for similar reasons.

The problem is not so much yoga as much as the army’s institutional association with Baba Ramdev’s organization. The Baba is controversial with his business deals having come in for investigative scrutiny. The premises in Haridwar where army men spent couple of weeks hosted a convention for the RSS year before last. The Baba is a known cheerleader for Prime Minister Mr. Modi.

Such proximity is not without its underside. Yoga is enwrapped in a cultural context. Cultural transmission can be expected, such as of ritual, intonations and interpretation of Sanskritic texts. Since the program requires residence on campus, dietary mores and ashram routine would also be conduits.

A right wing associated organization is not about to pass up an opportunity for influencing the army with its world view. Even if tacit, the exposure of 1000 troops this training year, and perhaps more to follow in subsequent years, will enable a window of penetration of the right wing perspective into the army.

This raises the question as to why this apprehension escaped the army’s exercise of due diligence in going about its yoga training program.  

I suggest that the impetus is from both directions. While it can be expected that right wing organizations are interested in the military, counter intuitively, it appears that the military is not averse to such attention.

The growing grip of Hindutva forces across polity and into society, such as over the education sector, the army should be alert to the possibility that it cannot escape like attention. This should have made it defensive, if not prickly, so as to reduce the politicization and corresponding effect on professionalism that penetration of cultural nationalism entails.

Its yoga program does not suggest that it is mindful of the otherwise obvious dangers. Since these are easy to apprehend, a plausible inference is that the army is courting Hindutva. Since it takes two to tango, are there are elements within the military opening the door wider?

An illustration is the appearance of articles on Vedic leadership in military publications, specifically in the Infantry Journal and on the website of the army think tank. This is of a piece with a leadership in the nineties by the Army’s Training Command on the leadership philosophy of the controversial godman, Sai Baba.

Is politicization underway? This is not in the usual sense of the term in a convergence of institutional and political interest of the military leading to its displacing of the government, as in Pakistan. This is better described as incidence of subjective civilian control in which the civilian ruling dispensation connects with the military by ensuring that the military shares its world view, in this case, of Hindutva, such as is the case in communist states.

This is as against objective civilian control in which the military is rendered politically inert by being left to its professional devices. The difference between the two is that where objective civilian control is exercised, the military not a political player. Where the military is under subjective civilian control, the military is kept out of politics because, in subscribing to the dominant perspective, it does not feel the need to intervene.  

Such a move by Hindutva forces can be expected. Once they go about their reset of India in right earnest, they would prefer to keep the military to its professional till. Whereas the mechanism of objective civilian control is available to this end, the ambitious Hindutva agenda for India forces a preference for a tighter embrace of the military. This will ensure, firstly, that it can be kept out by decree and does not feel the need to intervene, and, secondly, that it can be made to weigh in on the side of Hindutva, in case Hindutva forces find the going tough over the longer term.

In light of Indian military’s apolitical record, it can be argued that such apprehensions of convergence of interest are outlandish. This is true in so far as the military’s interest, unlike that of its peer militaries in developing states, was never in a takeover of the state. This would continue to be so, the difference this time round is that the military will increasingly subscribes to the world view of the regime in power.

This is not troubling in so far as the paradigm is a conservative-realist one that militaries, universally, subscribe to. However, the makeover of India in the image of majoritarian nationalism is unlikely to remain a political and democratic exercise. Aware of this, Hindutva forces would like a placid military when they contrive to remain in power and their agenda goes beyond governance.

On this count, the army’s association with Baba Ramdev is only superficially innocent, to do only with yoga. The army is not so politically innocent as to be unaware of the upfront social and political changes ongoing in India. Its choice of Baba Ramdev suggests that it needs watching as much as the moves of the Hindutva combine to influence it.     

 

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Book Review

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=49951

Vivek Chadha, Indian Army’s Approach to Counter Insurgency Operations: A Perspective on Human Rights, Occasional Paper 2, IDSA, New Delhi, 2016, pp. 40

In the IDSA monograph under review, Chadha brings out the current status of army’s approach to human rights. The army’s record has been chequered, but the limitations of space in a monograph length work have led to Chadha’s looking at only the positives. The good news is that the current day army appears suitably impressed by the need to keep human rights to fore in subconventional operations.

Since the army is not particularly challenged today in any theater of subconventional operations, be it J&K or North East, it is easier for the army to maintain a credible record on human rights. That it is has used the letting up in operations for taking a closer look at human rights is altogether heartening. The test of whether it has suitably internalized this can only come up with the next test.

Such test does not appear on the horizon. The situation in J&K while being delicate politically and simmering in terms of popular disaffection is unlikely to escalate militarily owing to the massive deployment of the army continuing along the borders and within the ‘hinterland’. The Udhampur, Gurdaspur and Pathankot incidents suggest the difficulties terrorists are having in using Kashmir as site for their action. In the North East, a series of suspension of operations agreements are in place, the most significant of which in Nagaland has recently be strengthened by a framework agreement. The Central Indian theater of operations has been consigned to the paramilitary since the levels of violence are relatively low and access to sanctuary abroad the missing element.  

As for the possibility of being faced with subconventional operations outside of the borders, this can only be in wake of conventional operations against Pakistan. The likelihood of this has thankfully been appreciably set back by the upward trajectory, albeit a hesitant one, in Indo-Pak relations of late. Stabilisation operations in which human rights would have a place appear remote. Another farfetched site for subconventional operations could be if India joins a multinational force in wrapping up the ISIS in an indeterminate future. 

The upshot of this survey is that after a long while the army is not faced with subconventional operations of any notable intensity. Does Chadha’s work lend confidence that the army will pass when tested?

It would be as easy as unfair to dismiss Chadha’s word as coming out of a ‘sarkari’ think tank, the IDSA, and being from a former military man cannot but be biased. However, it best to give him a hearing for as once an infantry colonel he would know where the shoe pinches. His first hand knowledge is from participation in subconventional operations in Sri Lanka, J&K and North East. He is also author of the heavy tome Low Intensity Conflicts in India: An Analysis in which he laid out a brief history of India’s showing in countering insurgency in various theaters.

Chadha believes that the army’s human rights approach has not received due attention in the human rights discourse otherwise crowded with the works critical of the state and its agencies. His claim is that the army has at least over the last decade spruced up its understanding of and record on human rights. He uses its work in J&K as a case study.

In J&K, the statistics are clear. The human rights record of the army has improved to an extent that incidents such as at Machil stand out as aberrations. Further, the positives are in the army’s own attempt at house cleaning such as in its punishing perpetrators for the Machil and follow up in the mistaken opening up of fire at a road block in Chhatargam in which two youth died.

There are two explanations for this. One is that Pakistan has indeed turned off the tap to a large extent in terms of infiltration, leading to an improved security situation. Consequently, the army has rightly tuned down its operational tempo, leading to an improved human rights record. The second is that it has also had an enlightened leadership in Kashmir, appointing figures with a credible spoken reputation. It needs noting that the current theater commander General Hooda has embellished his credentials by his actions on this front.

In the bargain, Chadha’s work appears to have profited with Northern Command furnishing some figures to help his case. Even if these are critiqued - as they should be - by human rights defenders in J&K, the gainer would be the human rights discourse having something more that a straw man to grapple with and reflexive military bashing.

Chadha’s vantage point does not allow him to engage with the items at the forefront of the human rights agenda in J&K. The issue of justice is critical. The figure of disappeared at close to five figure mark; the resurfacing of the Kunan Poshpora incident in the judicial agenda; and the attempted closure by the army to the Pathribal case are prominent cases.

Chadha, for his part, attempts to bring out that judicial and human rights activism can result in miscarriages in terms of making soldiers acting in good faith victims. The reminder is that intensive operations also have a psychological war angle, which human rights defenders must also for their part be objective about. Chadha also reveals the processes by way of which the ministry approaches its role in respect of Article 6 (in case of J&K, Article 7) of the Armed Forces Special Power’s Act. But, he takes the safe way out in being descriptive, rather than self-critical.

In a reference to the infirmities in the western record in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chadha brings home an inescapable fact: that collateral damage and human rights infringement is intrinsic to military operations. There is no ‘zero casualty’ war. The human environment of combat severely tests pious intentions: both at the strategic and tactical levels. The ‘zero tolerance’ to human rights abuse policy inevitably acquires caveat.

The seeming logic is that this is for the eventual larger good. This explains India’s parameter: human rights infringement is tolerable only if it is operationally justifiable. The problem is that the military sits in judgment on its own action, in that verdict on operational justification cannot, of necessity, have civilian imprimatur. 

Though outside the scope of Chadha’s reflection, if and since subconventional operations have human rights consequences, the state (and civil society) must not only look at mitigation. The state must be preventive and political.

For instance, in the case in J&K, it is not enough for the army to be working on its human rights record. Firstly, howsoever well intentioned, this would always leave much to be desired when, for example, the ‘Do’s and Dont’s injunction against torture implies that it is excusable short of maiming and causing death! Secondly, kinetic subconventional operations outsourced these days the army’s engagement with human rights becomes academic, if not diversionary. The case in Imphal of ex PLA fighter Sangit Meitei’s killing by Herojit Singh on orders of the police Additional SP and the manner of paramilitary’s sway in Central India make their human rights approaches more significant.

Wishfully speaking, the state must work more diligently in taking forward the promise of Modi’s 

Lahore stop over externally, and, internally, creating the political conditions speedily for removal of troops. If the misplaced sloganeering in Delhi’s Press Club and JNU on 9 February is to have any value, it is to wake India up to this finally. If two tenures of a UPA government could not bring this about, it cannot happen any time soon.

Consequently, the verdict is that whatever the human rights spin/situation - such as currently - it cannot but be impacted when push comes to shove. This inevitability opens the human rights space to instrumental use as part of policy and strategy, by both sides. Chadha’s is a tragic insight: this is at best subject to mitigation, never to elimination. In J&K, the resulting satisficing leads to the circular argument: since the situation is tolerable now, the army can be removed, but since the army is tolerable now, it can remain indefinitely.

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For India to be off to Levant now would be premature

http://www.eurasiareview.com/03022016-for-india-to-be-off-to-the-levant-would-be-premature-analysis/

India’s Former National Security Adviser and foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon in a lecture in New Delhi argued that, “sooner rather than later India will have to make real political and military contributions to stability and security in this region (West Asia) that is so critical to our economy and security.”

He takes India’s “high stakes”, specifically its oil being sourced to West Asia, the presence of an Indian diaspora and remittances, as its national interest, and advocates that “our approach and behavior should change in defense of our interests.”

That India is not part of the ongoing four powers’ peace initiative closer to home in Afghanistan suggests prudence in casting out wider. Further afield in West Asia, our power is greatly diluted by distance. As a recent study points out, India does not currently have the capacity to sustain such operations, even if it would be able to do so in future.

At best India can reinforce the peace frameworks being put in place under US-Russian aegis. Militarily, it can participate in any subsequent peacekeeping, but, as pointed out by its defence minister, only under the ‘UN flag’.

The catch is in going further in terms of rolling back the ISIS by going beyond peacekeeping to peace enforcement.

As the foreign office spokesperson Vikas Swarup hastily clarified, this is a “hypothetical situation”. Menon, who plugged the liberal-realist perspective while at the helm of the national security establishment, is unlikely to have had this in mind.

What can India do? India has rightly ruled out a military solution to the conflict and backed the conference that is currently bringing all actors to the table. Interestingly, its statement in the UN makes no mention of its position on ISIS.

In standing up against regime change in Syria, the line favoured by Russia, China and Iran, India stands to be at odds with the West, Arab regimes and Israel that have consistently sought the exit of Basher al Assad. India’s stakes – oil, diaspora and remittances – being largely on the Arab side of the divide and its tilt towards Israel, act as constraints to actively standing up against regime change in Syria.

Therefore, India cannot be expected to ‘do more’ at this juncture. It can await fruition of the UN led peace initiative currently underway, whereupon it can participate more broadly including in any peacekeeping dimension that emerges.

However, tacitly in what Menon says, and explicitly in the words of other commentators, there is a belief that India, as part of its ‘great power’ march can, indeed must act, in the defence of what it defines as its national interest.

In regard to West Asia, a leading strategic commentator, Manoj Joshi, puts it thus: “If  our oil supply lines or  citizens working in the Gulf are threatened,  or hundreds and thousands of Indians are being radicalised by the Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, India should certainly consider intervention, with, and if it has the gumption, without, UN authorisation.”

Although Joshi’s is rather a high – almost hypothetical level – of Daesh tentacles, even so, interventionist thinking needs contesting.

The first problem is political, on the question of legitimacy. Menon appears to suggest that since traditional security providers in the region – read the US and UK – are less than effective, India must sign-up rather than continue as a free-rider.

Menon appears to justify prospective military action by saying India’s transformation depends on flow of oil. Interference in its flow would require Indian military response to defend the status quo. The argument smacks of neo-colonial logic in which oil dependency of the West requires them to back repressive Arab regimes.

Arab nationalism that has been discounted in the media fixation with the religious dimension to the Daesh challenge, has been air brushed out of the frame. This has enabled the unchallenged Western, and now Russian, military approach in West Asia. In effect, India would end up backing a status quo in favour of the mix of repressive regimes that have between them succeeded in stymieing the promise of Arab Spring.

Scope for ‘doing more’ is in pointing this out course correction by Arab regimes in internal reform and their Western backers in shedding militarized templates. However, in having the French President over for its Republic Day, India appears instead to be painting itself into the same corner as the West.

The second reason is military. An ‘all of government’ response would be called for. The response to the terror attack on Pathankot airfield does not lend any confidence that the national security establishment can pull it off.

An external – military – consequence of India’s military proactivism could be with Islamists fetching up at the door step. The Pathankot episode suggests that the border fence, even if shored up with gadgets and tactics of Israeli provenance, cannot be relied on.

Menon discounts such a scenario, saying that the “risks of the (India-Pakistan) relationship deteriorating into open conflict are slight.” With the Daesh having already fetched up in Afghanistan, in case of India’s military involvement in the Levant it could provide a fillip to anti-India groups in Pakistan.

The internal political consequence of this would be the benefits for the right wingers in India. It would buoy majoritarian extremists who misrepresent the Islamist threat as the threat from Islam.

Therefore, any thrust for a greater role in West Asia needs to be contested. The liberal realist argumentation can be easily manipulated by cultural nationalists at the helm of national security affairs to depict an emerging consensus in favour of intervention. That an Akshay Kumar starrer Airlift is ruling at the box office suggests such a thrust.

As Menon points out elsewhere, the timing of when to make the move from a regional player to a ‘great power’ is a delicate one. Clearly now is not the right time and this is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Security demands strategy before action

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/security-demands-strategy-before-action/185506.html

Accounts of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ajit Doval, as a man of action have only been reinforced by his response to the terrorist attack at the Pathankot airfield early this month. While a laudable quality in an operational-level commander, however, when this trait (to take action) is present in abundance in a person required to function at the strategic level, it may be problematic. 

 

Perhaps, the most onerous responsibility of the NSA is his duty as Secretary to the Political Council of India's Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) and as Chair of its executive council. The appointment requires a cool, reflective, person to tenant it. The Pathankot episode throws up the question: Whether Doval is the best man for this sensitive job.

 

On this score, the criticism attending the response to the Pathankot terror attack should not be spin-doctored into oblivion. The Prime Minister on a visit to the site, and the Army Chief in his Army Day press conference, have tried to restore confidence in the system. Acknowledging a few home truths would better serve the system. 

 

A key point was brought forth by the previous NSA, Shivshankar Menon. He observed the cancellation of the NSA’s trip to China for strategic-level talks, implying this was an instance of misplaced priorities. Second, an NSA getting involved in essentially a tactical-level operation is liable to miss the wood for the trees. Third, the NSA's bypassing of institutions such as the Home and Defence Ministries and the military serves to sap traditional chains of command and constitutionally ordained authority. 

 

Since the NSA is at the fulcrum of India's nuclear command and control, these observations have implications for India's nuclear command and control. 

 

India's NCA already has glaring lacunae. As revealed in the commentary in the aftermath of the Pathankot episode, India's National Security Council (NSC) system has been created through an executive order in 1998. It has not been institutionalised and sanctified by an Act of Parliament ever since. As a result, the NSA is an oddity in the parliamentary system, only owing accountability to his appointing authority, the Prime Minister. This further empowers the Prime Minister's Office, detracting from India's parliamentary democracy by making it resemble a presidential system. 

 

The NSA serves as link between the Political Council of the NCA that comprises the Prime Minister and principal ministers, and the Executive Council, comprising of the significant officials, military chiefs and scientific heads. Even this responsibility of the NSA has no legislative authority underwriting it. The press release of January 3, 2003, from the Cabinet Committee on Security that met to operationalise India's nuclear deterrence policy at best serves to inform. It cannot be taken as sanctioning this role of the NSA. The responsibility needs being invested with legal content. 

 

The insertion of the NSA in the nuclear command loop is such as to act as a buffer between the political head and the military chiefs. To fulfil this function, the NSA has the support of the NSC Secretariat (NSCS), which is under the Deputy NSA and part of the PMO. The strategy programme staff that informs decision-making and implements nuclear deterrence and employment strategy is, however, not under him directly, but is in the NSCS.

 

The Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) commands the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) that is in charge of India's crown jewels, its nuclear arsenal. The staff support of the Chairman COSC is the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff. Further, the Chairman COSC receives his marching orders not from the Prime Minister or Defence Minister, but the NSA. Since the Chairman COSC is himself double-hatted, also serving as head of his service, the NSA’s role assumes a greater significance. In effect, the general commanding the SFC is willy-nilly reporting to two heads: the bona fide military chain of command and the more significant, but civilian, NSA. 

 

This reveals a structural problem in India's nuclear command and control in which accountability is with the military, but the authority is with the NSA. Governments in this century, including the current one, have promised to create the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. A CDS, with executive teeth in the nuclear realm, would ensure convergence of accountability and authority. That the reconstitution of the dysfunctional National Security Advisory Board has been held up for close to a year now does not lend confidence on this score. 

 

The deficiencies of this system are such as to preclude buffeting from the angularities of personalities. As demonstrated on other occasions such as the Special Forces operation in Myanmar in the middle of last year, the NSA has a tendency to join the action. Conflict will serve up temptations aplenty for him to roll up his sleeves. The NSA would be better advised to exercise considerable self-restraint and allow the national security institutions to work their mandate, to enable him to take a wide-angled view of crises and conflict. Servicing the NSC in a sober manner would enable him to give relevant inputs as the fulcrum of the NCA.

A conflict strategy for India in the TNW era

http://www.claws.in/images/journals_doc/644372525_AConflictstrategyfoIndiaintheTNWera.pdf

Why rule in TNW

Tactical Nuclear Weapons (TNW) use considerations in an India-Pakistan conflict are usually held hostage to the optimist-pessimist debate. To deterrence optimists, nuclear deterrence will hold and therefore there is little to discuss. To pessimists, deterrence could break down and therefore there should be options up one’s sleeve. To the former, the existence of such options makes deterrence more liable to breakdown in first place. To the latter, the options reinforce deterrence in that the ability to respond in a situation of deterrence breakdown, prevents deterrence breakdown. A second line of argument between the two is in pessimists insisting that once breakdown is incentivized thus and occurs, then escalation is ruled in; making TNW irrelevant after the initial exchange(s). Pessimists believe that the idea of escalation is so horrendous to contemplate that escalation may not readily result, with the exchange(s) liable to be halted at the lowest threshold. Optimist would say that is impossible and therefore there is no call to make any effort to make nuclear war appear fightable; but to pessimists it is only impossible if no attempt is made to limit escalation and de-escalate prior and during hostilities.  The debate is liable to continue as it has since the seventies during the Cold Warbut in the regional setting in South Asia.

Understandably, in light of their security competition and largely adversarial relations, India and Pakistan appear on different sides of this debate. It would appear from India’s declaratory doctrine that it is informed by deterrence optimism; while Pakistan’s unstated nuclear doctrine seems to be based on deterrence pessimism. India’s declaratory doctrine posits unacceptable damage in return for nuclear first use against it or its forces anywhere. Logically, its use of the phrase ‘massive’ seems to be to reinforce deterrence in that it brings home to Pakistan the unwelcome prospects of escalation for that state. This explains India’s leveraging of its conventional advantage in its ‘proactive’ conventional doctrine. The optimistic understanding seems to be that deterrence will hold sufficiently for a measured conventional punishment of Pakistan.

Pakistan, for its part, appears nonchalant in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons as part of its ‘full spectrum deterrence’ formulation in keeping with its concept of deterrence which covers not merely the nuclear level but also the conventional level. It believes that this enables deterrence against war, even while it races to restore the strategic balance seemingly in favour of India in terms of second strike capability. Pakistan’s deterrence pessimism comes through from its TNW turn in that it hints at its apprehensions that its extension of nuclear deterrence to cover the conventional level may not hold, forcing nuclear first use on it. That it hopes for a graduated escalation is seen in its emphasis on TNW, hoping thereby to preclude escalation by nuclear first use at the lowest escalatory threshold and with the lowest opprobrium quotient.

Since there is no initiative so far, despite the possibility having been bandied about in election time last year of a nuclear doctrine revision, at the declaratory level India persists with nuclear optimism. However, it cannot be said with conviction that this will remain the case with India’s operational nuclear doctrine. India’s operational nuclear doctrine may well be different and more responsive to nuclear developments on the Pakistan front, even if India chooses not to advertise any shift from its position based on nuclear optimism. Therefore, there is a possibility that India’s operational nuclear doctrine may have an element of nuclear pessimism. India has possibly taken care not to own up to this so as not to incentivize Pakistani nuclear first use in the belief that it can get away with a lower and therefore tolerable punishment. India requires cauterizing its conventional level from Pakistani nuclear first use. Any hint of its own contemplation of TNWs in response may incentivize Pakistani TNW use, thereby placing India’s conventional forces in harm’s way and with the challenge of facing a nuclear conflict.

However, it is clear that India’s resort to its declaratory doctrine for informing its nuclear strategy in a conflict gone nuclear exposes India to strategic exchange(s). Compared to this, tactical nuclear exchanges may not harm mainland India to a similar extent. Between the two – having armed forces face up to nuclear conflict and the population face up to a strategic nuclear exchange(s) – it can be expected that the democratic government in India may settle for the former. Therefore, it makes as much strategic sense for India to have tactical nuclear response options up its sleeve as an unstated operational nuclear doctrine as to alongside keep quiet on any departure from its declaratory nuclear doctrine this entails.

What the discussion above suggests is that TNW use cannot be ruled out. In any case, this is not for India to legislate on since it is a decision Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, serving Pakistan’s National Command Authority, has arrogated to itself. What has been established in the discussion here is contrary to strategic commentary in India that rules out TNW use by India, there is a possibility of India to respond in a ‘tit for tat’ manner since it makes strategic sense to do so. Doctrine can only inform strategy; it cannot dictate it. This suggests that a future conventional conflict can go nuclear with the resort to TNW by both sides.

What TNW use entails

Nuclear level

An appreciation of how this would play out is necessary at all three levels: nuclear, conventional and sub-conventional. At the nuclear level, the aim for India’s NCA would essentially be to modify the war aims for a war that has gone nuclear in light of preexisting and longstanding grand strategic aims. India would not like any of its three revolutions being undertaken simultaneously – economic, political and social – be upturned or inordinately set back. A nuclear war has potential to set these back considerably. India as a rising power may like to cauterize the long term effects of nuclear conflict. In this it would not be alone, in that Pakistan would also like to play along, aware that it would suffer disproportionately. The twin aims of the two states would have the facilitative weight of the alarmed international community. Therefore, the reflexive escalation that finds usual mention in strategic literature is unlikely to happen without a sufficient window for escalation control and bargaining.

At best any exchanges in this window as the political and diplomatic de-escalatory game plays out would be of TNW. The Indian nuclear logic in this initial exchange(s) should follow game-theory-endorsed mirroring strikes. TNW use for Pakistan would have two objectives: at the political level, it would be in a de-escalatory mode to message the crossing of thresholds and that India must desist from cashing in on the gains that have provoked the strike(s). At the operational level, the objective would be to redress any operational level asymmetries India’s offensives have generated. For India, TNW use would be to reflect its resolve. It would like to convey two messages simultaneously: one of determination not to be second best in any nuclear exchange(s) and second a willingness to discontinue these in case Pakistan throws in the towel first. These would entail TNW strikes that are quid pro quo or a tad quid quo pro plus.

Since the scenario usually imagined is of Pakistani TNW use in a low opprobrium mode on its own territory in a defensive manner, India’s reply would be also on Pakistani soil. This would be in effect a double whammy for Pakistan. It can only get out of this bind by escalating exponentially, a suicidal action. It would therefore be boxed into proportional escalation with the certainty that should it touch Indian soil in this, it would risk strategic exchange(s) – a slower but equally sure way to national suicide. What emerges is that even though the TNW genie is out of the bottle, TNW is what Pakistan would be restricted to and that too most likely on its own soil or at best in conflict zones on India’s territorial periphery. India can thus afford to mirror Pakistan in TNW exchanges. The strategic level at which the nuclear exchanges are playing out would then be in conformity with the political level at which the politico-diplomatic de-escalatory moves are in play. A pitch that India’s restraint will enable it at this level is that it be allowed to continue conventional operations to sufficiently punish Pakistan for its busting of the nuclear taboo, while an international clampdown on Pakistan’s nuclear use is enforced.

Conventional level

There are three options for conventional strategy: one is to rely that nuclear deterrence will hold; two is preparedness to modify conventional strategy in face of deterrence breakdown; and last is to have conventional operations proceed under the assumption of Pakistani nuclear first use with TNW. The first is somewhat wishful. While the good health of India’s deterrence is not in doubt, the strategic sense of the Pakistani leadership certainly is. The Pakistan army has blundered before and can do so at the crunch. The second is desirable in that it caters for both a deterrence breakdown and has contingency plans in place prior for coping timely. Since national war aims may be adjusted in face of nuclear first use, so would military objectives and plans.

The third, proceeding with the assumption that Pakistan means what it says, may make the military over-cautious, leading to it pulling its punches. The down-side of this is in India not exercising its conventional advantages, gained at the cost of national treasure, optimally. The up-side is that a cautious war strategy and plans would put Pakistan in a political spot if were to nevertheless break the nuclear taboo despite India’s restrained conventional strategy. It would put Pakistan in the political doghouse and enable opening up Pakistan to military punishment. Such a prevents nuclear first use and in case of nuclear first use enables using the political leverage so gained to advance military objectives.

This article is not the space for dilating on how such a conventional strategy needs working out. However, a barebones sketch is that India could unleash stand-off conventional punishment, not amounting to a Cold Start of Pakistan’s nightmares. It could do creeping and selective mobilization behind this, to both be in conformity with a crisis management profile of the run up to conflict as also up the ante in case of failure of crisis diplomacy. Pinprick Cold Start offensives, such as by an Integrated Battle Group or two, can serve notice on Pakistan. It could have a Cold Start lite up its sleeve in case Pakistani counter moves gain threatening proportions. Allowing Pakistan’s counter moves to play out may be useful alibi from a political casus belli point of view. The offensive punch of strike corps can be in reserve, awaiting a ripe moment for launch of Cold Start, even if no longer ‘cold’.

It can be envisaged that Pakistan’s nuclear moment is not when it is at the receiving end of stand-off missile, air, artillery and naval fire operations. The threshold is also unlikely to be crossed in case of pinprick IBG offensives. But it gains plausibility in case of Cold Start lite and increasingly so in case of strike corps operations. In case of TNW advent in face of Cold Start lite, the opportunity presents itself for strike corps to follow through. At the political level, space must be created for military punishment of Pakistan. This is possible in case of demonstrated conventional restraint as depicted here, followed by nuclear restraint in a ‘tit for tat’ TNW response. Strike corps can then operate with relative impunity in the dust of initial TNW exchange(s). Relatively bold gains can be made in the mountain sector employing the mountain strike corps, since TNW employment is unlikely in these areas owing to proximity of the national capital region of Pakistan and the water flow considerations. What this discussion suggests is that India’s plans must be less of Cold Start and more of slow boil and be capable of acceleration once Pakistan’s TNW gambit is revealed as having less conflict ending potential than it hopes.

Subconventional level

After the Gulf War II experience it is clear that hybrid wars are what a state must prepare for, especially when forces are deploying in areas that have potential for Islamism. Pakistan has been at war with extremism, albeit a selective and partial one, for about a decade. Indian offensives will eventually find Indian troops in occupation of Pakistani territory, and reclaimed Indian territory in J&K. It can easily appreciated that they will face an irregular warfare backlash. In case this is compounded by prior nuclear outbreak, there is likely to be a political and leadership vacuum in Pakistan, particularly at lower levels of administration. A clue to this can be seen in the manner the extremists managed to fulfill the requirements of an absent state when Pakistan was struck by the earthquake in 2005 and by floods later. Therefore, stabilization operations will have a subconventional operations bias. As to how this will be accentuated by the nuclear factor may have figured in formation wargames, but has escaped discussion in the open domain so far.

India has two options: one is to persist in Pakistani territory and second is to retrieve to Indian territory, other than in J&K, earliest. The former has its basis in war aims, which may be to stabilize Pakistan in order that it does not continue to pose a post war threat to India. This may be in league with right thinking elements in Pakistani polity and society, including factions within its military. This may include those in charge of its nuclear arsenal. This may be in conjunction with international organisations and key actors, including the US and China, lending a helping hand to stabilize Pakistan. On the other hand, the latter may be on account of prudence dictating that there is no reason to offer a magnet for terrorist impulses of extremist forces in Pakistan. In right thinking forces are at low ebb in Pakistan, there may be little that India can do but to contain a truncated, nuclear contaminated Pakistan. 

In either case, and during the course of conventional operations, India would in any case have to contend with an Islamist counter. Alongside, would be societal effects of TNW use, such as refugee flows and heightened civil-military issues such as disaster management. There would therefore have to be three lines of action. One is that the offensive formations will have to undertake their own anti-terrorist measures. Second is in additional formations, possibly Rashtriya Rifles, to undertake communication zone pacification. And last is paramilitary for handling the increased population control measures. Clearly, both RR and paramilitary, will be at a premium, particularly as calls from disaster management priorities within India, especially those stemming from nuclear blasts, will assume priority. Therefore, the army’s contingency plans will need keying in prior to operations itself. A major facet of these will be to sensitise soldiery of the need to distinguish between the extremists and people. Any identification between the two should not owe to India’ssubconventional operations. This has been the principal take away from wars this century.

Conclusion

Thinking about TNW use has been drowned out by the dominant narrative in nuclear strategic discourse in India that there is there is no such category. All nuclear weapons are strategic weapons. This is to serve India’s declaratory deterrence doctrine that any nuclear weapons use against India or its forces anywhere would meet with nuclear retribution. The problem with this postulation is that it prevents thinking such as carried in this paper that could productively inform conflict strategizing within the military. Whereas the military may be undertaking such thinking independently and confidentially, there is no reason for a blackout in strategic literature. In fact, loud thinking such as here, may help with deterrence, in that in communicates to Pakistan’s SPD that its expectations of nuclear stumping of India may be unfounded in light of India’s thinking through its responses prior and being prepared accordingly. An Indian military that is prepared for undertaking conventional operations in nuclear conditions will enable greater flexibility to the Political Council of India’s Nuclear Command Authority. It then does not reflexively have to approve a nuclear strategy based on the declaratory doctrine. India’s operationalization of the nuclear deterrent, which involves a greater military input and interface than hitherto with the nuclear field, must also push for an operational nuclear doctrine, which even if kept secret, is a departure from the declaratory doctrine.

A nuclear strategy that envisages TNW employment as depicted here must follow game-theory endorsed ‘tit for tat’ exchange(s), at least at the lower end of the nuclear spectrum. This will convey resolve and allow Pakistan a face saving exit. In being de-escalatory thus, it will create a political and moral high-ground for India to continue conventional operations. Conventional operations must first be premised on caution and second must be capable of upgrading in violence once international political-diplomatic pressures ensuing on induction of TNW succeed in restraining Pakistan. Conventional forces can expect a subconventional backlash from Pakistani extremists. Conflict strategy must have an exit game-plan in play. If persisting on occupied territory is required then it must be in conjunction with right thinking elements in Pakistan polity, society and its army.

TNW are here to stay. As other weapons they cannot be uninvented. Consequently, discussion on their effects and the possibilities and options they open up must be part of the professional regimen. The current silence on such issues is untenable and can prove paralyzing later. There are issues that have not been covered here but warrant equal attention, such as the effects on fighting troops’ morale and discipline, on management of families in cantonments close to the border etc.Approaching nuclear conflict as a different conflict environment enables clarity in such matters. Even if in the event it turns out that the nature and character of conflict does not really change, nuclear conflict will make demands that can be expected to put our earlier experience of relatively gentlemanly wars in the subcontinent to shade.