An Army to fear: The Army's future?
http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=67858

The jury is out on whether the army chief was put up to it by his political masters or whether his rewarding the protagonist in the infamous ‘human shield’ case was of his own volition. From the broadside by one commentator likening the chief to General Dyer, it is clear that there are some who believe that the army chief acted on a suggestion from his superiors. That broadside from an academic would likely have been directed, less at the army chief himself, as much as the one whose bidding he was doing. But with the army chief going out on a limb (yet again) with his defence of not only the indefensible action of Mr. Tactical Innovation himself, Major Leetul Gogoi, and his own award, it is quite clear that the army chief has the courage of his conviction. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the conviction is itself wrong-headed. Courage of conviction in such cases leads to persisting in the wrong direction. Precedence in the case of a predecessor of his pursuing an age related case for a year’s extension at the helm of the army suggests as much. Incidentally, that general titled his memoirs, Courage and Conviction. Worse could follow. The generals of the First World War were not for nothing dubbed ‘donkeys’, for their outsized determination in trying to breakthrough trench lines with tactics that failed to work for several successive years at the cost of a million lives.

The pattern of persistence in wrong headedness in Kashmir is discernible. There has been a reversion to cordon and search operations. The unwritten ceasefire dating to end 2003 is in tatters. Just as the army went after the JKLF in the early nineties, believing it was wrapping up the indigenous insurgency then, this time round too it has a list, a score entries long of local militants it wants to take out by summer’s end. The army chief has warned off people from complicating military operations, lest they be taken as overground workers. Since it is well known what happened to overground workers, among others, through the nineties, he is harking back by a decade and more. The earlier measures having failed to end the insurgency, it beats imagination as to how these can possibly succeeded in their second iteration.

This time round the difference is in the army chief setting the tone out loud. He has required that the army be feared. Earlier - at least up front - the army preferred being respected, if not quite loved. It certainly wished to inspire fear in the enemy. This enemy was usually the adversary state across the border and its army, and in Kashmir, the jihadi mercenary, usually Pakistani Punjabi.

However, in terms of internal security, Jawaharlal Nehru had early on clearly spelt out how the army needed to be appreciated in such circumstance as a protector of the people. The then army chief taking cue in sending the army into Nagaland in 1955, had in his Special Order of the Day phrased the political terms of reference given out by Nehru in these words:

You must remember that all the people of the area in which you are operating are fellow Indians. They may have different religions, pursue a different way of life, but they are Indians and the very fact, that they are different and yet part of India is a reflection of India’s greatness. Some of these people are misguided and have taken up arms against their own people and are disrupting peace of this area. You are to protect the mass of the people in the area from these disruptive elements. You are not to fight the people in the area but to protect them.

General Rawat has upturned this. He has pronounced that ‘Adversaries must be afraid of you and at the same time your people must be afraid of you. We are a friendly army, but when we are called to restore law and order, people have to be afraid of us.’ He argues that the proxy war the army is coping with is a ‘dirty war’. He cannot have people throwing ‘petrol bombs and stones’ while his soldiers ‘wait and die’. He needs to keep their morale up by allowing them to fight innovatively, including through use – in the incident that prompted his defence of himself – of human shields.

Happily, he was quick to clarify that, ‘It (human shield) is not a general norm. As a practice it is not supported.’ What he misses is that tactics is to be guided both by norms and the humanitarian legal code, be it in war or internal conflict. Situations cannot guide tactics. Tactics are responses to situations that have to be ethically and legally compliant. By shifting the goal posts the army chief is arbitrarily changing the accepted doctrinal principles of Indian army in subconventional operations. 

This could possibly be on his initiative. His extensive experience in counter insurgency that got him his job, perhaps persuades him that the doctrinal principle of ‘one hand tied behind the back’ is superfluous. It was never quite popular within the army, with its counter insurgency trope largely bewailing the imposition. This is what prompted the army’s somewhat tough approach and action in the nineties in Kashmir, such as through use of proxy groups as Ikhwan, disappearances, firing on LC without concern for collateral damage etc. The new fangled technique - perception management - was to manage the fallout. The army’s flagship publication on subconventional operations - ‘iron fist in velvet glove’ - coincided with the start of the decade long hiatus of peace in Kashmir. It is apparent that the tenets on the use of force in the document are liable to be liberally interpreted by those who have cut their teeth in counter insurgency operations, such as the army chief.

In other words, has the army dropped its veneer? Though veterans with equal claim to operational experience are aghast at the brazen shift, that its slip is showing does not appear to embarrass the army any.

This brings one to the second possibility. The shift away from the central doctrinal pillar of people-friendly operations is perhaps an imposition by its political masters. They have chosen well in choosing an army chief with like sentiment. The government is explicit that talks are not the way out, even if its home minister promises a solution to the troubles in Kashmir. The army will therefore be held to the till. A tough line to go with the image of its national security minder – the national security adviser - and his boss - the prime minister - is politically useful. In any other dispensation, even if it was not knocked on its knuckles privately, the army could not have been this willful.

The problem with doggedness is that it can be in the wrong direction. The army in Kashmir is on such path. It mistakenly insists that it is confronted with a proxy war. There is surely Pakistani chicanery, but a decade long talks process with several false starts cannot but have let Pakistan continue as an  interested party and ill motivated player. The equally long and coextensive engagement with a political solution in Kashmir has been abandoned, leaving the people – even girls - with little choice than to take to stones. Whether this is a product of information war on social media - as the army chief suggests – is up for debate.

Instead, a self-fulfilling prophesy will likely develop, with a jihadists supposedly in search of Khorasan overrunning the indigenous dimension – yet another throwback to the mid nineties when the JKLF was eclipsed by the Hizb and the late nineties  when the Hizb was outshone by the Lashkar. This would be welcome in New Delhi. Turning the army into one feared by people would be small price to pay and it would exactly what is needed by an authoritarian regime. Hopefully, this is not a future the army envisages.   

http://thebookreviewindia.org/a-historical-sweep/

Book Review 

Armed Forces and Insurgents in Modern Asia, Kaushik Roy and Sourish Saha

The book is a product of collaboration between an unlikely duo: a history professor at Jadavpur University and a bio-statistical consultant for pharmaceutical companies based in the US. It began in a conversation over coffee at Kolkata’s Park Street in which the two discussed governance, poverty and armed rebellions in India, with the discussion expanding to include comparisons and contrasts with the experience of insurgency and counter-insurgency across the globe. In the event, the two restricted the scope of the book that emerged to Asia. They intended the book as a ‘sort of reference book for researchers’ (p. vii). The bibliography at its end covering 19 pages makes this claim plausible.

Professor Kaushik Roy’s academic contribution to Indian military history has included many works of considerable length and depth over the past decade. While the division of labour between the two authors is not known, the book’s introduction bears an academic’s stamp in its synthesis of thinking on insurgencies and their counter. Thoughts on rebellion ranging from Clausewitz to Mao and counter-insurgency thinking from Kitson to Kilcullen are touched upon. It is a sound background chapter on which to base the rest of the book, backed as it is by 82 footnotes citing the well regarded sources on the subject.

[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”reg” ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]

There are eight chapters covering sequentially the insurgencies and counter-insurgencies in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, North East India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq. The authors acknowledge that this is not an exhaustive coverage of Asian internal conflicts since some significant ones such as the Maoist insurgency against the Kuomintang and the Japanese; the several sites of insurgency in South Asia such as Punjab, Kashmir and Balochistan; Turkey’s engagement with the Kurdish question; the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, do not find mention. In a way, it is a subjective selection on studies included, but these suffice to give a taste of various aspects of rebellions, how militaries have coped and statecraft. This is therefore a useful introductory volume for students not only of internal conflict as a phenomenon but specific insurgencies covered such as that of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.

The volume succeeds in bringing out the scope of insurgencies—its multiple forms and variants ranging from nationalist inspired such as in Vietnam to current day religious inspiration of the Islamic state in the Levant. Alongside, there are several models of state counter action such as imperial policing with militaries exhibiting a constabulary ethic to an annihilationist model persued by the Sri Lankan army against Prabhakaran’s beleaguered Tigers in 2009. The authors are agnostic on how success obtains to an insurgent and a counter-insurgent, but lay out the factors that influence the balance. For instance, the situation had turned decisively against the terrorist tactics adopted with the 9/11 attacks. This enabled the Sri Lankans to turn the screw without anyone, including India stepping up to bail out the Tigers. However, an annihilationist model has not succeeded elsewhere, howsoever much the ordnance delivered has been upped, for instance in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The book’s historical sweep covers a century from early last century to the current day. For instance, the chapter on India’s North East contrasts the British approach to pacifying the North East with Independent India’s approach. Since there is a lot of ground to be covered, there is a tendency to compress the material, with the time span of India’s military involvement in the North East from the mid-fifties to today being covered in a mere three pages. Sometimes this ends up as a staccato barrage of facts and figures, which is difficult to systematically put together analytically.

The readers can engage selectively with the book, dividing it into chapters of individual interests. Some are topical in that the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan continue unabated. The chapters therefore are a useful backgrounder, covering as they do the historical background to how the current day imbroglio came about and the current status of the insurgency itself. This is a rather ambitious project, but the authors make no claim to comprehensive treatment, but to bring to the fore the salient features and some nuances in the light of space constraints. For instance, in their chapter on Iraq they discuss the efficacy of the ‘surge’ that is credited with ending the earlier Sunni rebellion contrasting the two theories on its end, whether it can be attributed to American upping of their numbers under Petraeus leadership or of Sunni tribes themselves rolling back the Baathists and Al Qaeda elements within them.

The concluding chapter carries a view on the future of insurgencies and their counter. They highlight the dangers of urban insurgency, with the location being along seaboards in the light of global littoralization. Then there are the problems of weak, dysfunctional and failed states tackling population growth, slow economic development, social divisions, inadequate governmental penetration of areas and weak polity. The headlines-making Islamist terror also figures as a threat that will persist into the future. What is certain is that Kilkullen’s concept of ‘war among the people’, forged late last century in the face of the fissiparous wars in the Balkans, shall remain relevant into the future.

The book would be of interest to students of strategic and peace studies. Practitioners in uniform might like to broaden their understanding of their own experience by taking a look at examples from outside. Policy makers will find comparisons possible between the sites of insurgency useful, as also any best practices that can be gleaned from the case studies. By this yardstick, the book could find a place on bookshelves on internal armed conflict.

The book is also a contribution to Asian studies and development of an Asian perspective. This is all for the better since Asia is the least integrated continent in the world. It being the most populous and spread over multiple subcontinents, it is also the most militarized and has raging across it the most significant of today’s conflicts. For instance, Islamism—that is prophesized to figure in future conflicts—has a presence ranging from its Mediterranean shore to the Pacific. It is therefore important to begin seeing Asia as one, so as to emulate Africans who urge ‘African solutions to African problems’. On this count, the book appears a step in the right direction.

http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/21/strategic-affairs/disjointed-doctrine.html

Reviewing the Military’s Joint Doctrine

The second edition of the joint doctrine of the Indian armed forces was released in April 2017. Admiral Sunil Lanba, current Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (Ch COSC), states in its foreword that it is intended as a reference document for the academia and citizens, among others. Therefore, unlike its earlier edition in 2006, this is thankfully not a confidential document. Nevertheless, it has not been put up on the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) website. For the sake of discussion here, the doctrine has instead had to be downloaded from a website run by a journalist known to be the cheerleader of the former defence minister.1

This is in keeping with the past practice of doctrinal reticence on part of the HQ IDS. Though its webpage2 has a cache of links to Western military doctrines, it carries links to the only two Indian army doctrines in the open domain: its flagship doctrine and another one on sub-conventional operations. It has not placed its own non-confidential Joint Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations (HQ IDS 2012) on the webpage.

This suggests that the services are somewhat conflicted in their approach to transparency. There is a degree of openness, illustrated by the navy placing all editions of the naval doctrine and maritime strategy in the open domain, available on the official website of the headquarters for ease of access. Taking a page out of the naval book, the air force went public with the third edition of the air force doctrine and also made it readily available on their headquarters’ website. The army, for its part, has been more circumspect. The respective second editions of the two open domain army doctrines were not only kept confidential, but no press release was initiated on their promulgation, as is usually the case even with confidential doctrines (Ahmed 2015). It is apparent that the army has learnt the wrong lessons from the considerable criticism the first editions of the two doctrines faced (Navlakha 2007; Ladwig 2008).

The dissonance suggests that the more liberal approach to transparency of the other two services has been trumped by the army. The other baleful aspect of army influence on this doctrine is the quality of the product. The naval and air force doctrines are a pleasant contrast in terms of quality of writing and production values. From its resemblance to the army doctrines in terms of laconic language and pedestrian production values, the joint doctrine appears to have an army pedigree. This makes apparent an underside of “jointness,” the holy grail sought by the three services through the joint doctrine.

The army chief recently let on that the draft national security strategy and national military strategy are soon to be given to the government (PTI 2017). First, this appropriation by the army of the lead role in doctrine-making does not bode well for jointness. There is, within the HQ IDS, the Directorate of Doctrine (DoD)—that took ownership of the joint doctrine—which should logically be in the lead role on the two projects the army has appropriated. Even so, the DoD can at best address military strategy, not national security strategy, which is presumably the domain of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).

Non-traditional security approaches—such as human security—that arguably can best be captured by civilian input, presumably subsumed in the NSCS, would likely be eclipsed. While conceding that the army’s stepping up appears to be a case of its volunteering to bell the cat—knowing that bureaucrats and politicians are not up to it—it can only lead to a militarisation of national security thinking. Interestingly, the joint doctrine mistakenly includes the deputy chair of the NITI Aayog (formerly the Planning Commission) in the National Security Council (NSC) (p 33). This was true over a decade and half ago, when Jaswant Singh and K C Pant, known for their interest in national security, were deputy chairs of the Planning Commission in their turn.

Flaws and Failures

That said, the joint doctrine has some substance. The joint doctrine makes clear that, India’s aim being “comprehensive national development,” national security entails creation and sustenance of an enabling environment. For the military, this primarily implies prevention of war through deterrence and other supportive roles for the military, such as aid to civil authorities, and humanitarian and disaster relief. Military force application, when necessary, is to bring about outcomes desired by the political leadership. Conflict prevention is preferred through deterrence and coercion. It rightly points to preconditions for use of military power, namely, in the national interest; with necessary force levels; with clear objectives, capable of reassessment; with support of people; and as a last resort.

Nevertheless, there is a conceptual flaw. The joint doctrine spells out three “states” of being: peace; conflict or war; and a combination of the two. It sees the difference between peace and conflict as the absence of threat in peace, and in conflict the presence of threat necessitating military measures. However, threats also exist in peace and military measures are taken to deter and mitigate these, without transitioning to conflict. Since this is easy to point to, the conceptual clutter might just be a case of lazy editing and can be left at that. However, the concept of peace is defined as absence of “real or perceived threat” not only to the country’s national interests, but also to that of its “strategic partners,” the latter a patently unnecessary inclusion.

Some problematic phrases also give one pause for thought. One such phrase is “decisive victory,” occurring thrice in the document. When obtaining politically desirable outcomes is sufficient as a military aim, going for decisive victory can be overkill and is unnecessarily escalatory. The armed forces intend to “shock, dislocate and overwhelm” the enemy. After mobilising “swiftly” and with an “early launch” of operations, they are to “rapidly achieve tangible gains” (p 19). This appears to be a hangover of the Cold Start doctrine, as the 2004 army doctrine was colloquially referred to. The Cold Start doctrine was taken out of cold storage by the new army chief on taking over (Shukla 2017).

With much water having flown down the Indus since then, particularly Pakistan’s induction of tactical nuclear weapons systems, Cold Start will bring the nuclear overhang down on the conflict. Another beehive stirred by conventional operations simultaneously will be the hybrid war—asymmetric war waged by irregulars—which the doctrine prognosticates as the future form of war. Together, these will put paid to the fond expectation in military writings, and echoed in the document, of a “short” war (p 10). By not dwelling on how these twin menaces will be tackled, the doctrine packages war as a usable option.

This is important to point out since, according to the doyen of military thinkers, Carl von Clausewitz (2008: 30), the first consideration for the political decision-maker is to understand the kind of war contemplated. Since the document does not have a section on nuclear war—plausible between nuclear powers—it does not provide the necessary grist to thinking intelligently on how a war can turn out. The absence of discussion on escalation avoidance, control and de-escalation suggests that the armed forces are living in denial of the nuclear reality, the Achilles’ heel of the joint doctrine.

This gap is attributable to a structural flaw. While the HQ IDS serves the Ch COSC—the “first among equals” among the chiefs—it does not have a dedicated section of the staff dealing with nuclear conflict. The Ch COSC is in the reporting line of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC). Since the SFC is the custodian of India’s nuclear deterrent and executor of nuclear operations, it quite rightly is not the locus for nuclear decision-making input. Further, the Ch COSC is double hatted in also being the operational head of his service. Thus, the Ch COSC—the focal point for professional military advice—is hobbled.

According to the doctrine, the second channel of reporting of the SFC is the National Security Advisor (NSA). The NSA is a civilian appointed by executive order, unlike in the United States where appropriate legislation and procedures of appointment and on roles exist. A mere press release serves to inform of the appointment being made (PIB 2014). There has been no effort to legalise this anomaly by situating the appointment in the constitutional scheme of democratic accountability.

Though in its diagrammatical description of the higher defence organisation (p 38), the doctrine misses out on the link between the NSCS with the SFC—within the NSCS is nestled a Strategic and Defence Division, which deals with strategic planning. This division also comprises military staff who serve the non-uniformed NSA. The comparative lack of military heft in nuclear decision-making leaves a void in institutional checks and balances for the inordinately high-powered and unaccountable NSA. This explains the persisting status quo in the face of multiple reports recommending the creation of a chief of defence staff or permanent Ch COSC (Mukherjee 2015). The doctrine, in its chapter-long discussion on civil–military relations, sensibly recommends inclusivity in the national security structures so that military input is not only a statutory requirement, but is expected, sought and given.

Below the conventional level is the sub-conventional one, which in hybrid war can be expected to be coextensive with conventional operations. Nevertheless, the doctrine’s discussion on Low Intensity Conflict Operation (LICO) is only in response to proxy wars waged; as the doctrine has it, by an “inimical adversary, engineered through hybrid elements” (p 20). Also, “surgical strikes” in response to terrorist provocations, though finding mention (p 14), are not discussed. Surgical strikes could well obliterate the distinction between the sub-conventional and conventional levels. Pakistan’s good sense in pretending that no surgical strikes took place in September 2016 may have made the option appear reusable. The constant, media-generated hysteria for more-of-the-same, such as in the aftermath in May 2017 of the beheadings of the two soldiers by a Pakistani border action team along the Line of Control and the murder of young Kashmiri military officer, Ummer Fayaz, while on leave, obfuscates escalatory dangers.

Further, the doctrine’s merging of counter-infiltration and counterterrorism operations within the LICO came at a price. It misses the indigenous dimension and the aspects of militancy and insurgency altogether that were better captured earlier by the two doctrines on sub-conventional operations, that of the army and the joint doctrine. Though it locates LICO at the sub-conventional level, the shift to the use of LICO in relation to sub-conventional operations and absence of “sub-conventional operations” in the terminology at the end of the book appears to be an arbitrary shift. Indeed, this reveals a problem with the wider military approach in Kashmir. The doctrine’s characterisation of the internal conflict in Jammu and Kashmir as a proxy war calling out for the LICO makes for a very limited approach to conflict management and resolution in Kashmir. No wonder the internal conflict continues with renewed gusto, with teenage girls joining the ranks of stone throwers this season.

Hope, Yet

Finally, to note the doctrine’s signal contribution, it rightly alights on, among others, democracy, secularism, inclusive socio-economic development, respect for diversity, peaceful coexistence, pluralism, and tolerance as national values (p 1). Its reiteration of these is interesting in the light of the military’s political bosses supervising a transition away from these values. Since doctrines serve as a form of messaging, can this be taken as a subtle pushback by the military?

Nevertheless, so as not to go overboard in its temerity, the doctrine echoes the popular, and erroneous, strategic discourse, deeming the threat to these as an “eastward spread of [Islamic] fundamentalist and radical [Islamist] ideologies” and an “engineered radicalized tilt towards such ideology amongst India’s [Muslim] youth” (parentheses added; p 10). Evidently, the doctrine is oblivious to the principal threat to national values emanating from majoritarian extremism. It cannot be faulted overly.

Vice President Hamid Ansari has pointed to the principal failing in the national security discourse in his delivery of the fifth K Subrahmanyam lecture in New Delhi in February 2017. In a veiled reference to what cultural nationalism has wrought, he said,

The operative principle for this [national identity] is ‘national-civic’ rather than ‘national-ethnic,’ though a segment of opinion today would want to modulate or amend it and espouse instead an Indian version of ‘cultural nationalism’ premised on ‘religious majoritarianism’. (Ansari 2017)

The military would do well to revise its threat template accordingly.

Combined with the military’s thrust for inclusivity in national security policy and decision-making, it would appear that not much would change in terms of variegation in input, particularly if subjective penetration of the military by cultural nationalism is so thorough already. On the contrary, more direct exposure of the military brass to the political class, unleavened by the bureaucratic layer as is the military’s desire, would imperil military professionalism and its apolitical position with irreversible finality. The selection late last year of the army chief set a precedent whereby politically aligned or pliable military leaders might be easier to spot by the political ruling class. This could bring about a change to subjective civilian control of the military—in which there is a convergence in ideology between the civilian and military—from the present-day objective military control based on the apolitical character and professional distance of the military.

The military is virtually the last institution standing. With the publication of this joint doctrine, it has staked out its professional space, but would need to engage with the concerns raised here. Of greater significance, however, in the present context, is its brave hark back to constitutional values as national values, knowing that these sit at odds with the definition of national values held by its political masters. This presents the military as an island on which can yet rest hope for the soul and idea of India.

Notes

1 http://bharatshakti.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Joint_Doctrine_Indian_....

2 http://ids.nic.in/doctrine.htm.

References

Ahmed, A (2015): “Opening Up the Doctrinal Space,” Center for Land Warfare Studies, Article 1375, 29 April, viewed on 15 April 2017, http://www.claws.in/1375/opening-up-the-doctrinal-space-ali-ahmed.html.

Ansari, H (2017): “Some Thoughts on the Domestic Dimensions of Security,” fifth K Subarhmanyam lecture, New Delhi, 14 February, viewed on 10 May 2017, http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/speechesinterviews/remarks-shri-m-hamid-ansari-honourable-vice-president-india-5th-k-subarhmanyam.

Clausewitz, Carl von (2008): On War, Trans Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Beatrice Heuser (ed), Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.

HQ IDS (2012): Joint Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations, New Delhi: Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff.

Ladwig, W (2008): “A Cold Start for Hot Wars?” International Security, Vol 32, No 3, pp 158–90.

Mukherjee, A (2015): “Closing the Military Loop,” Indian Express, 1 April, viewed on 3 May 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/closing-the-military-loop/.

Navlakha, G (2007): “Doctrine for Sub-conventional Operations: A Critique,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 42, No 14, pp 1242–46, viewed on 20 April 2017, http://www.epw.in/journal/2007/ 14/commentary/doctrine-sub-conventional-operations-critique.html.

PIB (2014): “Shri Ajit Doval Appointed as National Security Adviser,” Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, 30 May, viewed on 5 May 2017, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=105318.

PTI (2017): “Strengthen Military, Look for New Allies to Tackle Pakistan, China: Army Chief Bipin Rawat,” NDTV, Press Trust of India, 5 May, viewed on 10 May 2017, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/strengthen-military-look-for-new-allies-to-tackle-pakistan-china-army-chief-bipin-rawat-1689725.

Shukla, A (2017): “Why General Bipin Rawat Acknowledged the Cold Start Doctrine,” Wire, 20 January, viewed on 30 April, https://thewire.in/101586/cold-start-pakistan-doctrine/.

- See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/21/strategic-affairs/disjointed-doctrine.html#sthash.4u42zoKd.dpuf

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/1/10769/The-Gogoi-Award-puts-General-Rawat-On-Test

 The Gogoi award puts General Rawat on test

That Major N.L. Gogoi has earned the Army Chief’s commendation is not in doubt. He has received it for consistent display of grit in line of duty. As a Rashtriya Rifles company commander he can be expected to have led patrols, sat in night long ambushes, kept roads open through rain and fog, reacted to spot intelligence on terrorist movement and participated in events organized by his unit to bring the army close to the people. 

He has evidently done all this at a time when the going has been getting tougher in the Kashmir Valley and the people are more hostile. There can be no envying him his recognition. But for the likes of junior leaders like him the Valley would have been lost to India a long time back. If the award was for his work preceding the incident that brought him fame – infamy to some – he can enjoy full credit for it. 

Placing him in front of an array of microphones to tell his side of the story bespeaks of the army’s confidence that his act of tying the Kashmiri young man to the jeep in early April was an act in good faith. Gogoi for his part thought that was the best way to save lives which would have been the case had he shot his way out of trouble. It is possible that the court of inquiry that investigated the incident has found him credible. 

Let us leave Major Gogoi at that without begrudging him his award. One can imagine him over at his company operating base or out on some patrol on election day. With the SOS coming in from the ITBP, the adjutant of his unit might have scrambled him to the location, not necessarily because he was closest but because of his hard earned reputation as a man of action. He proved as much in thinking on his feet, in his own widely telecast description of the event. The rest is beyond that of the fighting man. 

The significant aspect of this story instead is the timing of the award. While usually awards await the Army Day, Republic Day and Independence Day, in this case, Gogoi got his out of turn. This is not unknown as commendations are a great way for the brass to exercise their morale building function. A good deed timely recognized by an award has a wider effect than merely pepping up an individual but of energizing a whole outfit. The Military Cross was pinned to Sam Manekshaw’s chest while many thought he might die of wounds without knowing of the acclaim of his peers. 

By likewise handing the award bearing his stamp to Major Gogoi out-of-turn, the Army Chief has been bold to open himself to scrutiny. It has not been long in coming. The usual suspects have gone to town over the implications for human rights and humanitarian law and possible disrespect for Kashmiris. The liberal brigade has alighted on the side of the Farooq Dar’s story, the ‘human shield’ in this incident. 

Allowing that the crowd of 1200 – in Gogoi’s numbers – was one kilometer deep, along his exit route, they wonder why Dar needed to be strapped down for the rest of his 25 kilometer long journey through three-four other villages. Also, what accounts for his beating that even now reportedly gives him the shivers at night? 

If the inquiry did not address these questions, it does not hold water. To them, it is one of a piece of inquiries that litter the Kashmir record of security forces: beginning from the controversial Kunan Poshpora incident; not forgetting infamous Pathribal; and, to clinch these, the finding of yet another as ‘death by drowning’ of two able bodied women in Shopian, all in two feet of flowing water. They would surely have died from drowning if their heads had been held under water long enough. The inquiry did not pursue who might have wanted to do that and why. 

All this brouhaha could easily have been anticipated. This Army has remained unfazed and it’s chief, rather brazen. It well knows that the ‘national’ media – as against the Lutyens’ media – would have lapped up the Gogoi press appearance. With fire assaults simultaneously on Pakistani pickets along the Line of Control broadcast in virtual real time, it is playing to the gallery in India’s heartland and hinterland. 

Perhaps it thinks that this display helps prove its responsiveness to civil authority, doing what its acting minister set it to do in wake of the beheadings of its soldiers early this month. There is little else the Army could do on the Line of Control, in light of precedence dating to the late nineties. But surely it has gone beyond the necessary in the Gogoi case. It must know this is unnecessary additional wind in the political sails of its civilian masters that the Army did not really need to provide. 

The problem is that it is not the Army’s mandate to be providing political ballast. The apex level must not only know that it has to keep the Army out of politics but also know how to keep it so. Even if the Army is not interested in politics, in India today, politics – right wing politics – is interested in the Army. Recall, in its earlier avatar, the BJP led NDA government had the Army organize Sindhu darshan for its homesick ideologue, LK Advani. This time round the right wing’s embrace of the Army has been more than just on election posters. 

The Army brass has a representational function that entails ensuring the Army stays apolitical. The more it lends itself to providing egregious political comfort to its civilian masters, the more it opens itself to manipulation. The more it is manipulated, the less it is apolitical. A Chief who cannot understand this - leave alone one who is complicit in this - is not worth his salt. 

Where does this leave the Army chief? He has two years to go, long enough to help line up his political masters for an extended tenure at the political helm. Or conversely, it gives him enough time to retest his ability to say ‘thus far and no further’, if not ‘no’ itself.

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=66848


Ummer Fayaz: Another Kashmiri icon

I can imagine the conversation young Ummer Fayaz might have had with his abductors in his last moments. He would likely have told them to take a hop - only more colourfully - though knowing fully well he might not make it out of captivity alive. This I can tell from reading the write up on him in the Indian Military Academy commemorative volume on his passing out course, that took the ‘Antim Pag’ (‘Final Step’ (as a Gentleman Cadet)) at the hallowed Chetwode Hall in December last year. He is described as one who could ‘debate on any topic’. Being ex-NDA (National Defence Academy) to boot, he could not have been short of sting even with a gun to his head. Shamed when confronted with a mirror to their face, his captors hurriedly dispatched him to what shall surely turn out to be eternal glory.

No doubt they justify to themselves that this is their payment for their tickets to paradise. They perhaps think that he having joined the Indian army - which to them an oppressive outfit - had signed his death warrant at their hands. Having notched him up as their victim, they fancy themselves closer to the houris reportedly awaiting them there. It beguiles as to how they still expect to at all get to heaven. They appear unable to see that Fayaz and the likes of them cannot both be eligible.

Fayaz is surely already up there. By all accounts, Fayaz has no place else to go. In his short life, he just did not have the time to notch up the deeds that could veer him off course. He was only just about to proceed on his Young Officer course. The acting defence minister – no doubt well briefed – refers to him as a ‘model’. To have been on an academy sports team – hockey in his case – is evidence of his grit. Having a gift for speaking; a sportsman and with good looks to boot, here was the epitome of Kashmir’s youth.

The army is entirely right in swearing to bring his killers to justice. However, in case the killers resist, the army should not lose any more good men in keeping the murderers from their maker. Fayaz’s killing might be their last, but not necessarily their most dastardly. A trial here would best reveal them - finally - for all they are worth and for Kashmiris to disabuse them of any notion of their utility for the Kashmir cause. Justice if at the cost of more lives can safely be left to judgment day.

It can be argued that these men – either Pakistani or Kashmiri - are also presumably young. How did they get to murder? How are they so blinded by hatred as to be unable to see that murderers can neither bring freedom to a land and a people nor please the gods? An argument could go that they are as much victims as Fayaz – their humanity snuffed out by intelligence handlers and religious indoctrinators. If Kashmiri, they – like Fayaz – might have seen no other reality than violence. If Pakistani, they were bundled onto terror assembly lines too early to be able to exercise a choice. So, Fayaz was killed as much by the circumstances of the violence surrounding Kashmir as by the killers themselves.

Consequently, the question needs rephrasing from ‘who killed Ummer Fayaz?’ to ‘what killed Ummer Fayaz?’ There can be several answers to this. The one hazarded here is political timidity earlier followed lately by political hubris.

For a political problem to be alive seventy years since its inception, it obviously escaped the necessary political attention. Some might interpret the persistence of both states in enmity as a sign of strength and a sign of their determination to remain unbowed. The alternative is truer. Both simply lack the political will to get on with shoveling the problem left over by history.

Whereas earlier the giant Jawarharlal Nehru was unable to manage the right wing critique to his Kashmir policy mounted by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and the Praja Parishad, later towering leaders as Indira Gandhi and Zulfiquar Bhutto, at their zenith in power, could not resolve the problem in their meeting at Simla. They were not able to pull off the supposed unwritten agreement they had arrived at there, as their power steadily whittled with time.

It is easy to surmise that less powerful leaders would fare worse. This has been the case of the earlier NDA and its successor UPA regime. Whereas Vajpayee’s Lahore initiative was ambushed by the Pakistani army at Kargil, at Agra his subsequent initiative was sabotaged by LK Advani. The political sphere in Pakistan has been so weak and corrupt that it has been unable to whittle the Pakistani army’s image as defenders of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers. The latest spat between Nawaz Sharif and the army – over his responsiveness to Indian overtures through the back channel - is evidence of Pakistani political weakness.  

The story in democratic India is little different. Vajpayee set the table for Manmohan Singh. Mr. Singh could not clinch the issue either internally, with appropriate follow through on his three round tables, the five working groups and with the three interlocutors, or externally, through the back channel discussions. To be fair to Manmohan Singh, the remote on his government was reportedly held with 10 Janpath and the Congress high command there ensconsed was transfixed with the danger of any concessions being taken as appeasement. By the time of UPA II, both were afraid of their own shadow.

This however cannot be said of the current government. It has the political numbers to carry the day. While preceding governments feared the BJP would go to town crying sell out in case of conflict resolution steps that involved compromise of any sort, the BJP itself has no such fears. It has nothing to prove in terms of ‘nationalist’ credentials. It can go the distance, should it so wish. Mehbooba Mufti is right in believing that Mr. Modi holds the key.

So, what has tripped up this government? Not political pusillanimity as much as political hubris. For it to cast away the investment it has made in polarization, by seeming to cotton up to the Kashmiris and making peace with Pakistan, would be premature. It needs Pakistan as a bogey for longer. Winning a majority in parliament, followed by capture of the assembly of India’s largest state is not enough. It now reportedly has a ‘mission 2019’ lined up with a 400 plus target of parliamentary seats. That would assure Mr. Modi his second term and the Hindutva forces a long enough tenure to make India great again after a 1000 year eclipse.

The government cannot chance peace with Pakistan now. It has to keep Pakistan enmeshed in the proxy war, supposedly being waged in Kashmir, so that it can do without addressing the Kashmir problem. As for Kashmiris, most happen to be Muslim. And Muslim baiting - with the latest variant being ‘triple talaq’ (divorce in three chants) – is set to continue till the next elections. Therefore, addressing Kashmir will have to wait.

Though the BJP got to power touting development, it’s handing over of India’s most populous province to a religious figure suggests that it knows that its  strength is rooted, not in the development-minded middle class, but in the right wing formations, the foot soldiers of elections. The right wing continues to exercise a veto on the main fixtures of India’s foreign and domestic policies – Pakistan and Kashmir respectively. Thus, though Mr. Modi has the numbers - even if he wants to - he dare not strike off trying to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Political timidity of preceding governments has led up to this pass. Here on it is greed for power, for its own sake and – or so the sales pitch goes - for the greater good and glory of Hindutva.

There cannot but be a few more deaths of the likes of Ummer Fayaz and Burhan Wani. The two represent their generation. They are their generation’s offering at the altar of peace. Kashmiris must realise that far too much blood has been extracted from them by the two states claiming their allegiance. They need to collectively find a non-violent way out before their next is another ‘lost generation’.  

http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-5462/2017/may/5/when-war-is-no-option.html

Book Review

ACCOMMODATING RISING POWERS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 
 Edited by T.V.Paul 
Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, Year 2017, pp.236, $36.99

The Book Review, VOLUME XLI NUMBER 5 May 2017

The editor of the volume under review,   T.V. Paul, is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. The book is rather dense and a difficult read, and consequently can only be recommended for the cognoscenti. Its 14 contributions are by well-chosen academics who attended a workshop with the theme ‘Globalisation and the Changing National Security State’ organized by the editor and his project team in late 2013. The book aims to preempt the usual manner of system change in the international arena: violent conflict. It visualizes new kids on the block threatening the current overlords. Often this sets up a confrontation. International relations is little different. However, war as a means to settle the differences between status quo and rising powers is no longer an option. In the nuclear age, it is far too destructive not only for the putative belligerents but also for the planet. Therefore, fresh ways of change need to be thought through to effect peaceful change through long term strategies on the part of both the emergent powers and the dominant powers. With China, Russia and India among others playing an increasingly significant role, change is underway. The key is to keep this peaceful. The book is a notable contribution to that end. In an incisive opening chapter, Paul charts the theoretical course for the volume. He inquires whether violent conflict between the aspiring and established great powers is inevitable in power transitions. He asks the question as to what extent power indices, including of military power, matter in today’s international order that is deemed to have changed considerably as to make armed conflict between great powers an unlikely manner of passing on the power baton. If war is not an option, what can substitute is the object of the inquiry in the book. Can institutions serve the purpose of accommodation? The alternative to accommodation is containment. This entails delicate balancing on the part of the dominant power. The book probes such questions by first looking at the mechanisms of accommodation. Among these number mechanisms stemming from balance of power theories; interdependence theory; institutionalism; and constructivism, dealing with ideas on accommodation and change. In its second part, it deals with historical case studies including the passing of Pax Brittanica in favour of Pax Americana and the US opening up to China in the Kissinger years. 

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2017/04/26/south-asia-nuclear-self-deterrence-as-a-virtue/

South Asia: Nuclear Self-Deterrence as a Virtue

Deterrence strategists value the fear and shock effect a state’s nuclear capability to inflict harm induces in the leadership of an adversary. The capability is so envisaged and built as to convey a certainty in case of conflict, with political will demonstrated in peacetime to assure the adversary that the nuclear decision maker would not shy away from genocide and ecocide when the push of conflict comes to nuclear shove.

Nuclear strategists have it only half right. The ability to inflict harm cannot be seen independently of the like ability of the adversary to similarly cause harm right back. This brings in self-deterrence, to—at a minimum—question the nuclear strategists’ input to decision making, and—at a maximum—to stay the nuclear hand. Just as avidly nuclear strategists articulate their wares, anti-nuclear practitioners must show-case nuclear dangers to induce self-deterrence in decision makers.

A small storm in South Asia’s nuclear teacup last month provides an entry point into using India’s case in an imagined nuclear aftermath as example.

Recently, noted nuclear watcher Vipin Narang set the cat among the nuclear pigeons. At a Carnegie international nuclear policy conference in Washington DC, he put together the writings of two former officials who dealt with India’s nuclear deterrent, namely the former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and the former head of the Strategic Forces Command Lt Gen Nagal, to posit that India is moving towards a first strike nuclear posture.

He argues that the writings of the two officials after leaving respective jobs suggest that India plans to take out Pakistan’s nuclear capability in case of tactical nuclear first use by Pakistan or in case India decides not to wait for Pakistan’s nuclear first use prior to its own launch of a disarming, counter force, strike. In the same breath he says that this might as yet be wishful since India does not quite have the capability yet.

Jawaharlal Nehru University don, Rajesh Rajagopalan, elaborates that such a strike would require 60 warheads for a first strike, with another 30 up India’s sleeve for follow-on strikes. Both sensibly argue against going down this route, but base their argument on strategic grounds.

An argument missed in the discussion—which nuclear strategists in general take care to avoid altogether—is the likely effect of Pakistan’s strike back, even after suffering a first strike equivalent nuclear attack.  that has taken out its ability for a coherent response along with its physical capability to strike back.

Self-deterrence is a taboo word in nuclear theology. Nuclear strategists are in the business of scaring the adversary. Self-deterrence on the other hand implies buying into nuclear scaremongering and staying one’s nuclear hand. In the case under discussion of India’s contemplation of a nuclear first strike, self-deterrence would imply taking stock of the consequences and prudently shelving the option of first strike.

If, as Rajagopalan argues, it would take 60 warheads to attempt a disarming strike, India needs examining the environmental impact over the long term of not only these 60 impacts—even if all are not ground bursts—but of knock-on detonations and scattering of nuclear debris of Pakistani nuclear warheads so struck. Since Pakistan has some 120 warheads, India might wish to take out perhaps two thirds of them to set back its retaliatory capability. At least half of these need being added to the environmental damage calculus, making for an effects estimate of about 100 warheads.

Also, when confronted with a disarming strike, Pakistan would make its remaining numbers count. Though under broken-backed conditions and even if decapitated, it might still like to get in a blow or two at India’s political and economic centers of gravity, Delhi and Mumbai respectively. It would try and get in at least a tenth of India’s salvo on these two targets counting on India dissolving into being a ‘geographical expression’, as India was once envisaged in Winston Churchill’s malicious phrase.

Environmental costs are easier to imagine. Seldom discussed are the socio-political consequences in the aftermath of first strike and retaliatory strikes.

In India’s case, bordering states would be directly affected including that of India’s principal nuclear decision maker, the prime minister, who belongs to Gujarat. Punjab, ruled by an opposition party and abutting Pakistan’s heartland, stands to be most affected with the political and economic power of Sikhs, one of India’s significant minorities, who live in Punjab, directly impacted.

Pakistan’s plight would focus the attention of global jihad, embroiling India in a far worse and by far wider imbroglio. Since there are only desert stretches on the other side, Pakistani refugees would likely stream eastward. Prime time view of the Syrian migration towards Europe indicates India’s border fence might wilt.

Having heard Narang, Pakistan would surely redouble its attempts at squirrelling away its nukes. Some would be stashed away unobtrusively in areas of what it considers its strategic depth, ungoverned spaces along the Af-Pak border. It would innovate on how to use its smuggling networks to get across a suitcase bomb or two through the border or the Arabian Sea. Nuclear terrorism could make a spectacular advent.

Further, how this influx of Pakistani refugees into India will impact India’s social harmony is easy to guess. The manner India’s largest minority—its Muslims—have been put upon by the right wing formations after the victory of the party subscribing to cultural nationalism, the Bharatiya Janata Party, suggests a worsening of inter-community relations.

This buffeting of internal security can only heighten centralization. Authoritarian tendencies marked in today’s polity in India will get a fillip, prompting a backlash across India’s periphery. Externally, India’s economic and diplomatic isolation would be near complete, making India ripe for an insular dictatorship at war with itself.

Though India might have ‘won’ the nuclear war itself, it would have lost the peace—the only sensible way to define victory in war. Self-deterrence might have more sense to it than all deterrence strategists purvey.