Foreign Affairs Journal, Apr-Jun 2010

Priyanjali Malik, India’s Nuclear Debate: Exceptionalism and the Bomb, New Delhi: Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-56312-3, pp. 344, Rs. 795/-

The book is a befitting addition in the series War and International Politics in South Asia, following earlier books by Rajesh Rajagopalan and Harsh V Pant. The book is based on the author’s DPhil thesis at Oxford University, for which she was awarded the British International Studies Association (BISA) Founder’s Day Prize for the best thesis in 2007-08.

The book examines the domestic debates in India over the nuclear option through the Nineties. However, it takes Its argument is that pressures on the non-proliferation front on account of CTBT negotiations and NPT extension were seen as infringement of New Delhi’s right to make its sovereign decisions on how best to manage its security. It explains how the original opinion in favour of promotion of nuclear disarmament and keeping the ‘option’ ‘open’, turned towards support of nuclearisation with the Shakti tests in May 1998.

The author introduces the concept of ‘attentive public’. To her in this group are those in India who have traditionally concerned themselves with foreign policy issues. This group of the urban middle and upper classes comprises ‘highly educated individuals, fluent in English and who use the language to cut across regional and cultural divisions within the country, form(ing) an urban elite whose political compass points to New Delhi’. While a tiny minority, it is nevertheless influential. The study charts the growing interest of this group in nuclear policy ‘to draw out the manner in which New Delhi’s independence of action was perceived to be linked to India’s sovereignty, its global and regional position and the ongoing nationalist project of defining India…’.

The book charts the interaction between two dyads, defined by the author as ‘two competing sets of priorities faced by the national government’. The first is development and security. The second is of identity of ‘India’ based on the tension between the ‘India’ of Gandhi and Nehru and a more ‘normal’ state comfortable with power and military capabilities. The debate in the attentive public was about breaking out of the ‘managed group’ by throwing off self imposed shackles of nuclear restraint. This would involve a break with Indian ‘exceptionalism’ that had prompted its anti nuclear stance. Changes resulting from the end of the Cold War contributed to the salience of security arguments in favour of weaponisation. Though in the course of the debate India shed some Nehruvian ideas, ambivalence continues to attend its approach to nuclear weapons, best evident from the first paragraph in the draft nuclear doctrine talking, contrary to expectations of such a document, of disarmament.

The first chapter walks the reader through the Nehru years and how the Nehruvian legacy of preserving decision space was preserved by successive prime ministers till the penultimate decade of last century. In the Nehru years, the balance between security and development in the national project was forged. India sought security and international recognition through exceptionalism, by leading the critique of the Cold War world order even as it took advantage of it. Events in the period beginning with the nuclear tests by China in the Lop Nor drove the nuclear debate, in particular the advent of the NPT regime and India’s peaceful nuclear experiment. In the eighties India attempted to build up its nuclear and missile capability under a watchful technology restraint regime. In the period the attentive public was only episodically interested in defence since the nuclear issue did not acquire the overtones of a ‘political’ question, as it did in the nineties. The decision space was left to the government and its experts. With liberalisation, the media revolution and the increased visibility of the scientific establishment in the next decade things were to change.

The second chapter discusses the nuclear debate in the Nineties. The international context was framed by the end of the Cold War and internally by economic liberalisation, advent of the coalition era in politics and the social fissures that developed along the caste and religion faultlines. The country was driven onto the defensive by a draw down in defence spending and by allegations on its human rights record. Nuclear policy was forced to the fore amidst all this by a western led interest in rolling back India’s nuclear ‘option’. Discussions on nuclear issues continued desultorily between ‘doves’, ‘hawks’ and ‘owls’ till the mid Nineties. The indefinite extention of the NPT in 1995 and the impetus imparted to CTBT negotiations in the years led to a certain urgency in the debate. Yet it did not venture beyond whether to test to dwelling on the place of nuclear weapons in India’s development and security dyad. The tests of May 1998 closed the debate regarding testing. However, the issue that mattered to attentive India was less the security aspect of nuclearisation but that the tests demonstrated that India mattered in the international community.

Chapters three and four dwell in greater detail on the change and the manner it was worked between the first and second half of the decade respectively. Chapter five brings out how in the post CTBT period the criticism of the BJP’s tests focussed mostly on economic consequences and the political intentions of the party espousing Hindutva. Jettisoning of the country’s non-violent heritage was challenged indicating the new biases of attentive India. The debates revolved around the meaning of the tests for modernity and scientific achievement, of costs, implications for image and status but not on what actually constituted a credible deterrent in ‘classic, military terms’. In the author’s words, ‘India’s nuclear tests defended the idea of a sovereign, independent India.’ The idea had changed in the build up to the fiftieth anniversary of independence and would continue to resonate into the new century.

Chapter six discusses how the Kargil intrusion in the shadow of the tests faced India to face up to the military implications of the tests. The draft nuclear doctrine then being drawn up was speedily released a month after the ceasefire. It further forced the debate since in being expansive it meant many things to many people. Kargil made defence mainstream, even as the draft placed the nuclear question at its center. The return of the BJP to power in wake of the war, led to developments in the security field both organisational and conceptual that have since kept attentive India focussed on the hitherto fore ignored matters of defence. India’s defence posture evolved to more offensive and proactive one in the right wing nationalist party’s redefining of India. India has attempted to carve out a new global space for itself on the back of the demonstration of the capability.

The author concludes that, ‘For attentive India, India’s possession of nuclear weapons matters not because the country need them to protect its territorial integrity but because they defend a certain political idea of India that had been negotiated during discussions of its foreign, defence and economic policies in the 1990s.’ Consequently, India, in the imagining of attentive India, is not as a ‘nuclear weapons state’. The nuclear weapons status and arsenal are instead ‘co-opted into the political imaging of the country, as attentive India seeks to define a global, regional and domestic role for the country over the next 50 years of independent existence.’

https://idsa.in/system/files/jds_6_1_AliAhmed.pdf

Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernisation, New Delhi: PenguinViking, 2010

Stephen Cohen has been a long-time South Asia watcher. His books on the region’s two protagonist militaries (The Pakistan Army and The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of the Nation) have established him as an influential military analyst. His other two books, India: Emerging Power and The Idea of Pakistan, have further enhanced his reputation as a leading interpreter of the region not only for the Americans but for the South Asians themselves. The present book has been co-authored by Sunil Dasgupta from the University of Maryland. The book makes the argument that although there has been a greater outlay on defence— increasing by a factor of three over the last decade—the resulting modernisation has been less than coherent, which explains the title of the book. The authors are critical of India’s policy of strategic restraint, which according to them accounts for the lack of political direction for India’s military modernisation. They attribute this to the political elite’s reasoning that the international environment is benign, that the balance between defence and development must tilt in favour of the latter, and that the militarisation of policy is not desirable. Instead, the authors support a result-oriented strategic transformation and a military makeover, because, “India’s new affluence and the nuclear tests of 1998 raise hopes that the country will break out of its strategic restraint—and assume its place as a great power.” According to them, “ [India’s] Modernisation has lacked political direction and has suffered from weak prospective planning, individual service-centred doctrines, and a disconnect between strategic objectives and the pursuit of technology.” They recommend a structural transformation involving the following: strategic modernisation of the nuclear arsenal; organisational reform to include the creation of a joint chiefs of staff with a chairman; acquisition and production reforms to include the private sector; and development of knowledge resources in the defence sector.
 These issues seem unexceptionable in view of their repeated reiteration in military analyses and strategic literature. However, they need to be seen in light of the last chapter of the book on recommendations for US engagement with India. The latter’s rearmament has attracted much attention. That it appears directionless is disconcerting to those, who want to engage with India, such as the US, not only for military modernisation but also strategically. India intends to spend $100 billion over the coming decade and is strategically placed in terms of the regional balance in Asia and the Indian Ocean. Therefore, it will be courted by many players, particularly the US. For American analysts, therefore, to interpret the Indian reality for the administration is understandable. However, that it also has the agenda of opening up India for US strategic purposes compels thought. The warming in India-US relations, recounted in the book, goes back to the famous Kickleighter visit at the end of the Cold War. The relationship has only deepened, despite the setback in the wake of the Shakti tests. The Kargil War brought the two sides together as much as the behind-the-scenes meeting of minds between Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh. The Indo-US nuclear deal has been the high watermark of the relationship. That said, the interest of the US urging India down the path of an easier familiarity with power and its instrumentality, needs to be taken with caution. India’s policy of strategic restraint has served India well despite its relatively dangerous neighbourhood. India has stuck to its aim of continuing on its economic trajectory. This entails avoiding distractions, even a provocative terrorist action of the order of 26/11 in Mumbai. This policy does not mean that India is neglecting defence. Not only have more allocations been made but measures are being taken to ensure effective spending, including a streamlined defence procurement policy, promulgation of a new defence procurement procedure in January 2012, and the implementation of the Rama Rao Committee recommendations for reforming the defence technology sector. Deficiencies still remain, such as the slow acquisition processes, inadequate indigenisation, lack of coordination between the ministry and the armed forces, and the jointness deficit in the absence of a CDS. An evolutionary approach, that has been the Indian way, suggests that these would be tackled at appropriate internal, political, and external strategic junctures. What the US and its analysts want are speedy processes and the early institution of a reformed structure. This is pure self-interest since the US is in need of a strategic partner, if not an ally, who could help shoulder the regional order responsibilities while they disengage, in some proportion, to the extent warranted by their attenuated economy. It is no wonder that the authors argue that a “sufficient overlap exists in American and Indian visions to justify the effort in both countries to alleviate, if not remove, the persistent bureaucratic and perceptual obstacles that are so evident.” There are two reservations on this score from the Indian perspective: the first is in respect of the desirability and the extent of the engagement with the US, and the second is the timing of India’s taking over responsibilities as a great power. The answer to these lie in India’s political discourse and in its holistic security circumstance. The Indian polity does not countenance the idea that the “strategic partnership” with the US, currently part of India’s preference for a multipolar world, becomes an “alliance” with India, weighing in on the side of the US. This stance may place India on the side of conservative status quo, in which “stability” is valued over democratisation. India needs to adapt its non-alignment policy to the current global order, maintaining mutually beneficial relations with all consequential powers. Moreover, its internal security circumstances, not only in terms of internal security but also developmental indices, do not indicate that the time is ripe for India to break out of the region to become a global player. India must, therefore, ensure that it prioritises development over defence for at least a decade longer. In the interim, it needs to sustain a deterrence posture, rather than modernise with power projection and extra-regional responsibilities in mind. That the authors have succeeded in igniting this debate makes this book a very useful contribution to the security discourse

Book review

Vortex Of Conflict: US Policy Toward Afghanistan, Pakistan And Iraq, By D. Caldwell, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011 (First South Asian Edition 2012), in The Book Review, XXXVI (9), Sept 2012

Caldwell, D. (2011), Vortex of Conflict: US Policy Toward Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India Ltd, First South Asian Edition 2012, pp. 389, Rs. 995/-, ISBN 978-81-7596-927-8.

Dan Caldwell is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University, California, characterised in its website as ‘a Christian university’. Why this seemingly innocuous detail finds mention here is that the Professor in dealing with the interminable war launched by the US with its coalition allies in tow in South Asia and South West Asia has been less than even handed. While acknowledging that he has dwelt on American policy, warts and all, his has been an American democrat’s critique. While critical of the war in term of its strategic aim and conduct, the Professor is unable to get himself to pronounce unambiguously on its illegality in first place and the illegitimacy of several actions taken in the name of freedom and democracy in second place. It is no wonder then that the book is dedicated to American servicemen and their families, a dedication explicated by the author in his preface as owing to his book being inspired by a chance meeting on a beach by two marines in prostheses. Therefore, to this reviewer, the book is yet another one to help Americans feel better about themselves and the war.

To begin with, the book is inappropriately titled. It deals largely with Iraq, with Afghanistan and Pakistan thrown in to form the backdrop since the Afghanistan war preceded the one in Iraq. In case the Afghanistan war was also on the author’s beat, then developments there over the Obama presidency needed to have figured in greater detail in the narrative once the scene had shifted away from Iraq with the departure of George ‘Dubya’ Bush from the White House. The author’s skipping over how the US lost sight of the ball in play in South Asia, by wandering off to Iraq is suggestive of a blind spot. Even though the author mentions ‘Oil’, it is one made in passing as one of at least four reasons why the US went to war. That US attention wandered on to Iraq, even before Al Qaeda was eliminated and Afghanistan stabilised, bespeaks of the real strategic intent behind the war. Therefore not to say it out loud is to obfuscate.

This needs spelling out at the very outset to undercut the author’s case that the war getting messed up can be attributed to an inattentive president and a few ambitious neocons and hypernationalists. To him the war was an understandable reaction to a terror attack on US soil; if only it could have been waged a little better!His take is that the unfounded assumptions of the neocons, based on ideological predispositions and the false input from Iraqi expatriates, led to a myopic policy that overlooked the post war reconstruction phase by focussing instead on the prior ‘kinetic’ phase alone. It is clear from the denouement in Afghanistan that there has been little consideration of this even now despite the war there becoming the longest war in American history.

Instead, responsibility for the war and the eminently avoidable hurt and grief sustained by its victims needs to be laid at the door of the navel-gazing American public. They allowed their democracy to be hijacked by an incompetent president. Their inability to bring their lawmakers to balance the executive, despite the million-strong march against the war - missed entirely by the author - speaks of a terrible drawback in their otherwise much applauded democratic system. Having witnessed the havoc this can cause on other societies, a case can easily be made that keeping Americans democratic, free and in plenty is proving much too costly for the world.

It needs reminding that the US had not stayed on for reconstruction of Afghanistan after its terrible proxy war against the Soviets. On the contrary, it had tried to prop up the Taliban so as to bring about stability in Afghanistan to enable pipelines for access to Central Asia then opening up. On the Iraq front it had continued the Iraq War I through sanctions that reportedly resulted in six hundred thousand dead children. The deaths were openly acknowledged by Madeline Albright as a price the US was willing to pay. For the author to dwell appreciatively on the overrunning of such an Iraq by the American military in Iraq War II is to miss out on the extensive ‘preparation of the battlefield’ that had been going on even during the preceding Democrat administration of two terms.

Given this immediate history of US engagement with the region and its support to authoritarian regimes, which the US was taken on in an asymmetric struggle was unsurprising. To castigate even nationalist impulses within the opposition as terrorism, the consistent refrain post 9/11, must be exposed as an attempt at discourse dominance. Though the author does mention Abu Gharaib, military contractors, bureaucratic infighting, Bush’s religious predilections etc., these merely help him try and explain how and why things went wrong. There is little deliberation over the nature of the American footprint in terms of the efficacy of drone attacks; the numbers of civilian dead in both wars; the sectarian and ethnic furrows that have irredeemably opened up; the opportunity costs;  effects on global strategic culture of militarisation; the economic price; the home front scene of security legitimised growth of the new American ‘garrison’ state etc. It neglects pertinent issues as the military-industrial complex and its influence on American politics, even though the author covers the role of the vice president, Dick Cheney, who straddled both worlds. It tells of the forging of the document purportedly from Niger that was used to make the case for war on Iraq on grounds of eliminating weapons of mass destruction. However, the author, a political science professor, should really have taken the point further to see as to why American public has allowed itself to be lied to.

The book, though published in 2011, seems caught in a time wrap with its conclusion carrying twenty six strategic level lessons for the US. Typically, these,by highlighting how not to have fought this war, show how to fight the next one. In other words, the book only serves to whet the continuing American appetite for war. The manner the ‘end game’ is playing out in Afghanistan suggests that Americans have learnt little from the war. With books such as this one to inform their thinking, it is unlikely they ever will either. This perhaps explains why Pakistan figures in the title of the book. With the author having listed as one among his twenty six ‘lessons and legacies’: ‘Pay attention to Pakistan’; it would not surprise this reviewer if the theatre of war next moves to Pakistan.

That said, the book is a useful one for beginners as introduction to the central international event of last decade and its main players. It carries a fairly comprehensive bibliography and notes. The book is therefore at best one best suited for undergraduate students at his university. However, being American centric, the book is clearly not the last word. In fact, until the Arab and Afghan side of the story gets told, history will not be complete. For this, the US will first have to be stopped from war: better done by its own people exercising their much wonted democratic credentials.

UNPUBLISHED ARTICLE DATING TO 2000-2001

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/6/16705/Peoples-Power-in-Sudan-Throws-Out-Omar-al-Bashir-After-30-Years

Peoples Power in Sudan Throws Out Omar al-Bashir After 30 Years

There would be much rejoicing in liberal circles that Omar al-Bashir has departed into history, brought down by people’s power right at his doorstep.

Earlier he provided refuge to Osama bin Laden, who allegedly planned his terror attacks in Africa - conducted after he was boarded out of Sudan for Afghanistan – while in Sudan.

A fugitive from the clutches of the International Criminal Court, al–Bashir’s toppling would be seen as prelude to his receiving his just desserts for his handling of the rebellion in Darfur.

However, there are two counts on which he could well be remembered favourably alongside.

The first is his realistic shepherding of South Sudan to independence after three years of peace talks that ended Africa’s longest civil war and six years of implementation of the outcome.

The second is his maturity in enabling that fledgling state to find its feet after two bouts of civil war in its short history of a mere eight years.

al-Bashir earned his spurs fighting the southern Sudanese rebels in the oil rich provinces the Greater Bahr el Gazal. Here he squared off a young colonel against John Garang’s Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army in the second round of the Sudan’s civil war that began at Garang’s home station and place of posting, Bor, in 1983. In 1989, al-Bashir toppled a civilian head of government, Sadiq al Mahdi, a grandson of the legendary Nubian religious leader Mahdi.

Lacking legitimacy, al-Bashir, as military coup makers elsewhere, such as in our neighbourhood, Zia ul Haq, flirted with the religious right. This flirtation with Hassan al-Turabi, led to Omar al-Mahdi falling out with the West, especially as the civil war continued in southern Sudan with the imposition of sharia as one of the root causes.

The attempt at President Mubarak’s life while he was visiting Addis Ababa, led al-Bashir to distance himself from these forces, even prior to the launch of missile strikes by the United States (US) in 1998, including on a factory manufacturing pharmaceuticals, for complicity of extremists in the terror strikes at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Instability spread to western Sudan by African, though Muslim, tribes in Darfur taking on the state. The Sudanese military, lacking in strength and professionalism and spread thin, resorted to use of irregulars, called Janjaweed militia, against the Darfuris.

This culminated in what a US’ secretary of state, General Colin Powell, terming ‘genocide’. This characterization was not bought into by the UN, which by mid 2000s had deployed a peacekeeping mission in Sudan to oversee the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) arrived at between al-Bashir and John Garang in Kenya.

Hilda Johnson, who was later the secretary general’s representative in South Sudan when the state got independence in 2011, in her account of the period in her book Waging Peace has a cryptic paragraph that almost testifies to the suspicion in Sudan watchers of the period that the Darfuri rebellion was stoked by outside powers in order to soften Khartoum so as to make it amenable to talks with southern Sudanese.

The figure of 300000 dead Darfuris, bandied in order to legitimize another UN mission, for Darfur, is also disputed. This author learnt from a UN official handling the official figure of casualties that at the point when the figure was hyped, it was then at a low five figure mark.

Therefore, while this by no means exonerates the excesses for which al-Bashir is ultimately accountable having been atop the pyramid that committed the atrocities, whether these merited an ICC push against a sitting head of state is worth considering. It is no wonder that African heads of state decided collectively to ignore the ICC in its messianism that could well have had power politics at base.

Recall the Bush administration was then out on a spree to unsettle the Middle East and Arab regimes in order to export democracy. This culminated in regime changes across the region by early 2010s, including by military action in Libya and an attempted replay in Syria.

Despite these provocations and continuing under US’ unilateral sanctions, al-Bashir kept his word on the South Sudan timeline, letting go Sudan’s African half without a reactionary backlash. He naturally could not also fall in line on the Abyei issue – a territorial dispute between the two sister states – and on the Africanised Muslim tribes inhabiting the Two Areas, north of the 1956 dividing line along which Sudan severed.

As with all strongmen and in an assertion of sovereignty in face of interference amounting to proxy war not only from South Sudanese trans-border support for these proxy groups, he asserted himself militarily to retain these areas in Sudan.

This put him afoul of liberals in the west, who pointed to his dismal human rights record in his prosecution of the war in the insurgency prone areas to the west and south. Though the mantra is ‘African solutions for African problems’, western liberals are uneasy when violence figures in such solutions.

That the non-state groups held out with the support of forces outside of Sudan also needs recording. At least one Darfuri warlord canvasses western support from a base in Paris. It is no wonder then that the Sudan Revolutionary Front, along with the civilian side, the National Consensus Forces, of the Sudan Call movement, missed the bus on the African Union blessed roadmap on national reconciliation dialogue and constitution making that al-Bashir initiated in 2014.

Even so, al-Bashir submitted to an African Union led peace process, considering the SPLA North (SPLA-N) issue as a legacy of the CPA period. The African Union appointed high level panel attempted to prevail on the rebels in both Darfur (those out of the wider Qatari led Doha peace process) and the SPLA-N. Several rounds of talks later, the status quo revolves around the questions of sequencing of humanitarian access (with SPLA-N) and the ceasefire and its modalities (with the two Darfuri groups).

The peace process was on the radar of the Obama administration, an assistance in the settlement of Sudanese internal conflicts as quid pro quo for Sudan’s letting southern Sudan go. In the event, the rebels decided on waiting out the Obama administration, anticipating that American energy would falter when the successor comes to power. They turned out right in their assessment of Trump.

Therefore, if the troubles continue in both areas – Darfur and the Two Areas – these need to be attributed as much to hold out rebel elites as to the regimes hardline and not laid at al-Bashir’s door entirely.

Surprisingly, Omar al-Bashir is not unpopular in South Sudan, having redeemed himself in his role as its mid-wife. Even though he fought off South Sudan in a border war in April 2012, he settled with the new state equally quickly in arriving at a raft of peace agreements in September that were to be implemented over the long term.

On his part, though there was some proxy war indulged in by the two states, he did restrain South Sudan rebel proxy groups, returning the Nuer and Shilluk groups in 2013 and refraining from aiding the third, the Murle. The three groups sided with President Kiir in his face off with his one time deputy Riek Machar. In case Sudanese support had continued, the combined forces of Nuer under Machar and the rebels could have prevailed over Juba.

In the event, even the Ugandan forces joining on the side of Kiir’s Dinka forces did not force al-Bashir’s hands, though Uganda and Sudan have been at odds for long, particularly over the supposed Sudanese support once for the depredations of the Lords’ Liberation Army. Not only did al-Bashir refrain from proxy war, but he prevailed on Machar to arrive at an agreement under aegis of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.

When that agreement broke down because of the SPLA machinations against Machar on his arrival in Juba in July 2016, al-Bashir is one who can be credited with its revitalization. Taking in Machar for recuperation and then handing him over to South Africa in the interim, al-Bashir settled the contextual face-off with Museveni’s Uganda. This enabled the revitalization of the agreement and the subsequent peaceful return of Machar along with a presidential delegation of al-Bashir to Juba.

To be sure, the renewal of flow of oil from oil fields in South Sudan was on al-Bashir’s mind. The last food riots were in late 2013, leading to some 200 killed in street demonstrations. The oil was essential to Sudan’s survival, particularly since it not only gave up ownership to South Sudan, but was dependent on rent from the flow of the oil through its territory.

The border war and dispute over pricing arrangements led to earlier disruptions and the civil war outbreak in South Sudan knocked off the infrastructure. Knowing his political future depended on the economy recovering with oil flows resuming, al-Bashir oversaw repairs with Sudanese help of the oil infrastructure. In the interim, he was faced with peaceful demonstrations, beginning 19 December last.

His predicament could have been eased had the US persisted with Obama’s plan for Sudan, lifting sanctions progressively and mainstreaming the state. In the event, while sanctions were lifted, Sudan stayed on the terror list and quite unnecessarily at that. Thus, US foreign policy lethargy under Trump and its foot dragging in Africa has exacted a price. It is completely out of step, as in most things these days, with his European allies, who found al-Bashir’s most cooperative in helping stem immigration to Europe from Africa, their principal plank in the common security and foreign policy agenda. These culminated in the happenings in Khartoum over this month, leading to the army stepping up and dispatching al-Bashir into history.

While a despot has been evicted, history has not come to an end. Neighbouring Libya is under turmoil, even as UN intends to dispatch an assistance mission to that state this year. Algeria has been convulsed in people demanding an end to a geriatric military regime there. Yemen, over to Sudan’s east, continues in distress.

Thus, an arc of instability has opened up across the Arab lands yet again. As to how this fits in with the Trump plan for the Middle East, to be unveiled by his son in law, Jared Kushner, is yet to be known. The plan perhaps awaited the return of ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu to power, as a lynchpin of stability in a sea of turmoil.

What a brilliant strategy for the national security of Israel, the regional nuclear equipped superpower. al-Bashir who had fended off instability spreading from the Horn of Africa is now no more in saddle. Fearing being engulfed by the instability, the military that has taken over – al-Bashir’s child in a way – has hit itself in the foot by talking of constitution making spread over two years. They may end up emulating General Sisi to the north.

The period could have been shorter (say six months) since al-Bashir was already into constitution making, with a standing invite to the Mahdi led holdouts – underwritten by the African Union high level panel headed by Thabo Mbeki - to join up at will in the process. The story is yet unfolding, but it is without its main character, the ultimate realist, al-Bashir.

Sudan, symbolized best by its name emblazoned across the iconic red-sandstone building at the National Defence Academy, figures in Indian interests significantly for the $2.5 billion investment in oil in the region.

Though India has lost a friend in al-Bashir’s departure, in his successor General Auf, it has another well-wisher at the helm in Khartoum.

India would do well to use its leverage to gently help its Sudanese friends down the road to democracy which they were already embarked on till al-Bashir finally ran out of time getting to. It appears the rug was pulled from under his feet by an array of forces not excluding those of liberal messianism.

The possibility of anarchy at the end of such an enterprise did not deter such forces. Even so, the prayer is for a different outcome in Sudan than witnessed in its neighbours.

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=89493

THE DOVAL AND HOODA PRESCRIPTIONS EXAMINED

The Congress has bitten the bullet by attempting a head start on its rival, the ruling party, in the release of its manifesto. It hopes to seize the agenda-setting initiative from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which it had lost seemingly decisively in the wake of the Balakot aerial strikes. Initial optics indicates that it has made a dent with its championing of dole to the destitute under the 'Nyay' scheme.

Of greater consequence to readers of this paper is the vision for Kashmir that it lays out. Since this has apparently been done with the input of a former commanding general in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), DS Hooda, it makes for enhanced credibility. Hooda had earlier taken on the request of the Congress to turn in a security doctrine for use by the party as it headed into elections. The grand old party, often criticized for its showing on the security front particularly in comparison with the BJP that projects a strong-on-defence image, has apparently benefited from his insight, using it to pepper its manifesto.

Hooda is regarded as a hero after the surgical strikes. Besides a wealth of military experience in counter insurgency, he has shown himself to be empathetic to the people of the state. His major legacy is in arraigning of the perpetrators of the Machhil incident and in making the trigger-happy security detail at a road check-point to face consequences for killing two Kashmiri youth out on a joy ride.

In the event, the armed forces tribunal let off the Machhil perpetrators on trivial grounds, even as his taking the responsibility for the check point killings was criticized as a political stunt by no less than the former director of the army's think tank on land warfare studies. (The former director went on to join a right wing think tank that has connections with Ajit Doval's family, Doval being the current day national security adviser.)

The Doval imprint on Kashmir has been apparent over the past three years, ever more so over the past three months. His latest intervention has been in the bans on the Jamaat and the J&K Liberation Front. Since Doval is an old warrior in the intelligence game with Pakistan over the past four decades, the bans are akin to vendetta with the animus dating to the early nineties when the two entities were reckonable antagonists for Indian intelligence agencies in Kashmir. The charge-sheet against the JKLF includes 'genocide', a clear give away of the accumulated bile in decision makers that can only cloud strategic thinking.

In effect, the advantage is to the voter. She has two Kashmir policy prescriptions to choose from, respectively the Hooda and Doval prescriptions. Since the voter's would be a forward-looking exercise, the prospects of the two are examined here.

To begin with: the Doval prescription. The pillars of this into the fifth year of implementation are by now amply clear. 'No talks' with either Pakistan or with Kashmiris is its hallmark. Since talks figure universally as a check box to be ticked in policy repertoire in counter insurgency and inter-state relations, internally, there is a perfunctory representative of the Union who makes the rounds, while externally, every now and again India takes one step forward for talks with Pakistan followed soon thereafter with two steps back.

In its fifth year, it is easy to examine the outcome. It can plausibly be argued that the conditions created by the Doval prescription led to the Pulwama car-bomb attack. Recall, prior to the mid February car-bomb strike with which Pulwama has now eternally come to be associated with, it was known for the frequent stand-off between stone-pelters and security forces. In one incident in December last year, seven civilians were killed on the sidelines of a military operation. Also, along with the 250 militants killed last year, 28 militants were killed before the car-bomb attack. With no lee-way on offer in terms of outreach by the representative of the Union government, escalation was only waiting to happen. In short, the government's policy needs being blamed for the escalation, besides its intelligence lapse and tactical imprudence, such as basic convoy drills, that led to the success of the car-bomb attack directly.

As for the deterrence value of the surgical strikes post Uri, the car-bomb attack has shown it up as vacuous. Pakistani restraint in its proxy war is apparent in its overlooking some 400 killed in the past three years in Kashmir without infusing fresh blood and material in to the proxy war. The Balakot aerial strike and the continuing of a 'no talks' policy can only incentivize it to reverse gear over the coming summer. In case the government is right on numbers killed ('a very large number' according to its foreign secretary) and the ruling party chair is right on his figure of 300 killed, then it can easily predicted to be a pretty hot summer indeed. As to effects on the assembly elections, these will surely be postponed - in case Doval remains in the chair after elections - allowing for Operation All Out to go all out.

If the BJP is re-elected on its pitch of doing away with Article 35A to begin with and it proceeds to queer the pitch on Article 370, it has been forewarned by the two mainstream parties in the Valley that there would be consequences. While the Modi-Doval combine might rightly believe that the 'Modiji ki sena' (in the inimitable words of a candidate successor to Modi, Ajay Singh Bisht, aka. Yogi Adityanath) would deliver, it would be hard pressed. However, there is no call for its professionalism to remain on test by aggravation of the conditions it operates in. Not politically addressing the problem amounts to political abdication of its role by the central government. But to further muddy waters politically would amount to a criminally liable dereliction of responsibility, once the nuclear balloon goes up.

The Balakot-Naushera aerial exchange indicates that the Modi-Doval prescription sets up the region for a perfect storm. While Doval apologists in the strategic community have it that India has called Pakistan's nuclear bluff, the view from the other side could well be that Pakistan has called India's conventional bluff. The starving of the defence budget, even as preening was at a peak by the government, made for a conventional bluff easy to puncture. At the nuclear level, a one-time military adviser in the national security system, Prakash Menon, observed a touching belief in both sides in respective nuclear bluffs. Both sides are liable to go into their next crisis determined to call the nuclear bluff of the other side: India wanting to call Pakistan's first use nuclear bluff and Pakistan out to show up India's massive nuclear retaliation as bluff.

It is easy to see that the Hooda prescription has the antidote to the regional predicament on account of Kashmir. The military's role is considerably eased by the political content in the Congress manifesto. The Congress manifesto calls for civil society interlocutors to dialogue with the Kashmiris, even as it dilutes the militarization in Kashmir and reviews the working of the armed forces special powers legislation. Clearly, Modi's reaction that it is a Pakistani conspiracy is perhaps the best indicator that it is a contrary prescription with potential to mitigate, if not reverse, the strategic impasse in Kashmir. The criticism that it could lead to 'balkanization', voiced by Modi's chief spin doctor, Arun Jaitley, is easily refuted since it has captured the grievances of Kashmiris, thereby addressing separatism. Enticing Kashmiris by presenting an inclusive and liberal version of democracy and respecting the foundational constitutional articles as regards the merger, it creates the political framework for Kashmiris to step into the mainstream.

Admittedly, if the Congress does come to power and even if it intends to follow through with its 'Congress will deliver' slogan, it would likely be in a weak coalition and one buffeted by a strong opposition coalition led by the BJP. Therefore, the Congress would require staying the course, unlike in its previous tenure at the helm, United Progressive Alliance II years, when it was fearful of being outflanked by the BJP. The BJP having been exposed in the Modi years and the Doval prescription having been found wanting, the Congress would need to step up. It would be well advised to allow Hooda himself, as the new national security adviser, to implement the policy he wrote up.

https://www.thecitizen.in//index.php/en/newsdetail/index/4/16623/has-mission-shakti-made-india-safer

Has Mission Shakti made India safer?

The answer to the question posed in the title has potential to absolve the Modi government on the counts it is being arraigned by strategists criticizing its conduct of the anti-satellite (A-Sat) test on 27 March. If found wanting in making India safer, it can easily then be seen to be yet another election jumla,indicating a certain panic over the possible outcome of elections.

To the decision maker, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the test proved his courage in decision making and claims for being strong on national security, complementing as it did the earlier ‘surgical strikes’ on land and through the air.

On the face of it, clubbing the three takes the shine off the A-Sat test.

If the surgical strikes along the Line of Control conducted in wake of the terror attack on the Uri military facility had been of any consequence, a subsequent terror attack of the magnitude as occurred at Pulwama two years later should not have happened.

As for the aerial strike in end February at Balakot to avenge the mid-February Pulwama terror attack the jury is still out on its deterrence value and the outcome would only be known over the coming summer.

In short, the result of the surgical strikes on land did not work out as intended. The Balakot aerial strike is unlikely to prove any different. What of the third surgical strike, in space?

Former Pakistan president, General Musharraf, from his current-day perch in self-exile in Dubai, made an interesting observation during the recent India-Pakistan crisis, on the nuclear dimension to an India-Pakistan confrontation.

He said that Pakistan is liable to be finished by an Indian counter of merely a score of nuclear weapons to Pakistani nuclear first use, even if of only one weapon. To him, Pakistan would need to preempt any such Indian counter by going first with a large nuclear salvo comprising some fifty weapons.

Worried by the possibility of such Pakistani nuclear temerity, India is apparently readying to go first with a preemptive damage limitation strike of its own.

Former national security adviser, Shivshankar Menon, in his book, Choices, indicated that a ‘gray area’ attends India’s No First Use (NFU) policy. He wrote that, ‘[C]ircumstances are conceivable in which India might find it useful to strike first, for instance, against an NWS that had declared it would certainly use its weapons, and if India were certain that adversary’s launch was imminent.’

The official nuclear doctrine dating to January 2003 has it that India’s would be ‘a posture of "No First Use”: nuclear weapons will only be used in retaliation against a nuclear attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere.’

Since the official nuclear doctrine is widely taken as largely based on the preceding draft nuclear doctrine of August 1999, the interpretation of NFU in the draft is of significance. The draft has it that ‘India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike….’

Taking the two together, it cannot be said with any certainty any more that India would await a nuclear strike prior to launching its own ‘retaliation only’ counter.

India’s tentative movement away from NFU has been spotted by two avid watchers of nuclear India, Vipin Narang on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Christopher Clary, who teaches at the University of Albany.

In a recent edition of the prestigious journal, International Security, they write: ‘India may be developing options toward Pakistan that would permit it to engage in hard nuclear counterforce targeting, providing India a limited ability to disarm Pakistan of strategic nuclear weapons.’

The idea appears to be that a first strike equivalent retaliation, in anticipation of imminent nuclear first use by Pakistan (even if not of first strike proportions), would not be violation of the NFU since Pakistan would be the one initiating the strike; thus absolving India of violating its NFU pledge.

Catching Pakistani signatures that betray such initiation requires intimate satellite coverage of the prospective locations and hides of its strategic assets. For this, India’s military reconnaissance and surveillance satellites are critical. Ensuring that these are not taken out by the enemy is therefore necessary.

This logic provides a plausible deterrence rationale for the A-Sat test. Since a kinetic-kill test is more visible, it has a higher deterrent value, even if kinetic-kill by use of missiles is no longer the likely way to take out such satellites. The cyber route is the more likely route in the future.

However, this does not answer the question if India is made any safer by a movement towards a capability for damage limitation strikes that stands enhanced by the A-Sat tests.

The logic appears to be that taking out most Pakistani strategic weapons prior to launch would leave Pakistan with only a few it could yet lob across. These could be shot down with the ballistic missile defence (BMD) cover being put in place. The A-Sat test was itself an indirect demonstration of BMD efficacy, which also stands being enhanced by the purchase of the Russian S-400 weapon system.

India is thus supposedly safer. But this neglects the numbers that Musharraf alluded to.

If, to Musharraf, Pakistan requires roughly 50 warheads for a first strike to preserve itself from the twenty Indian warheads that would otherwise finish it off, India would require rather more than 50 to set back any Pakistani first strike.

By most accounts, Pakistan is ahead of India in numbers of warheads and in the missile race. India also has another foe, China, necessitating keeping some bombs up its sleeve. Thus, India would unlikely be able to forestall a broken-backed retaliation by Pakistan, which in the event can only be counter value city-busting.

What the exchange does to the regional environment over the long term needs imagining, besides implications of refugee flows on the social fabric and political complexion of the regional states.

As regards China, against whom the capability is advertised as more relevant, it has had a head start over India in its A-Sat capability by a dozen years. It is no wonder that the asymmetry has precluded any substantial discussion of deterrent effects of the A-Sat test in relation to China.

Given the complaints of debris, that the National Aeronautic and Space Agency head claims are endangering the international space station, it is inconceivable for a kinetic-kill A-Sat capability to figure in war with China. The collateral damage to other countries satellites would be prohibitive politically for either side. Since both sides have a NFU in place and have the conventional war-fighting resources, seeking a first strike advantage may not figure in war.

At best, a reference to China, and the other two who have demonstrated the capability, the United States and Russia, has instead been to legitimize the tests.

Clearly therefore to the extent that the A-Sat capability incentivizes the movement away from a strict NFU and towards a putative first strike capability and intent against Pakistan, the A-Sat test does not make India safer. On the contrary, it incentivizes the insensible move to rescinding the NFU under a motivated reinterpretation of it.

By this yardstick, for the ruling party to have gone to town taking credit for Mission Shakti – and the other two ‘surgical strikes’ – makes the capability even more worrying, since, contrary to its claims, the capability is not self-evidently in safe hands, in hands of minders who should know better.