https://southasianvoices.org/fallout-of-article-370s-withdrawal100-days-on-indian-militarys-false-optimism/

Fallout of Article 370’s Withdrawal inKashmir: The Indian Military’s False Optimism?

On August 5, the Indian government did away with the special status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under Articles 35A and 370, bifurcating the state into two union territories. This change was fraught with military consequences: in the short term, an internal rebellion and an external crisis with Pakistan, and, over the long term, a proxy war punctuated with periodic crises with Pakistan and the rekindling of an insurgency in Kashmir.

It can be reasonably surmised that the Indian government’s decision to run the risk of making this move was in part due to the Indian military’s confidence in its ability to manage the consequences over both the short and long term. Speculating on the military’s input in this decision based onrecent doctrinal developments, this article argues that the military may have dangerously over-reached.

Setting the Stage Militarily

In retrospect, it is easier to see that the government’s move in J&K was long in the making. At the subconventional level, the military conditions were created by the killing of more than 700 militants over the past three years in a concerted campaign. This containing of the insurgency created the enabling conditions in areas other than south Kashmir for the political initiative to withdraw Article 370. To an extent, it was also aided by Pakistan restraining its support to the insurgency in Kashmir as part of the “Bajwa doctrine” of reaching out to India, taken forward by Imran Khan through his peace overtures after taking over as prime minister.

With regard todealing with a potential Pakistani response to any Indian moves in Kashmir, theIndian military presumably planned to resort to its recently-established toolkit, primarily consisting of surgical strikes—conducted by land in September 2016 following the Uri terror attack and by air at Balakot in the aftermath of the Pulwama bombing.Even if India’s Balakot aerial strikes did not hit the target—assome have argued, citing lack of evidence on the efficacy of the strikes—the deterrent was restored from the Indian point of view because India’s very decision to conduct the aerial strikes and to target mainland Pakistan demonstrated its willingness to accept elevated risk.

India has continued to hone its conventional deterrent over the yearsto prevent a Pakistani provocation, but the timing of recent Indian moves indicates that the military had a post-Article 370 scenario in mind. The latest initiative was the test-bed exercises this summer of integrated battle groups (IBGs) of the Western Command,part of operationalizing the Cold Start doctrine (India’s limited war doctrine that aims to conduct multiple shallow, offensive, punitive ground offensivesin Pakistan). This makes for a closer coupling between the subconventional and conventional levels. Alongside, the army chief’s deterrence messaging to Pakistan has been that he had forces on hand for following up on the air strikes at Balakot. After the post-Pulwama crisis subsided, the navy had also let on that it had deployed its nuclear submarines to the North Arabian Sea (hinting at the inclusion of its nuclear-armed submarine).The intent behind showcasing and citing Indian conventional preparedness was to stay a Pakistani conventional responseto India’s constitutional initiatives in J&K.

At the nuclear level,India has been attempting to influence Pakistan’s nuclear first-use decision by projecting ambiguity regarding its own no first use (NFU) pledge. After the nullification of Article 370, this was done through the Indian defense minister’s remarks about the NFU pledge being contingent on circumstances in the future. India was likely hoping to temper Pakistan’s “full spectrum deterrence” nuclear signaling that it could respond with tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) to any Indian forces crossing the International Boundary (IB). The idea of introducing ambiguity about the pledge appears to be to deter Pakistan from reaching for TNWs by implicitly holding out the threat that doing so would release India from its NFU pledge.

For his part, the Indian army chief has taken care to remind Pakistan that its notion of nuclear first use goes against the theory of strategic weapons employment. India has maintained that although IBGs are designed to operate across the IB, their limited objective of shallow strikes ismeant to be well below the threshold that would warrant a nuclear response from Pakistan. With this, the Indian army chief hopes to widen the window for IBG deployment by influencing Pakistan against using nukes at an early stage in the conflict.

While  details of IBG operational employment are necessarily under wraps, in case of a reprisal scenario they could be to administer a quick blow across the border from a standing start – so the term ‘cold start’ - and retrieve to own side before Pakistan gets its act together. In case Pakistan escalates, then their role expands to link the subconventional level with the conventional. How the wider conventional faceoff will play out without provoking Pakistani nuclear redlines is a challenge for both armies set to continue till the two independently arrive at the conclusion that the risk is not worth running.

However, for now, even though India is seeking a decoupling of the conventional and nuclear levels of conflict, Pakistan has constantly reminded India—and the international community—of the intersection between these two levels. Pakistan did this again even recently with Prime Minister Imran Khan explicitly drawing attention to this linkage at the UN General Assembly. This doctrinal interplay between the two states in the aftermath of theevents of August 5thus indicates the risk of war – nuclear war – that India has run with its J&K decision.

Did the Gamble Work?

Three months after August 5, it may appear that India has largely been able to manage the consequences of its J&K decision, but the respite is only likely to be through the winter.

India has tidied over the immediate term byextensive paramilitary deployment in early August under the ruse of heightened proxy war by Pakistan as well as through communication restrictions on Kashmiris and detentions of political leaders. What also worked in India’s favor was terror financing and money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force’s appraisal of Pakistan in October. FATF has determined Pakistan would remainon the grey list till February or be put on the blacklist if it does not make progress on the action plan. This suggests that pressure to clean up its act for the FATF decision and its dire economic straits may have precluded Pakistan from attempting heightened proxy war or conventional war at least until next summer.

However, India’s August 5 move could backfire over the long term (next summer and beyond), both within Kashmir and vis a vis Pakistan. For one, reports of considerable human rights violations in Kashmir, such as the detention of juveniles, suggest a deepening of the suppression-alienation cycle—in fact,civil society activists returning from Kashmir report that people in the Valley have launched a civil disobedience movement. These satyagraha tactics can be expected to continue till the Supreme Court announces a decision on the petitions challenging the voiding of Article 370 but if that decision does not go the way of the Kashmiris, a renewal of the insurgency can be expected. In addition, with Prime Minister Khan indicating that support to Kashmiris is an obligation under the doctrine of jihad (struggle), Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir—even if largely indigenized—is set to persist.

Unease from the heightened contest could see India delivering on its promise of a robust response. Reassured by the recent acquisition of ammunition stocks at ten days intense-war rate, inclusion of the Rafale into its inventory, conversion of mechanized formations into IBGs, and restructuring of its apex military under a new chief of defense staff system, India may seek a way out through limited war.

Since it takes two to keep a war limited, it remains to be seen if Pakistan’s ‘new concept of  warfighting’ doctrine gives it the confidence to take on an Indian conventional attack without resorting to its nuclear arsenal tocompensate for its conventional disadvantage. ByoperationalizingCold Start and simultaneouslyflexing air and naval muscles, India unwarily is leaving Pakistan with little recourse other than putting a premium on its nuclear capability. This in turn leads to buffeting of India’s NFU.  

By indulging in a game of ‘chicken’ – the one who veers off between two cars speeding at each other is ‘chicken’ – India hopes to cow Pakistan down, confident that Pakistani nuclear nonchalance regarding tactical nuclear weapons introduction into a conflict is more for projection than carrying out at the crunch. The onus to keep of the escalation accelerator is thus transferred to Pakistan, the foreseeable consequence of not doing so being explicit to Pakistan. This placing of all the regional eggs in the basket of Pakistan good sense is an overstretch, an instance of Indian strategic credulity.

In short, the likely assurance of the Indian military on itsability to manage the consequences of the decision to remove the special status of J&K, whichpresumably emboldened the government to undergo its Kashmir initiative, has upped the possibilityof war.The extent of danger is evident from a timely study that found that some 125 million people could perish in a subcontinental nuclear war. The government – on which rests the onus of the political decision – should have been more circumspect in its Kashmir decisionmaking, irrespective of the advice received from the military apex.

The Indian military’s periodic recourse to deterrence signaling is attributable to habits formed in the India-Pakistan cold war. Fortunately for it, the possibility of war has receded not due to its deterrence posturing, but by the sagacious recourse to civil disobedience by the Kashmiris. This has dampened for now both Indian repression and jihadi ardor supportive of Kashmiris in Pakistan. How the Indian security forces manage Kashmiri satyagraha will determine the temperatures in the subcontinent out to next summer.

http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=96325#

Military consequence management in Jammu and Kashmir

On 5-6 August, the Union government did away with the special status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under Articles 35A and 370 bifurcating the state into two union territories. The changes were fraught with military consequences in terms of, in the short term, an internal rebellion and an external crisis with Pakistan, and, over the long term, proxy war punctuated with periodic crises with Pakistan and an insurgency in Kashmir. It can be reasonably surmised that the government’s choosing to run the risk owed in part to the military’s confidence in consequence management over both the short and long terms. Speculating on the military’s input to the decision, based on military doctrinal developments, this article argues that the military may have dangerously over-reached.

Setting the stage militarily

In retrospect it is easier to see that the government’s move in J&K was long in the making. At the subconventional level, the military conditions were created by the killing of over 700 militants over the past four years in a concerted campaign. At the subconventional-conventional level interface, India resorted to surgical strikes – by land in September 2016 following the Uri terror attack and by air at Balakot in the aftermath of the Pulwama car bombing. Other modes of quick retaliation are available, such as missile strikes - reportedly readied the day following Pakistan’s quick rejoinder to India’s Balakot aerial strikes over southern J&K at Rajauri-Naushera. The common sense now is that administering these in case of Pakistani provocation rekindles India’s conventional deterrence of subconventional threats.

India’s test-bed exercises this summer of integrated battle groups (IBGs) of Western Command were part of operationalising its ‘cold start’ doctrine. That these are now better configured, cohesive and primed for launch makes for a closer coupling between the subconventional and conventional levels. For its part, the air force received its first Rafale aircraft on Air Force Day. Its crisis-time air chief, Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa, had rued their absence in the air scuffle over southern J&K when the Pakistani air force breached Indian air space to assert their deterrence credentials.

Even so, escalation remains a possibility. This explains the army chief’s deterrence messaging to Pakistan that he had forces on hand for following up the air strikes at Balakot. After the crisis abated, the navy let on that it had deployed its nuclear submarines, hinting at inclusion of its nuclear armed submarine that had only last year completed its first operational patrol. Another information war line has been the repetitive references to Pakistan occupied Kashmir by all and sundry.

At the nuclear level, India has been attempting to influence Pakistan’s nuclear first use decision making by projecting ambiguity regarding its own no first use pledge. The latest has been in the defence minister’s remarks that the pledge was contingent on circumstances in future. The idea appears to be to deter Pakistan from reaching for tactical nuclear weapons by implicitly holding out the threat that it’s doing so would release India from its pledge.

For his part, the army chief has taken care to remind Pakistan that their notion of nuclear first use goes against the theory of strategic weapons employment. Since IBGs are designed to operate below the assumed nuclear threshold of Pakistan, he seems to be indicating to Pakistan that pulling down their nuclear umbrella to cover a low conventional level militates against the notion of nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort. He hopes to thereby widen the window for IBG employment. While a decoupling of the conventional and nuclear levels is sought by India, Pakistan – on the contrary - constantly reminds India and the international community of their intermeshing of the two levels.

Consequence management prospects

The immediate term has been tidied over by the extensive paramilitary deployment in early August under the ruse of heightened proxy war by Pakistan. Reports of considerable human rights violations, such as detentions of juveniles, suggest that once the scale of the lockdown is apparent, a deepening of the suppression-alienation cycle shall set the stage for the long haul. It is learnt that the Kashmir Police has been largely disemboweled and the central reserve police rules the roost. As to what this implies for the gender factor in conflict situations will only be known when Kashmiris are free to speak sometime down line. With a largely north Indian male force under an indifferent leadership it can be reasonably be hazarded that the invasion of privacy and social spaces is a double whammy on Kashmiri women.

India has in retrospect apparently rightly discerned a window in which Pakistan has been forced to stay its hand. There was the financial action task force appraisal of Pakistan continuing on the grey list or otherwise in its consideration in October, which, in the event, has maintained a status quo. The requirement to keep its nose clean in the interim has removed any incentive for Pakistan to go down the proxy war route immediately. Since it is up for review in February, it would likely continue to be more circumspect for longer. Pakistan would not be averse to this untypical behavior since the Kashmiris in the interim have launched a satyagraha of sorts. Not wanting to upset the apple cart, Pakistan has a ready excuse to lay-off. 

Pakistan’s dire economic straits have in any case precluded its generation of a crisis or resort to conventional war. In 1965, it had taken to war though the provocation was minimal. This time it has hidden behind a lot of smoke, without a fire. This exposes its determination to fight till the last Kashmiri. It has as another excuse India’s immediate term handling of internal security in Kashmir in which there has been a perceptible fall in lives lost; thereby releasing Pakistan from any need for military predominant action. India’s adoption of a diplomatic stance that its action is an internal matter not impacting the LC (and implicitly the disputed status of Kashmir) has enabled the Pakistan military to play along saying that it never recognized Article 370 in any case. Therefore its removal does not ostensibly warrant any action on its part.

It begs the question as to why Pakistan maintains an army if it cannot respond to what has so far been taken as a premier national interest. The answer is equally obvious in the well known fact that its parochial interests far outweigh national interest. India’s national security minders have evidently read its neighbouring military rather well. This is easy to explain in light of India’s Pakistan obsession and the two sides being birds of the same feather in a manner of speaking.

Perhaps Pakistan’s hopes are over the long term - summer and beyond. It is clear that not only is the constitutional initiative unpopular within Kashmir, but the manner of its implementation has likely extended the life of the insurgency. The changes cannot be taken as a ‘political solution’, creating the conditions for extension of development to the region as projected by the government. Consequently, insurgency is liable to beset India into the reckonable future. With Imran Khan indicating that support to Kashmiris is an obligation under the doctrine of jihad (struggle), its proxy war – even if largely indigenised – is set to persist. For the record, Imran Khan paddled back on this tall talk fairly quickly.

Perturbations from the heightened contest over the long term could see India delivering on its promise a robust response. Reassured by recent acquisition of ammunition stocks at ten days intense-war rate, inclusion of the Rafale into its inventory, conversion of mechanized formations into IBGs and restructuring of its apex military under a new chief of defence staff system, India may seek a way out through a limited war from the cul-de-sac of its political decision backfiring. At a time of an economic downturn, a diversionary war may have internal political utility, even if it does not quick start the economy.

Since it takes two to keep a war limited, it remains to be seen if Pakistan’s ‘new concept of war fighting’ doctrine - dating to General Kiani’s tenure early this decade - gives it confidence to draw back its nuclear awning that compensates for its conventional disadvantage. India operationalising cold start and intent to simultaneously flex air and naval muscles appears instead to leave Pakistan with little recourse than putting a premium on its nuclear capability.

In short, the assurance of the military on consequence management that presumably emboldened the government in its Kashmir initiative upped the possibility of war. The extent of danger run is evident from a timely study that has it that some 125 million people could perish in a subcontinental nuclear war. The military needs answering how it’s proactive and robust handling a heightened proxy war and insurgency over the foreseeable future can be kept non-nuclear.

While for now the need for success of the Kartarpur corridor outreach by Pakistan to Sikhs and the FATF scrutiny appear to have kept the peace, it remains to be seen if the Pakistani military can sustain its reticence in interfering in Kashmir. At some point, the cultural pendulum will swing in which it will be asked by those currently besieging Islamabad to shed its uniform for the burkha. Therefore even if it is conceded that the Indian national security establishment has got the Pakistan army right, the long haul may yet test this judgment. Even so, both militaries have - thankfully – been let off the hook by the outbreak of the Kashmiri satyagraha.

a blow for peace

writings of ali ahmed, PhD (JNU), PhD (Cantab), with due acknowledgement and thanks to publications where these have appeared. Download books/papers from dropbox links provided. Follow on twitter: @aliahd66 Other blog-www.subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.in. Former UN official and infantryman. Visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia.

https://www.newsclick.in/why-pak-spin-doctors-are-zooming-gen-rawat

Why Pak Spin Doctors are Zooming in on Gen Rawat

UNEDITED VERSION 

The ISPR gets it almost right

The Inter Services Public Relations has gone overboard in its taking down of India’s army chief by a peg or two. They attribute three infra-dig issues to General Bipin Rawat: one, provoking war by overhyping fire assaults as surgical strikes; two, acting with an eye for the electioneering advantage of his political masters; and, three, damaging the professionalism of India’s military which they term as gone ‘rogue’ under Rawat.

Their invective was prompted by Rawat wading into a developing media story last weekend on the results of a fire assaults on Pakistani terror launch pads. The media influenced by ruling party spin doctors on election-day blew up the fire assaults as a ‘surgical strike 3’ as Maharashtra and Haryana went to polls.

Rawat’s weighing in on the casualties inflicted, prompted an otherwise sympathetic scribe in a quasi-nationalist website, The Print, to caution against the army aping the Pakistan army’s ‘lying’ ISPR. The reporter in his opinion piece goes on to make the link between polling and Rawat’s intervention, which was not lost on anyone following Indian security affairs over Rawat’s tenure.

It appears that the ISPR and attentive observers share two of the ISPR’s observations: firstly, the timing and overhyping of the latest round of fire assaults suggests an election-related agenda; and, secondly, this is not professionally edifying for the Indian army.

The ISPR goes a step further in apprehending a personal motive for the army chief’s behavior in implying that in aligning his political antenna to the prevailing political winds, he is auditioning for the vacancy opened up by the prime minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort, that of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).

Whereas the ISPR’s earlier response to the fire assaults of 20 October was the registering of mild disappointment, they upped the rhetoric a few days down the line, provoked perhaps by the army chief’s reference in the week to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) being controlled by terrorists.

PoK has become one of the army chief’s  favoured themes, considering the his last reference to the area was when he boasted that only a word from its political masters held the army back from seizing the area. Clearly, the army chief has gotten under the skin of the ISPR leading to it getting personal in its rhetoric.

There is a plausible explanation for the army chief’s periodic forays in the media against Pakistan. Such a strategy has roots in the army’s new doctrine, released in an understated form late last year and lodged in a nondescript corner of the army’s web pages. It dwells on hybrid war, characterizing even peace time – such as now between India and Pakistan - as a time of ‘hybrid war’. It takes the fabled military thinker, Clausewitz’s dictum ‘war being politics by other means’ rather seriously to mean politics is war by other means.

Under its tenets, Pakistan’s proxy war amounts to its hybrid war which India must respond to appropriately. The shift from the earlier strategic restraint to strategic proactivism under the Modi regime enables the army to use the interregnum of peace to condition, deter and degrade Pakistan as necessary. Psychological warfare or information operations constitute the main ‘line of operations’ in peace time.

The army chief’s utterances in relation to Pakistan could – at a stretch - be sympathetically rationalized in this light. It cannot be that the army chief takes himself seriously on PoK though. 

The assumption that Indian army can militarily take over PoK is easy to concede. Besides the reserves meant for the northern theater, it has additional forces available having just put its mountain strike corps through its paces in the eastern sector. It has the requisite air lift – thanks to the easier foreign military sales route with the United States - to bring the integrated battle groups meant for the China front to bear on the Pakistan front. One of its divisions is close at hand, at Pathankot. Alongside, to keep Pakistan from reinforcing PoK, it can credibly threaten a reprise of 1965 War - when it threatened Lahore by opening up the Punjab front in response to Pakistan’s armoured thrust towards Akhnoor. It has, through test bed exercises this year, also created two integrated battle groups in the border sector of southern Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), presumably poised to prise off Pakistan’s Sialkot bulge.  Assuming it manages surprise, it can be taken at its word that it can bite off a chunk of PoK.

However, Bipin Rawat should know that the moot question is whether it can digest it. If Indian security forces find Kashmiri stone throwers a problem – prompting an unprecedented now three month long lock down - after thirty years of countering insurgency in Kashmir, it can be surmised that PoK will prove indigestible. India noted at the non-alignment forum recently that Pakistan is the ‘contemporary epicenter of terrorism’. Extrapolating from what terrorism backlash did to the forces of the respective coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq, it can be inferred that PoK will be inhospitable, necessitating reeling back of Indian forces. This will buoy the terrorists; quite like the Hezbullah’s – if pyrrhic – victory claim on departure of the Israelis after their venturing into southern Lebanon in 2006.

Consequently, as in 1965, a war initially confined to PoK may require escalating horizontally southwards along the border. India came close to doing so on the two other occasions it fought on the western front – in 1947-48 and the Kargil War. A recent report on denial of access to the relevant papers regarding the first war with Pakistan which cover India’s deliberations over attacking mainland Pakistan in 1947-48 is evidence. At the twentieth anniversary of Kargil War, the then army chief, General Ved Malik, revealed that he had remonstrated with Prime Minister Vajpayee against openly saying India would limit the war to Kargil sector, lest if and when it became necessary to expand the war due to possible difficulties in Kargil, India might have foreclosed its option of escalation.

The army may indeed have limited objectives in PoK, restricted to some shallow objectives along the Line of Control (LC). These could be enemy posts that are so sited as to provide infiltration and observation advantages to Pakistan. The army’s intent may be take-over these in the next surgical strike. Since the other surgical strike forms – raids and aerial strike – have already been tried out, salami slicing on the LC could be tried next. The aerial strike turned out escalatory as Pakistan struck back and the Pakistani army is perhaps ready to beat back raids. Missiles – that were readied for firing off in their aftermath – do not provide the necessary asymmetry with Pakistan, since Pakistan is no push over in that field. That leaves land operations – more than a raid but less than an invasion.

The army’s repeated references to PoK could be to not only prepare the domestic space for a border skirmish, but also to spell out to Pakistan that the intent is not quite a border war. In case of Pakistani counter attacks succeeding and riposte attacks elsewhere, scope for escalation remains. Even so, it is not easy to see how the redrawn LC will be stabilized. If merely with a lockdown the Security Council met informally behind closed doors on the Kashmir question for the first time in fifty years, a border war that threatens at some step of the escalation ladder to go nuclear will entail a Security Council return to where the Council left off sometime in the late fifties in its mediation role on the Kashmir issue. An operational level gain end up a strategic level disaster.

By keeping up the din over the year on Pakistani villainy, the army chief – perhaps knowing better - may be indulging in information war of sorts. But in doing so he opens himself to credibility of the third accusation of the ISPR – of compromising Indian military professionalism, specifically its advisory function.

The fallout of the army chief’s bellicosity is in conditioning Indians into a war mania, potentially spiraling war pressures at the next crisis. Besides, if he does indeed believe his rhetoric, he would be misleading his political masters on the advisability of a PoK caper by Indian forces. The defence minister and the minister belonging to Jammu in the prime minister’s office have already bought into that line. The prime minister in his Diwali foray to Rajauri also appears persuaded.

The by-now well-known propensity of the national security honcho, Ajit Doval, and his boss, Narendra Modi, for unbridled haste in action (remember demonetization, surgical strikes, Balakot etc), indicates they may lend an ear. A repeat of Ranjit Singh Dyal’s late August 1965 taking over Haji Pir is of course possible, if the Doval-Modi duo is willing to risk (nuclear) war. Their running of the risk early this August through backing Amit Shah’s constitutional shenanigans over Kashmir does not lend confidence over war avoidance. Having chimed up on PoK so many times, India has laid for itself a commitment trap.

Finally, is the ISPR right on the army chief’s personal motives? The thought cannot be disregarded in light of the political utility to the government’s strong on defence image of the periodic grandstanding by its army chief. The ruling party has all through its tenure capitalized on military actions, best evidenced by the surgical strikes and the aerial strike figuring extensively in electoral campaigning. The danger is in an ambitious generals catering to its political need by lending the credibility of his uniform and office to its claims. The ISPR spots such a general in India’s army chief. It is best left to the general to himself introspect. Perhaps, for the benefit of all, including the general and of national security, it might be best for the general to be kicked upstairs into to the CDS chair, where as a general without an army he could serve his political masters best without compromising the army.

Even so, the ISPR must be called out for what it is up to. It is an equal participant in ‘grey zone’ warfare of today. The verbal jousts over PoK are information operations by both sides testifying that both have read the 2014 book, Peter Pomerantsev’s  This is Not Propaganda. For its part, the ISPR is trying to provoke a loss of confidence in the army chief, the prospective CDS. For credibility, such (dis)information efforts partially approximate truth. While being clear eyed of the ISPR’s motives, it must be acknowledged that the ISPR has unfortunately got it somewhat right.

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HINDU INDIA: THE SECURITY DIMENSION

AN ARTICLE PENNED IN 2003

Two popular views on China’s future contradict each other. To some, Chinese power will rise to end the current unipolar moment. To others, including China watchers in the CIA who periodically release their scare mongering reports to the press, China will fall apart under the weight of its own contradictions, the foremost of which is capitalism in a communist state. Like crystal gazing has seldom been done with respect to India. India is seen reflexively as a Great Power on the make, with a growing economy enabling it to expand its military capabilities. The under-articulated contrary view is that such a future is not axiomatic, but is predicated on continuing social cohesion of India as a nation. This article analyses the dangers attending the rise of Indian national power in conjunction with a decline in its social stability.

Such a scenario is not far fetched given the ascendance of the political right on a divisive platform over the recent past. The run up to the next national elections may witness further communal polarization, the election worthiness of the issue being manifest in the Gujarat elections. In the event of national elections returning the ruling party to power unmitigated by its present coalitional constraints, the hindutva agenda to create a Hindu India is likely to be unleashed overtly. The implications of this for national cohesiveness are apparent. Thus the future of advancing Indian economic and military power, accompanied with internal instability, will be realized. Reflecting on the security dimensions of such a future indicates that the current movement towards realization of Hindu India of hindutvavadi dreams is not an unmixed blessing.

Rising Indian power will not go uncontested by its perennial adversary, Pakistan. Indian strategy of replicating US strategy towards the Soviet Union of the early eighties to push Pakistan into being a ‘failed’ state, would further corner it. To counter India’s hawkish approach, two options are open to Pakistan. One is the expansion in scope of its proxy war to include other parts of India in collusion with minority elements influenced both by their own fundamentalist inclination and by the broader communalization in the polity. This would complete the vicious circle, for it will be taken as evidence of the fifth column status of the minority, in keeping with the premises of hindutva philosophy of marginalisation of the minority. Secondly, it would lower its nuclear threshold so as to negate the expanding difference between the conventional capabilities of the two states. Indian flexibility in resorting to force, furnished by its expanding capabilities and by the incentive to use them being provided by provocative Pakistan, would thus be constrained, further emboldening Pakistan. Thus Hindu India will not be able to transcend the subcontinent to play a major role on the world stage in keeping with its power trajectory.

The Huntingtonian logic of ‘clash of civilizations’ will be on display in relations with China, for India would no longer be a state pursuing its legitimate interests, but a state representing 5000 years of hindu civilization finally coming of age. The undercurrents of antipathy towards China are evident in Indian representations to the US President on Indian motivations for going overtly nuclear. There is also prevalent the determinist understanding in realist security circles that competition with China for space under the Asian sun may turn military over the middle term. The very notion of equating itself with China has an ego-boosting component to it. Arming itself with long-range missiles and pursuing strategic nuclear weapon program puts India into the big league. These tangible security assets supplement the false pride that the other philosophical tenets of hindutva provide. The preparation against the perceived Chinese threat over the long term can only result in materializing the threat. Thus a Hindu India would open yet another front, as also the certainty that its two adversaries so created would collaborate to further threaten it.

Bangladesh is a state that bears watching, for there are positive trends in its human development index that will have a bearing on its national power over the long term. This, along with the issues of Bangladeshi ‘immigrants’ into India, makes it necessary to give it separate treatment, rather than club it along with the other smaller Indian neighbors as is routinely done. It is already implicated in providing a base for ISI activities targeting eastern India. Since rival fanaticisms feeds on each other, fundamentalism in Bangladesh and its anti-Indian tendency will only deepen with the saffronisation of India. The use of the ‘immigrant’ issue by the right wing in India will be handy for leveraging itself into power through a campaign of vilifying the minority as a readily available ‘Other’. Corresponding treatment of the hindu minority in Bangladesh will be taken as further justification, since Hindu India would represent not mere citizens but hindus. Therefore, India’s soft underbelly will be even more exposed, even as Hindu India rings itself with neighbors in league with each other.

Smaller Indian neighbors will be the sites of contestation of Indian power with the combined power of its larger neighbors. While Bhutan and Maldives may band wagon readily with India, Nepal and Sri Lanka can be expected to balance Indian preponderance with an inclination away from it in at least some issue areas. In Sri Lanka, Buddhist fundamentalism could gain impetus, particularly if Hindu India feels inclined to take a religiously inspired position on a persisting Tamil question. Nepal, already taken as an ISI base, may continue as one if the Maoist insurgency grows. India’s interest in a stable Nepal are particularly acute owing to a proportion of its army being of Nepalese ethnicity and to contiguity of Nepal to India’s nexalite ‘badlands’ stretching from Bihar to Telangana. The status quo in the evolution of the SAARC would continue to deepen. Growing Indian economic power would compel these countries to seal off their economies to preserve them against Indian economic preponderance. Unilateral Indian concessions, though making sound economic and political sense, may be less forthcoming from adrenalin charged Hindu India. Thus, while regions coalesce into economic blocs for greater competitiveness in a globalised world elsewhere, South Asia will miss what shall turn out the most critical trend as the century unfolds. 

In its relations with the sole superpower, India has already revealed a disturbing initiative towards being the ‘most allied ally’. There are two fronts along which this association may be boomerang on India. One is that India may lend itself to the ends of a policy of containment of China, thereby enmeshing itself in Great Power games. While this may help the saffron leadership for adopting attitudes of statesmanship, it bears recounting that there is no region that has been left unscathed after having been embraced by the USA.

Second is that in trying to gain American attention India has been presenting itself as a similar victim of pan-islamic terrorism. One end of the muslim terrorist arc stretching from Chechenya is deemed to be ending in Kashmir. By projecting its understanding with USA as ‘natural’, India is associating itself with the reactionary reassertion of neo-colonial control of the energy resources, in league with its friend of recent vintage, Israel. Thus, India is opening itself to targeting by partially quasi-nationalist forces, presently deservingly designated ‘terrorist’. The restive minority in a Hindu India could find tactical allies amongst these terrorist forces, quite like the disaffected muslim underworld elements in Bombay who turned to the ISI for engineering the retaliatory Bombay blasts in 1993. Thus ‘islam’s bloody borders’, to use a huntingtonian expression borrowed by Mr. Vajpayee for his controversial anti-minority speech in Goa, would be imported into India. The future may find India on the wrong side of history.

The contradiction is that though Indian economic and military power will continue to grow, it will be proportionately less able to cope with the worsening security situation. Economic priorities will leave considerable angst within the vulnerable sections of society. The ‘experiment’ in the ‘hindutva laboratory’ of making the lower classes and tribals participate in anti-minority pogroms would help in psychological projection as also distraction in the short term. Over the long term, the limitations in neo-liberal agenda will surface to compound the internal security problematic. The kind of military power invested in, to include high profile missiles and nuclear weapons; and technology intensive and mechanized armed forces, will be the least appropriate to address the security problems that will arise in Hindu India. The police, in the tradition established by the Bombay police of abnegating professional responsibility, or worse, in determining it to be the service of the hindutva philosophy, will exacerbate the law and order situation. A reversion to the days of the Emergency when a ‘committed’ civil service was thought desirable will occur with similar results, only this time the commitment to hindutva line will rob the Indian state of its traditional neutrality and credibility in intervening in intra-societal conflict. Thus Hindu India will be its own gravest enemy.

While the Gujarat electorate has bought the line that the minority ‘threat’ in its midst can best be met by hindutva inspired governance, it would be tragic were this to be replicated at the national scale as is the endeavor of rightist formations. Their effort will be to emulate the resounding victory of Rajiv’s Congress of 1984 in both substance and result. This strategy will have to be combated first conceptually in intellectual discourse and then physically at the hustings. The Geobblesian ‘hindus and hinduism in danger’ line has to be revealed as true, not from the directions pointed out by those crying wolf, but from the scare mongers themselves. Hindu India will not only endanger India, but also will constitute its own greatest threat. Hindu India will not only menace minorities, but also hinduism and hindus.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/kashmir/politics-how-will-new-delhi-react-to-the-civil-disobedience-in-kashmir-4543111.html

How will New Delhi react to the civil disobedience in Kashmir?

Two recently-released civil society activist reports indicate the onset of civil disobedience in Kashmir. Their early warning stands vindicated by the arrests of former Chief Minister and Union minister Farooq Abdullah’s sister and daughter as part of a protesting group of Kashmiri women in Srinagar on October 15, though released the following day after submission of a bond against pursuing their protest activity. Security forces need to think up a coping strategy in real time, lest they end up bracketed with their predecessors who once served a colonial master.

New Delhi appears to have won the first round. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s meticulous planning and intimate supervision yielded the desired results, with a negligible number of Kashmiri dead over the last two months. Yet, the state administration has begun the second round on the back-foot, best illustrated by its advertisement beseeching Kashmiris to resume their usual, even if not quite normal, routine.

Clearly, the Amit Shah-Ajit Doval strategy for the first round has had costs. Besides the humiliation from the voiding of Article 370 without consultation, Doval’s masterminding of the communication cut-off and lock down cannot but have long-term repercussions.

Compounding these have been allegations of high handedness in affecting detentions in nightly raids, detaining of juveniles, possible torture, lock down and the ubiquitous and privacy-sapping deployment of troopers have generated disaffection of untold magnitude.

For its part, the state administration is trying to get a modicum of normalcy going. Restoring communications, calling for a return of tourists and assisting with apple harvesting and marketing cannot cover for the lost ground. Deputing magistrates to oversee start of schools and announcing an exam schedule to lure students back are stratagems. It will also keep the leadership and foot soldiers incarcerated for longer, lest the wellspring of anger find focus, a plan and a leader.

Quite like the first intifada that broke out in Palestinian areas unbidden in 1987 end as an ad hoc peoples’ initiative, taking about two months thereafter into posing a significant challenge to the Israeli State, the incipient ‘satyagraha’ in Kashmir may take as long to gather steam. As to whether it gains traction would depend on the State gathering its wits and strategising suitably.

For now, the State is evidently witless. Reflecting on how the situation will shape up, Doval has it that it would depend on what Pakistan cooks and serves up. The army chief has indicated that with some 500 terrorist ready in launch pads for infiltration, this is mostly along well-known lines: more proxy war.

This has not been unleashed as yet since Pakistani pro-activism is checked by the ongoing scrutiny of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on its terror financing record. The orchestration of deterrence signalling by successive statements by Indian ministers and its brass has left Pakistan with only its Prime Minister Imran Khan’s war rhetoric and nuclear scaremongering as fig leaf for its inaction thus far.

Even so, in round two, Pakistan is a step ahead by appropriating the civil disobedience. Absent indigenous leadership, locked away in a lakeside hotel and as far away as Agra, its dictate will speedily fill the vacuum. Killings targeting the apple industry and of shop keepers wanting to resume sales suggest its proxies are already acting as enforcers of the citizens’ curfew.

While such operatives will no doubt be taken care of by the resumption of counter insurgency operations with the communication ban lifted and the intelligence flow restarted, the disabling of the messaging function of mobiles will help interdict a means for gatherings, central to ‘satyagraha’.

As in the first round, India’s ‘success’ in the second will be predicated on the number of Kashmiri dead. Negligible casualty figures owed to stone throwers being far removed. In the second round, paramilitary troopers have to adopt uncharacteristic non-violent means for coping with crowds preponderantly comprising women. As a first step, pellet guns need stowing away.

However, their borrowing from India’s freedom movement by the Kashmiris has opened up an unbridgeable gap. Not only are ‘strategic corporals’ — trooper action having strategic fallout — significant to India’s showing, but equally what the Supreme Court has to say in its hearing beginning mid-November on the Article 370 petitions. Round Two can be expected to last till the Supreme Court rules on the case.

That Round Three will probably follow can easily be speculated, not least because of its incomprehensible postponing of the hearings, but also its short shrift to the human rights issues, such as in habeas corpus cases brought to its attention, from the undeclared emergency in Kashmir.

New Delhi’s frantic preparations for Round Three suggest as much. The army has operationalised the cold start doctrine some 15 years after thinking it up and also tested it in mountains, though in the eastern sector. The air force has acquired its first Rafale, with the defence minister personally ensuring its auspicious entry into the inventory. India’s ‘success’ in this round will be how it manages to avoid war even as it prosecutes the promised proactive response to proxy war.

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=95062

Nuclear winter before this winter?

Back triumphantly from New York, the prime minister’s adhoc speech making at the airport reception by his bhakts led to massive traffic snarls across western Delhi. The road show was justified by Narendra Modi getting the better of Imran Khan ‘Niazi’. Khan’s full name was eked out by a young Indian diplomat preparing her rejoinder to Khan’s ‘rant’ on Kashmir at his turn at the podium at the General Assembly.

While in the United States (US), Modi had instead expended his ammunition at the Rs. 1.4 lakh crore Howdy Modi show. (Disclosure: this author could not work out the number of zeros in that figure. Evidently, Rahul Gandhi, who dug up the dirt, knows better.) The highlight was his overtly interfering in the elections of the host country by endorsing the bid for reelection of its sitting president, currently under impeachment proceedings. That bit of personal diplomacy was taken as getting the US alongside, though Trump carefully pointed out that talks were the way forward for both sides.

The easy-to-manufacture consensus in India is that India has won. However, India’s national security minders know better. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval was over in Srinagar yet again last week keeping up the vigil. He best knows – hopefully – that only the first round is over. He informed on the second round when he spotted several hundred jihadis across the Line of Control (LC). The army chief, obediently on cue, got himself photographed peering through a telescope across the LC. The bell for the second round tolled with kinetic operations in the hinterland taking a toll of six militants.

Round One extracted a reputational price internationally - which the Indian media’s ostrich act has kept from the public. So it was not a walkover. As for Round Two, there are two dimensions. The first is the eruption in Kashmir. The continuing lock down is a dead give-away. If Amit Shah is to be believed there is no such lock down any more. But then to Amit Shah till only recently Farooque Abdullah was a free man. The second is the manner Pakistan lobs the Kashmir ball back into India’s court.

Pakistan’s army appears to have instructed its puppet and purported civilian political master, Imran Khan, to create the conditions for their actions in Round Two. Khan led the diplomatic offensive with as much vigour as he had brought to the cricketing oval when his team won the world cup. India did well not to shoot itself in the foot by shooting up Kashmiris, preferring instead to take the hit over a lock down. Even so, Imran Khan has given the Pakistan military an alibi. He has warned the international community adequately and if it has not taken vigourous preventive action, then it would have to be goaded into action with development of a threat to international peace and security in Round Two.

There are three possibilities. One is resumption of proxy war with gusto, and, second, to up the ante with a conventional show of force. The third is Pakistan going Gandhian.

The first possibility is apparently already in the works. The second may be necessary as overlay since the Indian military is ready and waiting. The Pakistan army would reckon that military force is to be used to protect and further its national interest. Since Kashmir is equated with the national interest – the military reputedly controls Pakistan’s Kashmir, India, Afghanistan and nuclear policies – it cannot be that it would go Gandhian at the crunch. On returning from New York, Imran Khan more or less conceded defeat, acknowledging that the jihad doctrine required standing by Kashmiris, giving the green light for possibilities one and two.

Instead, India appears to have betted on a third possibility: Pakistan, overawed by surgical strikes, going Gandhian. Strategic good sense would indeed be to survey the preparedness and power equations and step back, using proxies to face the music – as has largely been the case thus far. It could do this and get away earlier since it could justify proxy war as pressure to get India to talk. By India closing the option of talks decisively – saying talks will be over terror and Pakistan occupied Kashmir and making Kashmir inaccessible through (un)constitutional ‘integration’ – proxy war loses its earlier rationale. India has forced Pakistan to do more, foregrounding the second possibility.

As for the third, for India to expect a cake walk in Round Two is not unreasonable. Pakistan should know that its economy cannot sustain the ten day war India’s military preparedness can – even if India’s economic down turn precludes India sustaining a war of any duration. Pakistan is also on the cusp of black listing on its terror financing record. Pakistan could also lose the war and its army its position on the top of Pakistan’s power heap.

By winter, Round Two would have either finished or fizzled. It would be apparent what risk India has had to run over implementing a manifesto promise of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Such promises are to be checked by instruments of state by providing a reality check. Those institutions on the front rank of national security have to temper, deter and push back on policy missteps. If the government was warned of the risk of war is not known. That no one has resigned indicates group think.

Since there are no inducements to Pakistan on offer as part of a deterrence-reassurance strategy, it is not self-evident how the first two possibilities will be avoided. The army chief in his interview yesterday is out justifying a policy which - even if disaster is avoided in the short term - is not going to see a let up in the situation for another generation. He suggests that the shift to surgical strikes will ensure the third possibility, and if it does not, India will be at it till it does. It is anyone guess how long will that be, at what risk and with what efficacy. This is evidence that just as with other national institutions the Indian military is also hollowed out – unable to stand up to the media-built strategic reputation of their political master, the unelected Ajit Doval.

To highlight this here is not to reprise Im-the-dim Khan. India’s actions speak of an agreement with Imran Khan that it is running an undue risk. The lock down – self-inflicted clampdown according to General Rawat - in Kashmir is set to continue through winter as rumours of the paramilitary inducted in additional numbers is now seeking winter accommodation indicate. India has put out several deterrent gambits, such as, its defence minister reminding Pakistan of its past losses in wars and its standing to lose Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. His reference to a shaky nuclear first use pledge is proof of India’s concurrence with Khan that there is a more than just a nuclear backdrop to war today.

In a book, India’s Habituation with the Bomb, released at a Pakistani security think tank last week, I make the case in my book chapter contribution, ‘India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Dynamism or Stasis’, that India’s is now a warfighting nuclear doctrine – how so ever much its declaratory nuclear doctrine dissimulates to the contrary. This makes India more war prone than during its years of strategic restraint. It permits the shift to strategic proactivism of late. Ability and intent to match Pakistani nuclear use in war with its own at an early and low threshold mode makes India venturesome. Others have it that India may even preempt Pakistani nuclear use. This explains the military’s confidence in backing of the constitutional jugglery over Kashmir and belief that it can face down Pakistan. With a more usable Indian nuclear arsenal on call, Pakistan would be better deterred from going nuclear. Without the nuclear assurance behind it, the Pakistani army would be less liable to be adventurous over the Kashmir fait accompli. Any Pakistani poser over Kashmir can then be check mated by Indian conventional resort. Any Pakistan nuclear proclivity can be met with proportionate nuclear riposte. In short, a fightable nuclear war keeps Pakistan in better check.

In the present situation, the Indian assessment is that the worst case – of nuclear exchange(s) - can be ridden out. It’s a risk worth running for the national interest of a quiescent Kashmir. Since there can be no more fraught a situation than the current on over Kashmir, the hope is General Rawat is proven right. He has it that Pakistan cannot rely on its nuclear deterrent since doing so would be against the tenets of strategic weapons use. Hope General Rawat does not believe his deterrence propaganda. In case he is proven wrong, the only silver lining is that accountability shall catch up with the trio – Modi-Shah-Doval - that pushed South Asia into such a situation in first place.  

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