The Ali Oeuvre:

National security this century

https://www.dropbox.com/s/socevdjjm9bdkbu/The%20Ali%20Oeuvre.pdf?dl=0

Introduction

I was fortunate to arrive in Delhi as a young captain when India turned a corner at the end of the Cold War. My five years as an infantry man till then had opened up the tactical level. I had already gained an early introduction to the operational level on holidays in Kashmir, where a rebellion had broken out just then and had caught my family in its vortex. In Delhi, from my back row vantage in seminar rooms, I had a ring side view of strategic debates and managed a glimpse of the strategic level.

I witnessed old verities being abandoned and a new path forged. Thus, as with global history, this century can be taken as beginning a decade earlier with the end of the Cold War. The principal political shift was in cultural nationalism going from being incipient at the fall of the Babri Masjid to entrenchment. The right wing busily consolidated its sway over domestic politics. Its influence on national security was subtle initially as India’s upward economic trajectory - in part - hid revivalism as another impetus to its great power quest.

Even as history marched on, I took time out to acquire an education on the side in a sabbatical. This made for a well-spent subsequent decade in the military in which I participated in the internal debates by writing for professional publications. Freshly back from learning about military sociology, among other things, I watched as the ideological wares of the right wing acquire adherents within the military. The imprint of cultural nationalism was evident on both strategic and organizational culture.

My initial encounter with this was on the day when suddenly I espied a new layout in the Valmiki Library at the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington. I was a regular library visitor and was surprised to see a statue of the Hindu goddess of learning gracing the library one day. I dashed off an article for the Trishul, the journal of the DSSC, pointing out what I thought was a step away from the military’s secular ethos. For my pains, I was marched up to the chief instructor for being political, whereas to me the appearance of the statue was evidence of a step away also from its apolitical ethic against which the military needed to be cautioned. The senior instructor who marched me up can be seen in his retirement on google garlanding the statue of right wing icon BS Moonje. The then commandant of DSSC has since written a book that is in most military libraries that talks of air planes in ancient India.

I have since - subconsciously for most part - traced the rise of cultural nationalism. I recorded this intermittently, taking pains to apprise editors of the baleful imprint of right wing trope in military journals. Among other issues I dwell on, my writings provide a cultural explanation for the developments in Indian security over this century. I was an early bird in reckoning an attempt at right wing hegemony that rightly espied the security field as an easy conduit. The inevitable impact of this change in domestic political culture on strategic and military culture is a story that needs being told. I retrospectively notice that I have done so – explicitly at times and unwarily at others - in my writings.

The thread linking these writings is the liberal perspective on use of force in national security matters. It is clear over the past few years of a right wing regime in power that a pronounced reset of India is underway. A retrospective of my writings throws up several instances my cautioning against such a pass. I think that this prescience is the key to my work. Though voluminous, the corpus is an original perspective on South Asian security since it largely – and singularly at that since there are no other competing works on this - dwells on the influence of political Hinduism on national security.

This is a minority viewpoint in more than the usual way of interpreting ‘minority’. While I bear a Muslim name and that identity did I reckon in part influence my perspective, the ‘minority’ viewpoint I champion is the liberal one on national security. It has required investment of time, resources and energy to challenge the prevailing conservative-realist paradigm. In the context of the times, I like to believe that it took some gumption.

Since the corpus covers a vast terrain both in time and scope, I undertake a summary here. Besides the underlying theme of the work mentioned, the body of work is a useful record of the military and Indian strategic affairs over the last quarter century for students, practitioners, attentive public and academics to peruse. The published work earned me a doctorate – my second - from Cambridge University under its Special Regulations. I assume on that account that my work might interest a wider audience. The presentation here is to attempt reach it. This is hopefully timely in light of what I believe to be dire straits into which India is headed under this regime.   

An intellectual journey

At various times in my professional life of over three decades I have been a military man, an academic and an international civil servant. These exposures have contributed to my thinking on strategic affairs and peace studies related questions. I began my writing career, that was coextensive with my professional engagement, over the past quarter century as an infantry officer in the Indian army. Immersing myself in the academia after premature retirement from the army, I was able to contribute to the discourse as part of Delhi’s strategic community. Alongside, I worked towards a doctoral degree in international politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University.  

A perusal of the collected works comprising close to a 1000 published pieces of varying length, over 4000 pages and some two million words, needs summarizing. The aim is to bring out the underlying unity to the whole. The work has been informed by the peculiar and unique vantage points in my journey. My academic background has enriched the reflection, distinguishing my work from that of other practitioners in that it is a combination of learning and experience. The analytical tools acquired by me while at the DSSC, at the military intelligence course, at the New Delhi think tank and as a UN political analyst with its mission analysis qualification, have been put to good use.

A quarter century of extensive engagement with the strategic discussion in India finds expression in the collection. Not only did I feed into the discussion, but my thinking was enhanced by it. My writings enabled the strategic discussion (if not cacophony) to be taken further and in the dissemination of the content to an attentive audience, initially within the military, and over the past decade - after I left the military - to an interested public through writing on the web and compiling the collections in two blogs: www.ali-writings.blogspot.in and http://subcontinentalmusings.blogspot.com/.

In the period, India emerged as a reckonable power, with an expanding economic and strategic footprint. There was a growing interest in matters of national security among the educated, middle classes. Consequently, there was much to engage with and write about, particularly off the mainstream track. My contributions are at the interstices of international relations, strategy, military sociology and the political backdrop to internal security.

Areas covered

Military sociology:

An aspect of India’s politics that caught my attention early – as mentioned - was the rise of the right wing in national politics. I concentrated on the implications for national security and regional strategic affairs. Having studied civil-military relations at the master’s level, I was able to see the impact of the ideology on the military. While the Indian military is known as a professional, apolitical and secular force, I was able to trace the manner the change in national politics was influencing the military. This is a consistent theme in my writings on the Indian military over the past quarter century.

While within service, I consistently pointed out to editors of in-service journals the trickling in of right-wing ideas into the publications, and thereby into the military mind. This phenomenon has acquired a magnitude lately. My writings covering this aspect are perhaps the singular source on this phenomenon in India, and on that are of interest in military sociology.

They expand the horizons of military sociology that usually restricts itself to the study of the power of military over national politics in the form of praetorianism. What I bring out is the reverse, on how forces in politics seek to control the military through expansion of their reach into and within the military, termed subjective civilian control. Military professionalism is imbued with the cultural nationalist ethos of the ruling political formation, the ruling party and its support base in far-right cultural and political formations.

Minority security:

After leaving the military, I gained a measure on the emergence to respectability in national politics of right wing views. There was a concerted assault on India’s largest minority – and incidentally the world’s largest numerical minority - India’s Muslims. As a member of this community, I have - as with other Indian Muslims in the middle classes (including cultural and non-practising Muslims) and professions - been concerned by implications of majoritarianism for the minority.

I have in my writings taken a security-centric view, covering a gap in the discussion since very few in the strategic community are Muslims. The theme I tackle is the rise of Hindutva – cultural nationalism – in India is not without costs for India’s plurality, democratic ethos and secularism. I concentrate on the implications on the security of Muslim communities.

Strategy:

Further, I have reflected on how the right-wing penetration upsets rational strategy making and choices. I looked at how and why a secure and powerful state such as India behaves like an insecure, paranoid one. India has shifted its strategic posture towards greater assertiveness of its growing power over the past decade and half. It appears caught up in a security dilemma with its neighbours, with neighbours reacting to its security actions.

One arena of my particular interest in which this action-reaction is found reflected in is of security doctrines: strategic, nuclear, conventional and sub-conventional. I have extensively dealt with doctrinal matters, making for the distinctiveness of my work in India’s strategic community.

Having been a practitioner once, I participated in counter insurgency operations and conventional war exercises. I acquired a perspective on nuclear strategy at the two universities in UK. I was thus able to appraise the inter-linkages between the three strategic levels – subconventional, conventional and nuclear – and, link this to the grand strategic and political levels. My strategic work, included in the compilations, is on the potentially dangerous doctrinal inter-linkages between the two regional rivals, India and Pakistan, in the nuclear age.

Of some consequence in the strategic debate has been my doctoral dissertation at JNU on limited war in South Asia. My doctoral thesis titled, ‘India’s Limited War doctrine: Structural, Political and Organisational factors’ culminated in a book India’s Doctrine Puzzle: Limiting War in South Asia. It covered the Cold Start doctrine, the doctrinal shift in India towards a proactive strategy. The dissertation culminated in a well-received book, India’s doctrine puzzle: Limiting war in South Asia (Routledge 2014). The research and the book were done at a time when I was advantaged by being in the rooms where the doctrinal shift underway was often discussed. I dwelt on the implications of shift in conventional level on the nuclear level. 

Military doctrines:

My engagement with doctrines goes back to my Master’s dissertation in London on peacekeeping doctrine. In the mid-nineties, peacekeeping had spiked with the end of the Cold War. Doctrine required catching up with the outbreak of conflicts as Cold War stability dissolved across Africa, South East Asia and Balkans. As a young military officer of an army extensively engaged with peacekeeping and student, I was thus an early inductee into doctrinal thinking.

Back in India, the army was grappling with the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia in the two back-to-back nuclear tests in Pokhran and Chagai in May 1998. India brought out a nuclear doctrine. I examined its implications for the conventional doctrine, arguing for the applicability of limited war doctrine in South Asia. India’s conventional war doctrine at the turn of the century was modeled on a total war scenario, in which three offensive strike corps poised to knock out the adversary and capture territory for post-conflict bargaining. I found this was anachronistic in the nuclear age.

My two monographs at IDSA captured this shift, along with my book. I was in the midst of the doctrinal effervescence in India, in which the armed forces put out respective doctrines. Due to a peculiarity of India’s nuclear quest, the military had been left out of the nuclear loop. Thus, its conventional doctrine was put out in a vacuum of strategic guidance. I took on the role of stitching the two levels – nuclear and conventional – together and hopefully made an original contribution to Indian strategic thinking.

Nuclear doctrine:

The writings dealing with the conventional-nuclear interface were informed by a liberal perspective. I found myself constantly at odds with the realist-conservative bias in the military that surfaced in its publications, approaches and doctrines. The military is an instrument of state power and tool in the use of force, I pointed to the goal posts having shifted since the nuclear advent. My bringing out that it could not be business-as-usual was a contrarian position initially in the strategic discourse in India. The effect of hyper-nationalist and cultural nationalist thinking on strategy was liable to underplay the nuclear genie let loose in the region.

The Indian discourse was on how to outpoint and overawe Pakistan leveraging the growing power differential with Pakistan.  The assumption was that nuclear deterrence would hold. India was grappling on how to have Pakistan discontinue its support to its proxies in the Kashmir conflict by using its conventional advantage. Pakistan, for its part, pulled down its nuclear awning to compensate for its conventional weakness. India, mindful of this, decided to pull its conventional punches in its new doctrine, Cold Start.

However, the nuclear doctrine remained unchanged at a declaratory level and consequently continues to pose a threat to regional – and global - security. With Pakistan poised for first use and India promising massive nuclear retaliation, there is a potentially catastrophic doctrinal impasse. A shift in India’s nuclear doctrine for greater flexibility is one way out of this conundrum, even if it makes nuclear war appear fightable, if not winnable. If escalation pessimists are right, then the alternative staring India in the face is to put its money where its mouth is – it is fond of saying that it is against nuclear weapons - and de-nuclearise.

Liberal security perspective:

Though India adopted Cold Start doctrine, India’s military exercises did not reflect the necessity of doctrinal shift to limited war in the nuclear era. Conflict termination under nuclear conditions was not sufficiently thought-through. My contributions, spread across multiple websites on strategic affairs, were combative, taking the argument to the realist camp. I have packaged these in books of my compiled words, so that the thread of the argument and the debates within the strategic community of the last two decades can be easier followed.

I believe that my advocacy from an Ashokan perspective was a lonely intellectual guerilla effort since the Indian strategic community – as elsewhere - is realist dominated. Realism has limitations that need to be brought to the attention of policy makers grappling with global consequences of military action in the nuclear age.

Kashmir:

India’s foremost internal conflict, Kashmir, the most likely trigger for nuclear conflict, was an abiding interest. Challenged by a people-centric militancy, India chose to characterize it as terrorism and proxy war precluding political resolution and privileging a military template. It was aided in this with the anti-terror discourse internationally after the 9/11 episode. This approach limited policy choices with conflict management instead of conflict resolution approaches to fore.

I was an early bird in examining the internal conflict, as my Kashmir-related writings going back to the early nineties, testify. I was posed thrice - briefly each time - in J&K during my military career and acquired a worm’s eye view to complement my strategic perspective from my academic engagement. I had grappled with the issue of external intervention in internal conflict – proxy war by Pakistan in Kashmir - in a chapter in my MPhil thesis while at Cambridge. By mid-2000s India and Pakistan reached out to each other. This was not to last, derailed by 26/11, as the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 were called.

From another perch - my peace studies exposure in academia – I advocated progressing peace talks both internally and externally. Discerning why these do not succeed and what it might take for them to succeed is my attempt to stitch power oriented strategic studies and peace studies, that looks at negotiated end to conflict. I notice a conflict management approach trumps conflict resolution approaches, regardless on the implications for the community in which conflict is played out. I have been particularly critical on the latest constitutional initiative in Kashmir, whereby Kashmir has been reduced to a unit to be administered by New Delhi.

Counter insurgency:

The theme of peace initiatives and humane conduct of counter insurgency operations permeates my writings. This was usually to counter the militarized discourse in professional journals and within the strategic community in general and on how to tackle Kashmir and Pakistan. I reflected on the place of military template in this, arguing for human rights sensitivity in counter insurgency even where there is incidence of proxy war. I had two stints as an infantry officer in India’s north east: in Assam and Tripura. Thus, I was able to have a practitioner-cum-academic view, a not-unknown combination.

While India’s military has mostly been cognizant of human rights law and requirements, there is often a ‘Rambo’ tendency in fighting men. Institutional measures are needed for curbing can have strategic consequences as seen in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The turn to cultural nationalism and its influence within the military also needs factoring in. Seeing the conflict as a civilisational one between Islam and Hinduism, dating to a thousand years back, constricts scope for concessions and mutual understanding. This is an understudied area since the military is treated as a holy cow. I brought up these issues, calling for a draw-down in the military prong of strategy in favour of a political approach.

Peace studies:

I have been able to gain a greater appreciation of political approaches and options in conflict resolution in my capacity as a political affairs officer with three UN missions. I undertook two UN trainings in mediation in Oslo and appreciate the potential for conflict resolution of non-military approaches.

Political approaches are not unknown in India. There are multiple suspension-of-operations agreements in place in the north east and a major and long lasting ceasefire agreement is under implementation in Nagaland. Even in Kashmir, there has been a Ramzan suspension of operations, though the initiative appears to have set the stage for Operation All Out, an operation that in turn created the conditions for the constitutional initiatives of August 2019. The lack of traction for peace brings to fore the necessity of peace studies insights and their wider dissemination.

I was acquainted with this deficit while at the peace studies faculty, getting to know the march that strategic studies faculties have acquired over peace studies faculties. Policies favour the former; thereby, having the role of and use of force appear more efficacious when contrasted to the possibilities of peace through peaceful means. This is taken as an exercise in sovereignty in post-colonial states that see citizens as subjects. The view that citizens are to be protected by the state against conflict and its effects, if necessary by preventive, mitigatory and resolution-seeking negotiations and mediation for conflict termination is not widely prevalent. The sense of insecurity allows a statist view to prevail, leading to self-perpetuating conflict management rather than conflict resolution. 

A summary of the oeuvre

I consolidated my writings in disparate locations into book compilations over the years to enable access for a wider audience, particularly the student community in international relations, South Asian studies, Indian politics, South Asian security issues and peace studies. The writings cover the period since the early nineties and have touched upon all security relevant issues, such as the nuclear issue, the conventional doctrine, counter insurgency practices, Kashmir, India-Pakistan equations, peacekeeping and civil-military relations. The conventional-nuclear doctrinal interface and civil-military relations or military sociology are I believe path-breaking, the latter is particularly so since the subject is understudied.

Below I undertake a synopsis of the books on my blog to provide the context and knit together the argument that at heart of India’s security predicament is the rise of the Right wing in Indian politics. A co-edited book, Towards a New Asian Order (2012), comprising the conference proceedings of an international conference I organized on Asia for my think tank, is a prominent output not covered here. Sixteen books have followed (http://www.dogearsetc.com/dogears/search/Author/Ali%20Ahmed; http://www.dogearsetc.com/dogears/search/All/firdaus%20ahmed), three of which are monographs (one unpublished). My dissertations below are at my blog:

·         PhD in International Politics, Jawarharlal Nehru University – ‘India’s Limited War Doctrine: Structural, Political and Organisational Factors’

·         MPhil at Cambridge University – ‘Intervention In Internal Affairs By States In South Asia’

·         MSc in Defence and Strategic Studies at DSSC, Madras University – ‘The Contending Philosophies In Indian Strategic Thought And The Impact On SAARC’

·         MA in War Studies, King’s College London – ‘UN Peacekeeping and Military Doctrine’

The sixteen books can be divided into four sets.

·         The first set comprises my two books with my peer reviewed book chapter and article contributions respectively to edited volumes and publications: South Asian security: A vantage point and Indian security: A vantage point.

·         The second set comprises the three monographs, two worked on at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, namely Reconciling Doctrines: Prerequisite for Peace in South Asia and India’s Limited War Doctrine: The Structural Factor, and the third (unpublished) one at the United Services Institution, Institutional Interest: A Study of India’s Strategic Culture.

·         The third set comprises my compilations of publications (South Asia at a Strategic Cross Road; India: A strategic alternative; India’s National Security in the Liberal Perspective; On War in South Asia; On Peace in South Asia; South Asia: In it Together; Think South Asia; and Subcontinental Musings) and a book compilation with a proportion of my writings as a military officer (On India's military: Writings from within). Two further book comprise respectively some 100 op-eds in the Kashmir Times and another some 50 book reviews, including in the The Book Review India.

Synopsis of the sets

The first set

The first set with my book chapters and essays/articles respectively for eminent publications such as the Economic and Political Weekly – for which I share the monthly strategic affairs column with two other writers – is my major work. They cover the past decade and I believe are a significant contribution to the strategic debate in India, particularly so since the liberal perspective has not had space.

The essays reflect a contrarian perspective arguing that when India has enough power for security sufficiency, more of the same as argued by realists is unnecessary, counter-productive and liable to create a self-fulfilling prophecy in generating a security dilemma in neighbours, such as in India’s case, a relatively weaker Pakistan. Some essays carry an anti-nuclear stance, arguing through a strategic lens that nuclear weapons possession implies a critical time break. The argument was for adapting India’s conventional military power to the nuclear age. On the contrary, India, in the period, attempted to continue searching for ‘decisive victory’ through a new conventional doctrine, under cover of an expansive – and that count implausible - nuclear doctrine.

The implacable logic of deterrence in the nuclear age suggests a diplomatic outreach externally (with Pakistan) and peace interventions internally (in Kashmir). In the event, this is not the policy choice India adopted. I make the case through my writings that the reason for India missing out on the logic of the nuclear age is that its nuclear ascendance was in part induced by cultural (religious) revivalism in India and the need for primordial, national pride makes it continue to adhere to power – rather than accommodation - as means to conflict resolution. 

The second set

My second set comprises monographs. These have both research and conceptual content. In the monographs, Reconciling doctrines, I make my most significant argument that the doctrinal propensities of the two states – India and Pakistan – makes for a volatile combination when juxtaposed against each other. The two have offensive doctrines at the three doctrinal levels – Pakistan at the subconventional and India at the conventional level. Both have offensive nuclear doctrines: Pakistan does not have a No First Use doctrine while India though with an NFU has a ‘massive’ retaliation doctrine. My case is that a doctrinal interface is required between the two for conflict prevention, escalation control and conflict management.

The second monograph is on the structural factor determining doctrinal shift towards a proactive doctrine. It highlights a doctrinal impetus for India lying in Pakistan’s constant challenge at the subconventional level in Kashmir.

Of the three monographs, the one at the United Services Institution, supervised by the doyen of India’s strategic community, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam, was not published as I was an army major then and anticipating that the critique would not have been passed by the authorities had requested the monograph not be published. A bold look at how institutional interest of security agencies trumps national interest, the monograph is a critique of the subcultures in the security establishment, including its influence on the army’s performance in Kashmir.

In all three monographs, I show the hand of an assertive turn to strategic culture, brought about by inter-alia cultural revivalism in India, perhaps the first such academic observation in strategic literature on and in India.

The third set

My third set of books record developments in the security field in India and South Asia over the past two decades. The major websites of think tanks and publications in strategic field to which I regularly contributed are ipcs.org (Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies), claws.in (Center for Land Warfare Studies), idsa.in (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses), citizen.in, foreignpolicyjournal.com, Kashmir Times, countercurrents.org, indiatogether.org, milligazette.com etc.

The methodology in my papers is usually to contrast the liberal perspective with the operative realist one, thereby providing a sound critique of extant policy. The books taken together are a trove for students and have a historical value, because they trace the political change in India and how that has impacted the strategic discourse and India’s defence, foreign and internal security policies.

For instance, in Kashmir over the past three decades there has been a consistent recourse to the military template, to little avail since the hard option only creates more recruits for the militancy and attracts Pakistan’s intelligence meddling. Therefore, the neglected policy choices including political approaches and peace interventions are advocated in my pieces covering Kashmir. It is no wonder India has compounded its predicament in Kashmir lately.

I follow the nuclear issue through the years, again making an anti-nuclear case but in strategic terms to carry the argument into strategic discourse. The anti-nuclear discussion is otherwise restricted to activist circuits that are marginalised, depriving the debate of energy.

A word on my writings while in the military, On India’s military: Writings from within. I was an active participant in the intellectual life of the Indian military. The record provides insight into the concerns of the military over two decades of late last century and early this century. The book is a window to the military.

A must read among my writings while in-service is one comprising the then unpublished articles owing to the requirement of obtaining military intelligence clearance for writings by military personnel, but have since been self-published as From within: Reflections on India's army. Equally significant is a compilation of comments on articles published in military publications wherein my critique was on the right wing cadence and influence. These letters now form a record for tracing how the right wing had penetrated military thinking and the extent to which it has. I reflect on the rise of cultural nationalism and trace its influence on the Indian military.

I bring a practitioner-cum-academic point of view to bear, a rare combination. There are few prolific writers from within the Indian military; fewer have put together their work between two covers. The Indian army is an oddity in the developing world in being both professional and not having meddled in politics. However, my work is different in showing up how politics has pervaded the military stealthily at first and more blatantly of late. This is in itself a original contribution to the ongoing national debate on where is India headed. 

Summing up

The key take-away from my writings is that the change in India’s strategic doctrine from defensive realism to offensive realism owes to the impact on Indian strategic culture of India’s rightward political shift under the impress of cultural nationalism. Here I contrast the popular realist perspective with the one I have furthered in my writings, the Asokan perspective.

The key competing explanation for this shift in India’s dominant strategic perspective is a structural one that has it that India’s security predicament has led to a response leveraging India’s increasing power over the period. The realist explanation is in is traditional balance-of-power terms.

The Chinese juggernaut looming large across Asia and the traditional Pakistani threat taken together combined to generate a potential ‘two-front’ problem. India’s economic indices since the liberalization of early nineties had an upward trend in the early 2000s. This led to greater investment in the defence sector, allowing for greater self-assertion by India in response to the ‘two-front’ dilemma. The nuclear breakout in 1998 was brought about by a Chinese collusion with Pakistan that posed a missile and nuclear threat. Under the nuclear umbrella, revisionist Pakistan sought to upset the status quo along the Line of Control, in Kashmir and pose a terror threat in India’s hinterland. The Chinese infrastructure development in Tibet led up to an adverse force ratio on that front. India was able, through an increased defence outlay, to play catch-up, both in terms of infrastructure building along the northern – undemarcated - border but also by raising its military strength.

The threat forced Indian response in terms of doctrine development, equipment acquisitions, military exercises, defence infrastructure building, forging of strategic partnerships and organizational innovation (such as the mountain strike corps). India reached out to the United States (US), fellow democratic powers in the Indo-Pacific and adopted an ‘Act East’ policy, to complement the US’ ‘pivot’ to Asia. Today the discourse is on Indo-Pacific. An increasingly vibrant economy helped India offset the Chinese attempt to box-in India into South Asian confines, using Pakistan as proxy.

On the other hand, in the Ashokan perspective, the ‘threat’ appears as a self-fulfilling prophecy, resulting from a security dilemma generated in the smaller neighbour, Pakistan, due to India’s own posture and actions. Over the eighties, India had a conventional war doctrine of conventional retribution using its two strike corps, as demonstrated in Exercise Brasstacks in the mid-eighties. This prompted Pakistan in the early nineties to neutralize India’s conventional advantage by bogging the Indian military down in a proxy war in Kashmir, even as India went in for a third strike corps. India’s military template in Kashmir kept the locale ideal for Pakistani interference.

To make its conventional advantage usable in face of Pakistan’s covert nuclear capability, India went overtly nuclear. It held China responsible for forcing its nuclear hand, even though at the time India had forged confidence building measures with China. This suggests that instead of a reckonable threat from China, the Chinese threat was a rationale to cover a development prompted by India’s equation with Pakistan. This reading has it that the structural explanation is only partial. By a structural yardstick, at best, the Indian strategy was to reinvigorate its conventional advantage, and thereby deter Pakistan at the subconventional level.

Alternatively, liberal explanations do not disavow power balances but are sensitive to policy impulses in other causal chains. At a wider – grand strategic level - Indian actions prompted the threats it faced, which were, in turn, used as strategic rationale for continuing down a chosen path of self-assertion. This begs the question as to impetus behind self-assertion.

In my writings, a cultural explanation has been privileged for its explanatory value.

The principle change in India has been a discernible shift to the Right, not only economically with adoption of neoliberalism, but politically in an emergence and rise of cultural nationalism. This impacted Indian strategic culture, in turn imposing on the strategic doctrine as traced in the cases followed: doctrine making, Kashmir, minority security, India-Pakistan relations and the organizational and sociological impact on the Indian army. In my writings, spread over a quarter century as outlined here, the rise of cultural nationalism and its impact on strategic culture and on military culture can be traced.

The quest has been for peaceable solutions – peace through peaceful means. Using the timeless Ashokan tradition in India I shone the light for and provided a mirror to the Indian strategic community. Retrospectively, my observations appear to be vindicated, with religious majoritarianism in ascendance in India. A sense of perspicacity is little satisfaction in face of aggravation of the Indian and regional security problematic. My advocacy for a liberal turn to politics, a return to a strategic doctrine of defensive realism and critique of an assertive strategic culture and offensive military doctrines, appears set to continue in light of the ideologically driven strategic missteps of the right wing regime.  

Note - Also can be downloaded from the blog's right margin. 

Kashmir is in a state of churn. Will 2020 mark a new dawn?

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/politics/kashmir-is-in-a-state-of-churn-will-2020-mark-a-new-dawn-4759561.html

That India and Pakistan escaped coming to blows twice over during the year tells us much of the trend into the coming year. In the first instance, in the Balakot-Rajauri they did exchange aerial punches. In the second, to its credit, Pakistan refrained from hasty action in response to India’s early August constitutional initiatives on Kashmir.

That Kashmir continues in a partial state of lock down into its fourth month indicates it is not out of the woods as yet. Extension of detention of Farooq Abdullah by another three months betrays the government’s thinking that it needs working through winter to avoid the seeming stability unwinding in case of any premature letting up on its part.

Since by then spring would be at hand and the year’s cyclical campaign set to begin that would also unlikely be the time the government would seek to ease up. It has elections to prepare for through summer, the dates of which are not out yet since their proximity will likely get the Kashmiri gander up.

This would be cue for Pakistan to get its act together. It appeared outpointed by India’s deft footwork over the Kashmir initiative. It was not able to upset India’s apple cart not only because of careful Indian security preparedness but also since its economy was on the rocks and it was not able to secure its western flank timely through brokering a deal between the Americans and the Taliban for a dignified American withdrawal.

It almost seemed as if the Pakistani army was doing a repeat of its 1971 act. Then, it had promised to save East Pakistan by attacking in the west. In the event, Yahya Khan developed cold feet. This time round when its ‘jugular’ – Kashmir - was yanked out of reach, it left the rhetoric to civilians, in particular its selected prime minister, Imran Khan, while presumably holding its powder dry for a better day.

That day appears nigh. Pakistan’s economy was elevated in Moody’s ratings on from a negative status to a stable one, even as India’s went in the reverse direction. It received its thirteenth financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Geopolitically, the Americans are back to resume talking to the Taliban, even as Trump hits election year stride to deliver on his promise of draw down from America’s longest-ever war.

For its part, absent civilian deaths in Kashmir as ready evidence of repression, India got away relatively unscathed internationally. International opprobrium has expectedly been muted. Though India has been prickly towards their criticism, it has not been able to readily brush off the observations of the international media and watch dog human rights bodies.

However, India’s continuing down a right wing ideology-driven path, most recently by enacting the dubious Citizenship Amendment Act, it is losing its political capital. This is to be followed by a nation-wide citizen’s register, which can only lead to further dwindling of its secular-democratic image, opening up Kashmir, that it considers an ‘internal matter’, to nettlesome external interest. 

Its security measures in Kashmir while yielding short term dividend of buying India time have diminishing marginal utility. A central police force analysis reportedly has it that the tight grip down to mohalla level in Kashmir is unsustainable, particularly as it continues to be ad-hoc, with troopers roughing it out through the harsh winter. The paramilitary is already being pulled out for firefighting elsewhere, for now in the north east.

Its army has suffered 20 casualties from snow related accidents, purporting to extant alert levels whereby it is unable to withdraw troops from inner anti-infiltration tiers timely off ridgelines in depth areas where it does not maintain posts as along the Line of Control (LC). Along the LC itself, even if it is drawing more blood than the Pakistani military and mujahids, it has little to show as different from the time two decades back when similar ordnance exchanges and stand-off action as sniper fire were routine.

Thus, while Pakistan appears poised for a proactive turn, India appears jaded. Its newly appointed lieutenant governor – a bureaucrat - is busy with non-essential activity, such as house listing, at a time when major political and developmental initiatives should have been unleashed as part of a political strategy to defuse the pent up anger in Kashmir over its demotion.

The political decapitation of Kashmiris in the incarceration of every shade of their leadership from mainstream through separatist to local stone thrower ring leader has not resulted in lack of innovation on their part. There is utter stupefaction in the government on how to tackle the campaign of non-cooperation underway by common folk, resulting in a perception ambush in which it appears the lock down continues even in face of the administration’s denials.

Even if the government manages to get a new leadership supposedly under manufacture currently under a Bhartiya Janata Party government headed by a Jammuite Hindu in place, continued restiveness coupled with renewed Pakistani interference may yet set up the region for the proverbial perfect storm over the coming year.

  

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The options conundrum for Kashmiris

http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=97570

For now it is evident that Kashmiris are into a unique form of non-cooperation, opening up enough to survive, but not so much as to underwrite any claim by the government of a return to normalcy. This may be as much to do with their leadership of all hues being incarcerated as with Pakistani proxy war minders recovering from their post 5 August shell shock.

What is certain is that history is not an end, as the dynamic trio that heads the Indian state – Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Ajit Doval - might like Indians to believe. With the strains beginning to show on their primary instrument – the central reserve police that lost a senior officer in an avalanche as he cut corners to make it back to Kashmir from a short breather outside it – it is clear that even the Chanakyan duo – Shah and Doval – cannot believe this.  

What the state expects and is shaping is a substitution in the leadership of Kashmiris by well meaning and opportunist quislings of sorts, encouragement for forgetting the recent past through incentives in drips and drops like rekindled broadband etc, distraction in hectic activity like preparing the house verification as part of run up to the update of population register and census, and holding out hope for political reinstatement through sweetners as a residency requirement of 15 years for purchase of land etc. Alongside, it keeps its dragnet in place, with its security forces occupying, as a recent report on protests suggests, college premises.

It is only a matter of time that the fratricides and fraggings make an appearance, as is the spate with repressive deployments in central India when beset with election duty additionally. The calls on armed policing from elsewhere such as restive Assam have resulted in some troop deinduction from Kashmir. Evidently, the string is taut. The resulting tension may well be awaiting the proverbial spark. History suggests winter is no time for respite, given that the events of December and January at the turn of the nineties shook Kashmir as no other period has done till then or since. The clampdown then, that has since lent resonance to place names as Habba Kadal, Gau Kadal, Maisooma, Rainawari etc, only added to the energy that it was meant to dissipate. This time too it could be no different.

Then, the army had a few columns out on assistance to civil authority.  They are rumoured to have seen action, with mention of light machine gun usage at the time, though history for most part records the hapless central reserve police at the forefront. This means that the army may well be sucked in willy nilly into any impending explosion. Quite like its counter parts in Assam, called in from their deployment close at hand on a counter insurgency grid for aid to civil authority against the anti-citizenship bill agitations there, Its current utility in an anti terror role and on stand-by stands to be rudely interrupted.

Though the army commander was shown supervising a security meeting at the onset of the lock down, in order no doubt so that the civilians could get a buffer should things go wrong, it is not self-evident that the army is enamoured with its lead role. One news report let on that the army uncomfortable with being mistaken for the paramilitary wanted to change its camouflage pattern to a distinctive one. The resemblance has led to it being accused of violence even if perpetrated by the paramilitary, such as in the notorious case of broadcast of cries from torture so as to cow the citizenry. It is not known what the army inquiry promised when the accusation surfaced revealed.

Even so, given that that the army chief has on at least two occasions said that the security forces in Kashmir are hand in glove, the army cannot but gets its uniform dirty even if egregious violence is perpetrated by the paramilitary. The advisor home having been kicked upstairs to a sinecure in the ministry in Delhi, the burden is more starkly on its shoulders. Its links to the bureaucrat in saddle are no doubt challenged by protocol issues as much as lack of any known familiarity on his part with counter insurgency.

The army is no doubt aware of the challenges. An illustration is its losing some 20 soldiers to avalanches this year that indicate the pressures to keep people on posts and even untenable posts on snowed-in ridgelines for as long as possible. Apparently, avalanches have accounted for 74 deaths over the past three years, indicating the operational alertness. The soon-to-retire army chief, who may well be kicked-upstairs as chief of defence staff, warns of increased border action team assaults along the Line of Control that will add to the stretch. The relative quiet in the Valley, a respite from militancy, stone throwing and terrorist activity, may unravel at a higher tempo on breakdown.

Much depends on what the Kashmiris opt for. They appear to have four options. One is to be quiescent, throw in the towel and get along with the humiliation inflicted by the dynamic trio. Since even the state does not appear to be so deluded, this option can safely be discarded at the outset. The second is to maintain the status on non-cooperation and embarrass the Indian state. Their effort so far has drawn blood with India being uncharacteristically cast into the doghouse of international public opinion. However, this option is predicated on the assumption that the dynamic trio has ordinary sensibilities. Yashwant Sinha, formerly in the right wing corner, informs of being aghast to discover that the national security establishment is enamoured of a ‘doctrine of state’, presumably based on a misreading of Kautilya that only the ‘dand’ works. Simply put, this is arrogance of power. Believing in the trite saying that ‘pride comes before a fall’ is to wait indefinitely. This regime’s policies are predicated on an anti-Muslim foundation, rather than national interest mundanely defined and it is not going anywhere any time soon.

The third option is to resume the status quo ante of a mix of militancy, insurgency and terrorism. This is an old script that can only yield result if there is a political prong to Indian strategy at play. In the insurgency play book, military activity is to force a political settlement without compromising one’s position. Since India has chosen to cut off its nose to spite its face, there is no political prong of strategy in sight. So a status quo ante can at best witness another four years of self-inflicted hardship, since any change of gear can only await the democratic departure of this government. There is no guarantee of this since it can yet pull a Balakot on the electorate.

The fourth is to rely on Pakistan to up its act. This flies in face of history. Pakistan did not bestir to rescue East Pakistan in late 1971, even though Indian forces had ventured into East Pakistan early November onwards. While India once dated the war to Pakistan’s belated aerial attack on its airfields in early December, it is no longer reticent in owning up to creating the conditions for the Pakistani (counter) attack. Its veterans have a plethora of stories of their incursions starting with Indira Gandhi’s intervention legitimizing trip to foreign capitals in early November. Given this history of lassitude on a national interest of following through with its promise of defending East Pakistan by acting in the west, Pakistan is hardly likely to jeopardise its national interest of survival and its army its institutional interest beyond a rhetorical responses, led by the (s)elected prime minister. This option is a chimera, with Pakistan – that has not outwitted the financial action task force just yet nor managed to deliver on its promises to America on the Taliban – unlikely to be able to make good any time soon.

Kashmiris therefore face a conundrum. It is not something that would have escaped its incarcerated leadership. Reports of political bonhomie and cross-party discussions when confined together abound. Their next steps are perhaps solidified and await the nod of leaderships once their confinement ends. What might the contours?

Kashmir could perhaps pitch for the unfinished agenda of bifurcation - another bifurcation. Even if initially this may lead to foregoing the buffer to Jammu, the earlier trifurcation agenda could be explored. Kashmiris can be their own masters. The price is to dispense with their control over others that has arguably partially caused their present predicament. If this is not possible, then the regional autonomy features that were covered in the several reports, such as of the three interlocutors, the working groups and the mainstream parties, could be put in place to keep the two regions currently yoked together from each other’s throats – with a Delhi appointee playing umpire. This can in a way keep alive the Kashmiri quest for a distinctive self-hood, which is of a piece with India’s constitutional scheme. If and when this regime joins the debris of history, Kashmiris could reprise their course.

Needless to say this political course has no room for violence. As the security survey preceding the discussion of options suggests, the situation is keyed up to blow with a bigger bang. This is just the diversion the regime would welcome at a time it is being challenged for its misplaced ideological initiative, on citizenship, across India. The security establishment and its instruments would also not be averse since Kashmir has been beneficial institutionally and personally for ticket punching. Pakistan would be loathe to put its money where its mouth is. Therefore, with no one else being hurt, it would be irrational for Kashmiris to revert to militancy, but would be better advised to channel the youthful energy to back its political course, taking a leaf from the situation developing in rest of India.

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https://countercurrents.org/2019/12/the-agenda-for-the-new-chief

An agenda for the new chief

General Naravane takes over as army chief at the turn of the year. His agenda has already been set for him by his predecessor, whose tenure over the past three years witnessed a trend towards politicization of the army. Naravane needs to roll back the damage done by General Bipin Rawat, even if Bipin Rawat is lucky enough to be kicked upstairs as chief of defence staff by year end when he retires.

The likelihood of the latter is very much there since reports have it that all that remains to be done is for the prime minister to sign off on the CDS agenda. If this was not the case then it would not have taken the government so long to announce the name of the next chief, earlier done some two months in advance, though admittedly the Modi regime has been less than punctilious in observing this procedural nicety.

Since the CDS has been in the offing for long, delays have been attributed to the government making up its mind on the first incumbent and his mandate. In actuality, the government perhaps wants to heat up the race for the top job with senior three star brass lining up to signal their ideological propinquity.

The latest illustration of this trend is in the eastern army commander, General Anil Chauhan, under whose territorial jurisdiction the security fallout of the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) and the soon-to-follow National Register of Citizens bill will mostly to play out, stating that the controversial CAA was product of hard-nosed decision making of the government. It is well known that deep selection for the CDS post is being done with three star army command level officers in the run. The eastern army commander, having been the military operations head when the Pulwama-Balakot episode played out, assumes he stands a fair chance and is leaving no stone unturned to broadcast to the government his likemindedness with it and therefore his ‘ease of doing business with’ or pliability quotient.

Naravane would have to reverse this trend set by his predecessor in his repeated forays into political territory, most notably once in his likening of a political party in Assam to a front for illegal immigrants (short hand for Bengali Muslims). Others have followed, such as the northern army commander, General Ranbir Singh, who publicly disagreed with his predecessor that surgical strikes have been in the army’s armoury on the Line of Control for long. The northern army commander had independently in December taken up cudgels with his predecessor, now retired General Hooda. He later on the last day of elections this year unnecessarily supported the yet again unnecessary election time assertion of Anil Chauhan, then military operations head, that the there was no record of any surgical strikes prior to the ones under Narendra Modi. This intervention by the military was in the controversy over the Congress claim that it had conducted six such operations in its time at the helm. There was no need for Anil Chauhan to underwrite the governments’ side of the debate nor for the army commander to step up in its defence.

It is not a malady confined to the army. The last air chief was at pains to point to the well known virtues of the Rafale aircraft, particularly since an underequipped F-16 shot down one of his Mig 21 Bison aircraft, which we are now informed by an American expert speaking at the military literature festival in Chandigarh this December that the Indian plane was superior to the Pakistan-owned American one. The expert, Christine Fair, went out of her way to underline that she was no friend of Pakistan when she made her comments, a well known fact since her book on the Pakistani army is a well regarded critique of that army.

At the event, the former air chief, now retired, Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa, rode his favourite hobby horse once again. While earlier bureaucratic lethargy and political pusillanimity in the United Progressive Alliance era was the subtext, in contrast to the Modi-Doval innovative short cuts of procedure by way of which Rafale purchases were fast forwarded in Paris, this time round Dhanoa – recently retired – was explicit with his critique and implicit contrast.

Missing in the air chief marshal’s perspective are two elements that make for the distinction between the strategic and political planes. One is affordability, since security expenditures have an opportunity cost. The second is merging of the security and diplomatic prongs of grand strategy to influence a neighbour. By this yardstick, there was no compulsion for the UPA government to fast track Rafale purchases.

Also, there was no compulsion for the successor government to move to a proactive strategic stance without first putting in place the elements necessary. It is no wonder then India suffered a set-back in its strategic proactivism, with Pakistan not only shooting down an Indian plane but also having the last crack at India in its riposte to Balakot. Since the Indians missed their target at Balakot, the Pakistanis were wise enough to convey a message by missing their three targets in the Rajauri-Naushera sector. For Dhanoa to now claim that they were ready to climb up the escalation ladder – despite its well known dangers including nuclear ones - only shows up the deficit of strategic level commanders strutting at the political level.

This exposé of the direction India’s civil-military relations have been headed in the Modi regime is to forewarn the army yet again on politicization. Since all institutions of governance have already fallen by the wayside, including arguably the Supreme Court, the army cannot be an exception. The more its generals advertise its susceptibility, the more likely will be such a denouement. Naravane can yet spare the army such fate.

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https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18021/CAA-NRC-Those-Who-Voted-for-this-Regime-Need-to-Wake-Up
UNEDITED version
CAA-NRC: Those Who Voted for this Regime Need to Wake Up

The entry into the library and mosque of a university campus in New Delhi by the police and its proceeding to beat students, including women students, is a plunge by this nation into the dark. The ostensible reason given is that resort to stone throwing and arson by anti Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) processionists led to the police attempting to round up anti social elements.

Contrary to the police version, videos on social media indicate that the police set fire to the buses as a precursor to their heavy handedness that followed on campus. At the time of writing the police were shown on national television vandalizing vehicles on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University where sympathetic demonstrations broke out in solidarity with their student colleagues in Jamia Millia Islamia. This makes it easier to suspect the police version of events in New Delhi. 

The credibility of the police has never been high. It took a deep dive recently with a commissioner of police claiming that the law had done its duty while explaining the ‘encounter’ in which the police killed four alleged rapists in Hyderabad. Even if the police version is true, for the police to enter into a university campus in the national capital and rough up students in their search for the anti social elements who resorted to violence is the regime going overboard.

Only a perception of impunity in the armed police could have led to such high handedness. This can only be a result of their action being taken under orders. This line of thought begs the question: Whose orders?

By now it is evident that the regime is incapable of following through with implementing its hard-nosed, ideology-driven decisions with any finesse. The economic fallout and consequences on livelihoods of demonetization and Goods and Services Tax decisions is now fairly evident. The surgical strikes failed to deter the Pulwama terror attack. The Balakot aerial attack failed to hit its intended target. It is equally clear that no F-16 fell out of the sky in the aerial duel that followed. Kashmir is waiting to explode with each passing day of lock down adding to the potentially calamitous consequences when it does. The outcome of the register of citizens’ exercise in Assam can be visualized from the condition of detention centers there.

And now we have its failure to anticipate the anti CAA sentiment in the north east and in the Muslim communities across the country. Needing to divert attention from over reach and to delegitimize the emerging blow-back, it has resorted to its time-tested Gulf of Tonkin tactics. (The reference is to the incident engineered by the United States to enable and legitimize its intervention in the Vietnamese civil war on the side of its lackeys in the mid sixties.) Using the arson and stone throwing as excuse it has tried to paint the counter to the CAA in dark colours. It has already conditioned the media to loyally depict any violence as Muslim initiated and perpetrated.

The intent is to reinforce its narrative on the CAA cum National Register of Citizens (NRC) – its twinned answer to fool-proof homeland security. The Muslims objecting to the CAA-NRC pose a threat because they have much to hide, including some 20 million illegal infiltrators, in their mohallahs and qasbas. Tough handling at the outset of the demonstrations would help deter and divide Muslims. Else they may heed calls for non-cooperation by the community against the CAA-NRC. Besides, the strong arm would need to be much in evidence in case the ‘termites’ are to be accorded a burial at sea in the Bay of Bengal; Bangladesh, having cancelled the visits by its home and foreign ministers last week, being in no mood to welcome them back.  

The necessity of firmness is easy to swallow for believers; they believe anything including that their prime minister is a graduate. The wider public has also been worked on for over a decade during which the notion of convergence between terrorism and Muslims was fostered by the media and fanned by the strategic community. Perpetrators of the black operations that depicted Muslims in poor light were set scot free and at least one now graces parliament. Therefore, the expectation in the security minders who passed on the orders for mayhem on campus was that the rationale would be swallowed.

As with other implementation failures of misconceived policies, this time the regime has come up short. It has been exposed by the swirling social media clips that have found their way into mainstream media coverage of the incidents. Accountability is not with the khakhi clad superiors of the communalised armed police. They have received their marching orders and - being supine - have in carrying these out, have botched it.

Despite its inauspicious rollout of the CAA-NRC, the question still needs answering: whose orders? The deep state, comprising national security minders, is merely a link in the chain of command. Who does the deep state answer to?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at a mega rally the same day on the campaign trail in Dumka, Jharkhand, is a dead give-away. Modi in his inimitable style said that it is possible to make out who those setting the nation on fire are by the clothes they wear. This is of a piece with his long standing dog whistle politics. In a piece of immaculate coincidence the demonstration in Okhla unfolding even as he delivered his address in early afternoon, culminated in arson a little while later, with the nearby campus being invaded by the police shortly thereafter.

Modi’s home minister during his performance in parliament warned that the NRC was coming. The CAA is but stage setting. The Muslim community is left with little recourse but peaceful demonstrations by its articulate members – its students – to register its reservations. The two – Modi and Shah - responsible for setting off the counter to the CAA-NRC are out to manage the pushback with the only methods they know: Kashmirisation of the rest of India, to borrow a phrase.

That the counter has acquired such dimensions owes to the urgency and significance of the juncture. The government for its part is not averse to the rigour of the counter since it helps it project the necessity – in its narrative – of the CAA-NRC double whammy and paper over the widening cracks in the economy.

The take away from witnessing the aftermath of the first act of its folly is that the largely Hindu support base of the ruling party needs to wake up timely. Only a shifting of the sands below the feet of the Chanakyan duo will enable institutions play their part in the system of checks and balances that constitutes democracy. The accountability for controlling Modi-Shah is with those who elected the two. The agent-principal relationship that underpins democracy implies that Hindu brethren who voted Modi into power need inclusion in the answer to the question: on whose orders. They can yet make amends

https://thebookreviewindia.org/art-of-new-age-war/

ARMY OF NONE: AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS AND THE FUTURE OF WAR
By Paul Scharre W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 448, R1549.00

The book’s cover has appreciative lines by Bill Gates, who–as the cliché goes—needs no introduction, and Lawrence Freedman, who may need an introduction only for those from fields other than strategic studies, being the doyen of the field. Since Gates knows technology and Freedman focuses on war, their recommendation places the book on the frontline of technology and war.

It is no wonder that at the time of writing of this review, the headlines have it that the army’s Jaipur-based South Western Command is organizing a seminar at Hisar to get to grips with Artificial Intelligence and military operations. The media reports the seminar organizers modestly acknowledging that though the military has taken note of the advances abroad, including China, it is never too late to catch up. Clearly, here is the book to help them tank up.

Even so, a headline alongside says that India is going in for another 1000 plus armoured personnel carriers. This underlines a well-known trait in most militaries—apparently more pronounced in the Indian one—that it is easier to get a new idea into its head than to get an older one out. So long as the three services are busy throwing governmental largesse—set at $130 billion over the coming ten years—on platforms such as fighters, ships and tanks, it is unlikely India will ‘catch up’ this decade. From what Scharre informs through his 446-page book, it would be too late.

Paul Scharre is a good guide into an esoteric subject since he makes intelligible a formidable array of technologies that go into the making of autonomous weapons—weapons he describes as not having a human in the loop for their firing. The science he covers would interest sci-fi aficionados. The book itself is meant for practitioners, though it is written in a style that would attract armchair strategists too. It is meant for those into defence technology, specifically defence scientists and the fledgling defence industry.It needs being read by those working on national security policy to challenge the military’s laundry list of twentieth-century hardware. The book must be made compulsory reading at the military academies and staff colleges, perhaps figuring on the next update to the ‘Golden 100’— an army headquarters compiled list of ‘must read’, ‘should read’ and ‘could read’ tomes. One way to focus young military minds on its contents is to make it part of promotion and competitive exam syllabi.

An additional target audience of the book is the think tank community. Though the military glossies have been a dime-a-dozen for over a decade now, there is little cutting edge content. Technology has ample coverage, since the arms industry is out for a piece of the defence budgetary cake. However, missing is deep-end thinking presented by Scharre such as on the ethics of such weaponization. One doubts there is an equivalent project at any of the plethora of Delhi’s think tanks to the one Scharre tenants at Washington’s independent and bipartisan Center for a New American Security: its Ethical Autonomy project.

This is a step further than merely the technology or the operational usage of the weapon. It is engagement with the ethics of and ethical use of such weapons when fielded. The current state of the art is semi-autonomous weapons, requiring human sign off on targeting. Apparently, only the Israeli Harpy drone has so far crossed the line into being autonomous. Armed drones have over a dozen states in pursuit of the technology. That there is much for ethicists here while the technologists are still at it is evident from the recent killings by a semi-autonomous drone strike of 30 Afghan civilians out nut picking on a Hindu Kush hillside. If and since things can go wrong even with a human in the loop, what more can go awry when the human is at best with a kill-switch? On this count some 3000 robotics experts have already called for a blanket ban on autonomous weapons.

This is the key area Scharre engages with. He takes his time building up to the climax, traversing the technology and its operational use, before getting to in Part VI on whether and how strategy and ethics informs policy choices. The take away is that a weapon ban is wishful and fielding of such weapons is inevitable. Consequently, engaging with how these would relate to international humanitarian law is necessary in the here and now. The international community is taking its usual leisurely course at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meetings, even as developments overtake speeches made. In early 2018, there was a drone attack by Syrian rebels on a Syrian air base that also housed Russians, with Russians shooting down the intruding drones. By late 2019, ten drones targeted Saudi Arabia’s premier oil facilities temporarily putting a proportion of its oil production out of action and setting the region closer to a war between regional rivals, the Saudis and Iran.

The book is therefore an important one, with its significance likely to be remarked on more in retrospect some twenty years on. Scharre has wrapped up some ten years of work into its covers, beginning with methodically and readably outlining the technology: robotics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, cyberspace, bots etc. In the later parts, ‘The Fight to Ban Autonomous Weapons’ and ‘Averting Armageddon’, he comes to the meat. Thus the first three quarters of the book would interest the tech savvy, while the last two parts can be expected to detain policy wonks and academics. This ‘something in it for every-one’ aspect of the book comes from his background: an infantryman having served in both of America’s wars this century: Iraq and Afghanistan; and later as the director of the technology and national security programmme at his think tank. This review cannot but in closing reiterate Scharre’s sobering words:

‘No piece of paper can prevent a state from building autonomous weapons if they desire it. At the same time, a pell-mell race forward in autonomy, with no clear sense of where it leads us, benefits no one. States must come together to develop an understanding of which uses of autonomy are appropriate and which go too far and surrender human judgment where it is needed in war. Weighing these human values is a debate that requires all members of society, not just academics, lawyers, and military professionals. Average citizens are needed too, because ultimately autonomous military robots will live—and fight—in our world.’