https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/indias-strategic-doctrine

India’s strategic doctrine

Does Hindutva provide an answer?

The question in the title should not have been needed. By now, the answer should have been provided by the National Security Advisor (NSA)-led Defence Planning Committee. Set up to bring about coherence in the defence sector, it was also tasked with writing up the national security strategy - the bedrock of national security. Reportedly such a strategy has been written up. As to whether it has received the political nod, at the level of the Cabinet Committee on Security, is not known. (It is another matter that when the cabinet system is itself at an ebb, if such a formality matters.) What’s certain is that it is not in the open domain. So it is uncertain if such a strategy at all exists.

Though the Narendra Modi regime is known to be sensitive to defence matters and is in its self-image strong-on-defence, it is perhaps replicating the policy of the Congress of some thirty years back that had it that India has a national security doctrine; only not in a written out form. In effect, though ruled by the most self-consciously national security-oriented government, Indian analysts continue to be arrayed blindfolded before the national security elephant, casting about for the national security doctrine from any feature of the elephant touched. Given that it remains a well-kept national secret, to infer that none exists cannot also be convincingly refuted.

So, is there an Indian national security doctrine? ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. A political culture has an attendant down-stream strategic culture, the fount  - in turn - of strategic doctrine. With Narendra Modi and his protégé, Yogi Adityanath aka Bisht, having each been sworn in twice-over - despite the known governance deficits in their respective first term - it is clear that political culture is now indubitably Hindutva dominant. Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian lens through which to view India. It helps paper over the diversity that is said to constitute India by imposing a uniform colour, saffron. That Hindutva calls the shots is clear from other parties being pale imitations of the ruling party, evidenced by being referred to as the ‘B Team’ or professing ‘soft Hindutva’, or,  if with a non-Hindu membership, stooges of the ruling party out to dig into the minority vote.

With Hindutva acquiring a pole position in political culture - equivalent to the Congress system of the sixties and seventies - it can be reasonably inferred that its national security verities can be bundled together to constitute a national security doctrine. One would have expected the regime to profit from this as yet another national security initiative taken in contrast to their lotus-eating predecessors. In my view, the national security strategy is signed off only tacitly and cannot be allowed into the public domain lest its Hindutva-imparted tenets stir up criticism, if not derision itself. The regime being particularly sensitive to the latter, would like to duck, instead using its drum beaters in the strategic community to kick up an information war din targeting the voter that it has the national interest at heart.

So what’s the national secret? The national secret is the conception of national interest. In theory, national interest - as the term suggests - must have the nation’s interest at heart. In the case of Hindutva-defined national interest, the national interest is what is in the interest of Hindutva. Even though it now colours political culture, it is not steady on its feet enough to self-confidently come out on this score. Democratic accountability requires the government to aggregate national interest from the myriad parochial interests at play, even if it uses an ideological lens to finally arrive at the national security nector. It cannot outright say that the national interest currently is consolidation of Hindutva. Hindutva is the essence of the right wing. It cannot be mistaken as the national interest in a diverse polity as India, even if the dominant strain. Admitting to its consolidation as the national interest would bring forth an avoidable backlash in its period of consolidation. It must remain unsaid, with strategists making of national interest what they will and assuming that the government has the national interest at heart. It won’t do to admit that the parochial ideological interest of a political party is the national interest. They have learnt from the tripping up of the Congress system that to admit ‘Indira is India’ is precursor to a fall.

Thus, if Bhartiya Janata Party and affiliates-defined Hindutva is the national interest, what does Hindutva signify for national security? A Hindutva-dominant political culture can be expected to yield up a particular conception of strategic culture; whence can be inferred the strategic doctrine. Another way to go about getting to the strategic doctrine is to see the actions of the Hindutva-led State and divine the doctrine working backwards from the actions.

Majoritarian political culture has it that India is a millennia-old civilization that has been trampled upon by successive invaders. It has finally discovered its essence. Its essence is not quite diversity imposed on it by invaders for their self-interested purposes of ‘divide and rule’. Instead, the essence is in traditional and scriptural texts, preserved by a institutionalised body of bearers of such texts at the apex of the societal pyramid. The uniformity this lends militates against the conception of diversity. What needs doing is to instill the reverence of our common, shared and inherited culture and extend it to the geographical frontiers of the ancient land, Bharat qua Bharat Mata. That the frontiers do not coincide with the current day national borders – Akhand Bharat having a subcontinental scale - can be tackled at a later date.  For now, consolidation of Hindutva is the national aim, with New India as a regional hegemon, a great power and Vishwa Guru, as end state.  

Thus, from a political culture that eschews diversity, the strategic culture that emerges is one that takes diversity as threat, demanding it be papered over till it is subdued and cast out. The stratagem is to reiterate that India has never been expansive. This is making virtue of a necessity in that through history India has expended its energy in accordion-like expanding to its natural geographic frontiers and then collapsing in on itself. This time round it would be different in that Hindutva will not only provide the energy to recoup national frontiers but also furnish the glue to keep together thereafter. Hindutva is thus the panacea that Indian national security has been missing through history. India has finally found its mojo.

Hindutva’s arrival center stage was in the period when the subordinate castes bid for power and pelf in relation to their numbers. The Mandalisation of polity evoked a response in Hindutva gathering steam. It sought vertical integration of Hindu society through invoking Hinduism, Hindutva defined. The Ayodhya movement provided a focus. The destruction of Babri Masjid and the Muslim backlash it provoked set up the Muslim Other as prop for Hindutva propagation. Globally, the withdrawal of the Cold War led to instability that witnessed the falling apart of diverse polities as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Insurgency challenges beset India simultaneously in Punjab and Kashmir, attenuating the premium on unity based on uniformity. Hindutva, a readily available right wing doctrine with a century or so of existence in various forms – a nineteenth century milder revivalist version to a sterner twentieth century fascism inspired one – was served up as answer to fissiparous India suffering a like fate.

An observation made about then by an analyst, George Tanham, looking at India’s strategic culture – that India does not have one - provided a useful peg. Hindutva’s encroachment on and occupation of political cultural space led to strategic cultural products predicated on oneness and strength from such oneness. Globally, the strategic cottage industry on Islamism, impelled in part by Islamophobia, served as backdrop to a self-serving manufacture of a Muslim Other. Using the leverage of a narrative of a Muslim-perpetrated terror challenge within – made credible by the friendly neighbourhood bogeyman, Pakistan, and the Kashmir suppuration – a convergence was sought between ‘India in danger’ and ‘Hinduism in danger’. (Not belaboured here, but in the view of this analyst the Muslim tenancy of terror in the 2000s as the popular narrative has it, is untenable. Instead, in my view, these were black operations incited and conducted by the right wing, aligned with elements of the Indian deep state, in order to manufacture Hindutva as answer to Indian security predicament and propel its icons to power. But we shall leave that for another post.)

Echoes of this narrative of danger going back to the early to mid eighties continued in the strategic discourse through the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) period, when one would have imagined that the liberal security discourse should have predominated. The liberality in polity in the period was somewhat defensive, since in the background whirred Hindutva and an increasingly closely and self-consciously aligned conservative-realist security discourse. In the period of UPA stupor through its second term, Hindutva bid for power, reached out and seized it, with considerable support from the national security community persuaded by the national security promise of Hindutva.

Hindutva went center-stage unapologetically with Narendra Modi taking Delhi by the storm. It consolidated its support base in strategic circles with cosmetic initiatives as national memorial, military museum and a seemingly increased political interest in matters military, evidenced by the prime minister taking to celebrating Diwali with troops. It was dubious over fraught promises it could not keep, not least due to economic mismanagement, such as One Rank One Pension. It allowed the military a feel-good opportunity in seeming departures from an earlier policy of strategic restraint with conduct of the landward and aerial surgical strikes. Even so, these were largely chimerical, with little strategic effect, but great internal political dividend.

The parameters – or terms of reference – for both strikes evacuated each of any potency. This can be seen in the admittance of the prime minister that he did not want any casualties: troops were to return by first light in case of the landward surgical strikes and the planes conducting the aerial strikes were not to be overly venturesome in crossing over into Pakistan. This puts paid to any propaganda that there is indeed a departure from the strategy of restraint of Modi’s predecessor. Cultural nationalists within the strategic community stepped out of the closet for narrative dominance to the contrary. Instead, the continuity is proof that the period is one of consolidation of Hindutva, one that is not permissive of instability and uncertainty generated by military action. Military action is at best to be profitably used to firm-in Hindutva.

Thus, both strands of argument – one looking at discontinuities in political culture and strategic culture between the UPA period and Modi era and the second looking to see strategic cultural change through actions of the Modi regime – draw a blank. There is more continuity than discontinuity between the two periods. This can be accounted for by the UPA period being one in which the government continually looked over its shoulder at Hindutva breathing down its neck. The Modi period has not been one of significant change – as against what’s advertised – since Hindutva is in consolidation and cannot afford to be accosted by strategic uncertainty. Even as cataclysmic a strategic event as the Chinese intrusion did not force the Modi regime to budge. It continues to further Hindutva – seen in its delivering on its promise on Article 370 with due security precautions in place such as a preceding years-long Operation All Out and a thickening of interminable deployment in Kashmir – but not at any appreciable risk – such as by confronting China in the national interest of sovereignty, territorial integrity and balance of power.

This reading suggests that the strategic doctrine is therefore not one of assertion on national security as the complimentary discourse would have it. That there continues to be no written doctrine is because the regime would hate to admit to being little different on the national security front than its reviled predecessor. It would be loath to admit to Hindutva being its centerpiece national interest – rather than arrived at through a democratic aggregation of national interest. Admitting to a conflation of Hindutva and national interest may alert and invite opposition at a time when Hindutva prefers stability for ideological usurpation for a future Constitutional overhaul. 

 

 

 

 

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/the-kashmir-files-upturning-the-box?r=i1fws&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The Kashmir Files: Upturning the Box Office

Returning Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley with honour and affection

As is the fashion, let me start my inevitable piece on The Kashmir Files by acknowledging that I have not seen the film nor do I intend to. To echo what another writer said, “I don’t watch propaganda.” So this piece is not so much about the film, as much as whats it's about. Apparently, it depicts Kashmiri Muslims in poor light, adding them to the long list of villains who are responsible for the exit of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley that so far included Pakistani terrorists, Pakistan affiliated Kashmiri terrorists and Kashmiri Islamists. Now it includes the common Kashmiri qua Muslim.  

I use the term ‘exit’ for the Kashmiri Pandits moving out of the Valley, as against the preferred description elsewhere as genocide and ethnic cleansing, since there is at least one interpretation of those events out there that has it the Kashmiri Pandits were temporarily relocated outside the Valley for their security. It is said that the then governor, Jagmohan, assisted their exit with provision of transport and encouragement. The expectation perhaps was that they would be able to return to the Valley soon enough when the problem that had exploded there over the turn of the last decade of last century settled down. In this version of events, Jagmohan had been sent to be firm with the Kashmiris, which may have resulted in a backlash against vulnerable Kashmiri Pandits. So he was not averse to seeing their backs in order to get on with being tough with the Kashmiris who had taken to the streets in protest against long standing Indian mishandling of politics in Kashmir.

In my view, this was a very sensible step in the context of the times. The explosion in Kashmir was not a surprise. The indicators were there for some two years. There were bomb blasts and killings had already started, including those of Kashmiri Pandits. The troubles exploded with the State succumbing to the demand of Rubaiya Sayeed’s kidnappers for release of their jailed compatriots. Another date of consequence is the reinstallation of Governor Jagmohan, in the following month. Police action in Srinagar on his arrival in Jammu, followed by the Gow Kadal incident, led to a worsening. The crowds swelled on the back of a communication revolution then unfolding that brought to television screens the fall of the Berlin Wall and the retreat of communism from Eastern Europe. This caught the imagination of the people, some of whom were not particularly keen on how history had turned out in welding Kashmir to India. Consequently, thereafter, the situation was punctuated by mass processions of a deluded people and repression by a beleaguered State.

Using the tumult, terrorists advanced their agenda. Some were independentist and some affiliated to Pakistan. The former, being insurgents, would have been mindful of cutting off information flows to the counter insurgent State. Therefore, their preference for Kashmiri Pandits leaving, to stanch such information flows. The latter preferred a Hindu-less Kashmir, at the behest of their minders in Pakistan. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ubiquitous ‘ISI’ (Inter-Service Intelligence), had capitalized on India’s mishandling of provincial elections in late 80s and subverted those alienated. They provided training and arms and re-infiltrated the disaffected youth back into the Valley. Some of these youth targeted Kashmiri Pandits in killings and intimidation designed to force them to leave.

As the mass movement caught on, many locals too joined in the pressure on the Kashmiri Pandits. The loudspeakers system in mosques, used for the call to prayer, was abused instead to broadcast the imminence of ‘freedom’ and intimidatory messaging directed at Kashmiri Pandits. Selective killings of Kashmiri Pandits were witnessed, not all necessarily related to their religion. Their women folk were threatened and some unspeakable atrocities committed, including torture and rape, in the context of violence that rent the air at the time. This forced Kashmiri Pandits to leave, for the sake of their families and wellbeing. Their security could not be guaranteed in the various mohallahs and bylanese. While many Kashmiris did assist, expressed empathy and even protected them, this was not enough to convince many to stay, though a few did stay on.

The State was considerably challenged. The State government had resigned and Jagmohan busied himself holding the reins. A account of these difficult days is in his book, My Frozen Turbulence. Avoidably, the State police – with Kashmiris in its ranks - came under a cloud for its sympathies. The central police forces looked askance at the uprising, and, brought in post-haste, were not sufficiently situational aware or self-regulating enough to care against inciting further alienation amongst people through their actions taken in fear and anger.

The Army had been alerted and deployed in aid to civil authority, but its numbers were insufficient at the initial stages. In any case, it is never the right force to be employed to control mass protests, which is how the initial phase of the Kashmir troubles turned out. It concentrated on controlling the insurgents, even as there was apprehension of Pakistan capitalizing on the outbreak of insurgency by a swift conventional action to ‘liberate’ Kashmir. An Indo-Pakistan crisis followed, forcing the Army to be alert to developments at the conventional level and in counter insurgency. Its numbers could not readily be boosted as the Army was rather stretched at the time, only just about de-inducting from its peace enforcement operation in Sri Lanka. It also privileged its deployment in Punjab, considering that State more sensitive to Pakistani interference.

Under the circumstance of security forces being considerably stretched, the relocation of the Kashmiri Pandits was sensible. Alternatively, in my view, their presence and vulnerability in the localities could have made them more readily available as insurgent targets, thereby worsening their plight and heightening pressures on security forces. Their more extensive targeting by insurgents, Pakistani proxies and Pakistani terrorists would likely have led to a worse clamping down on Kashmiris, heightening violence levels. Since it was a mass uprising, a violent repression may have led to more deaths, reprisals and a downward spiral making a bad situation worse. International opprobrium would have been swift, complicating India’s hand and advantaging Pakistan.

There was a political outreach of sorts, once the Kashmiris had largely departed. George Fernandes was deputed as pointsman for the government, followed by Rajesh Pilot. Prem Shankar Jha informs that seven interlocutors of Fernandes were successively murdered by Pakistani proxies. Thus, normality could not be returned to the Valley through political engagement. Though Jagmohan was boarded out after a massacre at a burial procession by central police forces, the situation settled into a long drawn insurgency. Enactment of the Armed Force Special Powers Act was the State’s acknowledgement of this. Though, over time, deployed military numbers went up, the Kashmiri Pandits could not return as such numbers were insufficient to assure security at the dispersed habitations. The Pakistanis had considerably upped the insurgency, having toppled the independentists and put in place their affiliates. Over time, Pakistani terrorists and Afghan veterans ensured deterioration of the insurgency into a terrorism-dominant proxy war.

This was designed to put a political solution out of reach. The fallout was in Kashmiri Pandits remaining out of harms’ way outside the Valley. That not enough was done to rehabilitate them elsewhere is another matter. That some through their own volition and civil society help resettled elsewhere is to their credit. The few who stayed on in the Valley faced fear and periodic terror incidents, but were not without support from sympathetic neighbours. That the State used their plight for its purposes of keeping Pakistan on the backfoot in its political wars was only to be expected.

There was also internal political utility of the Kashmiri Pandit circumstance for right wing political forces in India in their bid for political power. Their ‘Hinduism in danger’ narrative from Islamist depredations used the example of displacement from Kashmir as prop. Some Kashmiri Pandit organizations, sensing support from the right wing, allowed their cause to be used for wider political purposes by the right wing. They hoped for a better dispensation once the right wing was in power. A hoped for symbiotic relationship was largely belied, with Kashmiri Pandits mostly left out in the cold by all manner of dispensations both in Srinagar and in Delhi.

The State, though not insincere, was ineffectual in resettling them. It was unable to organize durable and sustainable returns as the insurgency situation did not let up in the Valley to extent enough to lend confidence that Kashmiri Pandits could make their way back in safety and with dignity.

The Pakistanis took care to reinforce hesitance by periodic outrages as the Wandhama and Nadimarg episodes of killings of Kashmiri Pandits. The intelligence game in the Valley was also vitiated by incidence of black operations using proxies, even by the Indian security establishment trying to put the negative spotlight on Pakistanis and to turn international opinion on the proxy war and away from Indian human rights violations. This brought in information war into the picture, thereby complicating alighting on perpetrators of violence, such as in the Nadimarg incident.

In my view, this inability and unwillingness - to the extent the latter exists - amongst Kashmiris to countenance a Kashmiri Pandit return, amounts to ethnic cleansing, not the prior ‘exit’ per se. To the extent Pakistan remains a factor and India is unwilling to come to terms with its presence and demands, the responsibility for the ethnic cleansing is with both States.

Pakistani violence keeps Kashmiri Pandits away and Indian unwillingness to create the conditions for ending of this violence through political engagement with Pakistan is where the ethnic cleansing accountability lies. This does not exonerate the factions in the Valley that are acting on Pakistani behest and seek to profit from absence of Kashmiri Pandits, such as Islamists. These elements have to be accosted by Kashmiris themselves, socially embarrassed and brought round through political action. Kashmiris have heroically faced to violence to tame such elements earlier. They must suitably use the resources of the State to counter such violence and prevail. To their credit, mainstream politicians have voiced this aspect of their limitations, but have received less credit than is their due. 

A combination of State and civil society has to welcome Kashmiri Pandits back. Many have created alternative sustainable solutions for themselves. Even so, some 50000 remain marginalized. Theirs must be a prioritized return, while those better settled elsewhere make a symbolic return and retain their continuing claim on access and resident privileges in Kashmir.

This is the more challenging enterprise, much more difficult than violence and destruction. It requires equal strategizing. There is plentiful theory available in peace studies literature, profitably tried out elsewhere. Such initiatives have not been absent in Kashmir. The 2000s and 2010s did see much civil society action on reconciliation and collaboration on this score between mainland India and Kashmiris. Besides, Kashmiri traditional resources and syncretic culture have wellsprings that don’t really require inspiration from outside. Deploying these is not so much a State-led effort, but societal and non-state. There is no deficit of such resources in mainland India, including incidentally – in my view – suitably approached right wing organizations. There is no dearth of Pakistani liberal opinion that can be tapped and mobilized on the other side.

The potential of such activity was stark in the period of Indo-Pak proximity. Putting it all together once again in a post Article 370 environment is a case of who will bell the cat. Perhaps a non-state Truth and Reconciliation Commission of sorts can sit initially and at some point in the future, an official Truth and Reconciliation Commission can undertake more formal proceedings to put the sorry incidents of 1990 behind the two communities and the nation.

The State cannot but be expected to act along a realist, power oriented direction. That is how States are. Enlightened State support can however be incentivized if the project is taken off the ground in first place. From the developments on the India-Pakistan front, it seems that the two are not averse to turning a new leaf. The Indian State is unlikely to stand in the way. The Statist reaction to the film in question, The Kashmir Files, which also so the prime minister weigh in, suggests that the State needs bailing out. Even so, the opportunity of a focus on the issue that the film has brought about can be used to energise a campaign to return Kashmiri Pandits. Whereas there are sporadic killings designed to keep Kashmir on the brink, the rather low violence indices are not without some promise.

The longer the Kashmiri Pandits stay out and are not ushered back with affection and pride, the more credible the allegation of ethnic cleansing against Kashmiris. The onus is on Kashmiris. They have the potential to rescue not only their kin of different religion, but their coreligionists elsewhere in the country, targeted tacitly but equally by the film’s invective. If the opportunity is seized appropriately, the film can yet prove counter-productive for its makers and their covert supporters in the right wing establishment and State. 

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-implications

Russo-Ukrainian War: Implications for India's Cold Start doctrine

Does the Russo-Ukrainian War bury Cold Start?

Does the Russo-Ukrainian War bury Cold Start?

Cold Start is the colloquial term by which Indian strategic analysts term India’s conventional war options against Pakistan. The term, as does the concept it denotes, has had a chequered history. It made an appearance sometime in early 2000s. General ‘Paddy’ Padmanabhan when being interviewed post retirement on his experience of Operation Parakram, the Indian mobilization against Pakistan in face of the terror attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, had used it first. He was referring to the move afoot that he initiated to get offensive formations on an operational footing in quick time from a ‘cold start’. The lesson learnt from early days of Operation Parakram was that these took longer to mobilize than could be militarily useful in a crisis. Since crises brought on by terror attacks were unpredictable, they would have to be agile enough to take to the offensive from a ‘cold start’.

The term soon acquired the status of a doctrine with the then army’s public information chief in a briefing to journalists on a publicly released official doctrine of the army used the term, thereby making in stick in unofficial lexicon to the 2004 doctrine. That the doctrine envisaged a speedy start to proactive offensive operations remained unacknowledged in its early years, since its release coincided with the onset of the United Progressive Alliance government which professed restraint as a strategic doctrine and was in the midst of an outreach to Pakistan over the 2000s.

When an opportunity to test the doctrine came by in 2008, at Mumbai 26/11, the army passed up the opportunity, averring it was unable to give a guarantee that Pakistan’s nuclear threshold would not be crossed in case it went on the offensive in reprisal for the terror attack. The army then jettisoned Cold Start, though working towards cutting down mobilization schedules from a week to less than 72 hours. It shifted to proactive contingency operations which in retrospect can be taken as forerunner to surgical strikes, credit for which has been appropriated by the successor government of Narendra Modi.

Modi upped the scale of surgical strikes, besides going public with these for their electoral benefit, something his self-effacing predecessor had not done, though having undertaken some surgical strikes on a lower scale of his own. With surgical strikes having revealed the hand, the new Modi-appointed chief, General Bipin Rawat, went public with the badly kept secret that Cold Start was to be resurrected from its cold storage. The doctrine was to be given teeth with integrated battle groups (IBG) formed, with an objective-specific all arms structure. Jointness would provide the airpower heft to their firepower.

This was an adaptation to the nuclear age in South Asia, indubitably on since 1998. The Kargil War, merely a year after the two states, India and Pakistan, went nuclear that May, signified that to the Pakistani army going nuclear did not make war obsolete. Borrowing a page from the Pakistanis, the Indian army chief, Ved Malik, opined that there was space for a limited war below the nuclear threshold. This was the genesis of Cold Start, which is some 20 years down the line being followed through to fruition. Over these years, Indian army was ambivalent on the what to do with its offensive strike formations and followed the precepts dating to the World War II, modified for nuclear conditions in the Cold War doctrinal thinking on operational maneuver groups and AirLand Battle of the respective sides then. Since strike corps continue to exist, it is not certain where Cold Start and IBGs are at the moment. The ongoing efforts at taking forward jointness in terms of conjuring up theatre commands may finesse this matter. Till then, strike corps and nascent IBGs – combat commands equivalent strike forces controlled by offensive corps headquarters – appear to be India’s conventional crown jewels.

That the national security establishment remains as unimpressed by such doctrinal shifts as was the Manmohan Singh government when contemplating its options post 26/11, is clear from National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval at a speaking engagement last year at Pune ruling that wars as we know it are passé. Now Doval also has the Russo-Ukrainian war to inform his judgment. He would be even less liable to buy into a conventional military operation, howsoever nuanced by IBG employment buttressed by surgical air and missile strikes, given that the primary difference between the Russo-Ukrainian dyad and the India-Pakistan one is that both putative belligerents in the latter case are nuclear powers. In fact, one of the significant insights from the ongoing war in Europe is that Ukraine would not have been in its present position, had it retained nuclear weapons. The guarantees that allowed it to give up nuclear weapons - those from it backers to its west and those of its invader to its east – did not quite work. Despite this difference, it may be worthwhile to see if there are any lessons that India could take away from the conflict.

A major similarity is the extended frontage, shallow depth attacks. Cold Start was also visualized as being conducted along an extended front but only to operational depth, so as to not trigger any nuclear red lines that Pakistan might have. The Russians have attacked from three sides – Kiev in the north, along Ukraine’s eastern border till its southern portions in the Donbass and along the south to capture the Black Sea coast.

A departure is the Russian bid for an early investment of Kiev in order to, from the line-of-march, trigger a capitulation or internal coup in Ukraine, sparing them the bother they are now subject to, not having succeeded in their coup de main operation. Avoiding nuclear red lines might have kept Cold Start offensives from threatening such value objectives.

Whereas Cold Start presumes an early start to operations, truncating crisis timelines, this was not the case with the Russian invasion. It was predicted by the United States (US) weeks before the event, giving the Ukrainians enough time to prepare militarily, including by stocking up defensive weapons helpfully sent in by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Even so, the unreality of a conventional war in the 21st century was such that when the Russians did invade, their egregious violation of international law was somewhat of a surprise. 

The invasion itself has similarities with the Cold Start script. It was with limited aims and with limited forces in terms of numbers and the use of force. They set about the invasion with less than 200000 soldiers, part of several battalion battle groups.  Not wanting to alienate the populace of kin ethnicity, they were initially mindful of the firepower employed. They had two sets of aims: some rhetorical such as denazification, and, a second set, political and substantial, such as the taking over of the Ukrainian separatist region of Donbass, demilitarization to levels assuring Russian security interest and that Ukraine remain out of NATO. Accordingly, their offensive was caliberated to take over Donbass, open up a land corridor between the sliced off Crimea and Donbass, thereby also restricting Ukrainian access to the Black Sea coast. Operations elsewhere, such as along Ukraine’s eastern border were to tie down Ukrainian forces lest they interfere with the main thrusts in the  south east and south and the operations aimed at Kiev were to either trigger a regime change, failing which they were to pressurize Kiev into conceding.

As things have turned out, Russia has bogged down to an extent. Its Kiev operation has been counter-productive in strengthening Ukrainian resolve, also ascendant with the support it has elicited for Ukrainian war effort. It is possible that the investment of Kiev has drawn away forces that could have been used elsewhere to wrap up by now. Russia seems to have messed up with its political aim of intimidating the Ukrainian government distracting from its military objective of making territorial gains rapidly.

This summary of the war so far has lessons for any Cold Start-based conventional operations India might undertake. Cold Start would have the political aim of reeducating the Pakistanis on the virtues of temperance. Since Pakistan is largely controlled by its military, the military aim would be to give it a knock, hoping that doing so displaces it from atop the Pakistani hierarchy, or , at worst, the punitive action makes it rethink its India strategy.

The foremost lesson has already found mention: that Pakistan is a nuclear power and Cold Start may not be an appropriate instrument to address India’s Pakistan problem. That said, India would do well to follow the China model. China in its 1962 War on India and its 1979 War on Vietnam was politically sensible enough to declare victory and retrieve to its start line, even though in the latter, unlike in the former, it had received a bloody nose. Therefore, India will do well not to get its regional power gander up and ego ensnared.

This is easier said than done. The successor strategy to Cold Start - proactive operations strategy – has it that IBGs would make a run for it at war outbreak. It bears reminding that the Pakistani having followed the Indian discourse have wargamed the contingencies and prepositioned forces accordingly. They would prove difficult customers. Consequently, India – not wanting the IBGs to be shown up – might have to release reserves to get the better of the Pakistanis. This would up the ante into the No-Go nuclear terrain. In short, the political leaders must be willing to lose face.

There is a lobby that thinks Pakistan Occupied Kashmir could be a Donbass equivalent for India and that gains made across the LC are gains kept. This misses the fact that the terrain there is apt for irregular war. India would be hard put to retain gains.

The take away from the humanitarian consequences of the Russian invasion is that the suffering needs being multiplied manifold, since the population figures here are higher. This will not only hamper operations, but prove a CNN ambush.

The influx of foreign fighters into wars elsewhere, such as those in Iraq and Syria, has repeated itself in Ukraine, with Ukraine calling for a mercenary legion to join on its side. To the extent this is a right wing influx, it puts paid to Putin’s denazification cover story. In Pakistan, this will an irregular counter can be expected in real time, with Pakistani Punjabi numbers buttressed by Talibani and Islamist fighters. The political aim of mollifying Pakistan would be dead at birth itself.

While this might sell Pakistan down river to Islamist extremism, the political mirroring effect in India needs factoring in too. India, under a nationalist regime, might not see this as a problem, but a gain of sorts.

Therefore, it appears that the Russo-Ukrainian War has put the epitaph on Cold Start: a doctrine laid to rest since it was not worth chancing. This begs the question of India’s future doctrinal direction. On this NSA Doval may have set the ball rolling with his observations that conventional wars are obsolete. What takes the place of military-dominant wars is a mystery left for another post, since the Russo-Ukrainian War suggests that humankind is not done with wars as yet.

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/ending-russo-ukrainian-war?s=w

Ending Russo-Ukrainian War

Peace Strategising

Peace strategizing to end the Russo-Ukrainian War

By Ali Ahmed

Through this century, it’s taken on the status of a truism that getting into a war is easy, getting out of one is the tricky part. The example of the United States (US) is stark. In the midst of the unipolar moment, the US stepped into Afghanistan post 9/11 with the ease of a hyper power to displace the Taliban and scatter the Al Qaeda. Handing over Afghanistan to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) International Security Assistance Force, it made off Iraq to displace Sadam and find his weapons of mass destruction. Though President George Bush Jr soon thereafter declared victory from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the war went on and 10 years on morphed into one against the Islamic State. The US was finally able to leave Afghanistan only last year, an exit facilitated by the Taliban guarding the Kabul airport as the Marines boarded the last airplane out.

This recent history appears lost on President Putin as he headed into a war of his own by invading Ukraine. Even if we are to take a purported war aim - denazification - as rhetoric, the ostensible reason – to keep Ukraine out of the NATO – appears to have been conceded by his opposite number, Ukrainian President Zelensky. And, yet the two sides are embroiled a war that could well have ended. This only goes to reinforce the observation on war.

One of the problems of getting out of a war is that strategizing is taken as the remit of war colleges and there is not enough theory out there to help guide how to end wars. War termination in strategic theory is about prevailing over the other side or leaving in such a strait as to make continuing the war worse than ending it. This is easier said than done since the opposite side receives enough succor from external partners to avoid losing a war, thereby keeping a war going. In this case, Ukraine, the weaker side is being kept afloat by the US, with the US hoping that its showing in the war will help weaken Russia in the long term. A longer war will help the unprecedented sanctions in place bite.

Thus, we see Ukraine not only soldiering on for retrieving lost ground for the hard bargaining on the negotiations table when a peace process kicks in, but also to milk its predicament to the hilt in terms of assistance it can hope to receive in the reconstruction to follow. The US has already pledged USD 10 billion. This is at a price in terms of temporary inconvenience to its population facing displacement and refugee status. As for destruction, most of it – though not all such as in Kiev - is in contested areas that Russia might retain control of such as Donbass and the Black Sea coast. Thus, the post war problem of rebuilding will be heightened for Russia.

As for Russia, it has not been able to make the headway it might have wished at the outset. It had hoped for a quick victory from the line of march, but its columns headed for Kiev and President Putin’s call for a military coup to displace President Zelensky did not materialize the hoped for dividend. The Russian military has settled for methodically taking over territory of its interest: Donbass that it might not return; along the Black Sea coast that it would like to retain control of; and along Ukraine’s eastern border that it will likely wish to maintain as a demilitarized buffer zone. It continues to bedevil Kiev and intimidate through bombings elsewhere, including by hypersonic weapons, in order to break Ukrainian will to continue in the fight.

Even as these military moves play out, the diplomatic field has been busy. The two sides have had three rounds of talks, but only touched upon humanitarian consequences. The last round was at foreign minister level in Turkey, but did not make headway on substantive issues as ceasefire and a subsequent peace process. Intermediaries such as Israeli President Naftali have lent a hand in conveying each others’ bottom-line between the two sides. Others, as Turkey, Greece and France, have helped assist the two sides with managing the humanitarian consequences. The United Nations has served as venue for global power equations to play out in both the Security Council and General Assembly serving as site for passage of resolutions on the politics of the conflict and its humanitarian fallout. Missing has been shuttle diplomacy by the United Nations (UN) or any regional organization, such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that had been overseeing the earlier truce in the Donbass area. The former may owe to UN limitations since a Permanent Five member, Russia, is implicated, while the OSCE got its fingers burnt in the outbreak of the war.

Thus, avoidably, the war continues because there is little imagination on how to end it and even less political heft to do so. To think about how to end it, recourse must be taken to insights from peace studies, a subject not taught in war colleges and with far fewer faculties engaged with it than are defence studies departments. Even within the peace studies community, the emphasis post Cold War has been on internal wars and how peacekeeping and peacebuilding can be deployed to help manage and end these. What needs doing is to fish out traditional peacekeeping by venturing back to the Sixties for insight.

The two sides are messaging their concerns and portents are for the war to draw to a close. Even the military moves, such as reports of Ukrainian forces staging a counter at places, are indicators of peace at hand. That it drags on owes to the two sides awaiting a credible word on the other side on what each could concede to incentivize the other side to broach a ceasefire. Apparently, Turkey and Israel are facilitating a channel between the two, though the degree of collaboration between the two is not known. Turkey, having provided a venue for the foreign ministers’ meeting, leads the way on ceasefire negotiation prospects. The UN has been self-effacing for most part and attracted some adverse attention on that count, such as from UN veteran, Shashi Tharoor, who wants the Secretary General to get on a plane and shuttle. There is no shortage of eminences that the UN could deploy, not least of whom is recently retired Angela Merkel, who carries formidable political weight.

While Russian demands include a declaration of Ukrainian neutrality and Ukraine’s letting go of Crimea and perhaps Donbass. NATO membership ruled out, Ukraine has indicated that any concessions it makes will be subject to a referendum. Secretary General Gueterres believes this should suffice to get the two sides to the table to come up with a preliminary agreement on a ceasefire. He himself has not stepped up perhaps to avoid ‘forum shopping’ temptations for the two sides and to avoid complicating off-the-radar-screen peace initiatives unfolding.

An assisted preliminary agreement will buy the two sides time to get on with substantive talks over their major differences, even as humanitarian needs are met in areas that suffered conflict while normality returns to areas less affected by violence. Ensuing peace talks may well be long drawn out. The two sides, having just fought a war, would require assistance in keeping respective forces apart. Displaced people require to be ushered back and humanitarian actors need protection in order to service them. The ceasefire agreement may require Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory other than in certain areas where it might be seeking the fruits of its invasion, such as Donbass, Crimea and perhaps along the Black Sea coast. Their withdrawal would require verification and those that stay would require monitoring. A demilitarized buffer zone in the space Russians vacate may emerge from the ceasefire talks and would need monitoring by a force comprising both monitors in blue berets, protected by blue helmets. Lately, a draw down in Russian war aims restricting its interest to retaining Donbass may make for a more wieldy peace operation.

The UN is rather deliberate if not downright slow, in its procedures to deploy troops. The circumstance may warrant speedier inter-positioning of peacekeepers. Two countries figure in meeting the needs of both neutrality and strategic reach: China and India. Both have preserved relations with Ukraine while not burning their bridges with Russia. Other countries with similar out of area capabilities being ruled out on grounds of acceptability to Russia, the two can collaborate on a joint and early deployment of peacekeepers once the ceasefire agreement invites such a force under UN auspices. India being in the Security Council as a non-permanent member helps with this. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to Delhi is an indicator that cooperation on such a mission can be pulled off, though the two have been at odds with each other for two years over what India sees as Chinese intrusion into its territory in Ladakh. The opportunity of working together in returning stability in Ukraine might help the two overcome their differences in the Himalayas.

Peacekeeper presence will allow for the two sides to commit to a comprehensive peace agreement covering areas of major divergences. Implementation may require to be overseen too, for which the UN presence could be enhanced by other neutral Troop Contributing Countries. An integrated peacekeeping operation with a traditional interpositioning role alongside a humanitarian assistance mandate is not foreseen since the two sides are resilient enough to deploy their own resources and network with respective UN Country Teams on reconstruction, returns and humanitarian assistance.

India has been an active player, not only in the Security Council where it has been consequential in its messaging, but on ground in evacuating some 20000 of its students studying in Ukraine. It can however enhance its role by leveraging its peacekeeping forte. Peacekeeping can be foreseen, though with a return to the early period of peacekeeping for a model – a period when India used to punch above its weight in international affairs. India has a brigade worth committed to stand by arrangements. It has the air capability for out of area deployment of this brigade but also of Special Forces. If it is collaborating with the Chinese on a joint deployment, then the premium on its forces to be available for responding to a Chinese threat in the high Himalayas is reduced, enabling them to be used temporarily elsewhere.

Wars acquire a dynamic of their own. Peace strategies are to intercept wars in their escalatory trajectory, contain and bottle up the violence. These also help belligerents a face saver to get off slippery slopes. They require as much finesse in execution and sense of urgency and timing as war strategies. Unfortunately, there is much less attention paid to war termination in war colleges and strategizing peace in diplomatic schools. International Relations as a field can at best explain war, rather than help resolve it. Its prominent subfield, strategic studies too is left floundering when war, its instrument of choice, is revealed as ineffectual. Conflict Resolution as a field must leverage the opportunity of a European war looking for a suitable external intervention to end it to mainstream. India, for its part, could also use the opportunity to play to its weight on the global stage. Imaginative pointers here can be put to good use.

 https://southasianvoices.org/india-pakistan-a-missile-misfired-opens-up-opportunity/

India-Pakistan:  A missile misfired opens up opportunity

Pakistan has surprised India twice in the past month.Most recently, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan praised India’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine for maintaining “an independent foreign policy” for the “betterment of people.”

Prime Minister Khan’s remarks came amid Pakistan’s refrain from taking action when a misfired Indian cruise missile accidentally landed in Pakistani territory. India, for its part, has acknowledged that an inquiry is underway—papering over the legitimate questions that arose over its lack of transparency immediately after the missile crashed and its failure to keep Pakistan informed of the mishap. Though the supersonic missile did little damage, the knowledge that it was a “dual-use”Brahmos missile could have proven a trigger for crisis escalation. 

Fortunately, the context is one of rare convergence on India and Pakistan’s delicate positioning concerning Russia’s war in Ukraine. Both India and Pakistan have tried to maintain cordial relationships with Ukraine and its backers—the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—and Russia. While Prime Minister Imran Khan was present in Moscow when Russia launched the armed attack on Ukraine, Pakistan remained neutral during a UN vote on Ukraine.India also abstained at multiple fora where Russia’s action came up for censure: in the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Human Rights Council.  

Thus, when India and Pakistan found themselves in a similar predicament on the war in Ukraine, the two sides were able to take a wide-angled view and move past the missile episode soberly.

Their similar positioning on Ukraine was on the back of growing cooperation in other arenas, that when buoyed by their non-confrontational attitude to the accidental missile launch, can potentially manifest this turn in their interrelations into a trend.

Since reiterating the ceasefire on the Line of Control in February 2021, the two sides have been tentativelyworking through ways to get past their hostility. Their most recent instance of working together was on the humanitarian front, allowing for the transit of wheat from India through Pakistan intended as food assistance for Afghanistan.

Pakistan also avoided retaliating against the accidental missile launch since itis interested in improving its relationship with India now thatits reaction to India’s revocation of Article 370 has run its course. Pakistan has thus far largely privileged a diplomatic response in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370, rather than a re-upping of its proxy war. The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020 also put a halt to any military action Pakistan may have contemplated against India. Chinese intrusion into Ladakh and preoccupation with the US withdrawal in Afghanistanmay have also constrained Pakistan from upping the military ante. 

Faced with all those limitations, Pakistan has reportedly sounded India through back-channel talks to return a degree of autonomy to Kashmir.  Since this initiative of Pakistan was in play during the misfired missile episode, Pakistan perhaps did not want to jeopardize it by overly embarrassing India.

On the back of an advantage, India is well on the way to organizing elections in Jammu and Kashmir. The afresh delimitation of constituencies is almost complete. India’s home minister has indicated the way forward as being elections followed, at a suitable time, by a return to statehood. India would be loath to have a crisis with Pakistan derail its plans. Therefore, after some initial demur, India it forthrightly acknowledged its mistake, thereby nipping the potential crisis in the bud.   

The Indian defense minister’s statements in parliament accepting the mistake is intended to also reassure Pakistan. Ideally, the inquiry must come up with recommendations to follow through on the Memorandum of Understanding dating to the Lahore Declaration of 1999. 

Should the inquiry underway in India take cognisance the forward looking contents of the   Memorandum and call on India to operationalise the measures in collaboration with Pakistan, it would provide India the cover to proceed down the route the two sides arguably ought to have taken long back. Had they done so, they would already have in place the protocols to respond to such incident.

 Improved relations between India and Pakistan best explain the absence of a crisis sparked by the misfired missile landing in Pakistan. For Pakistan, the advantage would be in posturing that their intercession with India – even if off the radar screen –led up to the action. It hopes to incentivize Indian reciprocation in easing up its dragnet in Kashmir, while India would prefer Pakistan to not complicate the campaign to UT assembly elections.

The mature actions of the two states in wake of the misfired missile not only reflect the improving relations but using the episode to strengthen CBMs will broaden the silver lining, enabling both to move in tandem on other issues that continue to plague the relationship, including Jammu and Kashmir.