What to make of Modi’s ‘war is history’ thesis?

ali

Sep 18

1

In his bilateral meeting on the sidelines the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit with President Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “I know that today's era is not of war and we have spoken to you many times on the phone that democracy, diplomacy and dialogue are such things that touch the world.” Modi was referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, expressing his dismay at Russia seeking to further its national interest through the instrumentality of war.

That Modi was speaking in the context of an ongoing the Ukraine-Russia war into its sixth month, in wake of outbreak of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border hostilities and Kyrgyz-Tajik border skirmishes next door to Samarkand, where he was at the time, his regarding war as outdated, intrigues.

No room for war

The idea that war is passé has been around now for some time. Modi’s national security adviser in an address to cadets passing out of the Hyderabad-based Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy had spelt out the idea, saying, “(T)he new frontiers of war — what we call the fourth-generation warfare — is the civil society. War itself has ceased to become an effective instrument for achieving your political or military objectives. They are too expensive and unaffordable.”

Doval borrowed the idea from then Chief of Defence Staff, Bipin Rawat. A recurring feature in Rawat’s speeches in various forums had been on hybrid war. Though he takes hybrid war as an instrument of Pakistan in its proxy war in Kashmir, he considered only two options in response: ‘offensive (hybrid war waging) option’ and ‘proactive defense’ against hybrid war. He settled for proactive defence, with limited proactive offensive hybrid operations conducted in support of the latter. This was in line with Doval, in his famous Balochistan reference, averring to the offensive option, but only in response to higher order provocations as the one at Mumbai.

Understandably then, Rawat’s concept called for all kinds of proactive defensive responses ranging from governance to empowerment of central police organizations and narrative warfare. Evidently, his known proximity with NSA, Ajit Doval, allowed him to indoctrinate Doval with the same reticence on war as an option. In turn, Doval having the ear of Modi on national security matters, Narendra Modi’s ‘war is in the dust bin of history’ thesis lies in such thinking.

Interestingly, in Rawat’s laying out of the concept, there is no mention of war as a counter to hybrid war. Considering he was a military man, his leaving out war as an option is strange and perhaps holds the key to understanding Indian distancing from conventional war.

The role of conventional deterrence was limited to deterring proxy war, restricting it to levels of intensity at which proactive defence could contend with hybrid war and wrap it up. Where the intensity was upped, India resorted to surgical strikes, broadcasting through ‘a shot across the bow’ its irritation as much as resolve to go the distance. In the event, India refrained from raining down missiles on Pakistan – allowing the United States to pick its chestnuts from the fire for it after the aerial surgical strike flopped.

Room only for hybrid war

Doval went on to hold that civil society was the hybrid war battlefield. The war on civil society today has this understanding that with war obsolete, civil society is game. To him, the adversary’s tentacles reach into civil society. Since the offensive option of giving the foe back in the same coin cannot overtly be admitted to, he appointed police officers as civil society defenders in case of hybrid war on India.

This is theoretically problematic in that some of the pressures civil society is subject to emanate from the State, which the State perpetrator cannot - or will not - itself regulate. The problem then arises is human rights defenders pointing this out end up as the hybrid war enemy. Contrived linkages are then painted of their external inspiration or funding, allowing for an offensive option – that is otherwise to be incident on the adversary - to play out internally.  

Doval’s adaptation of the concept has thus led to a war being waged on Indians. In Kashmir, site of proxy war, there is a plausible case for proactive defence. But in circumstance where there is no proxy war, as elsewhere in the country, the offensive option is very much in evidence. At a stretch, the proxy war justification can be contrived in relation to Maoist ambition to upturn India’s neoliberal applecart, Maoism being taken as an import from China.

To Rawat, proactive defence in Kashmir involved a political resolution. Instead, the political ‘solution’ that is currently in the works - comprising as it does the gerrymandering of the forthcoming elections to the Union Territory to engineer a win for the ruling party - is quite the opposite. It is the offensive option, a hybrid war on one’s own people. That the Supreme Court is laying-off on the constitutionality of the deflation of Article 370 indicates it too is implicate in the legally dubious maneuver, putting India’s preferred political ‘solution’ in the pail of offensive option.

Whereas proactive defence against proxy war is justifiable, it cannot be put beyond a Doval-run national security apparatus to deliberately misconstrue proactive defence for an offensive option. Take the case of the Bhima Koregaon human rights defenders, social activists and advocates of alternative economic approaches. Not only have they been jailed on trumped up charges, but in jail they are also denied medical care, though one of them died from health causes. On the contrary, the right wing goons and their masters who provoked violence at Bhima Koregaon are free. The irrefutable case of this as the offensive option is that the ‘evidence’ of a conspiracy to assassinate Modi was inserted into laptops. Though tampering has been outed, the fact has been neglected by Courts.

Troubling is the Judiciary’s joining the Executive on the hybrid war frontline. The case of Teesta Setalvad’s incarceration is illustration. First, the Supreme Court passed egregious comments on her pursuit of accountability for the Gujarat pogrom. Then her bail hearing for release from custody of an overzealous Gujarat police was kicked down the road by the Gujarat High Court.

The continuing of Siddique Kappan in jail is another. Kappan continues in jail despite bail is not only because he is held under a second case, but the judiciary took care to spike the grant of bail by requiring two locals to stand surety. A Keralite is unlikely to have such contacts in the Gangetic belt and the intimidation of civil society has been such by Chief Minister Ajay Bisht that it would be foolhardy for locals to stand surety.  

In short, while hybrid war is taken as the face of present-day war, in India’s case, it’s not in a two-sided contest with adversaries, China or Pakistan. Instead, hybrid war is being waged by the Indian State on its people. Worse, it’s not proactive defence that is in evidence as much as much as the offensive option. Therefore, when Modi says it’s not a time for war he – true to form - is economical with the truth, excluding hybrid war from definition of war.

Is war done with?  

Clearly, war is around as evident from close vicinity of where Modi made these sage remarks, Samarkand. The Ukraine-Russia face-off over the preceding eight years has seen hybrid war waged by both sides. Russia’s hybrid war is fairly self-evident in its usurpation of Crimea and propping-up dissidence in the Russian-dominant enclave of Donbas. Ukraine for its part has been carrying out offensive hybrid war of its own on its people of Russian origin by deploying nationalist forces in the Donbas, aggravating - and arguably legitimising - irridentism. The conventional war of late summarily puts paid to the notion that war - normally conceived - is no longer an option.

Western capitals - that self-interestedly lauded Modi’s remarks - best know that war remains an instrument of State, if not a preferred one. They’ve been busy fueling the war over the past few months, when they realized that the knock-out blow Putin had attempted in the opening phase of the war had fizzled. They have banded closer together, upped respective defence spending, used the opportunity to corner Russia and hope to set it back in a manner as to make it a liability for its supporter, China. Thus, for them its two birds with one stone: undercut the Russia-China challenge to a West-articulated world order. Over on the other side of the Eurasian landmass, they have created conditions for another war in forcing China to respond to their needling over Taiwan.

Modi may have been prompted by the Ukrainian counter offensive wresting back territory and giving depth to its second largest city, Kharkhiv. Ukraine carried out a feint towards Kherson in the south, while they built up for this offensive. Surprised, the Russians preferred to vacate the territory, falling back to a defensible river line.

Even so, core Russian interests in their special military operations are not threatened: consolidation of their control over the Donbas. Russians intend to hold the now-postponed referendum as prelude to either their incorporation of these territories into Russia - as was the case with Crimea - or to create Russian supported statelets, as witnessed earlier in Georgia. The action by Western powers in Kosovo is coming back to haunt them.

Since Russian gains in vicinity of Kharkhiv were diversionary and to provide depth to Donbas, while they stabilized their hold, the Ukrainian attack merely retook territory that Russians would have in any case traded on the negotiation table. Arguably, the gains allow Ukrainians a face-saver, setting up conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict as General Winter intervenes.

Conventional War has not indubitably proved unviable for either side. To be sure, usually there are better ways to go about achieving war aims. Risking war that has its own logic and grammar is not always readily justifiable. Even so, war is an option that States use and shall continue to use. Their risk acceptance ability genuflects to the capriciousness of the God of War.

To Russians, the war has helped give themselves an exaggerated image of their place in the world. It helps them walk the talk in their recently-released foreign policy doctrine, Russian World. To Ukrainians, who otherwise could have used the excuse of asymmetry with Russia for dignified capitulation, the war has enabled assertion of Statehood and nationhood. As for India, it has bought time for its troubled economy by buying up oil cheap from Russia, all the while keeping mum at the horse shoe table on implications for the United Nations’ Charter of Russian actions. Couched in terms as multi-alignment, it has allowed itself to also be wooed by the West.

‘Give war a chance’

Therefore, it is too early to write war’s obituary. Modi’s attempt need not detain us overly. After all, in the same breath, he also used the terms, ‘democracy, diplomacy and dialogue’. It’s no secret India is now an ‘illiberal democracy’, an ‘electoral autocracy’. Diplomacy has been marked by its absence in relation to both neighbours with which it has been at odds over the past few years. As for dialogue, he ducked the Summit dinner where he might have had a brush-by with leader of either neighbour.

However, Modi’s ‘war is history’ is of a piece with his regime’s strategic doctrine. Though confronted with intrusions in Ladakh, it preferred prevarication when a border war was called for. The Fire and Fury Corps had a frontage to defend and presumably has the resources to take on well-practiced contingencies. Its mandate is preserving of national territorial integrity. When challenged, there is no looking back for a corps configured for precisely such a challenge.

That it looked back and was not reprimanded shows up the national security system in place. Instead, recall in the 2013 episode of Chinese incursion into Depsang, a counter was posed it in Chumar. It is in the Modi era that Indians have started waiting out the Chinese, once each in Ladakh and Doklam. At Doklam, the Chinese were back in strength the following winter, though India had declared a victory at the end of that crisis. In Ladakh, it took Amit Shah’s vain posturing in parliament over Aksai Chin that brought the Chinese into Ladakh. Covid had not quite set in by early April. That the spirit was willing is evident from the showing of Santosh Babu’s band of merry men.

Instead, Modi lied. India dithered. Was it was under-confident in its general staff being able to pull off a localized border war? Isn’t escalation control part of operational art teaching at its war colleges? Was it was over-impressed by the asymmetry in comprehensive national power with China? Was there an internal bureaucratic fight in which the military was left to its own devices, having burnt its fingers at Galwan; and the intelligence fraternity and diplomats running for cover for letting their side down with no strategic warning? What exactly passed between Modi and Xi that Xi thought he could judge his Indian interlocutor so accurately that India would not respond militarily?

When India faces itself in the mirror, it might come up with the right answers. For now we are served up the logic that a nation off to developed nation status cannot afford to be distracted by war, imposed on by a neighbour wanting a competitor out of the race. We need to get up to speed militarily before taking on China. However, such self-exculpation can be shot down arguing that the much-touted economy might have held up to the test of a border war; the West would have stepped up; a border war is a limited war, fought with what one has (to recall General Ved Malik’s imperishable phrase); that comprehensive national power is a bogey, since all that matters is what can be harnessed at the spear tip etc.. War is not always Total War, as Russia’s measured actions in Ukraine show. Arguing thus is obviously as infructuous as pearls before swine.

Alternately, it would only be fair to speculate that the reasons for not going to war over a legitimate and legal reason to do so – a challenge to its territorial integrity and thereby to its national sovereignty – can be only if the reason for not doing so is graver. It can only be such if national interest is taken as regime interest in its self-perpetuation in the higher purpose of consolidation of Hindutva, the regime’s defining philosophy. The regime could not chance a war, the outcome of which could be as catastrophic for it as it proved for Nehru personally. Having gained the reins of the State after a century on the political margin, it could not have a foreign policy setback deflate the image of its Champion, on whose back it rode to power.

This explains Modi’s advocacy of non-war. It is a legitimization of India’s approach to war: wage offensive hybrid war on its own people in the name of proxy war in Kashmir and against liberal-leftists in anticipation of recoil from the under-classes, further deprived by the corporate orgy unleashed by Neoliberalism 2.0. Its easier. For ideological reasons, it prefers hybrid war on its own people to warring without. Holding war is not an option, legitimizes its shadow boxing in Ladakh. It puts the regime off the hook for its adoption of strategic patience to see off the Chinese, even at the cost of trading Indian spaces.

It has appropriated the typical do-gooder, sweet-talking veneer that was used to good foreign policy effect by its bête noire, the long deceased, Nehru. It remains to be seen if down the line it meets the same strategic outcome that proved fatal for Nehru.

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/did-modi-just-inaugurate-the-second?sd=pf 

Did Modi just inaugurate the Second Republic? 

Prime Minister Modi has abandoned a strategy of stealth for a more up-front and in-your-face one. Thus far, his has been an incremental approach, with subterfuge thrown in to tide over structural disadvantage and temporary weakness. Recall Modi’s turn at the head of his run-up - the consequential meeting, since shoved under the carpet, at his chief minister residence of 27 February 2002. Recall also the alliance between the Indian ‘deep state’ – cultural nationalists in the national security woodwork – and Hindutva forces, that, through black operations depicting India as a weak state subject to Muslim terrorism, manufactured an unbreakable vote bank from the majority community. Recall the period when acche din, signifying development, were bandied to win over the middle classes. His in-plain-sight cover-up of above shenanigans in the run up to prime-ministership is best evidenced by the recent incarceration of human rights defender, Teesta Setalvad. The period of stealth is now comprehensively behind him and he can openly steer the ship of State towards uncharted waters of the Second Republic. The inauguration of Kartavya Path, with one end anchored by the Netaji statue and the other at Vijay Chowk – perhaps eventually - having one of ‘Veer’ Savarkar, suggests as much. It will be followed by the throwing open, with religious observances led by Modi - if the earlier bhoomi pujan and the recent unveiling of the parliamentary Simhas are any guide - of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, even as the mosque that was to come up there is held up by clearances being withheld. The new parliament building’s opening awaits perhaps the next G20 summit when visiting dignitaries are invited to an inaugural joint sitting of parliament, their attendance being depicted as India’s arrival as Vishwa Guru. There will be political tamashas too – such as the gerrymandered elections to throw up a Hindu Jammuite chief minister in Srinagar, failing which, there is Ghulam Nabi - conferred recently with a national award in anticipation - to fall back on. The aim is - come 2024 - to build a majority in the legislature to rewrite the Constitution. After all, if Nehru family icon, Indira could, then surely Hindutva champion, Modi can, will and must. A Hindu Rashtra of Hindutva’s imagining is taking shape in front of our eyes. Its verities have been interrogated by liberals, but their reservations have drawn little political blood. Return of awards, missives to the prime minister in wake of egregious violence to the national conscience, populating liberal websites – as The Wire, Scroll etc. - with dire warnings etc. only contribute to keeping up the veneer that India is not a totalitarian State led by an authoritarian leader. Even the blatant letting-off of rapists – with the Center’s concurrence of the Gujarat’s remission of sentences of perpetrators of crimes against humanity – has not been able to draw the political opposition – notably the party in the lead trying to wrest Gujarat - into battle. A two-thirds majority in the lower house is not necessary for jettisoning the First Republic’s Constitution. As the Article 370 amendment proceedings showed, the ruling party will have political parties band-wagon in parliament. The judiciary’s Ayodhya judgment reflects - as much as does the cold storage of the other salient cases, notably, the one on electoral bonds - the doctrine of basic structure will not stand in way of a Hindutva Republic. It is already being held that the iconography on the margins of the original copy of the Constitution shows it was of a Hindu Republic. Even so, a set of seers has helpfully drawn up a fresh one, with non-Hindus thoughtfully reduced to second class citizenship. The security of the Second Republic already stands endangered. A lapse in Raj Dharma has set its tone at the very outset. The subterfuge by way of which the Hindu vote bank has come to be is both illegal and illegitimate. It’s illegal in the way black operations are inevitably, as the term suggests. It is illegitimate in that the information operations surrounding these informed the electorate’s voting behavior. Skeletons are already spilling out of the cupboard with an affidavit in a Nanded court spilling the beans on black operations. However, infirm foundations do not worry the regime’s Chanakya-inspired security minders. The very artfulness of capturing the State is taken as proof of being worthy of running it. The ruthless pursuit of power - that has seen blood spilt along the route including of Haren Pandya, Ishrat Jahan, Brijgopal Loya and hundreds of false-flag terror-bombing victims of all religions - is evidence of a capacity and will to wield it. Chicanery is legitimised by an end result in a dharmic democracy. Their three millennia-old referents fit ill with a modern-liberal nation-state construct. So, they hark back a century-old fascism for inspiration. Adapting that doctrine to the Indian condition is given a national security spin. India’s diversity is its Achilles heel. It needs a strong Center, with a firm hand at the rudder. With Hindutva pervading political culture, any pushback can only be from the social and geographic periphery. Doctrine has it that suppression must ensue to display both a will to power and the Doctrine of State or the State as Leviathan. There is self-interest in this for national security minders, ensconced in the hierarchy corresponding to their role in facilitating their Champion’s ride to power. Power prevents their roles being scrutinized. The resulting set up is conspiracy of silence for those in the know and a comity of silence for those who prefer not to. While negatively, this makes for a ‘stay or sink together’ approach, positively, since they subscribe to Hindutva, they are sanguine that all means for its propagation and consolidation are good. Working for the greater good of Hinduism is adhesive. India, repository of Hinduism, must be made safe through militant, political, Hindutva. This explains the whittling of institutions. Not only can these pose a hurdle to the imposition of Hindutva but may bite back when push comes to shove. The ‘deep state’ – that is now the Establishment – can do without balancing that legacy forces in polity and governance might bring to their roles. They can also do without being shown up by dissident voices from within. Group think is the order. Appointments are weapons, lure of future appointments are a way to defang any Constitution-related hang-ups. Professionalism – internally speaking truth to power in an area of expertise - can be shown the door. Institutional hemming and hawing can be made up by tapping the wider Hindutva-adherent community. Ideas as Agnipath can only originate in spaces external to the organisation. If it was from within the organization, then the question of what about Nepali inductees would surely have arisen well prior. This brings us up till today, which in the words of Modi is a turning point. The First Republic has been ushered out with his words, “Kingsway i.e. Rajpath, the symbol of slavery, has become a matter of history from today and has been erased forever.” The continuity which the Indian State enjoyed as successor of the British empire in India – itself a legacy of the British takeover of over-lordship of India from the Moghuls – stands ruptured. The Old is swept away, and the New tepid. The Old had not exhausted its allure or credibility, the New does not command loyalty. It is therefore a premature call, one insensitive to security implications of a state of non-being: with the Old not dead and the New unborn. The New State is to be imbued with Netaji Subhash Bose’s vision, articulated by Modi as, “It is our effort that Netaji’s energy should guide the country today. Netaji’s statue on the ‘Kartavya Path’ will become a medium for that.” Finding itself bereft of heroes from the freedom movement, the regime has hung on to the coat-tails of Bose, for no better reason that being mistaken as being anathema to the Nehru-Gandhi family. This is yet another sleight-of-hand by the regime. Sensing it too early to bring Savarkar onstage, they’ve settled for someone associated with fascists, even if for different reasons than those of Hindutva progenitors. For Bose, it was pragmatic, for Hindutva it was ideological. Thus, not only is their interest in Bose subterfuge – to cock-a-snook at the First Republic – but the interest is itself a smokescreen, since Bose is only a filler to legitimate them. Though unsteady, Hindutva has its eyes on wider goals, with Modi intoning, “Netaji Subhash was the first head of Akhand Bharat, who freed Andaman before 1947 and hoisted the Tricolour.” This elides the question how did Akhand Bharat cease to be and the role of communal and violent extremism in its end. Bose is an icon, but a historical personality open to interrogation. Military history is fairly clear that the British Indian Army stopped the Japanese in their tracks. That the nation owes much to that army is clear from your reading this in English, not Japanese. By holding the Indian National Army in contradistinction to it, both stand reduced. To do so is only to de-legitimise the Old, associated as it is with preceding British India by the ‘transfer of power’, which included two-thirds of the military. Alongside, on a lesser note, it is meant to deflate the self-worth of the Indian military that takes pride in its duty towards and loyalty to the State, of whatever hue. Hindutva does not need an apolitical military – preferring one which is imbued with Hindutva. But as it gets to that stage, Hindutva needs to neuter the military – enchain it lest it as the only institution that can, bite back when Hindutva gets to the cusp of Constitutional tinkering. Agnipath, tethering to the doghouse in mountain fastnesses, orgnisational turbulence through ‘reforms’ and by keeping the key appointment of Chief of Defence Staff untenanted are means to undercut the military. Personalized loyalty is sought by deferring institutional accountability over Balakot and Ladakh. Hyping all things military – including how to define indigeneity in its latest aircraft carrier – keeps the military from introspecting its role in Modi’s India. Narendra Modi went on to declaim, “Today, India’s ideals and dimensions are its own. Today, India’s resolve is its own and its goals are its own. Today, our paths are ours, our symbols are our own.” It is his Tarzan cry, a foot on the chest of Lutyen’s elite. Further, to him, “(B)oth, thinking and behaviour of the countrymen are getting freed from the mentality of slavery.” This is to free up space for Brahmanism, its retreat from a temporary high after Adi Shankara’s travels being brought about by the advent of Muslims. The tributaries comprising contributions of those with their holy land outside the subcontinent are being dammed. Modi is partially right in saying, “(T)he emotion and structure of the Rajpath were symbols of slavery, but today with the change in architecture, its spirit is also transformed.” With India Gate continuing in place, it cannot be said that there has been a change in architecture. That the spirit stands transformed will be known soon enough, when the life and energy of that particularly effervescent democratic space is snuffed out by regimentation on its use. To find out, take a ball to kick around. (A personal speculation from forty years of constant and continuing access to the Central Vista, one wonders whether the Central Vista has been appropriated by the right wing-run State since it got too much of an eye sore to see gol topis and burkhas saunter on it in disproportionate numbers. It was the only open space in vicinity of Muslims at Chandni Chowk.) Importantly, the Kartavya Path and the slogan, ‘Shramev Jayate’, “becoming a mantra for the nation,” are indicative of the shift from rights to duties. That should please Modi’s corporate backers. The State is no longer going to be held accountable for delivery on rights. Voting for Hindutva, people can’t also have their cake and eat it too. Amrit Kaal and developed nation status await them, and they would have only themselves to blame if they don’t get there. The State is facilitative of Aspirational India making rapid progress by giving impetus to ‘social, transport, digital and cultural infrastructure’. Whereas social infrastructure is being increased, the branch India is sitting on is being cut alongside with National Education Policy, questioning of reservations etc. Transport infrastructure, perhaps the most ubiquitous, is the most damaging with its trans-generational environmental costs. Digital infrastructure has gone amok, making possible divisive policies as National Register of Citizens. (Wipro was beneficiary of the exercise in Assam.) Kartavya Path taken as symbolic, cultural infrastructure is the most significant part of the India makeover. It might be that here too much is being read into the event. It might just be another routine inauguration that Modi is rather adept at – observed by a governor with a mind of his own. Modi has not transcended his avatar as an event manager from his junior politico days. Even then, some events such as the self-narrated story of his police custody for protesting Pakistani treatment of East Pakistan have turned out as imagined. There is no also reason to rush to Hindutva’s India, when the First Republic is working just fine, having returned him to power twice and lining up to do so as long as his yoga-imparted fitness holds out. The turn to Hindutva open, Modi is indispensible also for the right wing. He can ride – Ajay Devgn style – both horses, the State and Hindutva. He should take care to not end up with legs split as those of the Statue of Liberty on last week’s Economist cover. To avoid such calisthenics, Modi’s national security minders would do well to work on Modi. Participants in Modi’s journey and authors of his image, they best know the shaky foundations the Hindutva house of cards. Not only is it on infirm foundations of lies and subterfuge, but - going by Modi’s speech at the bottom of Bose’s statue - will be bogus. Tickling his narcissism, they must get him into believing his avatarhood is merit-based and not dependent on birthing a Hindutva Republic, arguing why kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg.

Why narratives matter: Arrows in an info war quiver

ali

Sep 3

1

Gautam Bambawale, having been ambassador in China and an official at the foreign ministry’s China desk earlier, is an old China hand. In a recent article he gives his view on the Chinese intrusion in Ladakh. Largely supportive of the government, the view has been elaborated in the book he co-authored. He suggests the Chinese carried out the intrusion in Ladakh in strength. Their ‘shenanigans’ were limited by Indian army’s reaction and mirroring of the Chinese buildup. Mindful that the intrusions have not been vacated fully yet, India is following a policy of not normalizing relations so long as the situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) does not de-escalate. There is thus a certain resemblance between the LAC with the Line of Control (LC) with Pakistan with both military’s up in considerable numbers. He recommends holding out till India’s growth reduces the asymmetry with China and external balancing by aligning with countries with interest in containing China.

Such narratives have it that China deployed its military to show India its place as part of its bid to displace United States’ (US) hegemony over the international system. Chinese intended to suitably impress India by Chinese military might to keep India out of the Chinese challenge to the US. If India was cowed down, then it would prevent a two front threat to China as it goes about displacing the US and over the long term it would subordinate India in both the region and a Chinese dominant system.

Consequently, India needs to stare down China. It needs to sign up with those skeptical of the Chinese challenge to the international system and balance against it. Even as it does so, it must be part of the international effort to domesticate China, co-opting the rising power to prevent it from disrupting the system. This will keep India geo-politically relevant and enables it partners to assist its military rise. Keeping economic doors open allows China a face-saver to back off.

The assumption is that India would be able to navigate the unfolding global competition with a foot in both camps. It deliberately does not go the distance from being a partner to an ally in the new Cold War. It can then be a free rider, stepping off any dangerous escalator its democratic partners take in their coping with the Chinese challenge. It can use the border stand off to its purpose of milking the anti-China front for gains in a higher political profile and strategic presence. However, by being rhetorically active and militarily inert on the front, it can ensure that China does not push its advantage. Domestically, the advantage is in the politically useful image of security establishment playing David against a Chinese Goliath. 

Such a narrative has the policy consequences of yoking India to the West and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy making China a long-term adversary. The policy fallout - already unfolding - is easy to see. India is leveraging its strategic location as a ‘rentier’ state reliant on its strategic location to one side of China to Lilluput-like help tie it down. In doing so, it potentially ends up as a ‘frontline state’ subject to the usual backlash faced by proxies in a global stand-off.

Internally, militarization, that has powerful constituencies, is in the offing. Here, stakeholders include commercial sectors interested in military modernization; the military, for the obvious reasons; the security establishment, since China is just the reckonable adversary to displace India’s traditional bogeyman, Pakistan, with; and, the right-wing political spectrum, wanting militarization for ideological reasons. It is with such reasons that the prime minister just this week took the acquiring by India of an indigenous aircraft carrier as ‘a step towards being a developed nation’. By this logic, India will be a ‘developed nation’ – an aim slated for 2047 - when it acquires the third aircraft carrier.

Clearly, narratives matter. They have consequences, arbitrating between winners and losers. The official - and therefore popular - narrative on the Ladakh intrusion is one such. In Bambawale’s take, Chinese are painted as the villains who were checked in their villainy by Indian military, forcing India to recalibrate its grand strategy in favour of a tilt towards the US-led side in the unfolding geo-strategic contest.

An alternative reading of the genesis – the Ladakh intrusion - of this policy exists. It too has policy significance but its potential consequences do not endear it to the national security establishment. It thus loses the narrative battle.  It has little outside political heft, the right wing being dominant in the political spectrum with its weaponisation of ‘anti-national’, relegating the alternative narrative to one of ‘dissent’.

The gate-keeping function of strategic commentators is critical to this, making capture of the strategic community a site for prior political contest and precondition for narrative dominance. Internally directed information war targeting the domestic political space for netting the voter through use of the famous troll armies does the rest.

The Chinese intrusion in Ladakh was a well planned, deliberate one. Past this start line, the two narratives diverge. The outset of the crisis was with the Chinese diverting the annual military exercise held in a proximate area towards the LAC. This had two instigations. First, India had changed the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir. Though it took care to reassure the Chinese that the rearrangement of governance rearrangement in Ladakh would not affect the Indian position on the LAC, the intrusion shows that the Chinese were bothered by the accompanying rhetoric.

The second is that Indian ‘transgressions’ across the LAC had been increasing through the previous decade, with two eminences putting it at twice and five times respectively those by the Chinese. This may have provoked China to settle the scores or to put India on notice on the trend. The two taken together make for as plausible a reason as geopolitical impetus – Chinese attempt to relegate India to subordinate status – for the intrusions.

Since the foreign minister has confessed to being unaware of what motivated the Chinese – recounting five reasons that the Chinese had trotted out – the motive ascribed to the Chinese here cannot be dismissed out of hand. It cannot be disregarded just because it is not sexy enough – like India forming a pole in the global faceoff sounds.

The Kargil War is illustrative. The Pakistani misadventure was built up as having grand aims, so that India’s counter could then be seen as an epic. However, reality is pedestrian. Operational art was conspicuously missing. Tactical level deficits were covered up by grit in subaltern ranks. Aims attributed to Pakistan included slicing off Siachen, biting off Kargil, distancing Ladakh etc. Instead, the Pakistani intrusion could also be seen as a mundane eastward extension of the typical fight along the LC on at the time, particularly in the Neelam Valley. Since India’s geographical advantage in that sector enabled it to interdict Pakistani logistics, General Musharraf – who was (as it turned out) more comfortable at the operational rather than the strategic level and still smarting from reverses in Siachen where he was a tactical level commander – tried a reverse Siachen. Thus, Pakistan surprised India, but was in turn surprised by the asymmetric Indian reaction – a strategic response to an operational gambit.

After Kargil, India used the opportunity to outpace Pakistan and put it in the dog house of international opinion. The outbreak of the ‘global war on terror’ soon thereafter helped. Military reforms were initiated, doctrinal moves made and organizations restructured. Retrospectively, the Agra summit can be seen as an aside allowing Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh to try their hand at turning round the relationship, while hawks like Advani – aided by the Indian ‘deep state’ (then in its infancy) denizens and national security officials with an anti-Pakistani axe to grind – waiting at the wings to sabotage the effort. The political advantage this group sought was on using the Pakistan bogey for expanding hold over domestic politics through the marginalization of India’s Muslims. They lent themselves to the Hindutva ideological project ongoing in society. Along the way they acquired a champion in Narendra Modi. A symbiotic relationship evolved (revealed partially in a recent affidavit at a Nanded court) leading up to capture of the political high ground by 2014. This brings forth the significance of narratives and critical role of narrative dominance in the political warzone.

By analogy, the Ladakh intrusion has prompted a similar Indian overreaction, looming as a like landmark in the steam of strategically significant events. As at Kargil, elements of the national security establishment charged with providing strategic and operational warning were missing-in-action. This time the buck stops at the political level, with the prime minister, the foreign minister and the national security adviser culpable in not picking up the cues China would certainly have dropped in the several political level meetings – that included two informal summits - in the run up to the intrusions. The initial intrusion may have been a rerun of the earlier intrusions with the Chinese intending their usual routine - two steps forward and one step back. The Army Chief had played to such a script in early June.

However, the Galwan incident precipitated matters. It brought home the scale of the intrusion and grabbed the focus. The prime minister could not extricate himself out of the spot he was in his usual style. Recall the foreign minister washing his hands from the affair saying that the rules did not compel India not to carry arms and use them as necessary. It was then that Indian military over-compensated by a whirlwind of logistic activity of sending up and maintaining environmentally-hazardous numbers of troops. If indeed the Chinese had come in strength – as Bambawale suggests - they could not have been checkmated by Indians who had already bound themselves up with Covid restrictions. Instead, the Chinese had limited aims, achieved with the set of troops they deployed for the purpose – even if more were prudently at hand in the rear.

The narrative that builds up India winning the first round is fanciful. It can only be politically driven since we know well by now how the regime likes to profit from military achievement, going to the extent of even dressing up failures – such as Balakot. This leads up to the ‘political-military collusion’ (in words of one analyst) in which the political class’ letting off of the military from accountability suborns it.

Though Bambawale does not touch upon it, Indians did not win the second round either. Whereas the Kailash Range occupation and getting on the high ground at Finger Four was laudable as a tactical and logistical feat, it was operationally purposeless. The run up to it had Indians depicting the maneuver as a preemption of the Chinese, which was not quite the case. Though the Chinese side was unheld, that it stopped on the LAC showed up lack of operational gumption. (A bit of langar gup has it that Indian troops who overshot the LAC by either misreading it or due to momentum of their advance were asked to pull back. Perhaps the much-awaited memoirs of recently-retired then-commanding general in Leh will clear the air.) The Chinese occupation of their side of the LAC in face of the Indian advance was depicted as their shying away from a counter attack. The maneuver forever closed the door on an avenue of ingress towards Rudok that could have been possibly been used to influence the Chinese hold over Depsang in ensuing talks. That the Chinese had not bolted the door prior by occupying their side of the LAC bespeaks of their careful reading that the Indians would not offensively react to their intrusions – an intelligence appreciation borne out by events. Overstretched (and the domestic front suitably impressed), the Indians vacated their gains the following summer, couching it as magnanimity to get the Chinese to do likewise. We lost the third round that unfolded on the military talks table. 

That the military is at the talks table and not the Special Representative or the foreign minister, shows the military has been left holding the can. It has been forced over two winters to boost its numbers on the Ladakh plateau, ostensibly to keep China from further adventures giving equal – though unverifiable - figures of Chinese positioned there. It begs the question why would Chinese, who could have bitten off any thing additional in the first round itself, maintain such numbers. Why would they follow Indians in a do-nothing strategy dressed up as ‘mirror deployment’, when they have better infrastructure to help them fetch up for combat at will? Sure, they would have additional numbers, but only enough to ward off an unlikely Indian grab in deference to a ‘security dilemma’ equivalent at the tactical level.

As Bambawale confesses, India is making the LAC resemble the LC. Since a long term deployment is inescapable, it can only be sustained by the Agnipath scheme – fresh blood inducted periodically to allow Indians to sustain deployment indefinitely. This is the only sustainable explanation for the otherwise bereft scheme. On their part, all the Chinese will do is to keep enough forces to enasure ‘all quiet on the Western front’. Since mountains favour defenders in general and the Tibetan plateau advantages the Chinese, they need no more than a proportion of the Indian figure for manning it. Since Chinese infrastructure capacity is legendary, their soldiers can be expected to be better looked after too.

Building up the Chinese as a threat – as Bambawale does - enables the opportunity to shift strategic alignments in a particular direction, with a windfall for stakeholders already mentioned. Though the Kargil War was used for turning the tables on the Pakistanis in respect of the US, the Pakistanis got into bed once again with their ‘most allied ally’ after 9/11. India could only remonstrate ineffectually, even though it shot itself in its foot in a black operation on its own parliament. In the rise of Hindutva to center-stage post Kargil War and the role of narratives in it, we have witnessed extensive damage to Indian polity. This time round, there is no competition for the affection of the US, and India has multiple partners, not excluding the Chinese.

No political alternative, there is also no tussle of narratives as such. While narrative dominance is complete superficially, there is an element of dissident chatter in non-mainstream quarters in a latent challenge to the meaning of ‘developed nation’. The info war quiver of the dominant side is already expended: a USD 5 trillion-economy by 2024 and a USD 20 trillion-one by 2047. It remains to be seen how the counter narrative catches up, depending on employment statistics, environmental catastrophes, political black swan events, global economic trajectory and geopolitical tectonics.

A different national trajectory can be visualized with the Ladakh intrusion as start point. The subaltern narrative pitched here has potential to energise an alternative future. It wishes to avoid adversarial relations that can upset respective national trajectories. Though similarly noted by foreign minister in his allusion to the crisis endangering the Asian Century, it is rhetorical since – as seen – India has turned the military setback and loss in territorial integrity into a strategic opportunity by sheer narrative building. As Bambawale’s endorsement shows, it is now the bedrock of a policy of growth which has the political benefit – elided by Bambawale - of setting up a coalition of advantaged castes and classes to control India. On the contrary, the subaltern narrative start-point precludes expansive aims attributed to China and its demonization. This enables India and China sit down and sort out not merely LAC management but border issues, with a an adjunct track for Tibetans, Ladakhis and Arunachalis.

Strategists owe the nation a duty of truth telling, a duty that increases correspondingly with their proximity with and access to power. The strategic community cannot lend its expertise-based authority for political appropriation. It is no one’s case that strategic commentary is not politically coloured. Narratives ‘are always for someone and some purpose.’ Self-regarding analysts need to be wary of falling prey to the official narratives they may end up popularizing and thereby queering the democratic pitch.