https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/the-new-military-leadership-must?r=i1fws&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

The new military leadership must emphasise professional distance

A recent turnover in the army’s leadership witnessed the emplacing of the next batch out till end decade. General Dhiraj Seth’s long-expected move to Delhi as preparation to take over as the next army chief is clear from the precedence of the last five chiefs having first been brought to Delhi as vice chiefs. The move appears to have been thought up a year back, with General Chauhan asked to stay on, so that Seth gets to Delhi without stepping over the lone army commander holdover from a senior batch.

A case that did not see such smooth succession was that of General Mohanty. He could well have taken over as chief had General Naravane been kicked upstairs as chief of defence staff (CDS); a position vacant since General Rawat’s untimely death. Even if General Rawat had retired at age 62 after a tenure of two years – though curiously his appointment was without a sunset clause - this could still have been the case.

However, the regime’s retrospectively reckonable antipathy for Naravane came in the way. By then the incidents in Ladakh - narrated in Naravane’s controversial unpublished book - had taken place. Also, the regime had to wait out Naravane before it could launch its agnipath scheme, which Naravane’s recount makes clear: “As usual in the end, the PM had some stories of his own. If in the last interaction, it was about the kite industry in Gujarat, this time it was about railway lines, more specifically, new railway lines (p. 311).” Mohanty’s career can thus be taken as unfortunate collateral damage. In the event, a gobsmacked engineer four-star acceded, assisted by a three-star engineer.

With the CDS appointment too falling vacant a month earlier than that of the army chief, the race is on. The criteria for the CDS appointment were rejigged under the assumption that being senior in service to the serving chiefs would give a three-star CDS appointee additional heft from seniority. Yet, strangely in a command-obsessed military, it remains hobbled since the criteria does not call for a ‘command stream’ appointee, implying that the post is tenable by any three-star whose last command was at one-star!

For now, recently retired three-star general officers hope to emulate General Anil Chauhan. A frontrunner appears to be one who got off to a head start, and has only reinforced his credentials since. Distressing to see are those with four-stars also positioning to follow in General Rawat’s footsteps.

General Dwivedi has taken to pilgrimages, thoughtfully adding that it is on behalf of the army, knowing his earlier forays seeking god’s favour did not go unremarked. The general has to work harder, since if the regime wanted to upgrade him, it could have well done so last year, without extending General Chauhan’s services.

His classmate from his sainik school days, Admiral Tripathi, has taken to fawning signaling: “we were also very proud to showcase the breadth and depth of our operational capabilities to the Prime Minister during a historic 17-hour overnight embarkation with the Indian Navy on the western seaboard.”

The admiral claimed that had Operation (Op) Sindoor lasted ‘minutes’ longer, then the navy would have left its mark on Karachi. From the Iran War II in the backdrop, it is abundantly clear that this is not a proposition to be glib about. In rebound, the Pakistani naval chief appears to have anticipated a lesson of the ongoing war. In the event, Admiral Tripathi’s classmate’s invoking of the gods would have proved mite useful.

An unstated agenda

What is clear is that despite the cautioning, the politicisation of the military has progressed considerably. The regime might like to normalise politicisation by making it unremarkable, as the way things ought to be and are increasingly just so.

Normalisation entails the embedding the ‘new normal’ in the consciousness of a politically-oriented armed forces. This extends the current-day inference of the newly-minted Pakistan-specific strategic doctrine of ‘new normal’ into the military’s sociological sphere. Sociologically, the ‘new normal’ is in the shift of the military to being properly the military of a majoritarian state.

It cannot be that a military is out of step with a regime as powerful as this one. If political culture changes, strategic culture follows, as must organisational culture. There is no gainsaying the fact that Hindutva has founded a new political reality, even if its methods leave much to be desired. Its worldview has aims justifying ways, means and methods; which upturns the Gandhian reading in the reverse.

The Indian military’s distancing from politics is not only a British legacy, but followed the Huntingtonian fashion of the day as the Republic got going. Its professional distance had three mutually reinforcing pillars: physical separation in cantonments; intellectual distance from the social rough and tumble; and an insulating babudom layer from a ‘vile’ political class. This led to a ‘value gap,’ especially in the coalition period when its operational commitments multiplied. It thereafter appears to have warmed to a strong hand on the rudder. From the political side, the aim is to domesticate the military as its done with all other institutions. The winds from without are also along such lines.

Unsurprisingly, the just-released defence forces vision fights shy of explicit mention of this aspect. It instead subsumes the change disingenuously in one of its ‘strategic priorities and goals’: ‘strategic culture and climate’ that requires defence forces ‘take pride in our legacy, (and) develop a nationalist outlook.’

While there can be no umbrage with India’s civilizational legacy inspiring, legacy is selectively delineated. It’s been ‘go to Pakistan’ for the medieval portion, and since ‘colonial practices need to be shed,’ the British Indian legacy is subject to decolonisation. That the periodisation of history is itself borrowed from Orientalists does not faze, since the orientalists received input from upper-caste native informers.

Interestingly, the vision carries no mention of ‘fusionism,’ the logical next steps to consolidation. While yet again fusion currently restricts itself to a marriage between innovators and industry with the military, its meaning in the sociological sense has already been broached, in its interpretation as a Saraswati-Laxmi-Durga triumvirate. (A factoid: Fusion was first referenced by late Maroof Raza.)

Preserving professionalism

A lesson from the ongoing culling of generals allegedly sceptical of ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda is that it weakens professionalism and may exact an operational cost. The replacement of the sacked general had sent in greetings to Trump on his second presidency win, hardly an encouraging credential.

Taking cue, in its institutional interest, the military must guard against dilution of its professionalism, at a time when professionalism is at a premium, with Op Sindoor 2.0 liable to bring Kolkata into the crosshairs, if not quite Delhi and Mumbai.

Help from the regime might not be forthcoming. It has put up the CDS post as a carrot. The incumbents have so far been professional, sporting between them 11 military awards. Even so, both had to broadcast their predilections to gain the regime’s attention. Both need not have done this, given they had a weighty insider on their side, ethnic kin Ajit Doval. The jump-through-the-hoops is now more expansive.

Three things need doing to steady the military’s professional boat.

One is that the criteria requires a rejig, restricting it to serving service officers with three-star level command experience; and, two, the military must dilute its seniority mindedness. Colin Powell superseded over a score contemporaries when elevated at 52 years of age as the youngest incumbent to an equivalent job; though admittedly his is not the best example given that he had successively truncated command tenures.

The third is for military members to emulate the better examples amongst their peers. Take the case of the self-same General Mohanty. Though a counter-factual, it can be hazarded that had he signalled he was amenable to the then in-the-works agnipath scheme, he would likely have made four-star. Howsoever distasteful to the regime, Naravane could have been put out of the way as CDS, chasing - as General Chauhan has gallantly done – the will-o’-the-wisp: theaterisation.

It’s better to honourably retire with dignity, as forerunners whose names live on - SD Verma, SPP Thorat, Praveen Bakshi. With brass-hats choosing to fade away as in yonder years, lost professional distance can yet be reinstated.

 https://m.thewire.in/article/security/the-defence-vision-2047-document-is-a-political-position-pleasing-their-political-masters

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/troubling-ideas-in-general-chauhans

The Defence Forces Vision 2047 document was released by the raksha mantri two weeks back. It has been competently reviewed elsewhere. Implementation contingent on factors outside the military’s domain, a cautionary word for the military has it that ‘the vision risks remaining a powerful prose on paper.’

The scrutiny here begins at the beginning, with the title, in its use of the term ‘defence forces.’ Ten years back, the last edition of the joint doctrine was titled, ‘Joint Doctrine of the Indian Armed Forces.’ A conflation of ‘defence services’ and ‘armed forces’ appears to have resulted in a bastardisation, with none the wiser. This, when India’s strategic mentor has gone from department of defence to war department!

The vision document is heavily caveated. The document is a ‘guideline’ for defence forces, but requires exertion for outcomes also by other stakeholders, such as the scientific community in relation to technical thresholds. In his foreword, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh notes the need for a Defence Vision 2047 as distinct from the Defence Forces 2047. If the document punches above its weight, why did the ministry not take ownership and instead placed the cart before the horse? It also includes aspects yet to be cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security. This confession begs the question: why the hurry?

An answer readily suggests itself: Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Chauhan - whose headquarters wrote it up - is due to retire soon. With little to show for movement on theaterisation – long projected as the core contribution of a CDS - this document must suffice. Therefore, it deems critical interrogation.

The major issues

The armed forces’ vision is predicated on a national vision of a Viksit Bharat, which presents India as ‘developed nation’ by 2047. While economists have weighed on its feasibility, critics foreground its implausibility, arguing that it takes more than just economic growth to get there.

Viksit Bharat is in turn predicated on Sashakt Bharat that has ‘absolute sovereignty,’ defined as ‘complete independence in strategic decision making.’ Apparently, India wishes to move further from the hardy ‘strategic autonomy.’ Even if globalization is a holdover from the post-Cold War liberal-internationalist phase, it is improbable that interdependence will reduce, especially when current-day India is casting about for multi-alignment.

To be sure, the HQ IDS has had little else to start-off with, given that the national security doctrine has been in the works now for close to a decade. Therefore, its recourse to the regime’s rhetoric to populate its opening paras on national vision. Even so, this is a departure from the mentioned joint doctrine, that instead echoed Constitutional values of the preamble, alighting on a reasonable national aim: ‘comprehensive national development.’ That the military has chosen to adopt the regime’s self-delusive taglines is only more evidence of the suspected politicization of the military.

The lazy connection the document draws between surakshit (secure) and atmanirbhar (self-reliant), as pillars of sashakt (empowered), is not unproblematic. There is no arguing self-reliance in the defence sector would be a feature of economic development, but by no means can it substitute for development per se, translated as prosperity for the masses.

Development is not growth or infrastructure, but is better gauged by the capabilities of the people. The Soviet Union’s example is that an over-developed defence sector hollows out a country. The example must reverse the perspective in the document: ‘(O)ur economic growth must match the pace and span of our strategic goals.’

Economically, military power has mostly ridden on the back of prior industrial capacity. For the defence sector to push the industrial applecart is to convert swords into ploughshares. Such is the case with defence atmanirbharta being used to kick-start the somewhat languid manufacturing sector. The expectation of delivery from the scientific, technological and industrial sectors is liable to be ‘little more than a well-worded illusion.’ The worry does not escape even General Chauhan. Curiously, there is no whiff of corruption, despite precedence of Bofors, Kargil coffins etc. and peer example of China.

Politically, even if the incidence of crony capitalism in the defence sector holds promise, the problem is that the moral authority of the uniform buttresses the electorally-sensitive regime-capitalist relationship. Recall, Germany’s big business interests backed Hitler and supported his rearmament program. In America, the pernicious influence of the military industrial complex was pointed out early enough: “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Institutionally, for the armed forces to argue that ‘an integrated civil-military approach, reinforcing the focus on defence and development, one complementing and reinforcing the other,’ is of a piece with the fashionable idea lately of fusionism, an idea “known to us from our vedic times.” The forces cannot be judge if defence sector-led manufacturing and industrial development is a valid proposition, leave alone whether it is a desirable direction. Under the guise of fusion, defence attachés are being put to what is patently not a military function: acting as vendors for defence sector capitalists.

Worrying phrases

An overstretch is in the egregious inclusion of ‘meritocratic’ in visualising the future military: ‘A modern, strong and combat ready military (lethal and meritocratic)…’ Meritocratic is set to be a rather vexed term soon. The military appears vigilant to the possibility and has in its introduction of the term here pre-empted what it may perceive as an emergent institutional threat. It is not for the military to determine its social composition. The position, reflective of the military’s sentiments, is a political position pleasing to their political masters.

In the document, there is certain reticence in engaging globally, with an over-emphasis on indigeneity of thought and practice. One of the seven ‘strategic priorities and goals’ - ‘strategic culture and climate’ - has this verbiage: ‘Our strategic outlook must be rooted in Indian knowledge and culture... Promote indigenous knowledge, take pride in our legacy and develop a nationalist outlook…. Colonial practices need to be shed.’ Elsewhere it exhorts: ‘The concept of self-reliance or Atmanirbharta… will help us develop new concepts/doctrines, tactics, systems and platforms for war fighting.’

Surely, the military is not oblivious to the contention in the political and social space on the idea of India. The regime’s conception of India as Hindu, in a departure from the Constitutional ideal of civic nationalism, is self-evident from its exertions in the educational domain. Over the coming years, new-fangled sainik schools are set to change the secular-liberal ethic of the officer corps. The agnipath scheme – with its inclination towards ‘all-India all-class’ – is already reshaping the social composition of the soldiery. Empowering, as the document has it, ‘ex-servicemen to maximise their potential towards strengthening nationalist efforts,’ is yet another tack amplifying regime-defined nationalism; and, mistakenly, presumes that wider society lacks a patriotic spirit.

If the windows of the military mind are kept open, fresh doctrinal and military-sociological winds blow in, preventing insularity. The military advances over last century have been in mimesis of peer militaries, beginning with the use of tanks or planes after the Great War; operational art of the Air-Land battle in the Cold War; the Revolution and Transformation in Military Affairs after the Cold War; and the current import of jargon as multi-domain and grey-zone operations. Drawing on a society goose-stepping its way to vishwaguru-dom puts a premium on the military’s receptivity to new and fresh ideas, irrespective of the origin.

Finally, the document has a word on the military’s roles: ‘ensuring our territorial integrity and internal stability which is essential to foster an environment conducive to growth and prosperity.’ This is a move away from the term, ‘internal security,’ advisedly used in the 2017 Joint Doctrine. Surreptitious shifts are dangerous; in this case the military appears to be identifying with dominant political forces. With growth deepening inequality, the link the military makes with prosperity is to fall for the regime’s chimera.

Spotting an opportunity

The document is rightly cognisant of the changing character of wars of today. Imagining the trends, it lays out a roadmap to prosecute such wars tomorrow. A military articulation, it is unexceptionable in its operational focus, other than being tight-lipped on ‘possible’ nuclear war. If the current-day and ongoing wars offer any lessons, it is against recourse to military power, implying that having more of it does not necessarily secure.

However, in its discussion of higher-order political aspects, the military has wittingly provided the wary regime its epaulette-laden shoulders to fire from. The document provides an renewed opportunity to discuss its major point: the relationship between defence and development. It’s formulation could do with being both problematised and politicised. The result may deflect the military from its desired trajectory, an eventuality it should prepare to receive with equanimity.