NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century (9 page)

G-20 (or something like it) may remain important, because it is the only forum where we have an equal voice. The grouping is, strictly speaking, not representative. But it has countries of sufficient weight to be able to carry the rest of the world: it enjoys a degree of legitimacy. What it lacks is sufficient consensus among the G-20 members, in part a result of its conjunction of developed and emerging economies, with their different interests. India does not see the G-20 as a substitute for other formal established institutions. Rather, it offers us a strategic platform and an opportunity to take the lead and to demonstrate how a new leadership association of this type can serve as a template for steering committees in other multilateral institutions—such as the UN or the IMF.

Given the complex nature of India’s interests, we will have to ensure that India has access to, or membership in, all the relevant forums that affect its interests. It also follows that we shall need to press for open and inclusive governance architectures and decision-making structures with these institutions.

India’s objective will be to play an active role in international institutions. But as it adopts this role, it necessarily follows that it will be increasingly asked to spell out its position on international norms. For long, India largely resisted norms and regimes that it saw as the vehicles of great power dominance. But as India grows more prominent, it will have to define a more positive vision of international norms and rules—and decide what norms to throw its weight behind.

India has also benefited from its engagement with new institutions and groupings like IBSA and BRICS. These ought to be made more robust, while simultaneously newer avenues of strategic engagement should be added: such as the Indian Ocean Region (going beyond the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium), Turkey, Indonesia, Iran, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), ‘Dialogue of Civilisations’, among others. Not all of these can be expected to be equally effective; but our active engagement with each of them should be seen as part of a strategy of broadening
our options and arenas in which we can exercise influence for different purposes.

International institutions that have an Africa focus should be of particular interest for India in both economic and political terms. India cannot match China in terms of investible resources and aid for Africa but its own equities are not inconsiderable: human resources, health and medicine, soft power, institution building, low-cost technology-driven solutions. Powers like the US may seek to piggyback on Indian equities in emerging areas like Africa. Working within international organizations concerned with Africa has upsides and downsides, both of which need careful evaluation. Above all, India should recognize that Africa is itself looking to leverage its relation with other major powers, and this gives India opportunities to enlarge its strategic space.

India must recognize and take advantage of its own extraordinary history in the evolution of international law and norms. It was an active participant in the creation of modern human rights norms. It has stood for a world order that was more equitable, just and non-discriminatory. It has been a major advocate of more rational security structures.

Norms do matter in international society. Nation states will, for the foreseeable future, remain the principal units of international society. But nation states—even those with the ability to enforce their will—operate within a context of international public opinion and norms. For all the emphasis on national power, the fact remains that, over the long duration of history, norms have come to be institutionalized in the international system, and have come to regulate wide areas of interstate behaviour.

Norms in the international system often mask the exercise of raw power. They are also hostage to the fact that enforcement of these norms is selective. It is often a pretext for the application of power. And even when the intentions are benign, judgements about what precise action is required in order to enforce a norm remain disputable. Any discourse on norms not allied with prudence can be self-defeating.

But equally there is no denying that the evolution of norms has largely been governed by a progressive agreement over certain moral imperatives: from the prohibition of slavery, the institutionalization of human rights, to the end of apartheid. It is therefore essential when thinking about international norms to have a clear diagnosis of the demand for these norms.

This is of particular importance for us, since the world
will be increasingly looking to India to shape global norms. Rather than being a passive observer, it is in India’s interests to proactively shape the evolution of these norms and the contexts of their application. This will require considerable investment in diplomatic and intellectual capacity. For example, India’s ability to engage with and shape international law is still relatively limited by the fact that there are few Indians with expertise or training in international law.

We must also recognize that norm-setting at the international level is now happening at many different levels. Norm-setting is increasingly being determined not just by formal institutions like the UN, but also by informal associations and networks, particularly in fast-changing economic and technology sectors. NGOs are also increasingly important in norm creation at an international level and in mobilizing public opinion. It is also the case that the creation of international regulatory norms in one area can have profound implications for our strategic choices in other areas. This overall picture has to be kept in mind.

India is often accused of not participating in the creation of international norms and of free riding on the current system. This is a debatable subject. We have to recognize that often it can amount to a tactic to pressure India to
do the Western powers’ bidding. India must not be shy of projecting its own track record on norm creation. Part of this may be an issue of diplomatic projection. It is often more effective and accurate to say ‘yes, but …’ than an outright ‘no’.

This is not merely a rhetorical point. Take the example of new norms on the international agenda like Responsibility to Protect or Democracy Promotion. Our commitment to important values like human rights, democracy and prevention of genocide must be very clear. And we should not be shy of projecting the fact that when we judged the circumstances to be right, and the instruments clearly defined, we have acted with full commitment on behalf of these values. India’s intervention in 1971, for instance, is one of the most successful cases of intervention on behalf of human rights—and well before current doctrines of Responsibility to Protect. But at the same time we need to make it clear to the international community that the circumstances under which armed intervention is warranted on behalf of these values needs to be very carefully weighed, and that universal norms and values cannot provide a fig leaf for the pursuit of great power interests.

India’s foreign and strategic policy should aim at using a variety of tools, including diplomacy and deterrence, to prevent the outbreak of armed conflict. Nevertheless, a prudent state must consider various possible scenarios, where diplomacy and deterrence may fail, and armed conflict becomes inevitable. This chapter on hard power looks at these possible scenarios, given India’s unique security environment. India’s military doctrine remains defensive and the set of recommendations are in the nature of considered responses to acts of aggression.

India’s hard power has as its instrumentalities the armed forces under the Ministry of Defence, the paramilitary forces and the Central Armed Police Forces under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the state police under the respective state governments. The armed forces constitute one of the instruments that deal with external threats while internal threats are dealt with primarily by forces
under the home ministry and state governments. Their main political objective and purpose is to ensure the creation of a stable and peaceful environment in order to facilitate maximum economic development concurrent with equitable growth. The political objective demands a peaceful international environment especially in our strategic neighbourhood that comprises the Asian land mass and the Indian Ocean littoral. The political objective also demands internal, political, social and economic stability. The role of hard power as an instrument of state is to remain ready to be applied externally or internally in pursuit of political objectives. Historically, the greatest threat to India is the combination of external threats during a period of internal instability.

The realm of external challenges requires hard power in the form of military power. These include, primarily, maintaining India’s territorial integrity which encompasses land, sea and airspace frontiers. It also includes, among other things, the protection of trade routes, access to resources and protection of the Indian diaspora. Considering the unresolved disputes with China and Pakistan, India’s borders with both these countries
continue to remain politically deadlocked, curtailing free movement of people and trade. Continuing boundary disputes and other potential political issues mean that there is also the threat of war that demands military preparations. Towards the east, attempts to connect India to South-East Asia through India’s Look East Policy have promise but still await fulfilment. In practice, the only direction in which India has greater freedom of projection is towards the Indian Ocean. Therefore the fundamental design that must underpin the shaping of India’s military power should be the leveraging of potential opportunities that flow from peninsular India’s location in the Indian Ocean, while concomitantly defending its land borders against Pakistan and China. The development of military power must therefore attain a significant maritime orientation. Presently, Indian military power has a continental orientation. To emerge as a maritime power should therefore be India’s strategic objective.

That both China and Pakistan are nuclear armed directly impacts the type of wars that can be fought. India has propounded the concept of conventional space being available under a nuclear overhang. But the limitations of conventional space significantly diminish the scope of achievable political objectives. The major factor that influences the constriction of political objectives
is the danger of escalation of war into the nuclear realm. Escalation is structurally intrinsic to war and is unpredictable as it involves an action and reaction chain between two independent wills. The decision to embark on war therefore will be weighed by the degree of risk that the political decision-maker is willing to take, and will depend on the issues at stake.

Beyond local border skirmishes, armed conflict will necessarily involve air power. Air power application in any war will first seek to neutralize the air assets of the adversary. It is aimed to achieve as much freedom for one’s own aircraft to operate without interference, as also to minimize the adversary’s ability to apply air power against one’s own assets. This process cannot be confined to a limited geographical area and could encompass airfields, aircraft and air defence systems, among other targets. The geographical spread of the conflict is therefore difficult to contain. Escalation can also be inadvertent due to political signals and military actions being misinterpreted in the fog of war. Dual-use assets complicate the danger of escalation as it is not possible to distinguish a conventional armed aircraft or missile from a nuclear one. Consequently, nuclear weapons constrict the traditional utility of military force and call for a redefinition of our notions of ‘victory’. The
challenge for the military establishment is to shape our hard power capabilities in tandem with India’s political objectives, while remaining within the ambit of the political and strategic logic imposed by nuclear weapons.

The shift to developing India’s maritime power is possible if we align the shaping of our hard power with the political objectives feasible under a nuclear overhang. The window of opportunity is available, as Pakistan is likely to be enmeshed in internal strife and the Afghanistan imbroglio for the next decade or so. China is likely to remain focused on creating an environment that will facilitate the maintenance of its economic growth and internal stability. While Pakistan is preoccupied, India can make the shift by transforming its hard power capability in coherence with its political objectives. This should facilitate some shift of resources from the Pakistan border and building its defensive capability along the Sino-Indian border. Concurrently, resources can be allocated to develop its maritime capability and undertake a maritime shift in military power. This would also call for concomitant investment and development to enlarge our space assets, given that militaries are increasingly dependent on space assets for effective combat capability.

Capture of significant amounts of Pakistan’s territory continues to be the primary military objective underpinning the doctrine and organization of the Indian armed forces. However, the capture of significant amounts of territory is no longer a valid proposition, owing to the nuclear equation. Also, except for the desert areas bordering Rajasthan and Gujarat, the density of population poses a danger of triggering humanitarian crises that may dwarf the advantages of military thrusts. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistani Punjab, where extremism is rife, we could find ourselves ensnared in a costly counter-insurgency campaign. The potency of insurgencies has also increased due to the technological empowerment of small groups, which can inflict significant physical and psychological damage through acts of terrorism.

The hard power strategy adopted by us will have to cover the spectrum that includes sending a political signal through military means at the lower end (through cyber or precision air attack) to capture of territory considered feasible under nuclear conditions at the higher end. The important issue is to shape our capabilities so that we effectively expand the range of practical options available under the nuclear overhang. The context of the particular
situation will determine the range of actions. At the high end of the spectrum of usable military power we will need to review our prevailing operational doctrine and structures. The capability that India should acquire is one that enables us to make shallow thrusts that are defensible in as many areas as feasible along the international border and the LoC. This will require significant restructuring of the India’s strike capability.

At the lower end of the options spectrum is the employment of cyber and/or air power in a punitive mode. The use of air/cyber power has advantages over any land-based strategy: it could be swift, more precise and certainly more amenable to being coordinated with our diplomatic efforts. Compared to any land-based options, the use of air/cyber power will come across as more restrained. To be sure, such action could invite retaliatory response from Pakistan. It is essential therefore that our coercive strategy not only caters for offensive use of air/cyber power but also for a defensive role. The principal role for the military will be denying Pakistani forces any ingress into Indian territory and preparing for the possibility of wider escalation. The crucial choice here requires a decision to move away from the paradigm focused on capture of territory to a paradigm based on destructive ability. Destructive capability will include air
power, missiles and long-range guns as the central vectors. This would entail restructuring and also spare resources that we could deploy against China and yet retain the capability to switch resources to the west.

A Sino-Indian armed conflict will also be fought under a nuclear overhang. Though both countries have a doctrine of ‘No First Use’, the nuclear factor can be expected to impose caution on political decision-makers on both sides. The stakes at issue will again determine the degree of risk in political calculations. Generally, the nuclear factor can be expected to limit the scale of conflict and impact the scope of feasible political objectives.

Our frontiers with China have been mostly stable for some years now. However, there is a possibility that in certain circumstances China could assert its territorial claims (especially in the Arunachal sector or Ladakh) by the use of force. China might resort to localized territorial grabs. The most likely areas for such bite-sized operations are those parts of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) where both sides have different notions of where the LAC actually runs. These places are known. We cannot also entirely dismiss the possibility of a major military offensive in
Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh. But such an offensive will not come as a bolt from the blue—there will be some warning in terms of an overall deterioration of diplomatic ties and significant military preparation by the Chinese as long as we have sufficient and reliable surveillance and intelligence capability.

In either case—whether China resorts to a limited probe or to a larger offensive—our aim should be the restoration of status quo ante. But this does not mean that we will have to resort to a purely defensive strategy. Indeed, given that the combat ratio and logistic networks favour China and that the attacker will always have the advantage of tactical (if not strategic) surprise, we will need a mix of defensive and offensive capabilities that can leverage the advantages that the terrain offers. Here again, we need to be clear about what kinds of offensive capabilities will be useful. The prevailing assumption that we should raise and deploy a ‘mountain strike corps’ against China is problematic. For it simply risks replicating all the problems with our existing strike corps under worse geographic and logistic conditions.

A more effective military doctrine would involve responding to limited land-grabs by China by undertaking similar action across the LAC: a strategy of quid pro quo. There are several areas where the local tactical and operational advantage rests with us. These areas should be
identified and earmarked for limited offensive operations on our part. More important, such a strategy will need the creation of infrastructure for mobility and housing troops. It would also entail building up our existing defensive formations. But this could be done as part of a larger rationalization of force structure by transferring some forces that are currently deployed for operations against Pakistan. Though border infrastructure is under development, its progress has been slack and requires a major boost to speed up its implementation. Such a strategy will not only wrest the initiative from the Chinese, but will also be useful for our diplomatic efforts to restore status quo ante.

In the event of a major offensive by China, we cannot resort to a strategy of proportionate response. Rather we should look to leverage our asymmetric capabilities to convince the Chinese to back down. Three broad capabilities will be required to do so. First, we must be able to immediately trigger an effective insurgency in the areas occupied by Chinese forces. This would require careful preparation in advance. Special Forces could orchestrate the campaign. We also need to induct locals into paramilitary units and train them to switch to the guerrilla mode when required. We must acquire intelligence of all logistic and supply routes from Tibet
into the occupied areas. Concurrently, we must develop the capability to interdict China’s logistics and operational infrastructure in Tibet. We also need to earmark locations from which the insurgency will be operationally and logistically supported. All of these, it bears emphasizing, will require preparation well in advance. The fork in the road we need to choose is the politico-military strategy of quid pro quo and asymmetry as a means to defend our borders with China.

The second prong of our asymmetric strategy is to accelerate the integration of the frontier regions and its people by speeding up and improving communication infrastructure with the mainland. The third prong of our asymmetric strategy would have to be naval. We should be in a position to dominate the Indian Ocean region. The details of such operational capabilities are well understood. But it is worth emphasizing that such capability will require the development of our naval bases in the offshore island chains (especially the Andaman and Nicobar Islands) and of amphibious capabilities. The latter will require specialized and dedicated amphibious forces. Concurrent with the development of our naval capabilities should be a major thrust to exploit the potential of our exclusive economic zone in the Indian Ocean. Ocean development would not only include exploitation of the ocean resources
but also the development of the infrastructure of our ports, connectivity to the hinterland, shipbuilding and ship repair capability, among other things. Due to the multiplicity of the agencies involved, there is need to establish a maritime commission. The crucial decision we face here concerns the quantum of additional resources that we must devote for developing our maritime power.