Evolution of Indian Strategic Thought-1

[Pranav]

Eitehr way he is calling US on their role in TSP nuclearization right?

Yes, but to make judgments for the future one needs to understand motivations.

[ramana]

For us everything is data. Its for us to make up our minds. So far data was lacking.

[brihaspati]

Pranav, What is debatable about that?

The charitable view is in 1984, the US looked away while PRC transferred the nukes to TSP. The debatable version is did they agree to it? The probable Cold War exigency was the need to ward of a SU retaliation on TSP to secure their Afghan deployment. In 1990s the Clinton Admin did not pursue the ring magents issue or other transfers. They did not prusue the missile transfers from PRC and NoKo. Instead their official Eihorn made dupliltitous statements about Sagarika etc in Congress to justify the TSP arming by PRC. All these measures added to Indian insecurity. Can you dispute that?


Jhujar, US is helping who? Please be more clear in your writing and thinking..

pankajs, They have joined forces in the past and continue to do so in some directions eg propping up TSP. IMHO they are the two faces of the same problem of a hegemonistic world order. US provides the intellectual and monetary capablity for this NWO which allows them to marshall world opinon to enforce the writ and PRC is the other side of that by being the rogue from whom the US 'protects'.

So casting them as two separate entities will lead to wrong conclusions.

They will devour each other as the mythical two headed bird. And the other factor is demographic changes underway any way.

Supporting US with Indian intellectual capital is feeding the system.

Indian capital should be to support Indian interestss.

It is indeed a mistake to think that there are not convergences between China and US on several strategic targets. They can form a block where they think their long term interests are threatened in common. They are each trying to use each other, will sli each others throat when opportune - but will not do so until opportune. They are like two scheming mistresses in the harem of an an aging emperor. The existing remnant successor system (financial+crime) to the Brit empire is the aging emperor.

[ramana]

Second Installment of KS garu's last few articles:

India's Strategic Challenges

India’s strategic challenges
K. Subrahmanyam Posted online: Sat Feb 04 2012, 03:34 hrs
India and the US, with their shared values, have every reason to form a lasting partnership

Among the strategic challenges facing India are those relating to defence policy, nuclear strategy, and governance. India is the world’s fourth-largest military power and has fought five wars against neighbours that are today nuclear-armed revisionist states advancing territorial claims against it. But India has lacked an ability to formulate future-oriented defence policies, managing only because of short-term measures, blunders by its adversaries, and force superiority in its favour. The cardinal mistake of India’s leaders was flouting the principle that chiefs of staff should never be in command of their forces. Separating command and staff functions enables the service chiefs to focus on defence planning and policymaking, including procurement, human resources, and military diplomacy. Theatre commanders handle the administration, daily management, operational planning, and operational training of forces. This is the practice of all large, modern armed forces, but there is no demand to rectify this shortcoming in India.

At present, defence policymaking is ad hoc, short-term, and service-specific. The state of readiness of forces and jointness of operations, training, and planning have not been addressed. Although a Chief of Defence Staff has been discussed, the position is not in harmony with India’s size and democratic structure; a Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee under a full-time chairman is more appropriate. The National Security Council, which had been expected to address policy incoherence and inadequate strategic planning, burdened itself with executive responsibilities. The services intelligence directorates are ill-equipped for long-term intelligence assessments, and area specialists are few, suggesting a greater need for think tanks. The armed forces have also not fully though through important aspects of nuclear policy and strategy. In a nuclear era, the role of the military becomes, essentially, preventing wars from breaking out through appropriate weapons acquisitions, force deployment patterns, the development of infrastructure, military exercises, and defence diplomacy. This is a far more demanding task than peacetime operations in a pre-nuclear age.

India is a reluctant nuclear power. After the Bangladesh war, India opted for a “recessed deterrence”, but this position could not be sustained after a 1979 intelligence assessment that Pakistan was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons. Indo-Pakistani nuclear deterrence is often viewed in the West through the prism of the Cold War, with doubts about the viability of India’s no-first-use doctrine and concerns about an arms race. But theirs is not an unconstrained competition, and India’s position has always been that deterrence is not proportionate to the number of warheads a country faces. No-first-use is also at the essence of deterrence, as the threat of a first strike is plain aggression. Although China was first in announcing a no-first-use policy, its caveat is that areas considered parts of China are excluded. The more important challenge with China is not nuclear confrontation but its defying international regimes and norms.

As a revisionist state espousing terror as state policy, Pakistan’s conception of deterrence is radically different from that generally accepted by the international community. Pakistan’s lesson from various crises over the last twenty-five years was that India had been successfully deterred. Other than perhaps during Operation Parakram, India, not being a revisionist state, has never been deterred because it never contemplated aggression against Pakistan. Successive Indian governments have proclaimed that a stable and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interests, but these sentiments have never been reciprocated. Given Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent, India must resort to engagement as the only viable strategy against terrorism. India is handicapped because Pakistan defines itself as anti-Indian, and its army is against developing commercial or social contacts with India. As Pakistan requires American aid, the US has a better chance of increasing Pakistani dependency in order to persuade it to give up terrorism as a state policy.

A final note on governance: It is a myth that India’s political classes submit themselves to public accountability at every election. India’s first-past-the-post elections, in which as little as 25 per cent support can produce victory, results in patronage politics that favour some sections of the population at the expense of the majority. Democracy therefore does not always result in the fair delivery of goods and services to the entire population. Non-inclusive growth is consequently not a result of globalisation but of patronage politics. Politicians also often have a vested interest in keeping voters poor, as it costs less to buy their votes. As long as the first-past-the-post system prevails, corruption, caste politics, and the poor delivery of goods and services by the state will continue, and the elimination of poverty and illiteracy will be hampered. The simplest solution is run-off elections if candidates are unable to attain a majority, but second-preference voting is another possibility.

India’s foreign relations: The transformation of the Indo-US relationship from estranged democracies to strategic partners is bound to take time, and relations should not be measured by the number of successful transactions. The shared values of both countries — democracy, pluralism, tolerance, openness, and respect for freedoms and human rights — acquire a greater prominence in building a more peaceful, prosperous, inclusive, secure, and sustainable world. The relationship must therefore be assessed on its progress in setting up structures that make it more effective in countering the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to terrorism, failing states, organised crime, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation, there are threats to various global commons — such as international waters, cyber space, and outer space — which cannot be addressed unilaterally or through NATO-like military alliances. In any other age, China’s rapid and inevitable rise would also probably have led to war, but that is unthinkable in a nuclearised and globalised era. US advantages in its competition with China include China’s ageing and unfavourable demographics, US immigration policies, and its culture of innovation. But to sustain its preeminence, the US still has every incentive to enter into a partnership with India, a democratic, pluralistic, and secular country with a young population that will soon exceed China’s.

What about Indian interests? If not sabotaged by poor governance and corruption, India’s growth will make it the world’s third-largest economy. It could then try to develop further on its own, but will be unable to bridge the vast gaps between it and the US and China. It could cooperate with China, but the Chinese model is inadequate for a diverse country such as India. Finally, it could partner with the US, a country that is home to a large Indian diaspora and shares India’s values. Other countries — including Japan, France, and Germany — face similar concerns as India. Together, the leaders of the democratic world must face the combined challenges of authoritarianism and jehadism, which cannot be countered by military means alone. Comprehensive and cooperative action by democracies, who constitute more than half the world’s population for the first time in history, is therefore necessary. Global governance must rely upon networks of bilateral strategic partnerships among democratic powers that manage rather than impose outcomes, and provide a powerful response to the challenges they face.


Indian strategic thinker K. Subrahmanyam passed away on February 2, 2011. This article is the second of two adapted by Dhruva Jaishankar from four of Subrahmanyam’s unpublished essays on grand strategy, Indian foreign relations, defence policy, and nuclear deterrence

I guess there are no more articles in the pipeline.

We are now on our own.

[Prem]

The debatable point is whether the motivation was anti-Soviet, as KS wanted to believe, or whether it was anti-India.

Most probably both. Basically war at this juncture is not in our interest as it will weaken us. War in 15-20 years will be in our interest as it will weaken the anti-Indian alliances done chori chori.

[Pranav]

For us everything is data. Its for us to make up our minds.

That is what it should be.

So far data was lacking.

The data has been there, but problem is that indoctrinated minds cannot process the data.

[ramana]

There you go again!
Do you get it sometimes its better to appear unable to process data?


Maybe you should read the Panchatantra tale
Brahmin and the Tiger?

PS: Who are you calling indoctrinated mind?

[Pranav]

There you go again!
Do you get it sometimes its better to appear unable to process data?

Sure. Playing dumb. But one never knows whether someone actually believes what he is saying!

PS: Who are you calling indoctrinated mind?

No shortage of those, from Nehru to MMS. The education system is not designed to produce clear minds.

[ramana]

Pranav, We are discussing an article by late KS garu. And you throw in indoctrinated minds of JLN to MMS in this mix. How am I supposed to take it?

it sometimes helps to take of those colored glasses.

For sake of keeping the thread going am going to delete your posts as they are OT.

[Pranav]

Pranav, We are discussing an article by late KS garu. And you throw in indoctrinated minds of JLN to MMS in this mix. How am I supposed to take it?

it sometimes helps to take of those colored glasses.

For sake of keeping the thread going am going to delete your posts as they are OT.

No problem. KS occurs in a context. The point applies to KS too. Is he trying to appear unable to process data? What does he believe?

Here is a data point from India-US thread:

So I tell them, 'Don't worry about yourself, but ask your son and grandson where they want to go to. China or the US? And you will have the answer!'

I would go a step further. Where would you be able to build a Balaji temple or a Meenakshi temple in China, which you can in the US?

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/s ... 110420.htm

[Prem]

[quote="Pranav

So I tell them, 'Don't worry about yourself, but ask your son and grandson where they want to go to. China or the US? And you will have the answer!'I would go a step further. Where would you be able to build a Balaji temple or a Meenakshi temple in China, which you can in the US?

So staying in India and attracting Ameeri and Chini is not an option/dream at all?

[JE Menon]

Where does he say that?

[ramana]

X-posted....

About a decade+ ago,I had occasion to speak with a very knowledgable former For.Min. from another land. He compared China and India and said that China had arisen,understood its potential and was executing its policies to achieve it on the global stage,while India still was appearing to be ignorant of its vast potential and inactive.

Though we have come some distance from that statement,under the MMS doctrine and our policy towards Pak especially, we have acted like domestic lackeys looking at Washington for advice most of the time. Washington also looks at us mainly in the context of "limiting " or "halting " China's expanding role in the IOR/Asia,or losing US jobs to "Bangalore"!

The rise of China is unstoppable. It's own demands from its population and internal market drives it on,just like India's.How both nations can prosper without a spat is the trillion dollar Q?

The US is in decline,though still possessing the most massive military force in the globe. The "strategic relationship" it looks for from India is mainly military,"meshing" the Indian armed forces with its own as a loyal non-NATO ally,complementing its relationship with favourite rent-boy Pak,which like a junkie hooked onto a dangerous harmful drug or like a nymphomaniac it just cannot give up.Therein lies the problem with India,it is not possible for "my enemy's lover to be my friend".

Good summation of the opposing view to KS garu's views on the inevitability of US seeking Indian support.

[Pranav]

Frustrated with the Syrian impasse, some voices are calling for a "concert of democracies" to bypass the UN - http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 442.column . It is quite possible that events will move in such a direction.

What should the Indian position be?

It is feasible for India to be a member of both such a concert of democracies and an organization like the SCO?

Or would the price of membership be too high - i.e. imposing sanctions, participation in multilateral military efforts etc?

[abhishek_sharma]

Empires of the mind

[ramana]

Empires of the mind

Empires of the mind
Sanjaya Baru Posted online: Wed Feb 08 2012, 02:01 hrs

In strategic affairs, no one had more influence on PM than K. Subrahmanyam

Last week, on the occasion of the first death anniversary of the Bhishmapithamaha of modern Indian strategic thought, the late K. Subrahmanyam, this newspaper paid tribute to him by publishing posthumously his last essays on India’s grand strategy.

Subrahmanyam was no ivory tower academic or a retired civil servant unleashing pent-up wisdom on the public. In service and after, he was actively engaged in scholarly debates, public discourse and offered policy advice on matters pertaining to defence and nuclear strategy, national security and governance. I saw him do this as the head of a think-tank, then as a media analyst and finally as an adviser to the prime minister.

Subrahmanyam’s views were sought and seriously considered by successive prime ministers, from Indira Gandhi to Manmohan Singh. Given his academic bent of mind, Singh always turned to thinking persons for advice on all policy matters, and in the realm of strategic affairs and foreign policy no one had more influence on him than Subrahmanyam.

When drafting his first major speech as PM on “India and the World”, for the Hindustan Times Summit in November 2004, Singh asked me to consult with Subrahmanyam. The final text (available on the PMO website pmindia.nic.in) is a mix of the thinking of the PM himself and of Subrahmanyam.

Singh’s second major public speech on India’s grand strategy was delivered at the India Today Conclave on February 25, 2005. Taken together, the two speeches set out what strategic affairs analyst C. Raja Mohan later dubbed as the “Manmohan Singh Doctrine” — (a) that the changing weight of India in the global economy is a factor shaping its weight in global affairs; (b) that new opportunities have now become available to India as a consequence of its economic growth and openness, enabling it to improve relations with all major powers; (c) that India’s openness and globalisation now made it possible to deepen South-South relations and relations with South and Southeast Asian neighbours through regional integration; and (d) that as an open society and an open economy India can build bridges with the world on the foundations of its democratic, liberal, plural and secular credentials.

These four elements of the Manmohan Singh Doctrine, so to speak, gel with Subrahmanyam’s vision of India’s “grand strategy”.

Encouraged by the positive response to his worldview both at home and abroad, Singh chose to take this vision to the leadership of India’s armed forces when he addressed the Combined Commander’s Conference in October 2005. His first address to them as PM, in October 2004, was drafted by the then national security adviser J.N. Dixit. That speech was never made public and only a sanitised version full of inanities was released to the media that, understandably, ignored it.

However, in preparing his second address, he sought Subrahmanyam out. I was given the task of taking the PM’s own notes to Subrahmanyam, to his modest DDA flat in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, and bringing the latter’s handwritten drafts back to the PM. The final speech was a mix of the two wise men’s thoughts, my only contribution being the quote from Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which reminded the defence services that “From the strength of the treasury the army is born”!

Given the importance of the text, I was convinced that at least this speech should not get converted into an inane press release and that the nation and the world must be made aware of the PM’s views. The PM agreed and the full text was published.

Drawing on Subrahmanyam’s views on India’s “grand strategy”, Singh summed up: “Our strategy has to be based on three broad pillars: First, to strengthen ourselves economically and technologically; second, to acquire adequate defence capability to counter and rebut threats to our security; and, third, to seek partnerships both on the strategic front and on the economic and technological front to widen our policy and developmental options.”

Every major initiative that Singh was able to take, within the constraints of domestic political compulsions, in the past seven years has been in pursuit of this vision.

Subrahmanyam made two major and specific contributions to Singh’s foreign and strategic policy. First, he led the PM’s Task Force on Global Strategic Developments and provided the roadmap for the strategic partnership between India and the United States based on India’s emergence as a “knowledge power”. The core of his ideas in this as yet unpublished report has found public expression in last week’s posthumously published essay. (‘India’s Grand Strategy’, IE, February 3)

Singh and Subrahmanyam were equally persuaded by Winston Churchill’s famous assertion that the “empires of the future will be empires of the mind”. That knowledge, not weapons, is the currency of power in the new world, and India must strengthen the entire pyramid of education, bottom up.

Second, he urged Singh to convene a “Jammu & Kashmir Roundtable” to provide a platform for a domestic dialogue with the widest possible cross-section of public opinion in the state, as a parallel to the bilateral dialogue between Singh and the then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf. Taken together, the bilateral dialogue and the roundtable process altered the environment in the state and the region, enabling all concerned to withstand the impact of several terrorist attempts to disrupt the dialogue and peace process, till the dastardly Mumbai attacks of November 2008.

For all his mastery over global affairs and national security, Subrahmanyam always maintained that the biggest hurdles in India’s tryst with destiny were self-imposed and at home. If India gets its domestic policy right, it will secure its place in world affairs.

The writer is director for Geo-economics and Strategy, International Institute for Strategic Studies, and honorary senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, [email protected]

[ramana]

My tribute to KS Garu written a year ago.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 8#p1031338

------------------
KS Subrahmanyam : A tribute


Ramana


K.Subrahmanyam, the doyen of Indian strategic thinkers passed away on Feb 2., 2011 at the age of 82. Since then many rich tributes have been written by those who knew him. Unlike them I did not know him face to face. I knew him by occasional e-mail only. To me he was Bishma Pitamaha and Chanakya personified due to his unwavering focus on Indian security and his vast knowledge of statecraft. He left a deep impact on my thinking about strategic matters. We don't know much about his early life except from the tributes written about him, Meera Shankar writes he was inspired as youth with Nehru's “tryst with destiny” speech. Soon after he stood first in the 1951 IAS batch at a young age. We don't know about his personal life but P.R. Chari recalls he put himself through college and took care of his siblings. All these show his humble beginnings and his sense of family. He must have been outstanding in his state cadre that he was moved to New Delhi in ten years. After that there was no looking back. Over a career spanning the next two and half decades he dominated the Indian strategic community with his clear thinking and level headed decisions on matters of national interest. He headed the IDSA for two terms. After his retirement he took up writing to educate and inform the general public about strategic matters. He was on many Track Two groups to carry dialog with interlocutors all over the world. After the Kargil war, he headed the Kargil Review Committee which led to many reforms. He was appointed to head many task forces to continue to provide the benefit of his knowledge and experience. He strode the Indian strategic scene as a colossus for fifty years. He was truly the Eminence Grise of India.


KS was encyclopedic in his knowledge and willingly shared it. He was a realist but his realism is based on Bhisma's teachings in the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata and not any recent Western thinker. He knew the writings of the different authorities in international affairs and their limited applicability to Indian situation. He was singularly driven in his quest to advance Indian interests. His forte was strategic decision making at national level way before it became a discipline. He had an innate ability to provide a balanced decision taking into account the risks and rewards together with available resources. His recommendations were clear and unambiguous. He wrote numerous books, newspaper articles and developed a body of strategic opinion. He taught without appearing to teach as Rory Medcalf recounts. And every shisya of his felt he had his undivided attention. A true mark of a guru.


The Sixties were a tumultuous decade in which India saw three wars on two borders, lost two Prime Ministers, had a massive devaluation and saw the nuclear ground shifting from beneath her feet. The question earlier in the Fifties was, when would India test and not if. The Sixties saw China race ahead with its nuclear tests and to add to the insecurity the NPT was being pushed. In those uncertain times KS emerged with a clear view of how to deal with the issues. Of his many accomplishments he had three main ones. First by advocating keeping India out of NPT he ensured the scientists had the time to develop expertise and allow the political leadership to exercise the nuclear option. Secondly by advocating intervention in East Pakistan, he ensured that the military threat on western borders is minimized. Recall in 1965 Pakistan resorted to armed force twice in Rann of Kutch and Kashmir. And thirdly supporting the Indo-US nuclear deal he envisaged the end of the sanctions in place after the 1974 test. He thus worked to ensure the tryst does not turn into a mirage.


There is no direct evidence of a grand strategy of the modern Indian Independence movement. There is no single document that describes the endeavor. However one can infer from the speeches, writings and actions of a pantheon of national leaders like Tilak, Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru that there were three goals of the movement. The primary goal was to end colonial rule and get rid of the British. The secondary goal was to create a modern Indian state and reclaim its status prior to the beginning of the colonial era. The tertiary goal was to prevent further fragmentation of the sub-continent.

KS belonged to the generation that implemented the second and third goals which are still a work in progress. One can understand his world view through this prism. We realize how his actions and support furthered these two goals. The support for the nuclear option is part of the creation of the modern Indian state and all the power that goes with it. Modern India was not to be subject to coercion ever again. His support for Indian interests by tilting towards Soviet Union was due to the US support for Pakistan and later China. Later when the FSU collapsed he rightly concluded that India needs to remove the US mis -perceptions which plagued the wilderness 90s. When the Bush administration offered the nuclear deal he seized the opportunity to remove the sanctions in effect since the 1974 test.


Over the last two years he was advocating the development of a knowledge economy that would develop synergy with the US to take the engagement to the next stage. He foresaw the US demographic shift would require Indian knowledge resources to retain competitiveness. He also advocated good governance as a way to reduce disparity and dissipate the million mutinies inside India. There are still a few issues to be resolved: Af-Pak connundrum, dealing with rising China with an economically spent US, new dawn in the Middle East so on and so forth.


It would be a fitting tribute to follow through these ideas and realize his resolve to ensure the tryst with destiny happens. While we remember him in words we need to be true to his teachings and develop a holistic approach to issues within India and globally to realize.
--------------------------
i still don't find any more words to add to this. I realize many thinkers who were close to him are realizing his true genius.

KS garu was so smart he used those who thought they were using him!!!!

Recall this remark a few years from now.

[ramana]

My comment about the MMS speech quoted by Sanjay Baru is what was the goal for the strategy? Strategy without a goal is only tactics.

[ramana]

K.P. Nayar

The Gentle Strategist

THE GENTLE STRATEGIST
- A.K. Damodaran and India’s relations with China
Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar


Ambady Krishnan Damodaran, a guiding light for an entire generation of diplomats, died two weeks ago at a time when his wisdom was needed most. Such a statement about someone who was ninety years old is apt to be received with scepticism even in a country where prime ministers are in their late seventies and governors are appointed after they cross into their eighties. But this columnist became convinced that Damodaran’s guidance would even now have served the nation after re-reading last fortnight his writings and the transcripts of his speeches delivered not very long ago.

The most pressing reason why India needs people like Damodaran can be found now in a speech — to cite one example — he delivered at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in the 1990s. “I have watched India-China relations from near and from afar, from all over the world,” Damodaran told the IGNCA audience, “the fact that this troubled border between the two countries had only three incidents in 30 years suggests that this is one of the quieter borders in the world.”

How prophetic! Last year, China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, told his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna, that for 40 years not a shot has been fired across the border between the two countries. Periodically, in recent years, those with an agenda of worsening India-China relations have manufactured tales of trouble on the disputed border, at times even concocting the death of Indian border personnel, as part of an attempt to whip up war hysteria. From time to time, sections of the Indian media have been complicit in this conspiracy.

Damodaran’s observations about the border, born out of his extended engagement with Beijing, long predated Yang’s conversation with Krishna. It ought to be a sensible reminder to Indians that very little has changed on the ground along the India-China border in four decades.

Damodaran added that “although India-China bilateral obsession is very interesting but the world is not interested”. True to his gentle demeanour and inoffensive nature, Damodaran was being charitable to the conspiracy theorists, some of whom draw their inspiration from abroad, when he merely said that the “obsession is very interesting”. Most serious books about Chinese foreign policy do not take into account the India-China border dispute at all, he pointed out. As for the future, Damodaran said: “I personally would not hurry.” He recommended “the famous formula of 1961 July [which] R.K. Nehru and Zhang Wenjin evolved in their talks… ‘Either solve the problem immediately by official talks or leave it to the politicians to discuss, if that is not enough, leave it to the shelf and let destiny decide’. That I think is a sort of attitude which we can take. We are two large nations, made not to worry about one momentary episode in our long histories,” he philosophized.

Zhang Wenjin was the chief Chinese representative to the first round of the Sino-Indian meeting of government officials on their boundary questions. He was later ambassador to Pakistan. R.K. Nehru was the foreign secretary and, later, ambassador to China.

Beyond Autonomy: Roots of India’s Foreign Policy, which Damodaran published in 2000, is a collection of his papers written mostly after the end of the Cold War. It includes one perceptive speech he delivered at New Delhi’s India International Centre slightly earlier.

Damodaran brought out Jawaharlal Nehru: A Communicator and Democratic Leader in 1997 when Nehru was rapidly becoming unfashionable and criticism was mounting against his policies in a nation that ought to be grateful even today for what he gave its people — a strong backbone to stand erect at home as well as abroad.

Damodaran edited with his diplomat colleague, Uma Shankar Bajpai, who could be described as the architect of today’s IIC, India’s Foreign Policy: The Indira Gandhi Years and edited with E.S. Reddy four volumes of V.K. Krishna Menon’s speeches at the United Nations. Reddy worked for the UN secretariat for 35 years: for 21 of those years he was the UN’s principal officer in charge of global action against apartheid.

Maybe a decade or two from now, after the proverbial whirlwind is harvested by those who have sown the wind in our time in Iraq, Iran and the region of the Arab Spring — not to speak of Europe hit by its current crisis — these four volumes of Krishna Menon’s speeches may turn out to be illuminating for another generation that no longer remembers the feisty Indian minister in Nehru’s cabinet.

Last year, Kishore Mahbubani, who was Singapore’s equivalent of South Block’s foreign secretary from 1993-98, now Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, spoke at a largely attended gathering in New Delhi on the subject, “Will India and China grow together or grow apart?”

Answering a question at the end of his lecture, Mahbubani said that he was struck during frequent visits to China by a complete lack of animosity towards India and Indians. While on Indian television pundits hold forth about the danger that China poses for India, it was a wholly contrary experience that he encounters during interviews he does in China. The Chinese rarely say anything unfavourable about India.

Also speaking in New Delhi, but almost two decades earlier, Damodaran reminisced about his time as a diplomat in Beijing from August 1963 to November 1965. It was the most difficult time in India-China relations, when wounds from the border conflict were still open: “Looking back 30 years later, what one can recapture is the ease and comfort with which we used to go about Beijing in those politically difficult days. The ordinary people of China, the merchants, the shopkeepers, the servants, the Chinese staff in the embassy were not hostile to us in spite of the enormous political resentment on both sides. India meant to most of them a distant but friendly western country and Indians were never made to feel unwelcome. This is the reason why so many of us, who were posted in Beijing, look back to our days there with nostalgia.”

Damodaran’s accounts are not unlike those by Brajesh Mishra, Kishan S. Rana and others who served with great distinction in Beijing during very difficult periods in India-China relations. Those Indians in public life, the media and the strategic community who are constantly trying to match their country against China, and instill an inferiority complex among Indians in the process, ought to think hard about identical comments by Damodaran and Mahbubani although they are separated by some 20 years.

In Beyond Autonomy: Roots of India’s Foreign Policy, Damodaran, who went to jail during the Quit India Movement, recalls an article by Mahatma Gandhi in 1942 in Harijan that traces the roots of independent India’s foreign policy. “Gandhiji said that there was no alternative to total autonomy in decision-making,” Damodaran writes. “This is the underlying principle which led to compulsive movement of Jawaharlal Nehru towards non- alignment… Nehru refused to accept easier options and chose a complex policy in which Moscow, Washington and London would all be a part of our diplomatic activity… Non-alignment thus became a negation of a negation of sovereignty.”

This book has very many light tales as well. These days when Union ministers, chief ministers, members of Parliament and officials are jet-setting the globe in complete disregard of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s pleas for austerity in travel, Damodaran recalls a time which ought to make today’s Indian diplomats wistful of the past. “The real advantage about a Peking posting for an Indian in those days was the total freedom from visitors, official and non-official: no protocol work, no liaising with hotels and travel agencies, no expeditions to antique shops.” In other cities like Dubai, London or New York, “antique shops” would be substituted by VIP shopping for electronic goods or clothing.

[brihaspati]

But really, who thinks that the shenanigans on the border were really ever so serious? Was India really ever interested in damaging China or Chinese interests? If so, it would not have blustered so grandly about Sinkiang and put in a criminally neglected army there for possible slaughter. If it even gave up on symbolic gestures like being defiant on AP, or hosting the Dalai Lama, its own countrymen will become suspicious. But frankly speaking - nothing was ever done that would cause pain to China seriously. Even hosting HHDL, is in a way kind of hostage keeping - a type of enusring "peace" from China.

China after all gained territories it never had before - India lost territory. So why should not there be "peace"? Has India since then done anything that causes serious takleef in Chinese power structure? !!!

[SSridhar]

From a speech by NSA Shiv Shankar Menon at the IDSA conference on Non-Traditional Security issues:

I would draw three lessons from an Indian point of view:

* It would be useful if we were to also rank and deal with our non-traditional security challenges from this point of view, examining how they could and do affect our ability to transform India.
* When security challenges are looked at in this manner, India’s strengths could well be in asymmetric domains – cyber, nuclear and space – which require not just (the creation and design of) capabilities but also imagination (in doctrines and uses of those capabilities).
* Thirdly, traditional or hard security issues should not be under-estimated. There is an overwhelming need to undertake the hard power military modernisations and revolutions and internal security reforms necessary to defend our increasingly complex society and economy. We had a vivid reminder of this only yesterday in the terrorist attack on Israeli Embassy personnel in a vehicle not far from here.

[Arav]

India needs ‘NonAlignment 2.0', new policy report says

NonAlignment 2.0 chalks out foreign and strategic policy for India

Warning that the time for India to get its act together is now because of the favourable growth prospects, demographic profile and international environment it faces — all of which may subsequently change — a group of foreign policy experts released a report here on Tuesday, NonAlignment 2.0: A foreign and strategic policy for India in the 21st century, which identifies the basic principles and drivers that would make the country a leading player on the world stage while preserving its strategic autonomy and value system.

Unveiled before a packed audience of present and former National Security Advisers, Foreign Secretaries, Ambassadors and High Commissioners and policy wonks, NonAlignment 2.0 was written over 14 months of deliberations by Sunil Khilnani, Rajiv Kumar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Lt. Gen. (retd.) Prakash Menon, Nandan Nilekani, Srinath Raghavan, Shyam Saran and Siddharth Varadarajan. National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Deputy National Security Advisers Alok Prasad and Latha Reddy also joined some of the deliberations.

As the report reiterated several times, the trends for India to extend its global role and influence are favourable but time is of essence. The basic structures suggested by the report must be quickly implemented because the “underlying factors that are propitious for our growth may not last long.” But the authors say India's big challenge will be to aim at not just being powerful but to set new standards for what the powerful must do, because in international relations, “idealism not backed by power can be self-defeating and power not backed by the power of ideas can be blind.” India's legitimacy in the world will come from its ability to stand for the highest human and universal values and at the global level, “India must remain true to its aspiration of creating a new and alternative universality.”

In a situation where the world is no longer bifurcated between two dominant powers, nonalignment today will require managing complicated coalitions and opportunities in an environment that is not structurally settled, the report say. But former NSA Brajesh Mishra, who spoke at the launch, questioned the approach of the report, especially its view that India not take sides in the rivalry between China and the U.S. China's approach was that of the Middle Kingdom, it wants to be number one, and India's priority should be to build a closer partnership with Washington.

The report deals with India's approach towards the ‘Asian theatre,' the international order, hardpower, internal security, non-conventional security issues like energy and nuclear options, the knowledge and information foundations of power as well as the state and democracy.

NSA Shivshankar Menon commended the overall thrust of the report, especially the link made between the manner in which India dealt with its internal and external challenges. West Bengal Governor and former NSA M.K. Narayanan said the report should have devoted more attention to left wing extremism and questioned some of its conclusions on the internal security front.

The report emphasises that for its strategic and foreign policy to be successful, India must sustain domestic economic growth, social inclusion and democracy. Its approach must be to secure the maximum space possible for its own economic growth in order for the country to become reasonably prosperous and equitable. Although India's competitors will put roadblocks in its path, “the foundations of India's success will depend on its developmental model.”

[ramana]

Arav, Put the entire text for there is more to it.

[ramana]

Non-alignment was between US and FSU which was ideological, economic and military among other things. US and PRC dont have any ideological issues. Also they are both economic partners. As for military strength there is great disparity between them. The US is global power while PRC is not even a regional power.


JLN came up with this idea to find a space for India in that war between elephants/t-rexes.

And both US and PRC have worked to keep India under check via various means individually and together.

So how does Non Alignment 2.0 work among them?

[ramana]

A commentary on NA 2.0 from Shyam Saran. Note he was present at the initial release.

Shyam Saran: An India allying with none

The country should not banish 'non-alignment' from its foreign-policy dictionary


Shyam Saran /

March 21, 2012, 0:46 IST


The publication of “Non-Alignment 2.0”, which seeks to promote an informed debate on evolving a new consensus on India’s foreign and security policies, has generated controversy. The authors stand accused of resurrecting the buried ghost of non-alignment, which allegedly served to limit rather than advance India’s interests. This is puzzling as no political dispensation in India, since the end of the Cold War, has discarded it. How do you stand guilty of resurrecting something that has not quite been pronounced dead by those who run India’s foreign policy?

Non-alignment needs to be assessed objectively and without prejudice. The way Jawaharlal Nehru conceived it, non-alignment was a strategy and not a dogma. Its relevance as a principle of our foreign policy must also be distinguished from the fate of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was specific to a binary Cold-War construct that no longer exists. There is more substance to the criticism that it has often been a convenient cover for not taking positions on key issues of the day, which all great powers must do. There is also a suggestion that non-alignment is reflexively anti-West and the use of this term may bring that attitude of mind back into the conduct of our foreign policy.

The phrase “non-aligned” was first used by V K Krishna Menon at the United Nations General Assembly in 1953 and by Pandit Nehru in 1956. However, the strategy that lay behind the phrase had been spelt out by Nehru much earlier, first in Constituent Assembly debates and later in Parliament. The very sense of India, with its history and civilisational attributes, he said, demands the pursuit of an independent foreign policy. Decisions relating to India’s vital interests should not be externally determined. Maintaining and, if possible, expanding the country’s strategic autonomy is a continuing objective. Nehru did propose that India should avoid entering into “other people’s quarrels”, unless, and this is important, “our interest is involved”. He demonstrated a realistic awareness of the limits of India’s ability to influence events when he added: “We should either be strong enough to produce some effect or we should not interfere at all”. This is eminently sensible advice.

Nehru also did not rule out entering into an alliance if that proved necessary: “We are not going to join a war if we can help it: we are going to join the side which is to our interest when the time comes to make the choice.”

The same pragmatism is evident in the following remarks: “Whatever policy you lay down, the act of conducting the foreign affairs of a country lies in finding out what is the most advantageous to the country.”

We often face a dilemma about how India should vote on important resolutions at the United Nations. Consider the controversy over our abstention on the Security Council resolution on Libya and our more recent affirmative vote, along with the West and the Arab League, on Syria. Nehru suggested criteria on which such decisions could be evaluated: “Our instructions to our delegates have always been to consider each question first in terms of India’s interest, and secondly on its merits.” This means that if the two criteria diverge, India’s interest should prevail.

None of these elements of non-alignment can be described as irrelevant today even if in the actual conduct of our foreign policy, we have often been seen as unusually defensive and even negative. In the Cold War period, such defensiveness was a product of our own limited power. Today, the essence and logic of non-alignment have not changed but they have to be applied in a vastly transformed international landscape and at a time when India itself is being transformed. India must continue to seek strategic autonomy but through a more contemporary reinterpretation and application of the principles of non-alignment. That is what “Non-Alignment 2.0” seeks to do.

So what are some of the features of the contemporary world that Indian foreign policy must address?

India’s enhanced economic and security capabilities enable it to influence external events and outcomes in a widening orbit compared to the Cold War years. India enjoys greater leverage but bears greater responsibility in dealing with regional issues such as South Asian and East Asian economic integration and global issues such as climate change and energy security. Furthermore, in a globalised world, external issues impact our economic and social development prospects while domestic choices we make as a country, in turn, have an impact on the external environment. Promotion of India’s interests demands far greater engagement with the world than ever before. Depending on the issue at hand, India will find itself working with shifting and variable coalitions rather than through settled alliances or groupings. The country has inherent assets, such as a favourable demography, a strategic location and a culture of creativity and innovation, which create a window of opportunity to drive India’s emergence as a front-ranking power, a master of its own destiny but generating a range of public goods that make the world a better and safer place to live in.

It has been argued by some that we are on the threshold of a new and enduring confrontation between the US and China. Given the challenge that China’s apparently relentless rise poses to India, the pursuit of a “non-aligned” policy appears unwise. The US has greater affinity and empathy with India. It supports India’s acquisition of economic and technological capabilities and has convergent concerns over Chinese hegemony. But the US has not yet determined whether, in its relative decline, its interests are better served by playing a balancing role in Asia among Asian powers including between China and India or seeking to contain China through a network of allies. Neither precludes India and the US pursuing closer partnership and both seeking a more cautious and nuanced relationship with China.

It is possible that a change in circumstances and India’s vital interests may demand that it gravitate towards alliance with the US and other major powers. As Nehru said, when the time comes to make a choice India will do so. It came close to doing this in 1971 when it concluded the Indo-Soviet treaty. But as long as the prevailing regional and international situation remains fluid and uncertain, India would be wise to hedge its bets, engaging with all with different degrees of proximity, but allying with none.

The author is a former foreign secretary.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



He is currently chairman, RIS, and senior fellow, CPR

The apparent dilemma is due to one section of elites pulling for kowtowing to US dictats for theri own reasons.

Pursuing own interests should not create a dilemma. On the contrary it clears the fog of vacillation and indecision.

[ramana]

Three posts

1)

A MUST WATCH!

National Security Convention Shri G.Parthasarathy 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKTQ2lpv ... re=related

National Security Convention Shri G.Parthasarathy 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdyufCIH ... re=related

National Security Convention Shri G.Parthasarathy 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsggX8dS ... creen&NR=1

2)

K. Subrahmanyam - Czar of India's Strategic thinking [memorial speeches]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8A0fBxn ... re=related

and Bharat Karnad's critique of NA 2.0

Roadmap for Second-rate Power Status for India: Response to Quasi-official foreign policy document– ‘Nonalignment 2.0′

Roadmap for Second-rate Power Status for India: Response to Quasi-official foreign policy document– ‘Nonalignment 2.0′

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Bharat Karnad

The title, the membership of the group comprising persons with Nehru-vian liberal/neo-liberal bent of mind (Nandan Nilekani, Shyam Saran; four academics – Sunil Khilnani, Pratap Mehta, Rajiv Kumar, Srinath Raghvan; a newspaper editor, S Varadarajan; and a token military-man, retired Lt Gen Prakash Menon), and administrative support rendered this project by the National Defence College, suggest its official provenance. Considering, moreover, that its public release on February 28 at the rundown, loss-making, govt property, Ashoka Hotel, in New Delhi, featured the entire constellation of NSAs (minus the late Mani Dixit) – Brajesh Mishra, M.K. Narayanan, and Shiv Shankar Menon, alongside former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, and one is compelled to take this document somewhat seriously.

In a nutshell, ‘Nonalignment 2.0’ (available at
http://www.cprindia.org/sites/default/f ... 02.0_1.pdf
is an exercise to force the present into a conceptual policy straitjacket from the past. While it is ostensibly future-minded, its utility as a foreign and military policy roadmap and “tool box” (a term used repeatedly in the report) is limited, being essentially a wordy rationale for whatever it is the Congress Party coalition regime headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying to do in the external and national security realms since 2004.

While there is little that is original in this report, by reiterating certain foreign and military policy ideas that have been aired in public space over the last 20 years by me in my various books and writings since the early 1980s — ideas such as forging sporting and other links between the militaries, exchanging observers at military exercises, military educational exchanges, etc. with Pakistan(p.14), turning military focus and effort from Pakistan to China, etc. (pp. 33,35), it is helping to mainstream them, which is good.

But the deficiencies in the Report are too many and too obvious to ignore particularly because they come bundled in a policy package that indicates a debilitating world-view and mindset. If its recommendations are realized, it will end in India remaining a second-rate power. What follows is a short critique of selective themes and ideas in the report that struck me as grievously hurting the Indian national interest.

1) The basic flaw is up-front and centre, and underlies much of the argumentation in the document. It claims that “the fundamental source of India’s power in the world is going to be the power of its example” – high-paced growth coupled with a “robust” democratic system (p.1). That may have been so in the 1950s when much of Asia and Africa had no models to emulate. But in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, the Indian political system, ironically, is lauded more in the United States and the West, than sought out as a developmental model by the Third World. Poor countries these days are impressed by ends more than means, by outcomes rather than system or process and, therefore, find the extraordinarily-rapid but generally orderly progress by a China, more tempting. The notion the document propagates that it is in the world’s interest to ensure India’s success is a remarkably introverted world-view, and then to go ahead and suggest that this supposed hankering by the world for India’s success should be used by India as “leverage” (p.4) is to dive through the rabbit hole and into an imagined Wonderland. India’s democratic pretensions cannot be stretched that far.

2) The acme of soft power, according to this document, is Indian democracy and liberal Indian traditions and values — the underlying theme of this report (pp. 2-4). But the Indian democratic system and society are still a work in progress, which fact curtails its impact on foreign audiences. In any case, to believe that Indian democratic norms and processes can be used as policy fulcrum in the harsh world of international relations, is to misrepresent Joseph Nye Jr’s original concept of soft power. When Nye wrote of soft power for a mainly American audience, he presumed US’ base of very hard power on which soft power of the state rests. Indeed, he argued that by relying mainly on its hard power without tempering it with intelligent use of soft power, America had experienced foreign policy failures. The obverse of this, that overly to stress soft power and its uses and minimizing the value and impact of hard power is equally injurious to the national interest, especially of a rising India, did not occur to the drafters, leading to a fatal weakness in the report. It is a weakness compounded, moreover, by the authors’ implicitly endowing this soft power with moral superiority – the sort of thing that in Nehru’s days set people’s teeth on edge in Western capitals and multilateral fora alike, and even now is a patent policy liability.

3) Nonalignment is, of course, the principal idea the Report self-consciously wraps itself around. Except in a world dominated by the US and China, adhering to this concept, the report avers, will require “skilful management” by India, of unstable “complicated coalitions and opportunities, especially” – and hear this! – “ïf it can leverage into the international domain some of the domestically acquired skills in coalition management and complex negotiation” (p.3). Seriously? Recruiting renowned bahubalis (strong arm experts) from the badlands of western Uttar Pradesh, fresh from exertions in the latest elections, on MEA teams negotiating climate norms, EU free trade agreement, and entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, will no doubt be a diplomatic innovation. But it may be frowned upon by the effete Americans and Europeans. [I know, I know, but such is the rich seam of absurdity running through this Report, a talented satirist could do it more justice.]

4) In terms of practical advice, the report reaffirms the passive-defensive “do nothing, provoke nobody” policy Manmohan Singh regime has been flogging all these years. Thus, it talks about developing “a repertoire of instruments” to deflect attempts at coercion, then turns around to propose that “we do not appear threatening to our many friends and well-wishers.” (p.4) This is a hint that India, for instance, will not develop, at least, not in Manmohan Singh’s watch, an inter-continental ballistic missile, whose design is in and only awaits Delhi’s green signal to get into prototype testing followed by full production, lest it upset the United States. To be consistent, it extends such an understanding to China as well. After suggesting that India concede superiority to PLA on the LAC but build-up maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean (p.7) — which the Chinese Navy is already in a position to out-muscle, it counsels “avoiding relationships that go beyond conveying a certain threat threshold in Chinese perceptions” (p.8, 26). In other words, India is supposed to forsake meaningful strategic partnerships with third countries, such as the US, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, et al, disadvantaging China because it might anger Beijing, even as the Chinese proceed with implementing their wei qi encirclement strategies (Kissinger elucidates in his book “Ön China”). India is being asked peacefully to acquiesce in a correlation of forces favouring China and in coming Chinese-shaped regional and world orders. Can anything more fatalistic and defeatist be conceived as policy prescription?

5) The document states that instead of behaving like other great powers which use multilateral organizations and forums to advance their singular interests, India, exceptionally, should strengthen their legitimacy (p.28). Of course, every country, including signatories to the CTBT, NPT, Doha Round, Climate summits, international laws, et al would be extremely happy with India, praise it to the skies, gain it goodwill, were it to undertake to abide by all their injunctions and resolutions, no questions asked and without preconditions. This is the way, the reports says, “to shape global norms” (p.30). Ah so. Then again, isn’t that what distinguishes weak powers with little leverage? Further, the authors wag a finger at powerful states inclined towards intervention using “universal norms and values” as “fig leaf for the pursuit of great power interests.” (p.31) Wonder what they would say were the situation in the Maldives to turn really bad for India, necessitating an Indian military intervention to restore a friendlier regime and ensure Indian interests endure in that island nation?

6) If the above themes and ideas were not problematic enough, the section on hard power has a few doozies, reflecting a passing acquaintance with the relevant literature, lack of understanding of military and strategic realities by the authors, albeit all of them proverbial generalists ready to pronounce on any and every thing, and their uncertain grasp of limited war, escalation, and nuclear deterrence. Briefly, the authors push something they call an “äsymetric strategy” against China. It requires India to favour building up chiefly the country’s maritime forces and the air force to counter China’s supposed superiority along the disputed border – Line of Actual Control. Worse, it recommends the same kind of penny-packeting of forces along the border and occupation of Chinese forward posts in retaliation for small land-grabs by the PLA in what is called a “strategy of quid pro quo” (p, 35). But this is “forward strategy” circa 1962 by another name, and we know how that ended. In the face of a major Chinese offensive, the report recommends going majorly maritime in retaliation. Meaning, they take Tawang, and the Indian Navy sinks a few Chinese merchant ships in the oil SLOCs. This is supposed to put the fear of god into the Chinese PLA? I reckon Beijing will happily exchange a fleet of ships with India for Tawang, which if forcefully taken will not be returned, unlike in the 1962 War. Other two prongs of this asymmetric strategy is to train Arunachal Pradeshis to wage guerrilla war behind Chinese lines, and building up transport and telecommunications infrastructure –which is mostly now missing – along the disputed border. This three-pronged plan is half-baked and amateurish. A far more effective strategy that I have been fleshing out over the last two decades – first contained in my classified report to the 10th Finance Commission, India, when I served as its adviser on defence expenditure is for India, on a priority basis, to raise 9-13 Mountain Divisions able exclusively prosecute offensive warfare across the border in Tibet. These forces have to be equipped with light armour, light howitzers, integral heli-lift and base transport for operations out of the Demchok Triangle and along the northern Sikkim plains. Taking the fight to PLA is what is going to give PLA pause for thought, not some rinky-dink operations to take a post here and a machinegun nest there. And this report which, predictably, says nothing about it, India should begin mobilizing the Tibetan exile community, train its youth in guerrilla actions deep inside Tibet, and generally be the Fifth Column aiding and abetting Indian offensive efforts in war by destroying PLA logistics hubs, the Qinghai-Lhasa and the Lhasa-Xigatze railway lines, etc. . Nor will it help to have only 2 plus 2 Mountain Divisions raised and under raising. These are too few to do other than beef up the defensive posture, which last is precisely what this Report suggests the Indian army restrict itself to doing (pp. 34-35), forgetting the lesson from the 1987 Somdurongchu skirmish, that general offensive-mindedness fetches better military results and a positive political fallout (remember Dengxiaoping’s “long handshake with prime minister Rajiv Gandhi!) than the defensive, stay-put, strategy the Indian govt, the Indian army, and the authors of this report subscribe to.

7) Versus Pakistan, the Report junks the strategy of capturing territory. Bye, bye, Cold Start! This is fine, it is a theatre of minor wars. But it does not go on to assert — as I have argued in my writings – that the personnel-heavy three strike corps establishments be thinned out to fill the 9-13 Mountain offensive Divisions. It instead advises an “ingress” denial strategy, because it fears anything emore forceful will eventuate in Pakistani escalation to the nuclear level (p.34). This is nonsense. Will not repeat here the arguments made at great length and in great detail in my books – ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’ and ‘Nuclear Weapons and Indian Strategy” now in its 2nd edition, as to why Pakistan simply cannot afford to escalate to a nuclear exchange no matter what the Indian provocation. But suffice to state just one fact: the improbably skewed exchange ratio – the loss of two Indian cities for the definite extinction of all of Pakistan.

Other than this there’s no mention anywhere else in this report of anything nuclear, certainly not in the strategy dealing with China. If one has to adopt a purely defensive strategy, and even as backup for an offensive strategy, why not, as I have been suggesting, place Atomic Demolition Munitions in mountain passes through which the aggressor Chinese units will likely pass and fairly forward of the present defensive pre-positioned line. The triggering of only one such device will halt the advance of all PLA units everywhere. With a large enough Chinese force allowed in before the ADM brings down the mountain sides burying most of them, the surviving troops and units can be eliminated in detail. China will have to seriously consider if nuclear escalating will help them, considering these ADMs will be going off on Indian territory after the Chinese are well inside it. This is the sort of hard options the Indian government and armed forces better begin preparing for, instead of the default option of kowtowing to the Chinese and bullying Pakistan that the Indian govt and military is habituated to realizing.

{This is the old Jerome Weisner idea peddled to Vikram Sarabhai in the mid 60s. How to come up with defensive atomic weapons!

My comment is its not only defensve but defeatist as it allows PRC to conquer Indian territory!}


At the release function on Feb 28th evening Vajypayee’s NSA, Brajesh Mishra had had about enough with all the moral posturing in the report and by some of the writers at the podium – all the hoo-ha about Indian values as the soft power lever to get India great power status. His somewhat meandering speech ended by his destroying the central pillar of this report. Mishra’s dismissal was devastating: “What values?” he said. “We have no values.”

the link for the mp3′s of the talk : http://www.cprindia.org/workingpapers/3 ... st-century

In fair interest of balance and giving readers opposing points.

[ShauryaT]

x-post.

More critiques of non-allignement 2.0.

Failure 2.0
India's big, new foreign policy idea is even worse than its last one. And that's saying something

[ramana]

Thinking about it, NA 2.0 is the retrospective description of a policy that UPA was implementing since 2004. The big thing is by calling it that name they are harking back to Nehru's era. The next thing is it goes against the recieved wisdom that US is the sole super power that was the mantra of the first decade of this century.

Maximum accomodationists are upset for that goes against their reading of US primacy. NA means there are atleast two actors/sides and India choses to be on the side that furthers Indian interests. Hence the tone of Dhume article.

Maximalists are also upset for the NA 2.0 while pursuing this middle path does not hedge or hedges wrongly for nearby challenges vis a vis PRC.

The early years of kowtowing to US interests are being claimed as part of that NA 2.0. Now they are pursuing Iran after having voted agaisnt Iran earlier.

The MMS govt should have ennuciated their doctrine with their own name and not invoke Nehru's hoary ghost for their take on the FP. Its typical Indian way of invoking mythical illustrious ancestors to justify our deeds.

The document also has a lot of conceptual holes, for instance the bit of Indian democracy and its vibrance.

The only vibrance is the people could see thru the leaders drinking juice in a kullad! Or Mamata didi pulling down her own minister to show ire at the UPA! And Pawar expressing distress at PM's remarks on partners! With partners like DMK who needs enemies?

[ramana]

I would have called it MMS doctrine of pursuing Indian interests.

After 1998 tests an accomodation with the P-5 was needed.
US would not have given such an accomodation to the NDA.
They would talk but not walk the walk with NDA.

Having understood that the nuke deal was the touchstone for that accomodation,
MMS did what was need to get out of the NSG sanctions. He also made sure that no treaty obligations were agreed to which could limit the Indian autotnomy (CTBT or FMCO).

He let US put all their bile into Hyde Act without any objection. It all came out as catharisis.

After that they signed the IUCNA deal and again included restrictions to show their power and pelf.

MMS let them pilot the agreement thru NSG which allowed resumption of commerce.

Voted agaisnt Iran to establish credentials.

Meantime MMS had the liability Act enacted under the shadow of Union Carbide actions post Bhopal.

Now US companies who thought they could revive their industries by selling to India are faced with uncertain future. So there is stalemate in this area.

Hence WSJ type articles demanding a share in the commerce which may or may not be forthcoming after the Kudankulam andolan. Here again US funding of NGOs is being mentioned.

The aircraft deal which was thought to be shoo in turned south but on technical grounds which couldn't be refuted. And they got other planes deals. So moneywise can't complain.

Now that Iran is in isolation after the Arab Spring, India is pursuing oil and transport links to Afghanistan thru Iran.

So all along its has his own stamp of pragmatism he has shown. All along he has pursued the mercantile policy of economic growth uber alles. Not even TSP attacking Kabul emabssy nor Mumbai terrorist attack did he get distracted. Again with US actions vis a vis David Headley he let the US show their true nature of hiding terrorists. He let the US be US. Everytime US talks about cooperation on terrorism there is the David Headley matter to be reminded of.

Whats Nehruvian here? No dogma nor ideology. JLN didn't care much for US ideas due to ideology, while MMS did praise them more than needed especially when they were on failing path in Iraq and banking/mortgage scams.

[abhishek_sharma]

Served by black swans

[ramana]

^^^^

Ashok Malik, Hindustan Times
March 27, 2012

Served by black swans

A simple but obvious question arose while reading NonAlignment 2.0, the blueprint for India's foreign and strategic policy for the 21st century put together by analysts supported by the National Defence College and the Centre for Policy Research: "Who will implement this?"

NonAlignment 2.0 describes itself as a 'strategy document' outlining 'basic principles'. Yet its prescriptions are contingent upon a rational, reasonably robust leadership, with the political capital and intellectual foresight to take trenchant decisions. The purpose of this article is not to critique NonAlignment 2.0. It is to make an assessment of the 'next steps' as it were, and study how Indian foreign policy works in practice.

Take an example. Speaking of West Asia, the authors advocate a nuanced distinguishing of jihadist terror networks from Islamist political groups "that have entered the political mainstream in their countries and are competing by legitimate means to enter government". It warns that "the political landscape of the region has been dramatically transformed and there is no possibility of reverting to the erstwhile status quo".

That final point is telling. It was precisely a failure to quickly recognise that the status quo had gone forever that cost India a clear-headed, real-time assessment of the Arab Spring in 2011. This was a symptom of the principal affliction of the Indian foreign policy establishment: the reluctance to embrace or sometimes even acknowledge change. Unless this is rectified, is any genuine follow through on legitimate recommendations of, say, NonAlignment 2.0 possible?

Foreign offices everywhere are status quoist. India is not an exception. From Moscow to Beijing, the US State Department to Whitehall, every foreign policy headquarters has its share of conservatives and naysayers who cling to an outdated prism.

So how do these foreign policies advance? Broadly, there are three causative factors. First, human-resource capacity is far greater. There are simply more diplomats available. This builds sector and geographical expertise and makes it incumbent upon an individual officer to compete with peers and promote his 'client'. It makes the officer sensitive to and watchful of every micro-development in his mandated area.

India is dissimilar. It has a comparatively tiny foreign service. A joint secretary at the ministry of external affairs (MEA) could be handling maybe 20 countries. He does not have the time or intellectual bandwidth to watch all of these equally closely. He will inevitably miss subtle shifts. More than that, his instinct will be to stall and delay. This should not be construed as criticism of individuals but of institutional failing.

Second, foreign policy formation in other powers benefits from having diverse external stakeholders — business to the military, domestic political constituencies to human rights lobbies. While this expansion is taking place in India, it is in its infancy. As such the MEA's autonomy in foreign policy making is still substantial.

Third, in several democracies, heads of government (or their foreign policy sherpas) come to power with specific ideas of what they want to achieve with their diplomatic capital. In India, coalition politics and the engrossing nature of domestic challenges makes foreign policy the afterthought's afterthought.

This three-parameter framework is with us for at least the medium run. So how does one reconcile it with the ambitious realism of, for example, NonAlignment 2.0? For a start, a strategically thought-out, gradualist foreign policy doctrine, one that substantial sections of the political class will buy into, is not going to happen.

Those who hope for India's international positioning and influence being enhanced incrementally and by a grand design — as opposed to by accident or coincidence — are day-dreaming. New Delhi's politics will not allow South Block the luxury of a long view — such as in America between the Roosevelts, or China under Deng and after.

{Writer is contra-factual. The BJP came to power with a specific agenda to transform India's image and weight in the world and they did in the short term. Any diplomat worth his calling will think for the long term and present policy options for the political leaders to implement.}

Like in the case of India's economic reforms, diplomatic accretion will be episodic, with lengthy lulls thrown in. Paradoxically, for a foreign office that swears by calibration, this increases the value of risk-taking. Take the two biggest foreign policy interventions in the past 15 years: Pokhran 2 and the nuclear deal. Both represented risks taken by outsiders to the MEA system. Left to the South Block bureaucracy, they would never have happened.

The Pokhran tests were an international risk. They brought New Delhi out of the nuclear closet and prompted the US to engage India seriously. Kargil, 9/11 and the legacy agenda of two successive presidents helped, and the risk paid off. The second gamble was the nuclear deal, a domestic risk Manmohan Singh staked much on. It is easy to disparage it now, when the government is on the ropes, but history will judge it well.

Consider a counter-factual. Atal Bihari Vajpayee conducted the Pokhran tests less than two months after becoming prime minister in 1998. What if he'd waited to consult the MEA and sought advice on an appropriate time? It would never have come. A million excuses would have been thought up: "Sir, we can't do it next week. The American vice-president will be in Vietnam on a goodwill visit. It will send a bad signal."

What is the lesson that emerges? If you seek an astute foreign policy for India, don't just write wise documents. Encourage, promote and incentivise risk-taking. Forget hawks and doves. Early-21st century Indian foreign policy will be served by black swans.

Ashok Malik is a Delhi-based political commentator. The views expressed by the author are personal.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage ... 31728.aspx
© Copyright © 2011 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.

[abhishek_sharma]

Excerpts from the P.C. Lal Memorial Lecture delivered at the Air Force Association by NSA SS Menon

[ramana]

Excerpts from the P.C. Lal Memorial Lecture delivered at the Air Force Association by NSA SS Menon

We need to discuss this lecture for there are contra facts. I would like to discuss the idea of those five challenges, the arrest powers to NCTC without oversight and under MHA, the capital expenditure of defence budget.

Overall the NSA writes about how things should be(ideal state) but not what they are (real state).

[ramana]

TEXT

ANNUAL IHC - SUBBU FORUM LECTURE


Geopolitical Consequences of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis

Back to the Drawing Board


Shyam Saran

India Habitat Centre

April 7, 2012



Admiral Raja Menon, NSA Shankar Menon, Mrs. Subrahmanyam, Commodore Uday Bhaskar, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege for me to be invited to address you at this annual lecture.


Thank you Admiral Menon for stepping up to the plate with Dr. Sanjaya Baru having been suddenly indisposed.


At the outset let me express my sincere appreciation to the the India Habitat Centre and the Subbu Forum for once again sponsoring this event as in previous years. I am thankful to them for providing me a platform now for the fourth year running.


Each of my annual presentations since 2009 have retained the main title i.e. The Geopolitical Consequences of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis, though the sub-themes may have been different. I have not felt the need to move on the another title because, as anticipated, this crisis is not being dissipated in a hurry. It is still ongoing. It is still driving geopolitical changes, though its manifestations may keep changing. It is important not to be distracted by the symptoms, but to grasp the fundamental well-springs of the crisis, understand its underlying causes and how it continues to play itself out. Only then can we hope to succeed in overcoming it. Drawing upon my earlier presentations, let me outline what I see as some of the relative certainties and underlying realities that can now be discerned four years down the line.


One, this is truly a crisis of global proportions. It erupted at the very heart of the capitalist system, the U.S. and has rapidly spread to the entire global economy through the multiple, interconnected, increasingly digital and, therefore, virtually instant, transmission channels. As a result of these dense pathways which bind the world economy together, market impulses which flow through them, from one point to another, often tend to act in cumulative fashion, reinforcing rather than balancing each other. This is a different beast from the notion of a self-balancing, self-correcting “natural” economic order that has dominated thinking in the capitalist world since the time of Adam Smith. As these cumulative forces play themselves out, they exacerbate imbalances, as with the asset-price bubbles we often witness, and these now impact not only national economies but across the global economy. As India becomes increasingly globalized, its fiscal and monetary policies must be determined within the context of a complex and often volatile external environment.


Two, at the heart of the global financial and economic crisis is the massive and persistent fiscal and trade deficits in some major economies with corresponding surpluses in others. The U.S. and China represent the two ends of this spectrum. The global economy has several players and it is possible that, at any given time, some may be in surplus while others may be in deficit. But the global economy, in the aggregate, must remain in balance, that is, for every creditor there must be a debtor, for every exporter there must be an importer. The corollary to this is simple. If major deficit countries begin to retrench to rebuild their balance sheets, surplus countries will necessarily have to run down their fiscal and trade surpluses. Failure to reduce these accumulated imbalances over an extended period of time will only deepen the crisis. I have pointed out in my earlier presentations that the stimulus measures adopted by all major economies, surplus and deficit, in the wake of the 2007-08 crisis, exacerbated and widened global imbalances instead of correcting them. Four years down the line, we see little sign of the surplus, creditor countries like China and Germany, taking measures to stimulate domestic demand and imports. Their continued reluctance to do so, for political and social reasons, means that deficit countries will seek to restore balance by making their currencies cheaper through monetary easing. They will need to cut domestic expenditures, adopt austerity measures, and reduce their own imports drastically, through protectionist measures if necessary. These measures, taken together, will impose, on surplus countries, reduced exports, because of falling external demand, capital outflows due to interest rate differentials and lower income and employment as excess capacity, the result of high but unsustainable investment rate in the past, begins to manifest itself on an increasingly large-scale. What we are witnessing today is the beginning of this cycle i.e. the rebalancing of the global economy through measures taken out of compulsion rather than through deliberate choice. It is for this reason that I have argued that China faces as difficult a task of rebalancing its surplus economy as the U.S. confronts in rebalancing its deficit economy. And I believe that as China’s economy retrenches, as it must, the impact on the global economy and hence on India as well, may be as severe as the recession in the U.S. and other Western economies.


We should be mindful of the fact that just as it is politically risky for the U.S. to adopt the measures required to bring its books into balance, especially in an election year, the same is true of China, which has just entered its year of wholesale political leadership transition. In Europe, there is a similar situation. For the Eurozone to overcome its persistent crisis, Germany cannot continue to export more than it imports from its European partners. It cannot continue to draw assets away from deficit countries in Europe, while insisting on the painful restructuring of their economies. While this is clear to policy makers, domestic politics prevents the appropriate policies from being adopted. The Eurozone is in flux and its future remains in doubt.


The global economy, therefore, will continue to be in crisis for an extended period of time. The crisis will only be resolved either through extraordinary and sustained coordination and concerted action among the major industrialized and emerging economies, for example in the G-20 or through a series of measures forced upon the key actors by the inescapable logic of basic economic laws. There is no “exceptionalism” for any economy, neither for the U.S. nor for China or for that matter for India. This ongoing crisis has, and will continue to spawn unexpected consequences geopolitically. India needs carefully crafted and effective coping strategies.


Three, I had argued in my presentation last year that the two pivots around which geopolitics will play itself out are energy and maritime security. We are already in an energy constrained world and moving inexorably towards a resource constrained world. The events in the Gulf and North Africa are significant for two reasons: they affect the supplies and prices of oil and gas, 40% of which still originate from this region. And the Straits of Hormuz is a narrow corridor through which much of the oil travels in the direction of the most rapidly growing markets of Asia to the East. Energy security and maritime security have thus become interlocked in a complicated political transition that is unfolding in the region.


The search for energy security may create new threats of geopolitical competition, as they are already doing in the Arctic Ocean, in Africa and in Central Asia. The routes to consuming nations are mostly over the oceans and increasingly through pipelines, and these are vulnerable to security threats. A competitive military build up will be the response of the countries affected, in the absence of any structural and multilateral arrangements to mutually assure security. India’s security planning and its foreign policy priorities must reflect these emerging priorities.


Four, there is no doubt that the long-term trend is towards a steady diffusion of political and economic power, away from the trans-Atlantic, radiating in different directions, but with the Indo-Pacific region gaining the most in terms of relative weight. Here I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Admiral Arun Prakash , former Chairman of the National Maritime Foundation in advancing the Indo-Pacific formulation in the Indian security discourse.


Given the presence of India, China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia in this region, it is easy to see why it is emerging as a new centre of gravity geo-politically. And yet this is the region which has several potential triggers for conflict, such as the continuing instability and tensions on the divided Korean peninsula, the unresolved maritime disputes between China and Japan and China and several ASEAN countries, the issue of Taiwan’s status and the potential for renewed military confrontation in the Taiwan Straits, which may involve the United States, the unresolved boundary dispute between India and China and, finally, the India-Pakistan conflict. Behind some of these unresolved issues are also the questions of exploiting potential energy resources and securing maritime routes. Thus even as the region is gaining in relative weight, it is becoming more vulnerable to conflict. This is reflected in the competitive arms build up which is taking place across the region.


Asia is the geopolitical centre as far as India is concerned, but its historical neighbourhood encompasses the region extending from the East Coast of Africa, to Central Asia and then beyond to East and South-East Asia. As India’s economic and military capabilities increase, its geopolitical footprint is likely to spread along these historical zones. Any long-term vision for India would inevitably locate its destiny within this extended neighbourhood. The global financial and economic crisis has loosened existing alliances and alignments. It has opened up spaces for India to expand its footprint as a major power. I see many opportunities for India to evolve into a truly global power, using its extended neighbourhood as the proximate platform to do so. This demands a sustained and accelerated growth in India’s economy, a stable and coherent polity and above all, a geopolitically aware and visionary leadership. We may be lacking in each of these aspects and, therefore, unable to leverage the opportunities that are constantly emerging as the global order undergoes an extended transition. However, I remain optimistic because in a plural and democratic India, change often comes from unexpected sources at unexpected moments.


That leads me to the sub-theme of my presentation today. Why do we need to go back to the drawing board?


My sense is that Indian policy-makers, like their counterparts in other countries, have assumed that the global financial and economic crisis, is really an unexpected departure from the norm and there will be, sooner or later, a recovery to an essentially familiar economic order, with some new and modified features. The fact is that there is no recovery to the pre-crisis state possible. The world which is emerging before our eyes will have very little in common with the world we left behind in 2008. In fact, the crisis of 2008 erupted precisely because we failed to keep pace with the very rapid and significant systemic changes taking place across the globe. An entirely different set of tools and a very different mindset are required to deal with what is already a fundamentally altered terrain. In this part of my presentation, I will outline only some aspects of this new reality and how India must redraw its strategies and plans for the future.


I spoke about our entering into a resource constrained world. This has implications for our growth strategy. To begin it, we must recognize that the ongoing financial and economic crisis, triggered by the over-leveraging of financial assets, is only a symptom of a far greater and more pervasive resource-crisis, which is evident in the over-leveraging of Nature’s finite assets. Deleveraging our claims on Nature is as important deleveraging our financial overstretch.


Taking into account the compelling and inescapable reality of an increasingly resource-constrained world, India needs to link the aspirations of its people and its prospects for accelerated growth to what I would call a “resource-frugal” instead of a “resource-intensive” strategy of development. I believe that such a strategy would enable India to sustain a high rate of growth over a more extended period of time, delivering affluence without waste, and current welfare without sacrificing the welfare of future generations. I will touch upon just a few illustrative examples.


The notion of frugality is current in some sectors of our economy and has been successful enough to attract international attention. “Frugal manufacture” is already acclaimed as Indian industry’s contribution to innovative production processes. This involves the stripping down of complex machinery or devices, to their most essential applications without frills. An example is the cost-effective, easy to use, hand-held ECG machine, which is a major contribution to public health. The other is the use of the mobile telephone to deliver information, services as well as funds on a low-cost and widely spread platform. Even in agriculture, there have been significant successes in promoting production processes which are dramatically economical in the use of water, dispense with the use of costly chemical fertilizers and pesticides or GM seeds and still deliver high agricultural output, ensuring food security. This is frugal agriculture. What should be appreciated is that these innovations, by making products affordable, lead to significant market expansion. This in turn brings economies of scale, further lowering of costs and generating even greater demand in a virtuous, self-reinforcing circle.


2. The hallmark of any modern society is its ability to deliver rapid, affordable and efficient means of mobility to its people. Enabling people to exercise their right to mobility is a critical state responsibility. However, mobility is linked to the use of energy and the use of scarce land, both of which are in short supply in our country. It follows, therefore, that we must have a transport strategy that ensures the most economical use of these resources. The continued expansion of private vehicular transportation is not sustainable. If the density of private car ownership in India were to approach U.S. or European levels, we would be using liquid fuels far in excess of the total consumption of all such fuels globally today. Just the space required for parking a billion cars and constructing highways for them to run on, would occupy land on a scale that would leave little space for any other activity. Therefore, shifting resources from private transportation to public transportation and investing in the latter to make them convenient, comfortable and cost-effective is another essential component of a “resource-frugal” strategy. Greater mobility ensures a more productive population and a more efficient distribution of goods and services. This is what can ensure a sustained and high rate of growth.


3. If frugal process is what India is good at, it can add value to each of the sectors of its economy by leveraging its proven strengths in information and communications technology. The systems which make modern economies run, whether these are the power supply networks, the transportation system, the distribution of goods and services, the water supply system, to name only a few, are being transformed through the use of modern data analytics. The placement of sensors at critical points in any economic process, generates massive and continuous mass of real time data, which high powered computers, using sophisticated software can analyse in considerable detail and propose what are called “smart” solutions. This reduces waste to the minimum, eliminates redundancies in processes and improve efficiencies all around. This, too, is an example of “resource-frugality”. Some Indian IT companies like TCS and WIPRO, are already doing data analytic projects for multinational clients, but it is India which can provide the biggest market for such value-added services, which can act as a multiplier across the board in a range of sectors in the Indian economy. What is important to appreciate here is that such services are really the hall-mark of a flat world, because they can add value in developing societies as they can in advanced ones.


The purpose of providing these examples is to add some substance to the overall optimism I retain about our future as a plural, democratic and innovative society, despite the seeming gloom around us.


This brings me back, in conclusion, to geopolitics. It is inevitable that Indians constantly compare themselves to China and despair at the growing gap they see between our overall national capabilities. We can narrow this gap, as I think we must, not by playing catch-up with China, not by yearning to be more like China. There is more to be gained by being more India, not China, in our strategies. Each of the examples I have mentioned responds to the new world which is emerging, and not seeking to re-create the old. What is more, each of these innovations enable inclusive growth because they empower the poor; they profit from leveraging the power of numbers. What we need is to upscale these successes from the margin to the mainstream, from the local to the national level.


Their impact will be felt not just in India but throughout the world precisely because they address what I described as the fundamental cause of the current crisis. If we can give a compelling intellectual shape to these ideas and reorient our economic and security strategies in line with them, India could lead by the power of its example.



***************

[abhishek_sharma]

Excerpts from a speech delivered at the National Export Control Seminar by the Foreign secretary

[ramana]

THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF ASIAN RESEARCH

INDIA'S SECURITY CHALLENGES AT HOME AND ABROAD

NBR special report #39 | MAY 2012


By C. Raja Mohan and Ajai Sahni

FOREWORD by Ashley J. Tellis

The analyses contained in this NBR Special Report examining India’s strategic environment and U.S.-India relations could not come at a more timely moment. The world continues to witness the ongoing shift in the concentration of power and wealth from West to East, and the United States in response has declared its intention to “rebalance” its strategic orientation toward rising Asia. While Washington warily eyes Beijing as a competitor for supremacy in a variety of areas, stronger U.S.-Indian ties are viewed in contrast as both desirable and urgent. Most recently, India’s test of the Agni-V long-range ballistic missile put an international spotlight on India’s defense modernization efforts, especially vis-à-vis China, given that this new missile brings most of the Chinese mainland within range of India’s land-based nuclear forces. The test was reflective of India’s complex efforts at internal and external balancing and has important implications for both the country’s regional relations and the U.S.-India relationship.

The two essays presented here focus on exploring India’s pressing national security challenges. Specifically, Ajai Sahni expertly examines both the internal security challenges facing India and the country’s relative success in dealing with them despite a fractious domestic system. C. Raja Mohan then provides clear and concise insights into the changes in India’s external environment, particularly as they relate to the impact of China’s rise, as well as future prospects for further development of the U.S.-Indian strategic relationship.

These essays arose out of a 2009 workshop titled “India’s Strategic Environment and Defense Policies,” which was held in New Delhi and organized by The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) in partnership with India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF). The purpose of the workshop was to examine India’s emergence as an Asian power in the context of the country’s military modernization efforts.

I would like to express my appreciation to ORF and NBR, especially my co-chair from ORF, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Vinayak Patankar, as well as my NBR colleagues Roy Kamphausen, Travis Tanner, and Tim Cook. ORF and NBR did an excellent job organizing this very successful workshop. I would also like to thank the authors of the two essays contained in this report, Ajai Sahni and C. Raja Mohan, for their efforts in conducting incredibly high-quality research and for sharing their expertise in this way. In addition, I am sincerely grateful to all the other experts who presented papers at the workshop and who added tremendous value to the overall initiative—without their substantial contributions, the project could never have been successful. Special thanks go to Lockheed-Martin, the lead sponsor and main source of financial support for the workshop. We also express gratitude to the other sponsors, including the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Russell Family Foundation, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, for their support of this initiative.

Ashley J. Tellis
Senior Associate, South Asia Program
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace


India’s Internal Security Challenges
Ajai Sahni

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

India’s fractious democracy faces numerous internal security challenges and is hobbled by incoherent policy responses and enduring deficits in capacity. The system has, nevertheless, demonstrated extraordinary resilience and has several dramatic successes to its credit.

MAIN ARGUMENT

India is a study in contrasts, if not contradictions. Extreme poverty and lack of opportunities coexist with rapid economic growth and obscene wealth, creating what commentators have often conceptualized as “two Indias.” These discrepancies, compounded by a wide range of external and internal destabilizers, produce enormous potential for discord as well as a number of enduring internal conflicts.

The state’s responses to existing and emerging challenges of internal security have been marked by a high measure of incoherence, structural infirmities, and a growing crisis of capacities. Despite these deficits and vulnerabilities, India has extraordinary experience in defeating some of the most virulent insurgent and terrorist movements. Unfortunately, the lessons of successful counterinsurgency (CI) and counterterrorism (CT) campaigns have not been transferred efficiently to other theaters.

While rapid economic growth has increased state resources, the policy environment remains crippled by the lack of a strategic culture and foresight. Nevertheless, there is increasing awareness of the urgency of a coherent strategic response. Ultimately, India’s political environment has demonstrated tremendous resilience, justifying the expectation that, in spite of its difficulties, the country will sustain its positive trajectory.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

• A coherent policy framework is a precondition to the resolution of India’s internal security challenges.
• India’s enduring conflicts must be assessed and countered within a protracted-war paradigm, not the present and dominant emergency-response paradigm.
• A police-led response has been the most successful template in CI-CT campaigns, which are small commanders’ wars. The challenge for policy and generalship is to develop comprehensive response capabilities.

While extreme inequalities are major sources of tension, the developmental deficits in the country are too great to allow developmental interventions to play any defining role in the resolution of existing and protracted conflicts within a reasonable time.

Managing Multipolarity: India’s Security Strategy in a Changing World
C. Raja Mohan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This essay discusses the impact of the emerging multipolar world on the foreign and national security policies of India and examines the new imperatives for India to go beyond its enduring strategy of nonalignment.

MAIN FINDINGS

• India, which began its quest for a multipolar world amid fears of American hegemony after the Cold War, is now faced with the prospect of a unipolar Asia that is dominated by China.
• India’s strategy of engagement with all other great powers without having to choose between them paid rich dividends in the first two decades after the Cold War but is not sustainable in the future.
• The compulsions for looking beyond nonalignment do not stem from a prior recasting of India’s foreign policy principles but rather from adapting to the regional consequences of China’s rise for India’s extended neighborhood and to a range of global issues.
• While the logic of circumstances will eventually drive New Delhi closer to Washington, there may be many detours along the way.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

• As India rethinks its national security strategy amid the rise of China, the U.S. will have to find ways to deal with New Delhi that are different from its standard approaches to other partners and allies.
• The Obama administration has reaffirmed former president George W. Bush’s commitment to assist India’s rise to power, but must find effective ways to translate that proposition into reality, especially in the domain of defense and security.
• Building on their converging interests in the Indian Ocean and East Asia, New Delhi and Washington must develop a measure of strategic coordination in the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and the “Af-Pak” region.

The full text of the essays can be read at
http://www.nbr.org/publications/special ... lenges.pdf

Cheers,

Ram Narayanan
US-India Friendship
http://www.usindiafriendship.net/

[ramana]

This the US version of Indian security challenges. It totally ignores the role played by US in sponsoring and keeping the pet monster TSP and condoning the PRC proliferation of nukes and missiles to TSP.

[svinayak]

This is amazing that they actually facilitated the rise of China and its proliferation

[AkshayM]

I wish somehow we can get the script of the TV serial Chanakya in word form either in Hindi or English.* The great thing about the serial is shows the evolution of Vishnugupta's thinking on strategy and how he synthesizes the teachings of earlier preceptors and adapts them to his times.

* I have the serial on DVD and watch it as often as I can. Reading the book is one thing and seeing it is another.

ramana saar,

I met Dr. Chandraprakash Dwivedi when I was in Mumbai this July. I asked him if he has thought about releasing the screenplay or script as a book. He said he has been asked this earlier, but he wants to focus on film making at this point. He thought it would be too much work if he takes up proof reading the entire script for book and may be polishing for a book release. He said he'll think about it perhaps after a decade or so once he eases on film making.

He is medical doctor by the way. He was surprised that I had seen the serial three times and I told him I'm his fan. I've not seen the pure Hindi in any other serial except perhaps Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan.

He was bit dejected that there is no market for those types of serials anymore. He thinks Hindi will cease to be spoken in a decade as parents turn to english at home. Also, after Anil Ambani handed out millions to Spielberg as investment, which Spielberg probably didn't need, he thought those kind of resources should be spent on Indian topics and Indic memes, rather than typical inferiority complex to get his (Anil) picture taken with Spielberg.

I asked him about general writing as well, but he said these days everyone has a blog without expertise or adhyayan (research/studies) on the topic so it is meaningless in some ways. But again here he said, he'll take it up once he backs away from film making.

[ramana]

X-Post.....

A link to the IDSA e-book.

One short comment: The title is grand strategy for 2020 and beyond. Thats only 8 years away. More like tactics than strategy.

Will read and compare to what the Business Strategy folks say.

Grand Strategy for India 2020 and Beyond

Right now only KS garu's paper is worthy.

Will comment on rest later.