Foreign Correspondence

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Charting a new course for India's army

I want to highlight this and get back to it.

The American factor
Lieutenant-General Singh may find that India's improving relationship with the United States could lead to acceptance of the US Navy's presence in the northern Indian Ocean region. Even the apparently benign presence of the US would restrict the actions of the Indian navy in a region that India claims as its own. More than US$100 billion of China's trade passes through the Indian Ocean, and this is growing rapidly. It is expected that the Chinese will sooner rather than later increase their presence in the Indian Ocean, and that is most likely to be with nuclear submarines. It is therefore of utmost importance for the Indian naval authorities in the coming years to work out an arrangement whereby the Chinese navy, in collaboration with the Indian navy, plays a role in maintaining the steady flow of maritime trade. If India succeeds in getting this difficult task accomplished, then even the benign presence of the US Navy would be questioned.

-Am


December 24,2004

By Ramtanu Maitra

NEW DELHI - On February 1, Lieutenant-General J J Singh will take over as India's new army chief. He is expected to direct the Indian army for at least three years, a tenure that is anticipated to be a period of great significance for the Indian army.

India's army is in the process of developing and adopting a new generation of military technology, based on precision and speed. At the same time, cursed with the border situation in its west and the never-ending insurgency activities, supported externally by anti-India elements operating from within Bangladesh and Nepal, in the northeastern part of India, Lieutenant-General Singh will have to formulate more effective counter-terrorism measures that have increasingly become regular military interventions.

It is almost a certainty that Lieutenant-General Singh will find the Indian army's counter-terrorism operations in need of modernization and the adoption of new tactical measures. An army press release on the adoption of a new counter-terrorism doctrine states that it would prioritize "winning hearts and minds" in such situations. In other words, the army will have to institutionalize an approach, which has to be spread from the top officer-level to the foot soldiers, calling for less ruthless and more personal relations with the people among whom it operates. It is a difficult task, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern India, where terrorists and secessionists enjoy the support of some of the locals.

On the other hand, the frequency of Indo-Pakistani talks at the official level to build confidence, and the growing opposition within Pakistan to the anti-India campaign of the Pakistani army, may provide some break to the new chief on India's western borders. With infiltration levels down and talks on with both Pakistan and dissidents in Kashmir, no Indian army chief has perhaps ever had the chance to look at the Jammu and Kashmir situation as positively as Lieutenant-General Singh. However, such a break for the army chief will be hard to come by in India's northeastern sector.

The new doctrine
Interestingly, reports indicate that the Indian military has framed a new military doctrine keeping in mind the duration of future wars, which are likely to be short and intense. The doctrine highlights more roles for the Special Forces, capable of quick movement and swift strikes, rather than having large armies. Outgoing army chief General N C Vij pointed out recently that Indian defense forces were being trained to mobilize troops quickly should there be a war in the future.

This fits in pretty much with the military-think of today's Pentagon, which is involved in intense discussions with the Indian military on a strategic alliance, particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. There is no question that a large number of analysts within the Indian defense establishment have been seduced by this Pentagon-think. The US Army's messy handling of the Iraq situation further confirms their belief that slow, conventional warfare is a loser in the present context of achieving specific objectives.

At the same time, a study by the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) says that some important features of the doctrine are poorly matched to the concept of limited war. "The new military doctrine envisages training and fine-tuning of our armed forces to gear up for such eventualities," General Vij was quoted as saying by the Indo-Asian News Service.

Limits of Pakistan-centric criticism
IPCS points out that the new doctrine says future warfare will require the synergetic application of land, sea and air forces to overwhelm the enemy by using all the defense forces in a coordinated manner. However, the IPCS report notes, a very quick and coordinated joint operation by all the defense forces may be a hallmark of the US-led campaigns in Iraq, but this may not be the case in South Asia, where the risk of escalation to a nuclear exchange is clearly unacceptable.

IPCS says a limited war against Pakistan can only be waged and kept limited if India's intentions are clearly known to be limited and, just as important, if Pakistan is willing to accept limited losses. In limited war, therefore, strategic management is at least as important as operational war-fighting, and both of these aspects must be organically fused, the report says.

Some analysts point out that the IPCS criticism is centered exclusively on a future India-Pakistan conflict. But the fact is that India has now emerged as a much larger military power and has a serious role to play in the region, in the context of keeping the maritime trade flow - by land, sea or air - running through the region.

No military strategic discussion in India can be complete, moreover, without taking into account the growing naval developments in the region. What Lieutenant-General Singh will have to face as soon he takes over power is the presence of extra-regional powers in the Indian Ocean. This has always been a sore point for the Indian navy, but India did not possess a blue-water navy to exercise its authority in this area. Now India is in a position to play a significant role in the Indian Ocean and the littoral states.

The Indian Ocean region contains a third of the world's population, 25% of its landmass, and 40% of the world's oil and gas reserves, and is, therefore, a potential area of major conflict in the future. It also serves as an artery of important international sea lines of communication. The region is home to most of the world's now-turbulent Muslim population.

The Indian Ocean region also is home to the world's two newest nuclear-weapons states, India and Pakistan, as well as Iran, which most observers believe has a robust program to acquire nuclear weapons. The growing harshness of Washington toward Iran also indicates that military pressure on the Indian Ocean may increase, but will not recede in the near future.

The American factor
Lieutenant-General Singh may find that India's improving relationship with the United States could lead to acceptance of the US Navy's presence in the northern Indian Ocean region. Even the apparently benign presence of the US would restrict the actions of the Indian navy in a region that India claims as its own. More than US$100 billion of China's trade passes through the Indian Ocean, and this is growing rapidly. It is expected that the Chinese will sooner rather than later increase their presence in the Indian Ocean, and that is most likely to be with nuclear submarines. It is therefore of utmost importance for the Indian naval authorities in the coming years to work out an arrangement whereby the Chinese navy, in collaboration with the Indian navy, plays a role in maintaining the steady flow of maritime trade. If India succeeds in getting this difficult task accomplished, then even the benign presence of the US Navy would be questioned.

In addition, Israel's expanding security perimeter and its growing strategic involvement in the Indian Ocean region cannot be ignored. While New Delhi has so far welcomed the Indo-Israeli security nexus, New Delhi cannot ignore the enhanced security complexity resulting from the presence in the region of another power, one, moreover, that is inherently anti-Muslim.

Most important, perhaps, is that Lieutenant-General Singh will have to face growing pressure from Washington to integrate the Indian army to achieve some of the US objectives in the region. Reports indicate that during US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's visit to India this month, he unfolded a new matrix for Asian security. This allegedly involves setting up a new Asian peacekeeping force, including India, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan, moderate Middle East regimes, and so on. Rumsfeld's core idea is to thin down the US military, modernize it even more, and involve Asian and Australian-Asian armies in their own security, equipped where necessary with US weapons. This way, key US interests will be protected; its hegemony will remain intact.

Whether India enters such an arrangement - a definitive alliance with the United States - remains to be seen. At any rate, it is still too early to say, because US President George W Bush's second term has not really begun. A political-economic bloc is different from a defense bloc, and India had always been leery of such arrangements in the past. However, it is also evident that the Rumsfeld proposal has not emerged out of a vacuum. There are many takers of this proposal in New Delhi today, and this poses a very demanding challenge to the new army chief.

Ramtanu Maitra writes for a number of international journals and is a regular contributor to the Washington-based EIR and the New Delhi-based Indian Defence Review. He also writes for Aakrosh, India's defense-tied quarterly journal.

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