INDIA’S STRATEGIC LESSONS FROM 2002: An Analysis

by Dr. Subhash kapila

India-Some Harsh Strategic Realities Needing Consideration: Strategically the Year 2002 AD could be viewed as a defining moment for India.  It was in 2002 that India was brought face to face with some harsh strategic realities, whose objective consideration should prompt a re-orientation in India’s strategic thinking, formulations and attitudes.  This strategic re-orientation needs to take place both in foreign policy making and India’s military doctrines. 

The harsh strategic realities that emerged, especially in post-September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred as 9/11) can be summarized as under: 

* India despite its natural pre-eminence in South Asia and all the requisite attributes of power still had not been considered as such, especially by the unipolar superpower, namely the United States, nor by China with its hegemonistic designs. 

* South Asia had no intrinsic strategic value as such.  Its strategic value arises only in the context of the specific strategic interests of the intrusive powers.  For example in the case of the United States, the importance of South Asia lay in terms of US strategic objectives in the Gulf,  in Central Asia and the use of a South Asian foothold for US possible military operations against Iran. Pakistan foots the bill there, and not India.  Similarly, for China, South Asia provides a fertile field for use as a strategic pressure point against United States strategic interests and for balance of power politics against India.  Pakistan, once again foots the bill. 

*  The major deduction arising from above is that the strategic importance of Pakistan in South Asia far outweighs that of India.  India will count strategically, the day it develops strategic assets with global reach.

 * The other strategic value that Pakistan enjoys in South Asia is that it has a “strategic nuisance value” arising from its possible downslide into a “failed state” and a “nuclear rogue state” as exemplified by its nuclear weapons materials and expertise export to North Korea (known and recorded by USA) and also possible linkages to Iran, Iraq and Syria.

India as the far more political mature nation and a functioning democracy, the world’s largest, does not believe in generating “strategic nuisance” value.  India also, regrettably, has not till now developed the following strategic assets: 

* India has not developed her full strategic potential commensurate with her attributes of power qualifying her for a major power status.  The Chinese model needs to be seen in the context. 

* India stands strategically confused still as to what her national security interests are . It still continues to be apologetic about the use of power and projects a “soft state” image.  It continues to have expectations of external powers to restrain her adversaries.  It is strategically hesitant to use her colossal military power to defeat the national security challenges posed against her. 

India’s present political dispensation, while asserting itself in 1998 (nuclear weaponisation) has yet to assert itself to overcome the above two strategic disabilities. 

With this as the background, it would be pertinent to draw some strategic lessons emanating from the events and developments of 2002 with special reference to September 11, 2001 (Islamic Jehadi bombings in main land USA); December 13, 2001(Islamic Jehadi armed attacks on India’s Parliament House) and India’s massive military mobilization in December 2001 as response to the latter and extending up to October 2002, with the interregnum filled with incessant Pakistan’s proxy war against India, despite United States pressures on Pakistan for restraint. 

India’s Exercise of Coercive Military Pressure Against Pakistan-Lessons:  The Indian Armed Forces, once again in December 2001 displayed magnificent competence in military mobilization and escalation on the Pakistan border in a short span of time.  While this author agrees and has reflected in his earlier writings that coercive military power should be used to gain political ends; but it also has been emphasized earlier by the author that no de-escalation should take place until the strategic objectives prompting escalation were realized.  The major strategic objective was putting Pakistan under pressure to desist from proxy war against India.  It is well known that Pakistani proxy war continues unabated and persisted throughout the period of India’s attempts at military coercion. 

The major strategic lessons, therefore emanating are: 

* Military escalation was only the means of pressure.  Curbing Pakistan’s proxy war would have required using disproportionate force by military strikes into Pakistan’s heartland; not against terrorist training camps as projected by a majority of defence analysts. Pakistan’s audacity in conducting proxy war against India has to be broken. 

* This contingency, in the event of military pressure not working, should have been factored in the Indian sequential logic.  If it did form  part of the planning, it obviously was not used.  Since it was not used, it was India’s strategic flaw. 

* India’s political decision-makers exhibited the same strategic flaws as were exhibited in earlier wars with Pakistan and China namely “strategic hesitation” to generate the full military potential of its Armed Forces.  This critically affects India’s strategic credibility. 

* India’s strategic challenges have to be met squarely by India itself, as a strategically self-reliant entity.  India needs to get out of the habit to look to others to restrain her military adversaries. India appears pitiable when it expects the United States to restrain Pakistan from its military adventurism. India should have long ago carried the proxy war back into Pakistan.

India’s Strategic Autonomy is an Over-riding Imperative: India’s strategic autonomy stood seriously curtailed in 2002 and the fault lies with India’s decision-makers and India’s policy advisers and policy formulators.  The Indian Armed Forces with their unexpectedly speed mobilization in record time provided “strategic surprise” which should have been exploited by India for multiple strikes against Pakistan.  Reports indicate that the Pakistan Army was only effective on the border in March/April 2002.

 India wasted the strategic opportunity by allowing its strategic autonomy to be curtailed under promises not carried out and pressure from USA and UK.  US Secretary of State, Collin Powell had requested that India should give a month's time to General Musharraf to deliver on his promises.  After a month, when Musharraf failed to deliver and became military belligerent, India should have looked for harder options. 

Two important lessons  emerge from this both for India and the United States, and these are:

* India should now be aware that the next time Pakistan’s proxy war provocations impinge on India’s self-respect and sovereignty the “military coercion” option against Pakistan would not be operative. India would have to resort to war against Pakistan, and it should be a declaratory policy announced now.

 * The United States and the West should understand that “military restraint” is  not a one-way street.  The United States should also recognize that India’s amenability to respond positively to its overtures for restraint stand wasted out.  Pakistan has not responded positively to US pressures.  On the contrary its belligerency increased, secure in the belief that it stood shielded by the United States. 

Further, India needs to be wary in what it states in discussions with the United States on  strategic matters.  It seems that having obtained assurances from India that it would not exercise the military option straight away against Pakistan, somebody in the United States Administration passed on this assurance to General Musharraf .The most telling images of this were provided by General Musharraf in his body language following India’s mobilization.  He was a chastened and a very worried figure.  A couple of weeks later his bellicosity returned. Obviously, because somebody had let him on the secreat that India had given an assurance to put its military option on hold. 

India’s Nuclear Doctrine is Timid Vis-à-vis Pakistan: India’s nuclear doctrine projects a timid picture when related to Pakistan.  India must repeal its ‘No First Use’ (NFU) policy against Pakistan.  India’s NFU has emboldened Pakistan to gain the strategic upper perch against India strategically, psychologically and in relation to reactions of the international community.  General Musharraf appears victorious when he claims that his  threats of ‘first use’ of the nuclear weapons option delivered through American intermediaries, held back India militarily.

 It is time that this Government repeals NFU and makes it clear that: “India reserves the right to resort to first use of nuclear-weapons against nuclear  armed states, should the military situation so demand". 

India needs to get out of moralism when it comes to strategic matters.  Strategic realities and not morality should fashion India’s nuclear doctrines. 

India’s Non-Military Coercive Options Stood Unused: India’s steps in downgrading diplomatic relations by recalling its High Commissioner , stopping rail traffic and over flights over India did not have much coercive effect on Pakistan. 

Non-military coercive options which need to be exercised even now since Pakistan’s proxy war has not ceased are: 

*Scrap Indus Water Treaty and not allow waters to flow into Pakistan. This is India’s strongest non-military coercive option against Pakistan and the India Govt. should prepare itself mentally to use it. 

* Scrap MFN status accorded by India to Pakistan, unilaterally.  It may not mean much to Pakistan straight away but eventually it would. 

* Declare as India’s national policy that it would not be a partner in any oil or gas pipelines to India, traversing Pakistan’s territory.  It should be clear to India that pipeline revenues so accruing to Pakistan would not make it into a democracy or lead to betterment of lives of Pakistan citizens.  It will eventually lead to greater militarisation of Pakistan. 

India’s Strike Corps Need to be Re-located: The events of 2002 and Pakistan’s continuance of its proxy war against India portend that war between India and Pakistan is inevitable.  And the next time around, the ‘military coercion’ option stands wasted and not workable.  The next war with Pakistan, if India is to attain its strategic objective has to be a ‘blitzkreig’ war. 

Two out of three Indian Army strike corps are located in Central India.  Such locations have the following disadvantages: 

* Their move and deployment in the borders, gives away surprise due to the distances to be traversed. 

* The long lines of communications to be covered by their move are vulnerable to sabotage in the context of the current internal security situation in India. 

Indian Army’s strike corps components are armoured and mechanized formations which have no role on the Chinese borders.  It is therefore imperative that all the three strike corps are re-located within a few hours movement time to the border and in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Northern Punjab. 

The above would enable their unleashing and employment for military strikes against Pakistan from the lines of march. 

India’s War Preparedness: A factor which may have contributed to India’s ‘strategic hesitation’ in 2002 in carrying its military coercion exercise to its logical sequential conclusion may have been shortages in military equipment, spares and ammunition in critical areas, especially of Indian Army’s strike corps. 

India’s defence procurements cannot be stymied by obstructive bureaucrats or by  journalists donning the noble mantle to expose corruption for reasons devious rather than moral.  The defence markets globally operate on the age-old principle of supply and demand and in the case of defence deals “ urgency of demand”. All the more reason that war preparedness deficiencies do not wait till the last moment to acquire “urgency of demand ” status. India’s war-preparedness must be monitored on a monthly basis by the  Defense Minister, the Service Chiefs and even the President, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. 

National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) Needs a Review: Writing at the time of the de-escalation in October 2002, this author had analysed that the NSAB in the 2002 crisis had been used as a rubber-stamp in respect of its advisory role. Please refer to SAAG Paper No. 537 dated 24-10-2002. 

In fact the entire National Security Council (NSC) organizational structures and composition needs a review.  Nothing would be more appropriate than doing so against the backdrop of the 2002 military challenges.

 Some glaring short comings that would strike any analyst are: 

* The National Security Advisor, the Chairman of NSAB and the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee which provides the Secretariat for the NSC are all ex-Indian Foreign Service Officers. Surely, there is enough talent on National Security matters available from fields other than the Indian Foreign Service.  On principle, all three should be from different backgrounds, if the NSC is to be an objective body.

* Most of the NSAB members are recent retirees from Government services. The NSAB should not be allowed to become a sinecure when governorships or ambassadorial assignments cannot be provided.

* The NSAB should be composed of National Security experts noted for their  independence of thought and having articulated their  independence of thought earlier.

Intelligence Machinery Still Not Responsive  to Strategic Challenges: India’s intelligence machinery, despite some reorganization is still not responsive to the strategic challenges that the country faces, especially on the terrorism front.  Some questions that go abegging for answers are:

* How come India’s intelligence agencies have not penetrated Pakistan’s defense structures and organizations like Pakistan has done of ours? India’s media regularly carries news of events of Pakistani espionage on our side but Pakistan’s papers hardly have anything corresponding to carry. 

* How come that Pakistan’s Islamic Jehadi organizations don’t stand penetrated by our intelligence organizations? 

* Why are Indian intelligence agencies not being given a free hand to carry proxy war back into Pakistan? 

* How many leaders of Pakistan-based or Kashmir-based Islamic Jehadi leaders have been liquidated by Indian intelligence agencies? United States and Israel model could be followed. 

* What is the state of our nuclear targeting intelligence gathering? 

* Why are Pakistan’s Northern Areas and Pakistan’s Occupied Kashmir not reverberating with incidents of sabotage and killings like that which take place on India side? 

Should the average Indian be led to believe that Pakistan’s intelligence agency the ISI single handedly is far superior to all our intelligence agencies combined?  Or is it that the ‘soft-state’ syndrome bedevils our intelligence agencies too? 

Concluding Observations: India is under siege today on both its Western and Eastern flanks from nations in which Islamic fundamentalism of the Jehadi variety is gaining ascendancy i.e. Pakistan and Bangladesh. India’s other peripheries are ringed by states in China’s military-client grip.  China enjoys strategic partnership with Pakistan and Bangladesh.  The United States today consumed by its “axis of evil” fixations is not only oblivious but also permissive to the threatening challenges to India’s security, prompted by the impulse that India should be prevented from emerging as a regional hegemon.   Forgetting, that what would challenge India tomorrow will challenge the United States, the day after. 

In the above circumstances, India should learn from the strategic lessons that emerge from 2002 AD.  India needs to  move from pursuing a liberalist and moralist state craft to the realist paradigm.  It would be appropriate to recall the observations of two American academics, Charles W Kegly Jr and Eugene R Wittkopf for the benefit of India’s decision-makers:

“ Within the realistic paradigm, the purpose of state craft is national survival in a hostile environment. To this end, no means is more important than the acquisition of Power –the capacity to exercise influence over others, especially by military means. Similarly no principle is more important than Self-help –the ultimate dependence of the state on its own resources to promote its interests and protect itself.  In this conception, State Sovereignty, a cornerstone of international law, gives heads of state the freedom- and responsibility- to do whatever is necessary to advance the state interests and survival” 

India can revert back to liberalism and moralism once India as a nation state is secured from threats and challenges outlined above. They can only be overcome by the build up of the military and strategic power of the Indian nation state and the will to use military power to offset the multiple threats and challenges to its existence.  The need of the hour is for India to assert and enforce its regional predominance in South Asia, without being apologetic about it or being constrained by others.