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India's security challenges
1.0 INTRODUCTION
"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle"
The Art of War, Sun Tzu (6th Century BC), Chinese general and military strategist
India’s ascendancy on the world stage is based by a lot of conflicts and threats both internally and externally. In the past 50 years the world has moved from bipolarity to unipolartiy to multipolarity. This has accentuated the need for a dynamic and flexible policy.
Internally too India has had its own set of linguistic, regionalistic, economic and communal discord. Statehood demands raised from time to time pose a threat to the country’s integrity. India faces extremism of all kinds from right wing to left wing.
2.0 EXTERNAL SECURITY THREATS TO INDIA
Geographically India is situated in close proximity to what is being described as "the epicenter of global terrorism". India's increasing relevance to the US strategic canvas, troubled relationship with Pakistan since the independence of the country, deteriorating and unpredictable relationship with China, unstable political climate in Nepal along with Maoist insurgency, mistrustful relationship with Bangladesh, civil-war ravaged and still-healing Sri Lanka, authoritarian Myanmar have rendered any fair estimation of Indian preparedness to deal with these security challenges an onerous task.
2.1 The United States of America
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 signalled the end of the Cold War. It forced New Delhi to start rebuilding its great-power relations from scratch. Not only was the change of economic orientation at the turn of the 1990s traumatic, achievements in foreign policy line the past two decades have been significant. The persistent efforts India has made over the past twenty years have finally started bearing fruit in the form of greater recognition in world affairs.
At the very beginning of his second term in 2004, George W. Bush began to put a new emphasis on India, thereby enlarging New Delhi’s room for manoeuvering with both Pakistan and China. In March 2005, the Bush administration announced its intent to assist India’s rise to great-power status.
This declaration was followed by two very important agreements between Washington and New Delhi. The first was a ten-year defense cooperation framework that opened up the sale of advanced U.S. weapons to India and defined joint missions by the armed forces of the two countries. The other agreement was the now well-debated civil nuclear initiative that sought to end India’s three and a half decades of isolation from the global nonproliferation regime. Together they marked a fundamental transformation in how the United States viewed India.
Initially a lot of anxiety was created by Obama’s promise to repudiate many of Bush’s foreign policies. The two triangles — the one between the United States, India, and Pakistan and the other between Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi — faced the risk of turbulence. However in 2009 while announcing the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as his special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Obama did not refer to Kashmir and Indo-Pak mediation. This gestures was reflective of some of India’s concerns. After this, President Obama and the-then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to articulate U.S. policy toward India and Pakistan with care and sensitivity.
Although India remains ideologically non-committal to signing the CTBT and NPT regime, there has been a tremendous improvement in the nuclear energy field through signing of the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty in 2006.
However, self-interest as always, dictated US policies on foreign relations. The US support to Pakistan's military through CEATO arrangements in 1960s, later President Nixon's visit to China in Feb 1972 which was secretly facilitated by Pakistan and resulted in melting the ice between the two nations, support to Pakistan's defense apparatus and Taliban through 1980s and now military offensive in the Af-Pak tribal region have all been calibrated on the US self-interests. All these steps have had a profound impact on India's external security environment. The continued US presence in our North-West border is cited to be one of the main reasons behind Pakistan's belligerent attitude in the aftermath of the Parliament attack in 2001 and 26/11 mayhem in 2008. The Pakistani Army knows Indian options are severely limited to strike across Pakistani territory owing to military assistance she is providing to Global War on Terror (GWOT). Apart from limiting India's punitive capability against Pakistan for its sponsoring terrorist attacks and their infrastructure in India, the US has also provided substantial financial and military to Pakistan which have adverse consequences for our strategic calculations.
Nonetheless the US is likely to dominate world affairs for at least another two decades. India has to work towards minimizing adverse impact of the US-Pak assistance on our external security.
2.2 People’s Republic of China (PRC)
2.2.1 Political Threat
Since the 1962 Indo-China war, the relations between the two countries have always been full of intrigue. Analysts say that India’s foreign policies are China-centric which points to the great amount of insecurity that exists between the two. China’s economic and political rise in the past three decades has given it a tremendous clout in international political circles.
China has patiently been working towards building military-economic and political alliances around India's periphery - termed as "strings of pearl strategy". China remains India's number one security threat. It has provided consistent military assistance to Pakistan for use against India, funded armed rebels in the North-East and has continued to up the ante in diplomatic circles through stapled visas, visa denials and spying on Tibetan Diaspora in India.
Although India needs to be sensitive towards Chinese sensitivities towards Tibet, India has failed to play an assertive role in communicating its interests to the Chinese side. On the other hand, China has built up superior civilian and military infrastructure along Indo-Tibet border. Our defense preparedness vis-à-vis China leaves much to be desired. As has rightly been enunciated by one of our Army Chiefs, the possibility of a Two-Front War scenario with both Pakistan and China should be factored in while preparing our doctrine of war and operational readiness.
To neutralize this security threat heavy investment is required in defence. However, with declining growth in GDP this became difficult. Our defense budget at 2.1% is way below 4.5% and 4.7% of Pakistani and Chinese budgets as % of their respective GDP and even the allocated funds do not get fully utilized for modernizing the forces but for the lack of speedy and transparent procurement procedures.
China is widely known to have understated its publicly announced defense budgets. The defense expenditure for Pakistan does not include capital outlay. Hence actual spending is higher than the declared figures. Hence the need to selectively utilize are limited defence outlay for maximizing lethality.
2.2.2 Economic Threat
Indian businesses feel threatened by cheap import of manufactured goods from China.
The World Bank's ranking of nations has placed India at 100, compared with China at 50. India's poor ranking as reflected in the number of documents required, time taken and cost involved in export/imports badly compares with China.
In addition to Chinese cost advantage in export-import formalities, other factors which favour Chinese exporters are:
- Low real wages and absence of industrial disputes and lockouts
- Cross-subsidisation of corporate sector by households through Government-controlled financial institutions (in a low domestic consumption, high savings ratio, plus high inflation, low real interest rates, cheap capital policy environment);
- Undervalued exchange rate
- Export restriction on raw materials with limited global supply such as coke, fluorspar, silicon, yellow phosphorus and zinc
- Aggressive policy of acquiring commodities (iron ores, copper, coal, oil and gas) assets in Africa and Latin America ; and
- Availability of government-acquired land, cheap power and more lenient environmental standards.
China will have to depend on exports to maintain its growth momentum and the threat of cheap Chinese imports will continue to haunt Indian businesses. But when it comes to its own market, China uses several non-tariff trade barriers to restrict access to its domestic market.
China is an important export destination, a supplier of cheap inputs and a serious competitor in domestic as well as export markets. However, Indian businesses are deprived of a level playing field due to the impact of high trade transaction costs in India, and the domestic availability of cheaper inputs and an undervalued currency in China.
At present, China is regarded as an “economy in transition” or non-market economy, which gives its trading partners enough flexibility for liberal application of trade defence measures. This flexibility will cease to exist once India accords China “Market Economy” status, which is likely by 2015.
in the years to come, Indian businesses will have to compete with overtly or covertly subsidised Chinese products ranging from processed food to textiles, and chemicals to engineering, in both domestic as well as export markets. These realities should be factored into by Indian businesses while formulating their post-2015 commercial strategies. With slower economic recovery in developed markets, Indian businesses must look at ways and means to tap fast-growing China, as an export market and/or a supplier of cheap inputs to improve their cost competitiveness.
We must resist WTO-incompatible Chinese trade measures such as export duties on key inputs, or discrimination between domestic and imported products — bilaterally, or multilaterally — through the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.
It is, therefore feared that sectoral negotiation in WTO, which aims at deeper tariff reductions in 14 sectors (including chemicals and allied sectors, electrical/electronics, industrial machineries, textiles & clothing) will further open up India's domestic market for imports from China. Besides, a free trade pact with China is also being considered.
The role of Indian government has to be remodelled from that of an ‘incentive-provider' to a ‘trade-facilitator', and here it has a great responsibility in making concerted efforts to improve India's trade infrastructure. There is also an urgent need for effective cooperation between India's trade negotiators and Indian businesses, so that their trade objectives are taken into account in bilateral and multilateral trade talks.
2.3 Pakistan
Pakistan remains the principal national security threat to India in all military dimensions, says an internal Ministry of Defence (MoD) assessment shared with other agencies and key lawmakers. The backgrounder note accessed by Headlines Today says the expanding footprints of extremists and terrorist organisations in Pakistan and their linkages with terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) pose a clear threat to India's security.
The perennial challenge before Indian defense apparatus to manage external covert and overt threat from Pakistan does not need any emphasis. Since the birth of that country, we have fought them four times in war - 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Besides the country is facing low intensity conflict in J&K abetted and sponsored by Pakistani military, in the North-East and through support to various fringe extremist group within the country. The country also faces huge challenge before its economy in the form of fake rackets being operated from Karachi and Dubai and widely believed to have blessings of Pakistan's infamous Inter-Services Intelligence - its external spy agency.
The recent Keran operation is being seen as part of the new terror policy adopted by Pakistan. "In Keran sector, Pakistan Army resorted to heavy firing, at times firing 1,000 rounds of medium and heavy machine guns in one night (September 24) to help its specialist troops infiltrate. The infiltrators usually when challenged return, but in this case they engaged the security forces for 3-4 days," sources say. Ultimately when they could not break through from here, they returned to try from adjoining sectors where the army insists 8 terrorists were killed and 66 weapons recovered. Though, not being able to find a single body has cast a shadow over army's version but the "military environment" sees the operation as a success.
Though in absolute terms terrorism related deaths in India have shown a decline, the potential for disturbing communal harmony within the country through such machinations cannot be underestimated. The fatalities here include all three kinds of death - civilians, security forces personnel and the terrorists. Commanders on ground concur with the MoD assessment that "provocations by Pakistan cannot be ruled out, it is our (government) resolve that our response should be to retaliate in a manner that will deter Pakistan from such actions."
Thus Pakistan remains one of our principle worries at both external and internal security fronts. Besides on the basis of its long-standing strategic partnership with China, it can stretch our armed forces capabilities in the Eastern sector. The modernization plans of Karakoram highway, the development of Gwadar as a naval port by the Chinese Navy and covert assistance to Pakistan's nuclear and missile program are on the anvil; these two countries should be watched very carefully in our defense planning.
Two recent books by Ayesha Jalal and Christine Fair paint a dismal picture as far as Pakistani Army’s motivation are concerned. The Pak army, they claim, is obsessed with one goal - weakening the ‘Hindu-dominated’ India that they perceive as an existential threat.
2.4 Immediate Neighborhood
India has problems with other neighbours as well. India’s foreign policy is trying to cope with it.
Bangladesh is finally showing signs of delivering on the stated policy of the Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of not letting her country's soil for anti-India activities. Bangladesh has recently handed over many high profile terrorist leaders hiding in their country. India has also reciprocated with a huge USD 1 billion economic assistance in the form of line of credit to Bangladesh. But India should actively continue to manage her somewhat uneasy relationship with the Opposition leader in Bangladesh former PM Mrs. Begum Khalida Zia. Seeking active Bangladeshi cooperation in destroying the terrorist infrastructure of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (Huji) remains a challenge for Indian security agencies.
Although India at first neglected their relationship with Burmese military rulers, there have been improvements in the past few years in our bilateral relations. China has been investing in Kyaukryu and Sittwe as commercial ports on the west coast close to our NE states. Both of these ports can be used as a naval base and should be a cause of concern. India also needs to co-opt Myanmar for curbing the North Eastern rebel groups e.g. NSCN, ULFA and Manipur rebels which find shelter in dense forests along the international border. For that increased economic and military cooperation without inviting international limelight is a challenge as recently the US has started objecting to our strengthening relationship with the junta.
India also faces competition from China in keeping Sri Lanka attuned to its interests. The recently finished Civil War in the North-East Sri Lanka has incurred huge emotional and economic costs for the Indian Tamils. Thus encouraging cordial linguistic relations in Sri Lanka through persuading Lankan government towards equitable distribution of resources and fair treatment of ethnic minorities is a priority for Indian foreign policy mandarins. Bhutan has demonstrated sensibilities to our concerns by wiping off ULFA rebels in their territory in 2003 and India rightly assists in their economic, social and defense developments. Similarly India should also manage our closest ally during the Cold War era - Russia - to counterbalance China and procuring critical defense supplies. The government of PM Modi has initiated an aggressive, positive relationship-building with all of these States.
3.0 INTERNAL SECURITY THREATS TO INDIA
India's internal security challenges can be categorized under two heads - insurgency and extremism.
3.1 Insurgency
India faces huge challenges in dousing the insurgency fires in many parts of the country - from the dense forests of Central India covering Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, few districts in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, few parts of Andhra Pradesh (so called Red Corridor) to North-East India. We all know the Pakistani sponsored and mooted terrorist activities in the state of J&K since 1989. Besides there are dozens of militant groups in ethnically diverse North Eastern part of the country. Indian strategy so far has been to first let a state handle its law and order situation and intervene only in cases of extreme urgency.
This strategy needs a rethink because of signs of consolidation among many of the freedom-seekers e.g. there are indications that Maoists have tried to forge ties with Kashmiri separatists and ULFA to synergize their activities. Furthermore as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in India stretches, it develops proximity to important cities and both north-south and east west lines of communication - termed as "potentially dangerous" by the Indian Army.
Therefore for successfully tackling the menace of LWE, a two-pronged strategy needs to be adopted - focus on socio-economic uplift of the affected areas as it is unfulfilled promise of the Indian state to her citizens (aka Directive Principles of the State) and secondly to crush with force the brutal terrorists, as this is one of the root-causes of the rise of Naxal movement in the Indian hinterland. Sincere efforts must be taken to implement inclusive growth as an objective of public policy. On fighting the insurgency, inter-state cooperation is a must and jurisdictional issues should not be allowed to tackle a nation-wide insurgency. Failing which, it must be emphasized India will face sever governance crisis internally and might even descend into chaos.
Insurgency in NE part of the country goes till 1950s and has its genesis in the way those states were integrated into the Indian Union. Much water has since flown down the river Brahmaputra to reverse the flow of time. Inter-ethnic and inter-religious harmony should be maintained in the highly sensitive region through grass-root level participation of people. Besides illegal migration from Bangladesh rightly fuels resentment among the rightful Indian citizens and there should be no vote-bank politics with this critical development in Assam and other states. Otherwise changed demographics of these states can wreck havoc on the internal security of the country in the coming decades. A reason to launch the UIDAI - Aadhar was precisely this.
For tackling the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, numerous tomes have been written. But in a nutshell, the issue requires firm handling from the Centre. It is widely documented that Pakistani state fuels the seeds of alienation among the Kashmiri youth. Even within the state of J&K, Jammu and Ladakh have not shown secessionist movements and are well-integrated into the mainstream. It is only the Kashmir Valley which has seen such activities and adequate focus should be given towards job creation in this region.
3.2 Extremism
Religious extremism is the other internal security threat to the country. Without establishing cause-and-effect for this phenomenon as do most of the Right and Left wing intellectuals, there is an urgency to tackle this issue. Fair and transparent law enforcement and quick, efficient judicial apparatus are required to stem the tide of religious extremism in the country - both minority as well as majority. Recent rhetorical statements from the politicians of certain political spectrum to milk this challenge for their advantage are indeed unfortunate. Other challenges to internal security are astoundingly high level of corruption, political factionalism and caste wars - all of which require seasoned and firm political vision.
4.0 WHICH IS THE GREATER THREAT - INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL?
It is indeed a complex task to determine which of the two threats will be greater for India. In fact, in highly dynamic external security situation and rapidly evolving internal socio-economic developments, the relative strengths of these challenges cannot be determined with certainty. But one can say that an internally weak nation cannot fight an external adversary successfully. So tackling internal insurgency successfully is a greater and immediate challenge than fighting wars abroad. Continued insurgency can provide a fillip to external aggression from our adversaries sensing internal weakness. For example, left-wing ultras can cripple rail and road infrastructure in the event of war and our enemies can very well factor this into their calculations. Similarly insurgencies in India are abetted and supported by our adversaries and the impact of the two challenges cannot be isolated per se.
5.0 CONCLUSION
In a field as vast and complex as national security it is difficult to ascertain which of the two threats - external or internal- will pose a greater security threat to the country going forward. But if we take nation as an organism, to fight an external adversary, internal strength is prerequisite. Internal cohesion and external defense preparedness is what gives a nation lethal power to deter a potential aggressor and preserve freedom. Indian history has shown throughout millennia, we have lost our freedom and riches by neglecting our frontiers or through internal factionalism. Any nation which is getting rich without paying adequate focus on defense invites aggression.
Are we as a nation ready to face and overcome these challenges?
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