Defense unpreparedness - Who is responsible?

Indian Express | New Delhi | March 23, 2018 | Page 15

India’s defense budget for FY 2018-19 is a meager Rs 2.95 lakh crore, an increase by 7.81% over last year but  just about 1.58% of the GDP, the lowest figure since the 1962 war with China wherein it was 1.65%. 

• In the light of military threats from both Pakistan and China, the defence outlay is unlikely to completely meet the requirements defense forces. Even though several defense procurement projects were approved, large amounts of funds continue to be surrendered unspent from the capital budget in the past few years.
• China's defense budget is $175 billion i.e. nearly Rs.12 lakh crores. And their massive spending on modernizing armed forces, started 5 years ago, is nearing completion. In terms of capabilities & preparedness, India stands no where near China.
• India’s military equipment is ageing rapidly and replacements are not keeping pace. The budget will not even meet the army’s operational requirements and meeting the threats against China and Pakistan. 
• Deficiencies in ammunition have an adverse impact on the ability to sustain prolonged military operations. The ammunition and weapons stocks available last for less than ten days of fighting against the norm of maintaining 30 days stock. 
• The navy and air force services are no better off. The obsolescent weapons and equipment also affects the country’s defence preparedness as fighter and bomber aircraft are extremely difficult to maintain towards the end of the life cycle. Air force units are also equipped with obsolete equipment and depleting fleet. 
• While the Indian navy is far from acquiring the capabilities of a blue water navy, the People’s Liberation Army navy is getting ready to sail into the Indian Ocean.
• Modern wars are fought mostly during the hours of darkness, but a large number of the army’s armoured fighting vehicles, tanks and infantry combat vehicles are still ‘night blind’. 

The government sanctioned some funds to acquire the wherewithal necessary for combat readiness. Unless the remaining deficiencies in weapons, ammunition and equipment are also made up quickly, the management of the defence budget improves by an order of magnitude and the defence procurement process is streamlined further, thoughts of critical hollowness in defence preparedness will continue to haunt India’s defence planners.

It is strange that India thinks of military when compelled to plan for augmenting their protection against the adversaries. The fact of the matter is India is not war ready. We don't have ability and ammunition stocks for a two front war. At best we can defend from aggressors. The military modernization which was conceived in 2004 after exposure of weaknesses during Kargil war has not taken shape till now. Both UPA and present NDA governments are responsible for India's today's utter defense unpreparedness.

Doklam standoff. India tamed?

• Two months after the Doklam standoff, India said on Aug 25, 2017 that China has agreed to mutually withdraw troops from the tri-junction. Minutes after India's statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said, while India was withdrawing its troops, they will continue to patrol in the Doklam area.
• “In recent weeks, India and China have maintained diplomatic communication in respect of the incident at Doklam. During these communications, we were able to express our views and convey our concerns and interests,” the statement said. "On this basis, expeditious disengagement of border personnel at the face-off site at Doklam has been agreed to and is on-going," the MEA statement further said.
• China's Foreign Ministry on Aug 25, 2017 said Indian troops had withdrawn to the Indian side of a disputed border area where the two countries' soldiers had been locked in stand-off for more than two months. Ministry spokeswoman said Chinese troops would continue to patrol the disputed Doklam region.
• This comes days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Xiamen visit to attend the BRICS Summit from September 3 to 5. 
• After three months of weathering Chinese pressure, it is unfortunate if India has withdrawn unilaterally. For both countries, it would be a loss of face if it were not a mutual withdrawal. 
• The Indian Army has been engaged in a border standoff with Chinese troops for over two months when the Indian troops stopped the People’s Liberation Army from building a road in the Doklam area. While China has maintained that they were only building a road in their territory, both India and Bhutan, the two other countries sharing the border in this tri-junction has said that Doklam is Bhutanese territory and critical to India’s borders.

India has not controverted any of the official Chinese statements so far. China has disavowed that the disengagement was mutual. Chinese maintained that their border troops continue their patrols in the Doklam area. Our government sources off the record says that the reason to ignore the Chinese assertions is to give China a “face saver” doesn't hold any water. Is this not an abject surrender? If China was right and we were wrong, why are we there in the first instance? Is Modi attending the BRICS summit in China that important? If yes, for whom and why? Is India’s gesture a sign of weakness for all the bombastic rhetoric of nationalism spouted over the past three years. Are we actually a bunch of spineless fellows scared of a war despite a national cause and favorable terrain? China actually won the war without fighting!

China Vs India

• China's defense spending at 10.7% of its budget is $150 billion, is five times of what India spends @1.5% of its GDP - the lowest since 1950-51.
• Our armed forces lack strategic reconnaissance to peer 300 km deep into China or Pakistan and detect mobilizations.
• India doesn't even have a full time defense minister since 5 months.
• China's military is undergoing modernization, where as India failed to implement long debated modernization plan and is saddled with outdated equipment.
• Our howitzer ammunition is adequate only for 10 days of intense warfare against prescribed 40 days. 
• Any sign of exhibiting weakness here by China, could boost its rivals.
• Doklam is a narrow plateau lying in the tri-junction region of Bhutan, China and India. Doklam is a disputed territory and Bhutan has a written agreement with China that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, peace and tranquility should be maintained in the area. This is not really an issue between China and India. New Delhi sees this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between China and Bhutan and maintain its control of Thimphu.
• Both Bhutanese and Chinese herdsmen have grazed there for generations, as claimed by both the countries.
• The Chinese perspective is that Doklam area belongs to China, it therefore follows that the construction of a road is a normal activity in this own territory. The present standoff between is reflection of India’s deep distrust and strategic anxiety towards China. The tussle at the tri-junction goes beyond the 89 square kilometres of territory to the larger issues.
• Rising nationalist sentiment since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power has only worsened ties between the two sides, as evidenced by the rhetoric by Indian officials since the standoff began.
• The Chinese economy is slowing. It has an ageing population, an ecologically ravaged landscape and mounting debt that is 250 per cent of GDP. China also remains a brittle and opaque polity. 
• In China, internal circumstances might have driven military to adopt hard line posture, both political and domestic, and the need to rally public support for the military.
• China's adventurism at Doklam, if successful, brings it closer to our 27 km Siliguri corridor (chicken's neck) the vital land connection to North Eastern states. Doklam is a significant ­security challenge for India.
• Our military modernization with combat readiness will be ready by 2020 only; IAF's dip in combat aircraft with 32 of 39 sanctioned planes is perilous; Navy is short of both submarines and anti submarine warfare helicopters.
• Along the LAC all weather roads and strategic railway lines to rush troops and supplies are either incomplete or paper bound. China in contrast have completed most of such things.
• China is in no mood for compromise in Doklam. The message is very clear. Unless India withdraws troops there is no scope for deescalation or talks, while India is saying let both sides withdraw troops and then talk. The deadlock and tensions are likely to remain for some more time.
• Yet the conflict will be disastrous for China mainly due to terrain being favorable to India. China might suffer greater causalities than India in case of assault at Doklam. 
• Any assault at Doklam will seriously hurt China's self image as emerging Global  power and Asian hegemon.
• Since China is not sure of a decisive victory against India, its aggressive & hard line rhetoric, its military superiority, border infrastructure, massive mobilization of troops along side border and drills are aimed at winning the war without fighting.
• It would be absurd for China to start a war over its own actions and that too with a small & tiny nation, Bhutan, which had security relationship with India.
• In the event of war, it would be limited to army air strikes. India would have greater strike power due to air bases located in plains where as China's airbase in Tibet is at higher altitude which restricts its pay load carrying capability. Neither can advance into other's territory without suffering heavy causalities. Hence Doklam might not trigger conventional full scale war.
• The fallout could be China, may in future, openly support Pakistan in all its border disputes with India.
• "It may difficult to shake a mountain, but it is even more difficult to shake PLA" said a Chinese military officer "India is truly different than that it was in 1962. We really don't want to engage in a war against India." indicating Beijing's awareness that a war with India would be disastrous. Its loud rhetoric doesn't mean action.

There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare ... Sun Tzu

Read also India-China border standoff

My View:
Chinese muscle flexing over Doklam is probably aimed at reducing its own stresses and uncertainties due to its massive military overhaul to be completed by 2020 and domestic political considerations for rallying public support for military ahead of PLA's 90th anniversary. However, our military deficiencies arising out of Modi's wrong priorities and meager budget allocations especially over the past three years could prove costly for him as well as India. On economic front, Indo-China war could prove catastrophic for both the nations especially India going back in time line by over a decade. Finally, there is substitute for dialogues and war solves no problems.

India-China border standoff

A series of disputes resulting in an armed confrontation between China and India would roil international markets, exacerbate fears in other Asian capitals about Chinese assertiveness, and distract Beijing and New Delhi from constructive agendas of economic development. The resulting setbacks to the Chinese and Indian economies could potentially harm U.S. investors, retailers, manufacturers, and service providers. The US has a major interest in peaceful relations between China and India, two largest countries by population and its trading and diplomatic partners.

• The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi openly asserted at the press conference on October 7 (1966) that India was committed to protect Bhutan.
• Bhutan and China do not have formal relations but maintain contact through their missions in Delhi.
• India and Bhutan has 'friendship treaty 2007' which states that 'neither government shall allow its territories for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other'. 
• In 1966, according to a China's report - the Dongnan (Donglang) grassland (referred to as ‘Doklam pasture’ by the Indian side) where the Indian government alleged that Chinese ‘intrusions’ had taken place is located in the vicinity of the tri-junction of the boundaries of China, Bhutan and Sikkim and has always been under Chinese jurisdiction and Chinese herdsmen have grazed there for generations.
• On the night of June 8, 2017, China initiated manoeuvre in Doklam that would trigger a chain of events leading to the most dangerous standoff between India and China in recent years. A platoon of China's PLA have moved stealthily into the plateau and razed stone bunkers built by Royal Bhutan Army years ago and manned occasionally. In doing so China made a premeditated move to alter the status quo that prevailed for decades in a sensitive region. 
• Ob June 16, 2017, the PLA road construction party entered Doklam and was initially cautioned by a Bhutanese Army patrol. Later when they failed to stop them, the Indian soldiers in the vicinity arrived to help the Bhutanese to deter the PLA from bulldozing its road construction through territory claimed both by China and Bhutan. Both India and China have strengthened their presence in the area, deploying around 3,000 troops each. This is the first time India has confronted the PLA on third country soil in Bhutan. 
• China accuse India of reneging and demanding Indian soldiers retract from the confrontation at Doklam by withdrawing first if any dialogue is to follow. Beijing has put itself in a corner leaving it no wriggle room or a face-saving option. As events have shown, India will not budge as the stakes are too high for it to blink first. Being locked in the valley also poses risks for the PLA.
• Every year, China and India claim hundreds of incursions by the other across the line that separates them in the Himalayan region; over time, forces on both sides have developed signals to warn the other and avoid deadly clashes. 
• The month-long standoff between the Indian army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Doklam sector of Bhutan, has become the longest ever. A border clash could inflict dozens of casualties, jolt global markets and hurt regional economic growth.  
• It is unlikely the current stand-off will escalate into a shooting match at Doklam as China would suffer much greater losses than the Indian troops. Doklam is the culmination of the cumulated angst of the Chinese over India’s constant needling and challenging of Beijing over its obduracy in blocking India’s admission in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, sanctioning Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Masood Azhar as a UN designated global terrorist and refusal on clarification of Line of Actual Control (LAC). India’s rejection of Belt and Road initiative, especially the strong objection to China Pakistan Economic Corridor on grounds of sovereignty which was endorsed by the US has angered China. 
• It is also possible that with China’s infrastructure industries having almost completely run out of orders, and the military having large budgets to spend, the road had been proposed to the military command in Tibet by one of China’s powerfully-connected construction companies to refill its thinning order books.
• The Three Gorges Dam project was not a grand central project, but the brainchild of a private company owned and managed by the family of Li Peng, the former prime minister of the country. The same company, the Three Gorges Dam company, is now asking Beijing to let it build a 40,000 MW hydropower project on the big bend north of Arunachal Pradesh, where the Brahmaputra drops 3,000 metres over a few kilometres.
• The rapid deterioration in China-India relations in the past two years, Beijing must have seen in the road project a way to provoke Modi into making a serious mistake while also putting pressure on the Bhutan-India relationship –  thereby increasing India’s isolation within South Asia.
• China did not anticipate Bhutan and India would respond in unison. All the conditions that had led to India’s crushing, humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese in 1962 have recreated themselves. We once more have an army unprepared for battle, whose capabilities are being exaggerated.
• This time, China has accused Indian border troops of trespassing into Chinese territory on June 18 and asked New Delhi to withdraw its troops from the Donglang area as a precondition for a “meaningful dialogue” to resolve the issue. Arun Jaitley said that the statement from Bhutan makes it clear that the land in question belongs to them.
• The 1962 war was set off by what was essentially an accident – the failure of army general headquarters to inform the soldiers tasked with setting up forward posts in North-East Frontier Agency that the Chinese had rejected the new tri-junction. As a result, Captain Mahesh Prasad, who set up the Dhola post at what he thought was the tri-junction, was soon surrounded by 600 Chinese soldiers. The attempt to relieve Dhola by force set off the war.
• Most Indian analysts who have been asked whether the present confrontation could lead to war have hastened to say ‘no’. That is precisely the wishful thinking that preceded the 1962 war. 
• China’s conditionality that Indian troops must withdraw first for any dialogue to start can be softened by employing the principle of simultaneity. As has happenend in the past, both sides can withdraw together from Doklam and prevent the dispute escalating into a bigger conflict.
• India's BJP led government is likely to take a tougher line and has already irritated Beijing on related issues. Its hawkish Prime Minister Modi—facing domestic pressures to retaliate, aiming to avoid the strategic consequences of showing weakness to Pakistan, and having developed punitive military-strike options short of full-scale ground mobilization—is more likely to respond with force than his predecessors.
• Today, Modi is faced to admit that he has made a mistake, pull Indian troops back from the Doklam plateau and step back. If he does not, then China has made it absolutely clear that it will use force to evict the Indians from Doklam. What is worse, the hostilities will take place on Bhutanese territory over the objections of its leaders and people.
• A wise leader is one who knows when to back off gracefully from an untenable position. A statesman is one who can not only do this but turn the situation around and make it work in his or her country’s favour. Regrettably Modi has so far shown neither wisdom nor statesmanship. But the Chinese don’t want a war with India. So there is still a little time left to make a start.

In war, there are no winners but all are losers ... Neville Chamberlain

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth. During any war 

truth is forsaken for propaganda ... Harry Browne

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could 

make a good peace would never have won the war ... Winston Churchill

My View:

If India and China do have a war, nobody can win and it does not matter who has more guns or ships or aircraft. China might suffer higher causalities due to deficient logistical support. The fact is that the spoils of war would be impossible to bear, and given the billion-plus populations and taking care of them, even the victor would be destroyed. 1962 was a political war and badly handled. It will not happen again. Beijing is well aware of that. Even 1971 Indo-Pak war that was victorious and politically left Indira Gandhi on very strong footing proved economically destructive especially after 1973 oil crisis that led to economic unrest and eventually ended up with Emergency in 1977. During past decade India virtually dismantled all its small industries and became huge importer Chinese cheaper goods and disruption of these imported goods will effect our economy and operations. China also would suffer its economy further sinking with loss of over $60 billion exports to India. Wars are fought always between egoistic politicians rather than peoples of these two nations or their armies, who will pay the price for no fault of theirs.