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COMMENTARY
Pakistan, China underpin
India's security doctrine
By B Raman
Any national security doctrine of India has to
cater to the possibility of threats from two sources -
China and Pakistan.
The threat from China was
rated high until 1988 because of the unresolved border
dispute between the two countries, the clandestine
military and nuclear assistance given by the Chinese
government to the Pakistani armed forces in order to
keep the Indian security forces preoccupied on two
fronts, and the support extended by the Chinese
intelligence agencies to the tribal insurgent groups of
India's Northeast. The border dispute led to a war
between the two countries in 1962. Between 1967 and
1979, many of these insurgent groups went to Yunnan in
China via north Myanmar and were trained and armed by
the Chinese intelligence.
The visit of Rajiv
Gandhi, the then Indian prime minister, to China in 1988
and his meeting with Deng Xiaoping set in motion the
process of improving bilateral relations. In 1988 and
thereafter, the two countries agreed on a number of
confidence-building measures, set up a joint working
group to discuss the border problem on a sustained basis
and decided not to let the pending border dispute come
in the way of an improvement in relations in the
economic, cultural and other fields. The Chinese
intelligence, which had already started reducing its
clandestine assistance to the tribal insurgent groups
from 1979, totally stopped it after 1988.
Despite this, China continues to pre-occupy the
attention of India's national security managers due to
the following reasons:
The very slow progress of
the talks on the border issue, giving rise to misgivings
that Beijing probably wants to keep this issue alive
till it has totally pacified Tibet to its satisfaction.
Though there is no more unrest in Tibet, which has been
developing economically, the Dalai Lama still enjoys a
large following there. The Chinese are determined that
when the present Dalai Lama dies, his successor will be
a man of their choice. They appreciate that this could
give rise to serious unrest, which could be exploited by
the Tibetan Diaspora in India and elsewhere. By keeping
the border issue alive, China wants to retain a pressure
point which it can exploit should India show reluctance
to keep the Tibetan refugees under control.
In
national security matters, the Chinese, unlike the
Indians, work on a long-term basis and try to develop
today options that they may need years hence should
circumstances so warrant. For example, China's continued
clandestine assistance to Pakistan in the military
nuclear field and in the acquisition of a missile-based
delivery capability. Even as Beijing was entering into
an agreement with Rajiv Gandhi on improving bilateral
relations, it was secretly entering an agreement with
Islamabad for assistance in the missile field. Another
example is China's decision in 2001 to assist Pakistan
in the construction of the Gwadar port on the
Balochistan coast, which will reduce Pakistan's present
dependence on Karachi port, which is within easy reach
of the Indian navy, and give the Pakistani navy a
greater operational flexibility.
The threat from
Pakistan, meanwhile, has always remained and will
continue to remain of a very high order due to the
following reasons:
Pakistan's inability to reconcile itself to the loss
of Jammu and Kashmir and its obsessive urge to gain
control of this territory by hook or by crook.
Its equally obsessive urge to avenge its defeat at
the hands of India in 1971 and its loss of the then East
Pakistan.
The predominant role of the revenge-seeking
Pakistani army in its national security management, with
practically no role for an elected political leadership
in this matter.
Its refusal to work for a reduction of tension and
for the improvement of relations in other fields until a
negotiated solution could be found to the Kashmir
question.
The complexes and the feelings of insecurity from
which the Pakistan army suffers vis-a-vis its Indian
counterpart.
The role of the pan-Islamic extremist elements in
molding perceptions towards India, whether in the civil
society or in the national security apparatus.
Its 1971 defeat at the hands of India brought
home to Pakistan the ground reality that it could never
hope to achieve its territorial objective through a
conventional war on India. It therefore embarked on a
policy of waging a proxy war through the use of
terrorism as a weapon against the Indian state. Pakistan
had been using terrorism against the Indian state since
1956 when the Naga insurgency broke out. Whereas its use
of terrorism against India before 1971 was a defensive
measure to keep the Indian security forces preoccupied
with internal security duties so that they could not
pose a threat to it, its use after 1971 was an
aggressive measure having the dual objective of
continuing to keep the Indian security forces bleeding
and preoccupied with internal security duties and
achieving its strategic objective of annexing Jammu and
Kashmir without the direct use of its army in a
conventional war.
Until Pakistan achieved a
military nuclear capability in the late 1980s, which was
subsequently openly demonstrated in the Chagai nuclear
tests of 1998, it kept its proxy war restricted to the
training and arming of Indian separatist groups, whether
in Punjab or Kashmir, which had taken to arms against
the government of India due to various grievances. The
acquisition of the military nuclear capability made the
Pakistani military leadership conclude that the
possibility of an Indian-imposed conventional war in
retaliation for its proxy war had been reduced
considerably, if not largely eliminated, and hence it
could further escalate its proxy war by training, arming
and infiltrating into India its own nationals under the
guise of jihadi volunteers from different pan-Islamic
organizations to intensify the jihad against India.
Until 1995, the role of these mercenaries was largely
confined to Jammu and Kashmir, but since then Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence has been using them in other
parts of India too.
Pakistan looks on its
nuclear arsenal and its missile delivery capability not
as a weapon of deterrence to deter India from using its
nuclear capability against it, but as a weapon of
intimidation to prevent India from retaliating against
it through its armed forces for its proxy war and as a
weapon of psychological pressure by creating fears of a
possible nuclear holocaust and thereby moving the rest
of the world, particularly the US, to exercise pressure
on India on the Jammu and Kashmir issue. Its consistent
refusal to subscribe to the no first use of nuclear
weapons declaration and its repeated reiteration of its
readiness to make first use of its nuclear weapons to
prevent the Indian army from over-running its large
cities and crushing its army are part of its
intimidatory tactics.
The nuclear threat from
Pakistan is compounded by the presence of pan-Islamic
jihadi elements which justify the use of the weapons of
mass destruction to protect Islam, if necessary. The
possibility of the nuclearization of terrorism
originating from the terrorist hub of Pakistan is a
matter of great concern not only to India, but also to
the international community as a whole, confronted with
the threat of pan-Islamic jihadi terrorism.
Since President General Pervez Musharraf seized
power on October 12, 1999, Pakistan has embarked on a
policy of over-projecting its nuclear and missile
capability in order to reassure its own population of
the adequacy of its capability and to intimidate India
and prevent a retaliatory conventional strike against
its proxy war.
Defense doctrine
objectives
The objectives of India's national
defense doctrine vis-a-vis
China are twofold and
simple:
How to prevent a repeat of 1962, by maintaining an
adequate level of conventional military capability to
deter any Chinese temptation to enforce its territorial
claims against India by force?
How to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent against
it?
The objectives vis-a-vis
Pakistan are manifold and much
more complex:
How to find a controlled retaliatory response to
Pakistan's proxy war without allowing the response to
degenerate into a war involving the use of nuclear
weapons?
How to neutralize the Pakistani attempts to
intimidate and demoralize the Indian population through
over-projection of its nuclear and missile capability
and irresponsible nuclear rhetoric?
Whereas any war with China will most probably be
fought in Indian territory, any war with Pakistan will
be in Pakistani territory. How to prevent India's
overwhelming conventional superiority from pressing the
panic button in Pakistan's military leadership and
triggering off a nuclear response?
How to achieve India's military objectives in the
shortest time possible before international intervention
comes in the way of the further conduct of the war?
In response to these questions, a number of
possible options have figured in the debate on national
security in recent months. Among the various options and
suggestions considered were:
Greater transparency about India's nuclear and
missile capabilities to reassure our own population and
to have a sobering effect on Pakistan's adventurist
generals.
A public announcement of India's nuclear command and
control mechanism.
Discarding India's no first use of nuclear weapons
policy.
India's readiness and ability to fight a limited
conventional war without allowing it to escalate into a
nuclear confrontation.
A counter-terrorism doctrine to exploit Pakistan's
vulnerabilities through covert action to make it pay an
increasingly prohibitive price for its proxy war.
Cooperative action through other concerned powers to
prevent Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction
capabilities from falling into the hands of its
terrorists.
The announcement by the government
of India of India's nuclear command and control
mechanism and the contours of its nuclear doctrine on
January 4 was the necessary first step in this
direction. The no first use policy has been reiterated,
but in a nuanced form by underlining that India's
nuclear capability is meant to deter not only a nuclear
strike, but also a strike with chemical or biological
weapons. India's capability and determination for a
massive retaliatory response has been reiterated.
However, the nuclear doctrine by itself will not
complete the national security doctrine unless it is
supplemented by a counter-terrorism doctrine to enable
India to exercise its right of active defense against
the Pakistani use of terrorism as a weapon to achieve
its strategic objectives. Such a doctrine should have a
mix of carefully-controlled overt and extensive,
sustained and deniable covert actions. The national
security managers should now devote themselves to this
task. It brooks no delay.
B Raman is
Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. He was also head of the counter-terrorism
division of the Research & Analysis Wing, India's
external intelligence agency, from 1988 to August,
1994.
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