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India:
The games the Pentagon plays
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - An acknowledged master of psyops,
the Pentagon has succeeded in conveying to India its
very low opinion of the Indian army without allowing a
public uproar to build up. The method it used was
leaking to sections of the media bit by palatable bit a
classified US government report highly damning to the
Indian defense services and their policymakers.
In the first leak in early April, one United
States officer was quoted as saying, "We want a friend
in 2020 that will be capable of assisting the US
militarily to deal with a Chinese threat," thus merely
implying that the Indian army was not yet fully prepared
to assume the role of a US friend. But gradually,
through several leaks in different sections of the
press, a fuller picture of the seeming contempt in which
US generals hold Indian army officers and politicians
has emerged.
Speculation is rife as to why the
US leaked this classified document at a time when it
desperately needs the Indian army to help its occupation
forces in Iraq. The Indian army alone could spare 20,000
soldiers, even as the main US ally in the occupation of
Iraq, the United Kingdom, has sent only 14,000 troops.
Why denigrate an army and antagonize it right when you
need it the most? Indian politicians are still debating
whether or not to send the troops.
It seems that
at the time that the leaks started - they must have
first reached Jane's Foreign Report, which first
mentioned this document, some time in March - the
Pentagon did not believe, though it was being told, that
it would face a Vietnam-like quagmire in Iraq after the
fall of Saddam Hussein. It had its eyes on Indian troops
even then. But it thought that it would need them only
for normal policing duties, and could tell India that
even though it did not think highly of their
professionalism, it could invite them to Iraq as a sort
of favor. After all, this would give them an opportunity
to learn working under the command of the world's best
army. The US may have thought that India would be
grateful for the opportunity, particularly if it had
been softened by the leak of a classified document
detailing the low opinion of US army officers about the
Indian army.
All this has changed though with
the unfolding security nightmare in Iraq, and the
American behavior in leaking the document looks
foolishly arrogant. Now the US is asking for Indian
troops for a very different reason as the body bags
mount.
And Indians are somewhat amused at the
idea of American "viceroy" in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, being
formally pulled up by National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice for not being nice enough to a visiting
Indian official. Indeed, Rice apologized to Foreign
Secretary Kanwal Sibal over the lack of an American
reception for the Indian official in Baghdad. It is
possible that they are regretting the policy of leaking
the confidential document.
The 153-page Pentagon
report was prepared by analyst Juli A Macdonald as
commissioned by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
It is titled "Indo-US Military Relationship:
Expectations and Perceptions". Macdonald's analysis is
based on 82 interviews - 42 Americans and 40 Indians -
and focuses on the impediments that exist in forging a
closer Indo-US relationship.
Through its policy
of palatable leaks, in small doses, assisted by relevant
Indian government departments, the Pentagon has
succeeded in avoiding a public uproar. But the defense
establishment and the strategic community is outraged.
Only a few army officers have, however, mustered the
courage to speak, that too off the record, to the lone
print media outlet, Outlook news magazine, that is
asking questions.
Outlook painted a reasonably
adequate picture of what the report says in its July 7
issue in a report titled "Something To Take Offence?"
calling it "a devastating indictment, not only of the
Indian army, but of other crucial departments as well".
The website rediff.com ran a series of articles in late
April, giving a more comprehensive picture. The
strategic community has been livid since then, but the
common people remain largely unaware. Both the Ministry
of External Affairs and the Ministry of Defense have
refused to comment, passing the buck to each other,
presumably because any response would mean criticizing
the US government.
What should worry India even
more than the US indictment of the Indian army and other
policymakers, however, is the obvious US attempt at
driving a wedge between India and China. The first
installment of the leak in March to Jane's Foreign
Report was clearly aimed at putting a spanner in the
then-ongoing negotiations between the officials of the
two countries for the agreements that were signed during
last month's week-long visit of Indian Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee to China.
Jane's quoted the
Pentagon report saying that the US and India were
forging long-term defense and security alliances aimed
at containing China, a country both saw as an emerging
regional and global power. "China represents the most
significant threat to both countries' security in the
future as an economic and military competitor," the
report said.
The Pentagon document also quoted
an unidentified US admiral as saying that a positive
relationship with India was a "hedge" against future
Chinese ambitions. "USA and India both view China as a
strategic threat and share an interest in understanding
Chinese strategic intent, though we do not discuss this
publicly," the admiral said. The report said that Indian
and US views of China were "strikingly similar" and
predicated to keep China out of the Indian Ocean region
where, over the past decade, it has been making swift
inroads.
US officials, the classified document
said, think a "strategic engagement" with India could
become a "future investment" of growing value if Asia
became hostile and dangerous to a continuing US military
presence in the region. "If China emerges as a major
power, the USA needs to have friends - preferably
friends who share the same values," the report said,
adding, "India will have more clout. As the US military
engages India, as much as we say we do, we cannot
separate our thinking on India from our thinking on
China."
India is more than willing to have US as
an ally, to "spook and rattle" China, despite its flurry
of diplomatic and political overtures to the Chinese
government to normalize relations, the report claimed.
"As the USA and India develop a closer military
relationship, China will respond. Where and how China
will respond remains unclear, but India faces the
reality that it lives in a neighborhood where China
supplies nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan,
weapons to Bangladesh and is building a 3657 meter
runaway near Mandalin Gwadar in Pakistan," it said.
Indian intelligence sources were quoted as
saying that China had also resumed, after a two-decade
gap, the supply of weapons to various insurgent groups
fighting for independence in northeast India. Meanwhile,
the report said, a small cog in the US-Indian military
alliance aimed at containing China is already in place.
For more than a year the Indian and US navies have been
jointly patrolling the Malacca Straits. The US is keen
to police the Straits, through which over 80 percent of
Japan's oil supplies from the Middle East are
transported. The Bush administration would also like to
establish a long-term presence in the region, given the
brewing North Korean and China-Taiwan crisis, the report
said, adding that naval cooperation is perhaps one of
the more promising areas.
It is not difficult to
see what impact the publication of this portion of the
Pentagon document must have had on the Indian and
Chinese officials engaged in delicate negotiations over
every word of their proposed agreements. In the light of
this revelation, it is perhaps not difficult to see why
India had to give concessions on Tibet and agree to
trade through the Nathu La pass in Sikkim without being
able to persuade China to offer a formal recognition of
Sikkim. Vajpayee has been accused of betraying Indian
interests, but he just had to establish India's
credentials as a country genuinely desirous of
friendship and normalization of relations in the face of
the Pentagon report that said it was actually colluding
with the US in its anti-China containment game or that
its views about China were identical to that of the
United States.
A main American grouse is India's
"hyper-sensitivity to sovereignty". In this context, a
foreign area officer is quoted in the document as
saying, "Indians won't participate in a multilateral
force until it is under the umbrella of the UN. If the
multilateral force has no UN support, then the Indian
military's participation is seen as compromising India's
sovereignty."
Indian bureaucrats, generals,
admirals and air marshals could be "easily slighted or
insulted", are "difficult to work with", harbor
"deep-seated distrust" of Americans, are mostly
"obsessed" with history than the future and "see the
world through their perennial distrust of Pakistan",
says a summary of the report in rediff.com. One American
policymaker says that the Indian mantra today is
"Musharraf cannot be trusted", and about a decade back
Indians saw a "Chinese periscope behind each wave in the
Indian Ocean", referring to Indian claims of a Chinese
presence in the Indian Ocean in the early 1990s. The
report goes on, "A number of American military officers
who interacted with Indians and Pakistanis in the early
1990s revealed that they would much rather interact with
the Pakistanis, whom they describe as more
accommodating, flexible and easy to work with." Across
the board American policymakers believe that Indians
"cannot think strategically".
The Pentagon
report treats nearly all sections of Indian strategic
establishment shabbily. It is even dismissive of the
National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, for instance.
He is described as being "lax and lazy at his work".
According to the report, as summarized in
Outlook, no American believed that military cooperation
"would or could open the floodgates" to US foreign
investment. The "disappointments and frustrations
associated with doing business in India cuts across most
sectors but are particularly strong in the energy
sector". A high-ranking American policymaker argued that
"doing business in India is difficult and costly. The
Indians are difficult to negotiate with; they sue; they
don't pay; and the legal process is slow". The report
also points out that of the 22 US companies which
accompanied former president Bill Clinton to India in
April 2000, only one company actually invested in the
country.
According to the report, Washington
policymakers also had the impression that Indians didn't
understand the "economic dimension of the relationship".
The report quotes a US official as saying, "Among all
the high-level visits in late 2001, the Indian finance
minister had not made a trip to Washington as of January
2002, suggesting to American policymakers that economic
relationship was not a priority." This view seemed to
have been reinforced by the visit of national security
advisor Brajesh Mishra in January 2002.
The
report says, "During a recent visit of Brajesh Mishra,
he backed out of an appointment with the US secretary of
treasury, Paul O'Neill, that could only be scheduled at
7:30 am. Mishra's behavior left the impression that the
economic discussions were not important enough to get
him up that early in the morning." One hopes that in his
recent trip to Washington, he was more active, dynamic
and punctual, as he must have been aware of American
displeasure at his lethargy.
What has earned for
the Pentagon the ire of the Indian establishment most,
however, are the comments and insinuations about the
Indian military. In the American view, the Indian
military still lacks the authority to design, plan and
execute an initiative without civilian supervision,
unlike the US military that has significant freedom to
define its priorities. Americans continue to be
concerned about the anti-Americanism that they see
lurking at the lower levels of the bureaucracy, and
these pockets of suspicion, they believe, have the power
to stall relations.
Another complaint is that
the Indian military is highly insulated from any contact
with foreigners, except with approval through official
channels. Officers have limited exposure to the outside
world and little academic training in subjects required
for strategy. This kind of chokepoint could seriously
impede a growing relationship.
The Directorate
General of Military Intelligence, complains the report,
is becoming an increasingly problematic chokepoint that
could undermine a broad-based military-to-military
relationship. Sometimes, this has led Americans to
conclude that India is not interested in US Department
of Defense initiatives, prompting it to divert funding
to other countries that show a positive and prompt
response. The Indian military's communications with
American counterparts are inevitably late, incomplete or
non-existent. Indians demand transparency on the US
side, but their system remains opaque and frequently
inaccessible to outsiders.
Though arguing for a
more meaningful Indo-US engagement, the report has
identified many stumbling blocks. For example, on the
subject of "Residual Perceptions of Each Other" the
report emphatically states that the US military
continues to harbor a "residual distrust for the Indians
because of their past relationship with the Soviet
Union". Says a US general, "We distrust any military
that flies MiGs. This is an ingrained perception that
has not yet faded." Another colonel quoted in the report
says, "Frankly, we will not share high technology with
the Indians while Russian technicians are running around
the country."
The report says that the Americans
interviewed complained about the inability of Indian
defense officials to "think strategically". For example,
several American policymakers described Indian briefings
at the defense policy group and the executive steering
group as "elementary and pedestrian, lacking any
elaboration of strategies". In fact, the report says
that American briefings on the Indian military's new
Integrated Defense Staff was far more comprehensive than
the Indian briefing itself.
Continuing in this
vein, the report talks of how Indian military officers
lack the training to conduct rigorous cost-benefit
analyses required to understand the implications of
their military operations or to guide their
budget/resources decisions. For example, instead of
analyzing the costs, trade-offs and strategic
implications of building a fleet of nuclear submarines,
the "Indians fall back on Cold War arguments and canards
to justify their decision". Academic training in
geopolitics, history and patterns of organization is
lacking, the report states.
Slamming Indian
defense officials for being "intellectually arrogant"
and "protocol-driven", which are "off-putting" and
"counter-productive", the report says interaction with
Indians had made many US officials "extremely
uncomfortable". In this connection, the report quotes a
colonel who has spent several years in India, "For the
Indians, the act is more important than the substance;
the theory is more important than the execution; and the
tactic is more important than the strategy."
There are swipes at "Indian elites" - both in
the defense services and the bureaucracy - who "thrive
on fine-tuned arguments and logic", instead of being
interested in practical issues. The report argues that
the US should not be deceived by the Indian military's
size. "They [US officials] believe the poor quality and
lack of maintenance of India's weapon systems limit its
ability to be a capable partner."
A number of
American military officers interviewed were concerned,
says the report, that the "density" and
"unresponsiveness" of India's bureaucracy are shaping
the perceptions of colonels who will be generals in five
years. Then, they might be less willing to work with the
US. The report states that "an underlying source of
frustration permeates" all American experiences with
Indian bureaucracy and many Americans ask themselves:
"Are the Indians uninterested in the initiative? Do the
Indians know how to respond? Did a civilian bureaucrat
kill an initiative for political reasons?" Indians
interviewed in the report dismiss these problems as
"insignificant".
To overcome the stumbling
blocks, the report says, American officers have adopted
a three-pronged strategy to engage their Indian
counterparts by sending initiatives to the ministries of
external affairs and defense, and the services.
While the government has been conspicuously
silent, serving and retired generals have gone ballistic
over the report, says Outlook correspondent Murali
Krishnan. Senior defense officers told him in private
that they were appalled that the Vajpayee government was
neither responding nor allowing the army to react. "If
the US thought so poorly of the Indian armed forces,
then why is Washington pushing New Delhi so hard to send
troops to Iraq?" was their agitated query. One retired
general, Major-General Afsir Karim, maintains that after
this report the Indian defense force should be very
careful of any interaction with the US army.
Commenting on the Pentagon study, analyst Wilson
John says in the pro-government newspaper Pioneer, "It
is important to understand that the American
establishment takes such studies very seriously, unlike
in India where they are forgotten rather hastily." One
clear sign of the American establishment taking it
seriously, John points out, is the way in which top US
leaders make it a point to drop in or come up with those
"endearing" gestures that make headlines, in the Indian
newspapers at least. The latest instance was Rumsfeld
dropping in to see Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan
Advani in his hotel room. The news items, obviously
inspired by the Pentagon, took pains to explain that the
Defense Secretary's gesture was an extraordinary one
given his then preoccupation with matters other than
India.
John comments, "The US defense secretary
is not given to such gestures on a normal course of a
day. He is following the doctrine enunciated in the
Pentagon document. According to it, the Indians are
obsessed with "protocol, with symbolic gestures ... So
now you know why the American leadership is suddenly
making appropriate noises, gestures, handshakes, bear
hugs, all the works. They believe that we can be taken
in by gestures."
Earlier in the month, though,
according to a news report from Washington, the Pentagon
has attempted some damage control by saying that the
paper was a "contract report" prepared by several
authors and not by the Pentagon. A defense spokesman
also termed as "misleading, selective and inaccurate"
some of the quotes from the report run in the Indian
press. The US, he said, has a high regard for the Indian
army, "which was evident in the nature of ongoing
Indo-US military exchanges".
Nevertheless, it
would thus appear that just as the Pentagon leaked bit
by bit to avoid public uproar, an anti-American public
uproar is building up in India bit by bit. It is leading
to a reappraisal of American goals in India by the
strategic community and also of whether India should
play the role of a policeman in the expanding American
empire. The fact that Vajpayee brushed aside
bureaucratic objections in finalizing a deal with China
and accepted a Chinese proposal that India had rejected
some years ago must have set alarm bells ringing in
Washington. What the US perhaps needs to realize is that
for all its shortcomings, India simply cannot be treated
as its smaller and much weaker allies, like Pakistan.
For all its sloppiness, India does have a mind of its
own. Apparently India has a view of its destiny that
does not quite correspond to the role the US has in its
mind for India.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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