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Unpacking the thinking behind Indian defence strategy
As news keeps trickling in from Ladakh it seems vital to understand how did India end up here. That was no accident; we can see two colliding ideas about defence colliding and one, clearly, seems to be better than the other. I have covered the Chinese thinking strategically in another article here. I would like to turn this into a new direction where we try to unpack the Indian military’s mentality or better the guiding principle in my opinion on which they were operating.
Echo of a bygone era
Not too long ago the world was divided between the two most power nations on the planet: USSR and USA, an era called the Cold War. It was quite clear that the two nations could not co-exist and one would come on top. In the early developments of the long drawn conflict the USSR focused on conventional strength and as late as the 1960s it was thought even by Western intelligentsia that in a head to head conflict the USSR would probably be able to overcome the USA. The direct planned economy of the USSR was more favourable to a long drawn conflict like WW II; however, the nuclear weapons changed the game. The generals of the old thinking such as McArthur quickly found themselves ousted from positions where they did not appreciate the ramifications of a nuclear conflict being dramatically different from a conventional one. The USSR followed suit but the nature of the conflict changed.
There were two things that the USA did to convert the strength of the USSR against itself: first of all was winning the cultural conflict; the USA had more reach and repeatedly advertised their cultural and moral superiority over their adversary. Even though the tactics deployed by both superpowers were at par with each other but the perceptions were quite different. The second, the USA engaged in supporting the antagonism of the USSR military such as the Afghan war but at the same time especially with the Regan administration, made the cost of being a superpower extremely expensive. They kept introducing new technology which was more and more expensive to maintain for the USSR if they ever hoped to have an edge over their counterpart. These two strategies eventually culminated with the collapse of the USSR economically without ever coming into direct conflict.
Indian inspiration
The Indian defence strategy seems to echo the same strategy as that of the USA to keep shifting the balance of power in terms of their strength so as to cause to make the adversary’s system become exhausted in the end. The second part was to outreach culturally with advertising their point of view to gain moral support and international outreach and support but for our analysis this is not important so we shall ignore it for now but I do appreciate the aspect which this was also the focus. One thing that they did differently was to focus on keeping conventional pressure over their adversary by repeated build ups over zones of conflict such as the buildup over in Kashmir but there was always the notion where they justified the escalation via playing the card of having to contain China as well but on ground focusing its efforts against Pakistan.
We can assess each conflict that India has faced with Pakistan to be of the similar thinking: in 1971 it hit Pakistan’s naval assets which took considerable time to reestablish. The fabled ‘cold start’ doctrine was also to maximize damage in shortest amount of time. However, India has failed to assess Pakistan’s determination to maintain a balance of power and India’s claims of having a two sided conflict since 1962 when it first faced China has failed to materialize on ground otherwise they would have been prepared for what is happening right now.
The lapse
You can have the best strategies but if you are not tactically prepared then it can go out of the window and I think this is what we are seeing happening. The Indian military does not seem practically prepared for an active conflict relying on their strategic aims to ensure victory. Strategy is what you overall aim to achieve and tactics is how you do it; strategy is the architectural blueprint and tactics is the actual building materials. However, lapses in these two are extremely hard to balance because they are informed by a myriad of factors. For instance, the decision of the IAF to go for Rafael systems is, in my opinion, a tactical error because the new systems need to be incorporated into the air force before they can be useful. For the average reader I would like to inform that just getting equipment is not enough; every system of such nature with such high technical nature requires to orient the logistics system of the air force to cater to it because these machineries routinely breakdown and more importantly, the engineers need to learn how to fix and maintain it and lastly the pilots need to learn how to use the machinery to its capabilities. All of this takes time, quite a bit of time, actually; a decade is not an unreasonable estimate. To simplify, which weapon is the best? It’s not the one which is the most lethal on paper but the one you have practiced on the most.
Peace time militaries
The reason for this, in my opinion, is quite simple; a military’s greatest enemy is peacetime decay. Essentially military is a bureaucracy and during peacetime it is focusing on its bureaucratic functioning which hampers important lessons that it needs to learn in order to do its actual job. The economic boom that India was able to achieve seems to have affected its ability to function cohesively as a fighting force. Let’s take this example of the recent confrontation between the Chinese and Indian forces at Ladakh; in such an environment it is surprising that the commanding officer of the unit in question would not plan a possibility of the event that took place and an experienced force learns this; there is little interference on the ground level by superiors, such as the Brigade commander would not be telling the company commander how to arm each platoon that he had to take forward in his company because the on field commander needs to have flexibility to maneuver as the field changes.
What we see happening is exactly what we see for peacetime militaries: the paper decides how to fight on ground and we see the same thing in their thinking as well. Unsubstantiated claims come out to congratulate themselves over each tactical error.
Tactical error into strategic error
How can the tactical error be exploited is quite simple: India seems to face staunch opposition now. Last year Pakistan answered areal incursions with an active response and India could not answer back satisfactorily much less the propaganda it projected which was never backed up by any independent observer. Now too, India seems to be going back to the same notion of claiming victory via similar means. However, any media victory does not equate to an actual one. The strategic thinking needs to change, China can economically sustain conflict with India and Nepal seems to have taken the same message to assert itself as well. The overhaul of the current top military brass is where the nation needs to head but given the recent political developments which have made a certain thinking to seep into the military would hamper that step. There seems to be no check against these decisions and that trajectory appears to go along. Unless India can translate a strategy which it is tactically capable of such escalations would see it lose continuously to a determined enemy which is playing on its strengths.
Conclusion
The current scenario places a new dynamic of non-interference from major powers in active conflict zones for various reasons but for the militaries of the contemporary world there needs to be a serious re-orientation needed to focus on versatility of operational capabilities. It is possible that militaries face counterinsurgency and conventional theatres at the same time. The same realization also needs to come into the political planning of the military development and deployment. In any case the current scenario is a lesson in constant military preparedness and operational readiness with realistic rather than ideological assessments of warfare.
The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those held by PDF management.
As news keeps trickling in from Ladakh it seems vital to understand how did India end up here. That was no accident; we can see two colliding ideas about defence colliding and one, clearly, seems to be better than the other. I have covered the Chinese thinking strategically in another article here. I would like to turn this into a new direction where we try to unpack the Indian military’s mentality or better the guiding principle in my opinion on which they were operating.
Echo of a bygone era
Not too long ago the world was divided between the two most power nations on the planet: USSR and USA, an era called the Cold War. It was quite clear that the two nations could not co-exist and one would come on top. In the early developments of the long drawn conflict the USSR focused on conventional strength and as late as the 1960s it was thought even by Western intelligentsia that in a head to head conflict the USSR would probably be able to overcome the USA. The direct planned economy of the USSR was more favourable to a long drawn conflict like WW II; however, the nuclear weapons changed the game. The generals of the old thinking such as McArthur quickly found themselves ousted from positions where they did not appreciate the ramifications of a nuclear conflict being dramatically different from a conventional one. The USSR followed suit but the nature of the conflict changed.
There were two things that the USA did to convert the strength of the USSR against itself: first of all was winning the cultural conflict; the USA had more reach and repeatedly advertised their cultural and moral superiority over their adversary. Even though the tactics deployed by both superpowers were at par with each other but the perceptions were quite different. The second, the USA engaged in supporting the antagonism of the USSR military such as the Afghan war but at the same time especially with the Regan administration, made the cost of being a superpower extremely expensive. They kept introducing new technology which was more and more expensive to maintain for the USSR if they ever hoped to have an edge over their counterpart. These two strategies eventually culminated with the collapse of the USSR economically without ever coming into direct conflict.
Indian inspiration
The Indian defence strategy seems to echo the same strategy as that of the USA to keep shifting the balance of power in terms of their strength so as to cause to make the adversary’s system become exhausted in the end. The second part was to outreach culturally with advertising their point of view to gain moral support and international outreach and support but for our analysis this is not important so we shall ignore it for now but I do appreciate the aspect which this was also the focus. One thing that they did differently was to focus on keeping conventional pressure over their adversary by repeated build ups over zones of conflict such as the buildup over in Kashmir but there was always the notion where they justified the escalation via playing the card of having to contain China as well but on ground focusing its efforts against Pakistan.
We can assess each conflict that India has faced with Pakistan to be of the similar thinking: in 1971 it hit Pakistan’s naval assets which took considerable time to reestablish. The fabled ‘cold start’ doctrine was also to maximize damage in shortest amount of time. However, India has failed to assess Pakistan’s determination to maintain a balance of power and India’s claims of having a two sided conflict since 1962 when it first faced China has failed to materialize on ground otherwise they would have been prepared for what is happening right now.
The lapse
You can have the best strategies but if you are not tactically prepared then it can go out of the window and I think this is what we are seeing happening. The Indian military does not seem practically prepared for an active conflict relying on their strategic aims to ensure victory. Strategy is what you overall aim to achieve and tactics is how you do it; strategy is the architectural blueprint and tactics is the actual building materials. However, lapses in these two are extremely hard to balance because they are informed by a myriad of factors. For instance, the decision of the IAF to go for Rafael systems is, in my opinion, a tactical error because the new systems need to be incorporated into the air force before they can be useful. For the average reader I would like to inform that just getting equipment is not enough; every system of such nature with such high technical nature requires to orient the logistics system of the air force to cater to it because these machineries routinely breakdown and more importantly, the engineers need to learn how to fix and maintain it and lastly the pilots need to learn how to use the machinery to its capabilities. All of this takes time, quite a bit of time, actually; a decade is not an unreasonable estimate. To simplify, which weapon is the best? It’s not the one which is the most lethal on paper but the one you have practiced on the most.
Peace time militaries
The reason for this, in my opinion, is quite simple; a military’s greatest enemy is peacetime decay. Essentially military is a bureaucracy and during peacetime it is focusing on its bureaucratic functioning which hampers important lessons that it needs to learn in order to do its actual job. The economic boom that India was able to achieve seems to have affected its ability to function cohesively as a fighting force. Let’s take this example of the recent confrontation between the Chinese and Indian forces at Ladakh; in such an environment it is surprising that the commanding officer of the unit in question would not plan a possibility of the event that took place and an experienced force learns this; there is little interference on the ground level by superiors, such as the Brigade commander would not be telling the company commander how to arm each platoon that he had to take forward in his company because the on field commander needs to have flexibility to maneuver as the field changes.
What we see happening is exactly what we see for peacetime militaries: the paper decides how to fight on ground and we see the same thing in their thinking as well. Unsubstantiated claims come out to congratulate themselves over each tactical error.
Tactical error into strategic error
How can the tactical error be exploited is quite simple: India seems to face staunch opposition now. Last year Pakistan answered areal incursions with an active response and India could not answer back satisfactorily much less the propaganda it projected which was never backed up by any independent observer. Now too, India seems to be going back to the same notion of claiming victory via similar means. However, any media victory does not equate to an actual one. The strategic thinking needs to change, China can economically sustain conflict with India and Nepal seems to have taken the same message to assert itself as well. The overhaul of the current top military brass is where the nation needs to head but given the recent political developments which have made a certain thinking to seep into the military would hamper that step. There seems to be no check against these decisions and that trajectory appears to go along. Unless India can translate a strategy which it is tactically capable of such escalations would see it lose continuously to a determined enemy which is playing on its strengths.
Conclusion
The current scenario places a new dynamic of non-interference from major powers in active conflict zones for various reasons but for the militaries of the contemporary world there needs to be a serious re-orientation needed to focus on versatility of operational capabilities. It is possible that militaries face counterinsurgency and conventional theatres at the same time. The same realization also needs to come into the political planning of the military development and deployment. In any case the current scenario is a lesson in constant military preparedness and operational readiness with realistic rather than ideological assessments of warfare.
The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those held by PDF management.
