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By ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA
The last time India bought a big gun, it backfired. A 1986 order for howitzers from Sweden's Bofors AB sparked a massive kickbacks scandal that scuppered Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's election campaign three years later. That experience was seared into the memory of politicians and bureaucrats, leaving them gun-shy. As Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta argue in "Arming with Aiming," that is making it difficult for India's armed forces to modernize.
India cannot afford to neglect its military weakness for much longer. The immediate neighborhood is growing more dangerous, from a Maoist Nepal to a military-jihadist Pakistan. And just over the Himalayas is a rising China, a potential superpower that claims parts of Indian territory.
It's not that India hasn't spent anything on missiles and tanks in the last few yearsmilitary expenditure is increasing in absolute terms. Yet the authors, both affiliated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, suggest this is not a useful measurement. From the perspectives they offer, we can glean three better metrics, all of which suggest India is losing the ability to guarantee its security.
First, the composition of defense expenditure is skewed. Total spending rose 34% year on year in 2009, for example, not because the military is buying more arms, but because it awarded a giant pay raise to the troops. The Ministry of Defence actually returned part of the capital budget allocated to it in 2008. If operating expenditure grows while capital expenditure stagnates, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that real capabilities are shrinking.
The deeper problem is that the policy makers, civilian and military, are unable to decide on the correct path for the armed forces. The authors do a fine job explaining their primary thesis: Even if the Indian state is spending on defense ("arming"), it has not thought through where exactly it should be spending and why ("aiming"). Better equipment should add to real military capabilitythe second metric to assess defense modernizationbut in India's case it doesn't. Almost every new weapon prompts a new question about doctrine.
For example, the two-million-man army is unable to resolve its "identity crisis" between counterinsurgency operations at home and power projection abroad. If the former is more important, why purchase howitzers? Then there's the air force that wants to win dogfights while the army wants it to focus on ground attacks. The ministry seems to have split the difference by inviting bids for a $10 billion multirole fighter in 2008.
India's navy has better managed the link between modernization and strategy, but even its sober ambitions pose questions. It launched its first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine last year. But it has yet to get its hands on nuclear warheads, delivery of which has so far been entrusted to the army and air force.
To be fair, other countries have taken years to decide their defense doctrine, so it's to be expected that India experiences growing pains. Still, its leaders don't appear to be laying the groundwork for the future. The authors rightly note that its politicians don't know enough about the military to push for reform, and don't seem to care to learn.
During most of India's independent existence, they didn't have to. Except perhaps for a brief period in the 1980s, India's strategy has been one of restraint and reaction to crises. No one expected anything more from a nation reliant on international aid.
Economic growth approaching double digits is changing those expectations. Many Indians dream of their country becoming a great power, one with its own grand strategy. For that, its military weight should be proportionate to its economic sizea third approach to judge India by. For most of the last decade, defense spending steadily fell as a percentage of GDP.
Messrs. Cohen and Dasgupta are sometimes rambling and repetitive, but in an incisive chapter called "Fighting Change," they try to get at the psychology that keeps India's military punching below its weight. Even on occasions when India has the personnel and equipment, it lacks the will power to deploy them. For instance in November 2008, when a handful of terrorists laid siege to Mumbai for 60 hours, the elite commandos who finally secured the Taj hotel spent half a day figuring out how to get to Mumbai. Why? Perhaps because India "remains uncomfortable with seeking the means of strategic assertion."
Only time will tell whether this "strategic restraint" is the one big structural impediment to military progress; perhaps the authors make too much of it. Restraint seems to be a cyclical factor. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to expand India's influence abroad by portraying it as a kinder, gentler great power, one which builds influence only by exporting IT services and Bollywood music. A future government will rediscover that great power status can't be sustained without the military muscle to back it up.
Bookshelf: India's Military Muddle - WSJ.com
The last time India bought a big gun, it backfired. A 1986 order for howitzers from Sweden's Bofors AB sparked a massive kickbacks scandal that scuppered Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's election campaign three years later. That experience was seared into the memory of politicians and bureaucrats, leaving them gun-shy. As Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta argue in "Arming with Aiming," that is making it difficult for India's armed forces to modernize.
India cannot afford to neglect its military weakness for much longer. The immediate neighborhood is growing more dangerous, from a Maoist Nepal to a military-jihadist Pakistan. And just over the Himalayas is a rising China, a potential superpower that claims parts of Indian territory.
It's not that India hasn't spent anything on missiles and tanks in the last few yearsmilitary expenditure is increasing in absolute terms. Yet the authors, both affiliated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, suggest this is not a useful measurement. From the perspectives they offer, we can glean three better metrics, all of which suggest India is losing the ability to guarantee its security.
First, the composition of defense expenditure is skewed. Total spending rose 34% year on year in 2009, for example, not because the military is buying more arms, but because it awarded a giant pay raise to the troops. The Ministry of Defence actually returned part of the capital budget allocated to it in 2008. If operating expenditure grows while capital expenditure stagnates, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that real capabilities are shrinking.
The deeper problem is that the policy makers, civilian and military, are unable to decide on the correct path for the armed forces. The authors do a fine job explaining their primary thesis: Even if the Indian state is spending on defense ("arming"), it has not thought through where exactly it should be spending and why ("aiming"). Better equipment should add to real military capabilitythe second metric to assess defense modernizationbut in India's case it doesn't. Almost every new weapon prompts a new question about doctrine.
For example, the two-million-man army is unable to resolve its "identity crisis" between counterinsurgency operations at home and power projection abroad. If the former is more important, why purchase howitzers? Then there's the air force that wants to win dogfights while the army wants it to focus on ground attacks. The ministry seems to have split the difference by inviting bids for a $10 billion multirole fighter in 2008.
India's navy has better managed the link between modernization and strategy, but even its sober ambitions pose questions. It launched its first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine last year. But it has yet to get its hands on nuclear warheads, delivery of which has so far been entrusted to the army and air force.
To be fair, other countries have taken years to decide their defense doctrine, so it's to be expected that India experiences growing pains. Still, its leaders don't appear to be laying the groundwork for the future. The authors rightly note that its politicians don't know enough about the military to push for reform, and don't seem to care to learn.
During most of India's independent existence, they didn't have to. Except perhaps for a brief period in the 1980s, India's strategy has been one of restraint and reaction to crises. No one expected anything more from a nation reliant on international aid.
Economic growth approaching double digits is changing those expectations. Many Indians dream of their country becoming a great power, one with its own grand strategy. For that, its military weight should be proportionate to its economic sizea third approach to judge India by. For most of the last decade, defense spending steadily fell as a percentage of GDP.
Messrs. Cohen and Dasgupta are sometimes rambling and repetitive, but in an incisive chapter called "Fighting Change," they try to get at the psychology that keeps India's military punching below its weight. Even on occasions when India has the personnel and equipment, it lacks the will power to deploy them. For instance in November 2008, when a handful of terrorists laid siege to Mumbai for 60 hours, the elite commandos who finally secured the Taj hotel spent half a day figuring out how to get to Mumbai. Why? Perhaps because India "remains uncomfortable with seeking the means of strategic assertion."
Only time will tell whether this "strategic restraint" is the one big structural impediment to military progress; perhaps the authors make too much of it. Restraint seems to be a cyclical factor. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to expand India's influence abroad by portraying it as a kinder, gentler great power, one which builds influence only by exporting IT services and Bollywood music. A future government will rediscover that great power status can't be sustained without the military muscle to back it up.
Bookshelf: India's Military Muddle - WSJ.com
