Civil Military Relations and Media

C for China? Not Always

India’s defence and strategic requirement have gone up manifold in the last one decade. These requirements have increased as a consequence of India’s economic rise and its implications on India’s positioning in the strategic space. In addition, India’s economic rise has obviously increased the stakes in securitising the agents of change. For example, a decade ago, no one could have imagined the role of CISF in providing security to the IT giants of the Indian industry. This is the manner in which India’s security requirements are going to increase in the future. India will have to increase its defence budget and focus on modernisation of its armed forces simply because there would be too much at stake if India did not pay adequate attention to the country’s security. For example, a hostage situation because of terrorist activity in the economic capital of the country tends to paralyse the entire security apparatus. And as 26/11 has shown, with rising power, India’s requirement for investing in maintaining that power has to rise in a concurrent manner. The question then is, why the leadership tends to be apologetic and looks east or west whenever questions relating to its defence upgradation arise? India’s strategic community and media must be willing to rationalise India’s defence projections as being the country’s independent requirement, regardless of the posturing or situation in the neighbourhood. For many in the strategic community, the actions of China or Pakistan have become an excuse and reason for upgrading India’s security infrastructure. Do we need to look for instrumental rationalities for our actions? If India is interested in acquiring the hard power in international relations, then the carriers and proponents of that power must be able to project the confidence that should accompany power. Hard power never comes to those who look to externalise the rationale for its possession. This kind of attitude has negative consequences which must be borne in mind. Let us look at the geopolitical reality of contemporary Asia. Since two of the rising powers – India and China – are immediate neighbours with disputed borders, any arguments that externalise a country’s policy will have implications for the other’s defence and foreign policies. Second, both the rising powers have extensive media, although of different nature, that tends to turn nationalistic at short notice. The scope of activities towards reasonable solutions that the leadership of the two countries has is extremely limited because of this reason; nationalism tends to change the dynamics of what a good government is supposed to be doing. Externalising one’s defence agenda links it to the projected enemy’s spending. Will India reduce its defence budget if China or Pakistan declares unconditional friendship with India? India will obviously prefer to wait and watch over the longer period of time and continue with its defence agenda. Why then time and again does one hear of reference to rising neighbours as cause for modernisation? India’s political leadership has done this more than once beginning in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests. Even in the recent past retired and serving service chiefs have studied India’s strength in a relative manner and called for augmentation to match the opposition. China’s strategic community recalls reference to their country in 1998 in a non-pleasant manner. They think of it being an instance of projecting China as a non-responsible power which China does not aim to be. Every now and then, one hears the problem of trust deficit in South Asia. It will take forever to wipe-out the trust deficit in the region if states use apologetic vocabulary for justifying strategic objectives. Certainly the situation in the neighbourhood has changed a lot in the last few years. But even if serious, it has not been any paradigmatic change. India’s concerns over the domestic developments in other neighbours is real and justified as it has its fallouts on India’s security but talking of India’s defence activities in the same breath as the situation in the region must be avoided as such phrasing makes it easy to accuse India of escalating the bilateral disagreements to the levels of conflict and conflicts to the level of confrontations. One must also ask if pegging India’s strategic actions to activity in the neighbourhood serves someone else’s interests, which is more likely the case. India and China can benefit from bilateral trust but if the two are to pose as enemies, it is the outsiders who are going to benefit from this situation. Indian and Chinese rivalry is real but there is no need for the two to wage a war against each other. When it is observed that a country is excessively obsessed about the other and not able to handle its rise then that country’s ability to take a sovereign, independent position on matters of its national interest comes under question. India must ensure that tactics flow from strategy and that the strategy is a reflection of the country’s sovereign identity, regardless of the surroundings. Perhaps it is also time to bring a diplomatic colour to the strategic talk. this commentary was recently published on the CLAWS website