India is emerging as US proxy against rising China determined to surpass USA in Gross Domestic Product by year 2027. India is opposed to China’s Belt and Road initiative. Besides, it uses its aid, trade and border contiguity to obstruct Chinese influence in Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
At India’s bidding, said countries to India line in regard to the South Asian Association of Regional Countries and other international forums like G-20. In 2005, Washington its intention `to help India become a major world power in the 21st century (K. Alan Kronsstadt, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, India-US Relations updated, February 13, 2007, p.4).It was later re-affirmed by ambassador David Mulford in US Embassy press release dated March 31, 2005. The USA’s resolved later translated into modification of domestic laws to facilitate export of sensitive military technology to India. The Nuclear Supplier Group also relaxed its controls to begin exports to India’s civilian nuclear reactor (enabling India to divert resources to military use.
Raj Mohan, Shyam Saran and several others point out that India follows Kautliya’s mandala (concentric, asymptotic and intersecting circles, inter-relationships) doctrine in foreign policy. It is akin to Henry Kissinger’s `spheres of influence’. According to this doctrine `all neighbouring countries are actual or potential enemies’. However, short-run policy should be based on common volatile, dynamic, mercurial interests, like intersecting portion of two circles in Mathematical Set Theory.
India’s current policy
Former Indian foreign secretary, Shyam Saran in his book How India Sees the World says, `Kautliyan [Chanakyan] template would say the options for India are sandhi, conciliation; asana, neutrality; and yana, victory through war. One could add dana, buying allegiance through gifts; and bheda, sowing discord. The option of yana, of course would be the last in today’s world’ (p. 64, ibid.). It appears that Kautliya’s and Saran’s last-advised option is India’s first option, with regard to China and Pakistan, nowadays.
Raj Mohan elucidates India’s ambition, in terms of Kauliya’s mandala, to emerge as South Asian hegemon in following words:
`India’s grand strategy divides the world into three concentric circles. In the first, which encompasses the immediate neighbourhood, India has sought primacy and a veto over actions of outside powers. In the second which encompasses the so-called extended neighourhood, stretching across Asia and Indian Ocean littoral, India has sought to balance of other powers and prevent them from undercutting its interests. In the third which includes the entire global stage, India has tried to take its place as one of the great power, a key player in international peace and security (C. Raja Mohan, India and the Balance of Power, Foreign Affairs July-August 2006).
Henry Kissinger views Indian ambitions in following words:
Just as the early American leaders developed in the Monroe Doctrine concept for America’s special role in the Western Hemisphere, so India has established in practice a special positioning the Indian Ocean region between East Indies and the horn of Africa. Like Britain with respect to Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, India strives to prevent the emergence of a dominant power in this vast portion of the globe. Just as early American leaders did not seek approval of the countries of the Western Hemisphere with respect to the Monroe Doctrine, so Indian in the region of its special strategic interests conducts its policy on the basis of its own definition of a South Asian order(Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014) p. 205.
Zbigniew Brzeszinsky takes note of India’s ambition to rival China in following words:
Indian strategies speak openly of greater India exercising a dominant position in an area ranging from Iran to Thailand. India is also position itself to control the Indian Ocean militarily, its naval and air power programs point clearly in that direction as do politically guided efforts to establish for Indi strong positions, with geostrategic implications in adjoining Bangladesh and Burma (Brzeszinsky, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power).
Robert Kaplan, in his book, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and Future of American Power, argues that the geopolitics of the twenty-first century will hinge on the Indian Ocean. USA’s new protégé is India. To woo India firmly into its fold, USA offered to sell India US$ 3 billion (per one unit) Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot Advance Capability (PAC-3) missile defence systems as an alternative to Russian S-400 system. India ditched Russia from whom it had decided to purchase five S-400s Russian S-400s air defence systems at cost of US$5.4 billion.
With US tacit support, India is getting tougher with China. There was a 73-day standoff on the Doklam (Donglang in Chinese) plateau near the Nathula Pass on Sikkim border last year. Being at a disadvantage vis-a-vis India, China was compelled to resolve the stand-off through negotiations. In later period, China developed high-altitude “electromagnetic catapult” rockets for its artillery units to liquidate Indian advantage there, as also in Tibet Autonomous Region. China intends to mount a magnetically-propelled high-velocity rail-gun on its 10,000-ton-class missile destroyer 055 being built.
India’s ambition to emerge as South Asian hegemon is reflected in its successive defence budgets. Aside from showcased marginal increase in defence budget, the three services have been asked to devise a five-year model plan for capital acquisitions. The Indian navy wants a 200-ship strong fleet by 2027. Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh had in December pointed out China added over 80 ships in the last five years. Navy wants to procure six new conventional submarines under Project 75-I and 111 Naval Utility Helicopters to replace the vintage fleet of Chetak choppers .Indian air force wants to procure 114 new fighters for the IAF besides the 36 Rafales ordered in 2015, still in the process.
Real defence expenditure in past years has been much greater than that exhibited on websites. In the past, India has unnoticeably increased its defence outlay in revised estimates.
To hoodwink general reader, India deflates its defence expenditure through clever stratagems. It publishes its `demands for grants for defence services’ separately from demands for grants of civil ministries that includes MoD. She clubs military pensions in civil estimates. There are several other quasi-defence provisions that are similarly shoved in civil estimates. Such concealed defence provisions include public-sector undertakings under MoD like dockyards, machine tool industries (Mishra Dhatu Nigham), and Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited, besides space-and-nuke-research projects, border and strategic roads and a host of paramilitary forces (Border Security Force, Industrial Reserve Force, etc).
Why India does so? It does so to `lower’ its defence budget as proportion of Gross National Product. Through such ploys, India, as compared with its neighbours, gets a favourable image in The Military Balance, Jane’s Defense, and other international magazines.
The real problem is that a hike in India’s defence outlays, at the cost of social sectors, ratchets up Pakistan’s defence expenditure. Spending spree for conventional weapons between nuclear peers is not understood? Each year, increase in India’s defence outlay ratchets up Pakistan’s defence outlay. India further increases estimated outlays via revised outlays and upward re-adjustments of actual expenditures. Indian defence budget is based on a strategic misconception_ it would be suicidal for Pakistan to match increase in India’s defence budget _A choice between Scylla and Charybdis, that is economic collapse or defence preparation. National security of a country does not depend on defence budget only. It depends upon many factors like soldiers’ morale, scientists’ ingenuity, military and political leaders’ character and skill, geographic position, and economic wherewithal.
Indian planners are oblivious of the fact that, in general, the more resources the nation devotes to national security, the less it will have for social security and vice versa. National security, from the point of view of an economist, depends on three factors: (a) The quantity of national resources available, now and in future, (b) The proportion of these resources allocated to national security purposes, and (c) The efficiency with which the resources so allocated are used.
Resources are always limited vis-à-vis unlimited wants (Lionel Robbins). As such, the problem of defence allocations should, in effect, be a problem of constrained resource optimization, not blind allocation of resources. Just calculate how many hospitals vanish by making just one missile? Let India lower her expenditure first! Be a leader to compel Pakistan to follow suit.
Shun hegemonic design for the time being.
