The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

ARTICLE

Kowtowing to Middle Kingdom
India’s territorial integrity compromised?
by G Parthasarathy

China has a long history of imperial arrogance, regarding itself as the centre of the earth, being labelled “the Middle Kingdom”. According to an ancient Chinese diplomatic practice, “barbarians”, including rulers and diplomats representing European powers, and neighbours like Korea had to “kowtow” while appearing before the Emperor, acknowledging the Emperor as the “son of heaven”. The Chinese practice of “kowtow” required others to kneel and bow so low as to have one’s head touching the ground! As China’s power declined, this practice ended. But China is rising now and has used, or threatened to use force in asserting its ever-expanding claims on its maritime frontiers with countries ranging from Japan, South Korea and Vietnam to the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. As tensions between Japan and China grew over provocative Chinese naval manoeuvres in territorial waters surrounding the disputed Senkaku islands, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently issued a stark warning to China, asserting: “I have ordered the authorities to respond decisively to any attempt to enter territorial waters and land on the islands”.

China had evidently calculated that with its leadership under siege, while facing an economic downturn, India cannot respond in the robust manner that Japan has and that India would not be averse to kowtowing, when confronted by Chinese power. Mr. Salman Khurshid had, after all, labelled the Chinese intrusion in Depsang as “acne”. The Prime Minister had described the intrusion as a “localised problem”. Government spokespersons and sympathetic hacks have claimed that hundreds of such intrusions occur every year. They refuse to accept that while routine intrusions involve troops moving in and out of contested areas, in the present case the intruders had pitched tents and contested Indian sovereignty. Apologists for the Chinese assert the problem arises because the Line of Control arising from the 1962 conflict has not been determined. What they fail to mention is that it is the Chinese who have refused to exchange maps defining the LAC in order to enable them to intrude at a time and place of their choosing.

Worse still, the Chinese are guilty of violating their commitment to resolve the border issue in terms of the “guiding principles” that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Dr. Manmohan Singh agreed to in 2005. These principles stated that in resolving the border issue the boundary would be along “well defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” and that “interests of their settled populations” in the border areas should be safeguarded. This clearly indicates that there will be no change in the status of populated areas. Rather than abiding by this agreement, the Chinese responded by declaring that the whole of Arunachal Pradesh a part of “South Tibet,” thereby requiring that the entire “settled population” of Arunachal Pradesh should become Chinese citizens!

In the western sector in Ladakh, going by India’s definition of the LAC, the areas China was intruding in Depsang are clearly on the Indian side of the Ladakh-Tibet border. The Macdonald-McCartney proposals, which China implicitly endorsed in 1899, were based on “well defined and easily identifiable geographical features”. India’s delineation of the LAC broadly conforms to the Macdonald-McCartney Line, which was tacitly accepted by China. The Ladakh-China border was then determined as lying along the Karakoram Mountains, up to the Indus river watershed. Chinese official maps issued in 1853, 1917 and 1919 depicted the Ladakh-Tibet border accordingly. China has thus to accept this Indian definition of the LAC as it has agreed that the boundary should be along “well defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features”. What has transpired is not merely “acne,” but a violation of India’s territorial integrity. New Delhi has been so pusillanimous that it deliberately chooses not to articulate how China has refused to agree to exchanging maps for determining the LAC and how it has gone back of the framework for a border settlement that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao agreed to in 2005.

The last time a similar intrusion across the LAC occurred was in Sumdorong Chu near the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh in 1986. The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did not describe the Chinese action as “acne” or a “localised problem”. Indian forces were quietly mobilised and three Mountain Divisions were moved to the Sumdorong Chu area, occupying hilltops around the Chinese forces. In a message conveyed through the then US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, China’s supreme leader Deng Xiao Ping warned that China would have to “teach India a lesson” if it did not pull back. New Delhi refused to oblige. A beaming Deng Xiao Ping received the Indian Prime Minister in Beijing in December 1988. The Joint Working Group set up after the 1988 agreed in 1995 that there would be a simultaneous withdrawal of troops from two border posts each by China and India in the Sumdorong Chu valley.

The sudden decision, made public in the late hours of May 5 that both sides will withdraw from the positions assumed after the Chinese pitched tents in the Depsang area, raises more questions than it answers. As already explained, the area in question has been historically on India’s side of the Ladakh-Tibet border. By agreeing to a mutual pullback from the existing positions has India not conceded that the area in question is disputed? Have we not put ourselves in a position of being unable to re-establish our presence in an area which is indisputably ours? If this is indeed the case, what is the status of the Indian presence in nearby Daulat Beg Oldie itself? Could the Chinese now not undertake a similar intrusion around Daulat Beg Oldie and demand our removal of the strategic airlift capabilities there? Have we tacitly agreed to quietly pull back from strategic positions of concern to China in Chumar and other areas?

Significantly, this is happening when India’s defence modernisation has been adversely affected by its economic downturn. The Chinese have noted India’s defence build-up in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh over the past decade and evidently concluded that they need to act now on this build-up, before it is too late. This intrusion has come just after the Chinese have proposed the freezing of troop levels on the border. Now that we have agreed to pull back from the Depsang area, are we setting the stage for halting the build-up of our Lines of Communications and forward deployments across Ladakh, thus giving the Chinese military advantage? These are issues that we need to carefully monitor in the days ahead. There can be no compromise on the country’s territorial integrity.

MIDDLE

Nurturing the child within
by Upendra Bhatnagar

During our college days there was a common teaser we used to discuss “what is there that comes in our lives and never goes back, and what is that which goes and never comes back?” The answer was known to almost everybody but still someone will raise his or her hand and answer the riddle as if the answer was known to him/her only, and the answer was: "It’s old age that comes and never goes back and it’s the innocent childhood that goes and never comes back”. But this riddle got lost somewhere in the struggle of life.

The struggle for “ bread and butter” is so cruel that the age and innocence of childhood have no meaning for it but still there are brave men who laugh at the time and say “we will never allow the child within us taken away by the kidnappers of time" and such people always enjoy the company of that child within.

I vividly remember the days when my father used to have a strange kind of joy on his face seeing thick black clouds, and as soon as rain started, he would run outside the house like a child (he was 58 at that time) and jump and sometime roll down on ground enjoying the freshly made rainwater pond, singing a song of his choice.

We used to get surprised at his child-like act and would ask him repeatedly to come back inside else he would catch cold or fever but he would always say, "Beta mere andar jo bachcha hai voh mujhe kehta hai mein abhi mara nahin hoon, chalo barish mein nahate hain, and I cannot stop my feet to stay within the four walls."

Today my father is no more with us but whenever there is torrential rain and my own children enjoy the rain as papa used to do, I always feel his presence around, whispering into my ears, Beta agar sukhi aur lambi life jeena chahte ho to apne andar ke bachche ko kabhi mat marne dena.

Nature has given us so many gifts to enjoy and rain is one of them but most of us ignore the joys coming in our way, falling prey to the tiring day-to-day life. But I never forget to pay a tribute to my father and always become a child with my children whenever they enjoy rain. Only a hot cup of coffee brings me back to my adulthood after the rain and keeps my father alive, the child alive.

OPED Security

India’s nuclear weapons not for national pride
Shyam Saran

Security analysts, both Indian and foreign, often make puzzling assertions that India’s nuclear weapons programme has been driven by notions of prestige or global standing rather than considerations of national security.

Shyam Saran, former Foreign Secretary, analyses India’s quest for security, its nuclear doctrine and the command system. The article is the second in a three-part series.

The accuracy and range of Agni missiles will improve with the acquisition of further technological capability and experience. Agni V was successfully test-fired recently. — PTI

US analysts often make the remarkable observation that “India now lacks a credible theory of how nuclear weapons might be used other than as an instrument of national pride and propaganda”. India does have a credible theory of how its nuclear weapons may be used and that is spelt out in its nuclear doctrine. One may or may not agree with that doctrine but to claim that India does not have a credible theory does not accord with facts. Since January 4, 2003, when India adopted its nuclear doctrine formally at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), it has moved to put in place, at a measured pace, a triad of land-based, air-delivered and submarine-based nuclear forces and delivery assets to conform to its declared doctrine of no-first use and retaliation only. It has had to create a command and control infrastructure that can survive a first strike and a fully secure communication system that is reliable and hardened against radiation or electronic interference. A number of redundancies have had to be created to strengthen survivability. In all these respects, significant progress has been achieved. To expect that these should have emerged overnight after May 1998 is rather naive. India today has a long-range ballistic missile capability and is on the road to a submarine-based missile capability.

These capabilities will be further improved as time goes on and more resources become available. The record since the May 1998 nuclear tests demonstrates a sustained and systematic drive to operationalise various components of the nuclear deterrent in a manner best suited to India's security environment. This is not the record of a state which considers nuclear weapons as an “instrument of national pride and propaganda”.

Chinese viewpoint

There is a similar refrain in Chinese commentaries on India’s nuclear weapons programme. Here is a typical Chinese comment: “Unlike China, which was forced to develop its nuclear option under a clear nuclear threat, India has never been faced with an immediate major military or nuclear threat that would require New Delhi to have a nuclear weapon option to ensure its national survival. The acquisition of nuclear weapons appears to have been almost entirely motivated by politics. India seems to have an explicit strategic goal; to be accepted as a world power. And this goal seems to reflect India’s deep-rooted belief that nuclear weapons constitute an effective physical signature of world power status, and even shortcut to this status”.

And this extraordinary assessment of India’s quest for security in a nuclearised regional and global environment comes from an analyst in a country which over the years actively and relentlessly contributed to the clandestine nuclear weapons programme of Pakistan, firstly by providing it with the design of a tested weapon and later by assisting it with developing its missile capabilities, both directly and through its North Korean ally.

This is a rare case where a nuclear weapon state has actively promoted the acquisition of nuclear weapon capability by a non-nuclear weapon State, though similar allegations have been made about US and French assistance to Israel. Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s strategic programme continues apace.

Could India ignore the implications of this alliance and the role of Pakistan as a Chinese proxy to pose a nuclear threat to India? The narrative that I have sketched out does not square with the observation that “India has never been faced with an immediate major military or nuclear threat that would require New Delhi to have a nuclear weapon option to ensure its national survival”. And it is rather odd that a representative of a country whose iconic leader Mao Zedong called for “politics in command” can now say that India’s nuclear programme has been “almost entirely motivated by politics”. Of course, it has been, but not the politics of seeking world power status as is claimed, but the politics of keeping India and its citizens safe from nuclear threats. We have long been familiar with the Chinese predilection to dismiss India’s role in international affairs as that of a pretender too big for its boots, while China’s superpower status is, of course, regarded as manifest destiny. One should reject such self-serving assertions.

Prestige or deterrence?

What is worrying, however, is that this status-seeking argument has been finding an echo among some Indian analysts as well. One analyst recently claimed: “During its long and unfocused nuclear weapons quest, India came to develop a highly self-absorbed approach. This was because India’s dominant objective was political and technological prestige, while for every other nuclear weapon state it was deterrence.”

Such sweeping statements show a lack of familiarity with the history of India’s nuclear weapons programme, set against the broader political and security backdrop. They also serve to diminish the very legitimacy of India’s nuclear weapons status though this may not be the intention. For if deterrence was not the reason for which India became a nuclear weapon state, but only for “political and technological prestige”, why should it have nuclear weapons in the first place?

If the argument is that India has and does face threats that require a nuclear deterrent, but these have been ignored by successive generations of India’s political and security elite, then obviously it must be a mere fortuitous coincidence that we have strayed into a strategic capability. This elite, it is implied, comprehends neither the security threats nor the manner in which this accidental acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities must be operationalised. This does not square with facts.

The thesis that India’s nuclear deterrent is mostly symbolic is, for some, driven by the perception that India’s armed forces are not fully part of the strategic decision-making process and that they play second fiddle to the civilian bureaucracy and the scientific establishment. Even if this perception was true, and in fact it is not, one cannot accept that the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrence demands management by its military. The very nature of nuclear deterrence as practised by a civilian democracy dictates that decisions relating to the nature and scope of the arsenal, its deployment and use, be anchored in the larger architecture of democratic governance. It is the civilian political leadership that must make judgements about domestic, social and economic priorities as well as the imperatives imposed by a changing regional and global geopolitical environment.

The military must be enabled to provide its own perspectives and inputs, just as other segments of the state must do. Undoubtedly the military’s inputs and advice would have to carry weight, especially in operational matters. But to equate exclusive military management of strategic forces, albeit under the political leadership’s overall command, as the sine qua non of deterrence credibility is neither necessary nor desirable. One should certainly encourage better civil-military relations and coordination. It may also be argued that the military’s inputs into strategic planning and execution should be enhanced to make India’s nuclear deterrent more effective. But one should not equate shortcomings in these respects with the absence of a credible nuclear deterrent.

If we look at the current status of India’s nuclear deterrent and its command and control system, it is clear that at least two legs of the triad referred to in our nuclear doctrine are already in place. These include a modest arsenal, nuclear capable aircraft and missiles both in fixed underground silos as well as those which are mounted on mobile rail and road-based platforms.

These land-based missiles include both Agni-II (1,500 km) as well as Agni-III (2,500 km) missiles. The range and accuracy of further versions, for example Agni V (5,000 km) that was tested successfully only recently, will improve with the acquisition of further technological capability and experience. The third leg of the triad, which is submarine-based, is admittedly a work in progress. We need at least three Arihant class nuclear submarines so that at least one will always be at sea. Submarine-based missiles systems have been developed and tested in the form of the Sagarika but these are still relatively short in range. It is expected that a modest sea-based deterrence will be in place by 2015 or 2016. There is also a major R&D programme which has been in place since 2005 for the development of a new, longer range and more accurate generation of submarine-based missiles which are likely to be ready for deployment around 2020.

Command authority

The National Command Authority (NCA) is in charge of India’s nuclear deterrent. At its apex is the Political Council which is headed by the Prime Minister and includes all ministerial members of the Cabinet Committee on Security such as the Ministers of Defence, Home and External Affairs. Below the Political Council is the Executive Council which is headed by the National Security Adviser and includes the Chiefs of the three armed forces, the C-in-C of India’s Strategic Forces Command and a three-star officer, among others.

There is an alternative NCA which would take up the functions of the nuclear command in case of any contingency when the established hierarchy is rendered dysfunctional. The NCA has access to radiation hardened and fully secured communications systems where, too, redundancies have been put in place as back-up facilities.

In order to support the NCA, a Strategy Programme Staff has been created in the National Security Council Secretariat to carry out general staff work for the NCA. This unit is charged with looking at the reliability and quality of our weapons and delivery systems, collate intelligence on other nuclear weapon states, particularly those in the category of potential adversaries, and work on a perspective plan for India’s nuclear deterrent in accordance with a 10-year cycle.

The Strategy Programme Staff has representatives from the three services, science and technology establishment and other experts from related domains, including External Affairs. A Strategic Armament Safety Authority has been set up to review and update storage and transfer procedures for nuclear armaments, including the submarine-based component. It will be responsible for all matters relating to the safety and security of our nuclear and delivery assets at all locations. This will function under the direct authority of the NCA.

The NCA works on a two-person rule for access to armaments and delivery systems. Regular drills are conducted to examine the possible escalatory scenarios, surprise attack scenarios and the efficiency of our response systems under the no-first use limitation. Thanks to regular drills, the level of confidence in our nuclear deterrent has been strengthened. Specialised units have also been deployed for operation in a nuclearised environment.

I am highlighting these details to make the point that while further steps may be required to make our deterrent more robust, it is unhelpful to peddle the impression that it is dysfunctional, or worse that it is non-existent.

Nuclear control in Pakistan

In much of western literature, one finds frequent comments about the professional manner in which the Strategic Planning Group, in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear assets, is run and how effective and transparent measures have been put in place to ensure the safety and security of these weapons. What is rarely highlighted is that among nuclear-weapon states today, Pakistan is the only country where nuclear assets are under the command and control of the military and it is the military’s perceptions and ambitions which govern the development, deployment and use of these weapons. This is a dangerous situation precisely because the military’s perceptions are not fully anchored in a larger national political and economic narrative. The pursuit of a more powerful, effective and sophisticated nuclear arsenal, dictated by the military, may run in parallel with a steadily deteriorating political, social and economic environment. Would it be possible to island an efficiently managed and sophisticated nuclear arsenal amid an increasingly dysfunctional polity?

The nuclear deal ‘exception’ provided to India by the US rests on India’s universally acknowledged and exceptional record as a responsible nuclear state with an unblemished history in non-proliferation as contrasted with Pakistan’s equally exceptional record as a source of serial proliferation.

There is an air of unreality about the often adulatory remarks about Pakistani military’s stewardship of the nuclear assets. There are anxieties about its continuing buildup of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles but these are conveniently ascribed to the threat perceived from India.

More recently, Pakistan’s buildup of its nuclear arsenal, refusal to allow the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to undertake multilateral negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and its threat to deploy theatre nuclear weapons to meet a so-called Indian conventional armed thrust across the border have all been laid at the door of the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement, which it is claimed has upset the “nuclear balance” in South Asia. The votaries of non-proliferation in the West have criticised the agreement as having allowed “exceptionalism” in favour of India, which has encouraged a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. Pakistan openly demands that it too be given a nuclear deal like India, otherwise it would continue to produce larger quantities of fissile material and push the nuclear threshold even lower in order to retain the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. The exception provided to India rests on it’s universally acknowledged and exceptional record as a responsible nuclear state with an unblemished history in non-proliferation as contrasted with Pakistan’s equally exceptional record as a source of serial proliferation and a nuclear programme born in deceit.

There is no moral equivalence in this respect between the two countries and this point must be driven home every time Pakistan claims parity. We should not allow such an insidious campaign to affect our proposed membership of the NSG and the MTCR.

— Excerpted from a lecture organised by the Subbu Forum Society for Policy Studies and the India Habitat Centre on April 24 in New Delhi. The views expressed are personal. The concluding part of the series will appear tomorrow.