Rollercoaster ride to White House

The United States presidential election was strange to begin with, but it has turned extraordinary now. Donald Trump's defiant performance in the tawdry second debate on Sunday indicates that he will hang on as the Republican candidate amidst calls for him to leave the ticket.
However, a month from election day, the Republican Party is in a state of meltdown and its flawed candidate deeply wounded. The Republican campaign had a major nervous breakdown last week with the revelation of a recording from 2005 that had candidate Trump making lewd remarks about women and appearing to encourage unwanted sexual contact with them. On Saturday, more tapes emerged with topics ranging from his daughter Ivanka's physique, threesomes and sex with women during menstrual cycles. All these should have repercussions in an election in a country where some 53 per cent of the voters are women.
All this led to unprecedented calls by sections of his party to withdraw as the Republican candidate. Many elected Republican officials have officially repudiated him, his own vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence issued a statement saying he could not defend Trump's remarks. In an effort at damage control, Trump's wife Melania released a sta­tement deeming his comments as offensive, though she said that "this does not represent the man I know." For his part, Trump insisted that he would not quit the race and in the second debate, appeared to successfully move beyond the issue.
The loss of support from the Republican elite is not surprising; their relations with Trump have never been good. Many of their actions are tactical — in other words, designed to shield Republican candidates contesting for the House of Representatives, the Senate or other positions from the Trump fallout. But many do reflect the sincere disenchantment of the party elite with their Presidential candidate. However, there are no signs that his strong base of support among disaffected Republican voters has been affected.
The Trump strategy in the second debate was to go on the offensive, instead of appearing contrite or defensive, with the view of rallying the forces that have brought him so far in American politics. His defiant and more coherent performance is also likely to stem the rush of Republicans seeking to distance themselves from him for fear of alienating his core voters who remain behind him.
It is not that Hillary is wildly popular. Negative news about her continues to surface, the most recent being a leaked video suggesting that she has a public and a private position on issues and that she was with the banking industry on issues of reform. Also that many of the remarks were made in paid speeches that netted her over $20 million since she resigned as Secretary of State in 2013. Hillary also has a record of 30 years of public life to defend and the big question hovering over her always is: What is it that you have actually achieved?
The campaign remains unpredictable. There is still room for the spotlight to return on Hillary Clinton's actions, especially in relation to her emails. On the other hand, a Trump isolated from his party could go into a sharp decline as undecided voters decide that he is not fit for office. In this sense, it is a roller-coaster ride. While the Democrats remain broadly united, Republicans are calculating whether it is worth their while in detaching themselves from a losing candidate in a bid to salvage their Congressional, Senatorial and gubernatorial elections.
As of now, we do not have fresh polls following the revelations, but the ones prior to that have shown a great deal of volatility, with Hillary's lead varying from 1 to 8 per cent in different polls. Both candidates do not have a great deal of support — Hillary is supported by 45 per cent and Trump 40 per cent, as of now, with third-party candidates Gary Johnson at 6 per cent and Jill Stein at 2. Trump and Hillary need to attract the 7-8 per cent undecideds to win. Often, these undecideds make up their mind in the last weekend before the election and are therefore not caught by the polls that take place earlier.
In democracies, elections are a time of division and even bitterness. But once done, they also bring a new consensus which strengthens the polity. However, this American election does not indicate that will happen. A Hillary victory is not likely to resolve the dysfunctions of American democracy which are now so marked that they require drastic
solutions. It is not likely to come with a Democratic majority in the House, and, given the current mood, the next four years will be wasted opportunity. A Trump victory, of course, will bring its own set of questions before us, rather than answers.
As for India, a Hillary presidency will represent continuity, with officials and cabinet personnel who are familiar with New Delhi. On the other hand, a Trump presidency could be a sharp discontinuity, especially since the central message of Trump backers is the need to fix things in America, rather than focussing on issues abroad.
Mid Day October 11, 2016

The enigma of victory: Carving out electoral capital out of surgical strikes

In Uttar Pradesh, the recent retaliatory commando raids across the LoC have taken on a new meaning. On Dussehra, PM Narendra Modi appeared at a Ram Lila in Lucknow, holding a faux sudarshan chakra. Across the state, posters featuring Modi, defence minister Manohar Parrikar, home minister Rajnath Singh and assorted BJP leaders have been plastered, along with silhouettes of soldiers, hailing the triumph of the “avengers of Uri”.
In the recent narrative, India seems to have had three military victories: The unambiguous triumph that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the somewhat ambiguous Kargil victory of 1999, and now, the “surgical strikes” of September 29, 2016, which have been declared to be a great victory, even though it has not quite achieved its goal — getting Pakistan to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure.

 

The war of 1971 lasted two weeks, with the loss of more than 3,800 officers and jawans. The Kargil operation lasted roughly two months with the loss of some 470. In the surgical strike, which lasted several hours, fortuitously no one was killed.
The reason why the government is furiously making all kinds of claims, including that the Indian Army is now as good as the one of Israel in counter-terrorism, has to do with electoral politics. The use of military achievements to win elections is not new. But conflating a limited border operation to a military triumph certainly is, especially as it is aided by sections of an over-the-top media that seems to have lost its balance. The army itself has been low-key and the DGMO’s statement announcing the attacks was factual and made none of the claims subsequently adduced on their behalf.
Read: Surgical strikes like Israeli ops: PM
Elections have played a role in all three victories. In March 1971, Indira Gandhi called for general elections and crushed the Opposition, in the main the dissident Congress and Jana Sangh. Strengthened enormously, she began the military-diplomatic moves that led to the surrender of the Pakistani army and the break-up of the country. Months after the war, in March 1972, she called for elections to 16 assemblies and the Congress swept them all.
In 1999, having been voted out of power in the midst of the Kargil crisis, Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to the polls with the “Kargil victory” as a slogan, accompanied by the same kind of media hype we see today. It didn’t wash, the BJP managed to win 182 seats, the exact number it had in the outgoing Lok Sabha. But it formed the government because the Congress did particularly badly.
The assembly elections in UP are due in a few months. At this juncture, we can only guess on the outcome, but one thing that is clear is that the BJP is going all out to make the maximum political use of what it says is a famous “victory”.
The surgical strikes are witnessing some of the repeat of the Kargil scenario, when the ruling party raised the din of the victory so high that the failure to detect intruding Pakistanis for several months was papered over. TV studios have constructed their own war room sets complete with anchors in war correspondent’s gear.

What would Indira Gandhi have said of Parrikar’s claim that “Like Hanuman, Army didn’t know its power, I made our armed forces realise their power”? Just how a supposedly cultural organisation like the RSS inspires a tactical military strike is another unfathomable mystery. Read: Parrikar credits RSS teachings for surgical strikes
Parrikar insists that the strikes have been the most outstanding achievements of the army in the past 30 years. In claiming this, he does grave disservice to the brave personnel who have conducted such operations since 1993, sometimes going deeper into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir than the soldiers did this time.
In democracies, using military achievements for elections are not unusual. But it’s worth looking at the outcomes of our listed “victories”. Indira Gandhi squandered her mandate, and in three years declared the Emergency. Vajpayee wisely consolidated the NDA and ordered the Kargil inquiry, which led to the first systematic reform in India’s defence system since the mid-1960s.
It is one thing to declare that our army is the best in the world, it’s quite another thing to be taken in by one’s own rhetoric. There are lots of gaps in the army’s organisation, equipment, doctrine and professional education. As defence minister, Parrikar’s first job is to address these issues, not win elections.
Read: ‘Engagement with Pak at time of our choosing’
Modi has now signalled a zero tolerance for jihadi activity so he is now committed to respond each time an incident occurs. But we are still a long way from cracking the tough Pakistani nut and getting it to abandon support to terrorism. The strikes have been a great tactical success, but the real triumph will be in achieving a strategic shift in Islamabad. The strikes are only one element in what could be a sophisticated strategy of compellence; however, that strategy is already in danger of getting derailed by the premature celebrations of victory.
Hindustan Times October 20, 2016

Strategy Of Compellence

Compellence is a word derived from nuclear weapons theory. Today, along with other words like deterrence and surgical strikes, it is being used in the conventional context in relation to India and Pakistan. It also best describes the method New Delhi has adopted to persuade Pakistan to abandon the use of non-state actors against India.
Prior to the Modi government, the Indian policy towards Islamabad was a mix of forbearance and deterrence, despite the latter’s covert war against India going back to the 1960s. This involved support for separatist movements, organising jihadi proxy armies, supporting Indian terrorists and even flooding the country with fake currency and drugs.
In some instances, notably Kargil, India struck back, but India avoided support for terrorist actions in Pakistan and remained content to fund a variety of Pakistani separatists.
Governments in New Delhi have believed that problems with Pakistan need to be “managed” because they were unlikely to be resolved in the short to medium term. So, even as Islamabad has thrown terrorists and militants at us, we have, as a management strategy, sought to engage it with a view of moderating its behaviour over the longer term. This policy has been reasonably successful – it sharply reduced violence in Kashmir since the mid 2000s, and even brought the two nations close to a Kashmir settlement in 2007. It enabled India’s economic rise, even as Pakistan steadily descended into chaos.
Now we have arrived at a point of inflection. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the change came with the arrival of the Modi government. Actually, any government in New Delhi may have been forced to adopt a similar course for three reasons. First, the Mumbai attack of 2008 hardened public opinion against Pakistan. Second, the downfall of Musharraf put paid to a possible Kashmir settlement. Third, the Pakistan army disavowed the Musharraf detente and hardened its attitudes towards India.
Expectations that things would change when Nawaz Sharif became PM have been belied. Sharif was systematically cut to size by the army and all efforts by him to respond to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overtures were undermined by actions like the Pathankot and Uri attacks. As a result, India has been forced to shift its policy towards what can be called “compellence”.
The Cold War era term “deterrence” described a situation where a country protected itself from military attack by maintaining a capacity to mount a devastating counterattack. But “compellence” is a more proactive concept, where military and diplomatic threats are used to compel the other side to behave in a certain way.
Whether or not Modi and his team have thought through the compellence strategy is not clear, but it appears to be the best word to describe the shift of policy that has taken place in the past year. It came after the January Pathankot attack which was seen as a direct rebuff to Modi’s surprise visit to Sharif in Raiwind on Christmas Day.
Since then, Modi has raised the issue of sanctioning and isolating Pakistan as a supporter of terrorism in nearly every world capital he has visited. In Saudi Arabia in March the Saudis came out in support of India’s proposal for a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) in the UN. In June, the US Congress heard his remarks to delegitimise terrorism and its supporters. In Qatar, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya, the theme of action against terrorism was insistently pressed.
In early September in China, Modi told the Brics summit that there was need to intensify joint action against terrorism. He spoke of “one single nation” in South Asia that was spreading terror. A few days later in Laos for the Asean summit, he mocked a certain nation for having just one competitive advantage – in exporting terror. In his Independence Day speech he added another element to the equation by raising the issue of human rights in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. Accompanying this was the outreach to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE – Pakistan’s traditional friends.
Since the Uri attack on September 18, the compellence strategy has taken on a harder edge. It has combined diplomatic hardball which includes organising the boycott of the Saarc summit in Islamabad, a criticism of the UNSC for its inability to ban Masood Azhar. And, more important, it included a coordinated shallow attack across the LoC to take out a number of launching camps of jihadi militants. So far India has managed events so well that even countries like Germany and South Korea have supported the Indian posture, along with the UK and France.
The big question is now what? There are reports of rumbling within the Pakistani military and civilian elite in Islamabad, but the outcome could go either way. The Pakistan army is a tough nut as the US has realised to its cost. Getting it to desist from supporting jihadi proxies against Afghanistan and India will not happen overnight and is certainly not easy.
India is on the right track in aiming to isolate and sanction Pakistan, and has shown sophistication in using the military instrument. But more pressure will be needed in the coming period. With the “surgical strikes”, the Modi government is committed to retaliation against all cross-border attacks. They will have to be executed with the same panache, and that is a high bar because the chances of failure are ever-present, as are the dangers of escalation.
Economic Times October 10, 2016

Army should not be used for political gain

One of the more alarming outcomes of the so called “surgical strike” on Pakistani positions in Jammu & Kashmir is the attempt to drag the Indian Army into politics.

For this both the ruling and the opposition parties are to blame, as well as some retired army officers. The politicians’ motives are electoral, in view of the coming Uttar Pradesh elections. 

The Defence Minister instead of shielding the army from controversy, has been most assiduous in using it for his party’s publicity

 

The greater blame rests with the ruling party, where the Union Defence Minister who, instead of shielding the army from controversy, has been most assiduous in using it for his party’s publicity.

One of the sad facts of democracy are the base things done and said in election time, however, the army is too important an institution to be used for electioneering. 

Posturing

The basic facts were laid out on the very first day by the DGMO, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh. The army conducted strikes on targets along the Line of Control to preempt so-called non-state actors from launching attacks on India. 

This was a one-off action, but in acknowledging it, the government has signalled a posture of “surgical deterrence” which will hopefully deter future cross- LoC attacks. The Indian Army is a volunteer force which maintains an apolitical posture and emphasises professionalism. 

It has played a significant role in building the nation by its secular and non-sectarian approach. Recall, that before the arrival of the British, Indian armies were constantly battling each other on a regional or sectarian basis. 

For their own reasons, the British wanted a force which would not get involved in internal uprisings, and so, they carefully recruited and maintained the force in cantonments, separated from society and paid them through a central treasury. 

After independence, too, the government saw the value of this and encouraged the army to remain apolitical, separated from the society both psychologically and physically. 

But for the small mutiny of the Sikh soldiers in the wake of Operation Bluestar in 1984, this has worked well. 

Patriotism 

The problem today is of political movements that are trying to stoke ultra-nationalism, and in the process seeking to conflate the status of the army as ultra-patriotic deshbhakts. 

This goes against the grain of the army and its outlook. The average person who joins the army, as a jawan or officer, does not do it out of ultra-patriotism, or to “serve the nation”, but because it is a job that comes with social respect, a reasonable income and a life-time pension.

It raises the status of the family of the soldier or officer and is a means of upward social mobility. 

However, there is one critical difference; the military job requires you to put your life on the line, on occasion.

Fortunately, independent India has not been involved in any major war, so the risk of death has remained low. 

In any case, the soldier confronts the possibility of death as part and parcel of his professional commitment, not bravery and deshbhakti. 

All commanders take calculated risks and do not play with the lives of their men, there is no such thing as secular fidayeen. 

The Special Forces do undertake high risk missions, not just because they are brave, but that they are highly trained and have a sense of professionalism inculcated through their rigourous training and their special weapons and tactics.

Their trade-craft and strong esprit-de- corps makes them comfortable in conducting operations which would appear near-suicidal to others. 

Here there is also need to look into this use of “shaheed” for a soldier who dies in battle. 

This is a religious category used by countries like Pakistan as well. What we need is a distinct category, something like that of France where soldiers who died in war have the designation “Mort pour la France” (Died for France). 

This is a legal category that provides for special benefits for the families of those so designated. 

Professionalism 

All of us want a brave army, but bravery is never enough. The fearsomely brave Rajputs would order their women to commit jauhar (self-immolation) and go into battle knowing there was nothing to live for thereafter. 

But the Rajputs lost many wars. What the modern Indian republic needs is a military that wins every time. 

So it must be well equipped, not just with weapons systems, but highly trained, educated and motivated personnel. 

They should be well paid and professionally satisfied, but also distracted from the many storms that always buffet the country- the beef controversy, the water wars of Karnataka, the reservation riots in Haryana, the Maratha agitation, the Maoists and even the Kashmiri agitation. Their orientation must be relentlessly on their need to defeat external enemies.

Mail Today October 10, 2016

Uri Aftermath: Retaliation, With De-Escalation Built In

There is nothing new in shallow cross-border strikes conducted by Indian forces across the Line of Control; what is new is the public – and political – affirmation of such a strike. But Pakistan has conveniently side-stepped the military and diplomatic challenge this poses by simply denying such a strike took place.
As a result of the Indian claim and Pakistani denial, both domestic opinions have been taken care of. The government of India has satisfied the public demand for action against Pakistan for the Uri strike which took the lives of 18 soldiers on September 18. And by their subterfuge – of attributing their casualties to Indian shelling across the LoC – the Pakistanis have signalled to their public that they remain firm against India.
It was in 1993-1994 that in response to some Pakistani attacks, General Bipin Chandra Joshi permitted the Army to conduct cross-LOC strikes, “as long as you don’t leave behind any one, dead or wounded.” So over the years, a deadly game of strike and counter-strike was played out by the two sides, most recently in 2013 and 2014.
However, this time around the government of India has changed the rules of the game when the DGMO declared that “based on very credible and specific information which we received yesterday that some terrorist teams had positioned themselves at launch pads along the Line of Control with an aim to carry out infiltration and terrorist strikes in Jammu & Kashmir and in various other metros in our country, the Indian army conducted surgical strikes last night at these launch pads.”
Having said this, Lt General Ranbir Singh took the precaution of adding that this was a one-time affair for the present. “We do not have any plans for continuation of further operations.” So clearly New Delhi has built de-escalation into its retaliatory action.
The Pakistani reaction is interesting: Since the action, by their official account, didn’t take place, there is no pressure on them to further escalate the situation. Over the past two seeks, many analysts have pointed out that Indian retaliation along the LoC or in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would not have the same trigger for Islamabad as would a strike in its heartland of Punjab. Both the Sharifs – Prime Minister Nawaz and army chief Raheel – have important constituencies there which they cannot afford to ignore.
Significantly, the DGMO also reminded Pakistan of the commitment it made in January 2004 during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s visit to Islamabad on the occasion of the SAARC summit to not allow its territory or territory under its control (read: POK) to “be used to support terrorism in any manner.”
Despite the dramatic rhetoric of the past few months, both sides have signalled that they understand the rules of the game on the LoC and will continue to play by it. No doubt, the Pakistanis will be planning a counter-strike using one of their so-called Border Action Teams at a time of their choosing. Unlike India, which has just cause, the Pakistanis will be out for revenge as well as to signal to the bruised jihadis that the Pakistan army remains firmly behind them.
While individual strikes on the LoC are fine, an escalation of tension and a breakdown of the 2003 ceasefire will be a serious development and rebound negatively for India. Because prior to the ceasefire, the Pakistani use of the artillery and mortar barrages to infiltrate militants into India was a serious issue.
Equally important, the ceasefire enabled India to construct a border fence which, though porous, has dramatically reduced the infiltration of the militants. A breakdown of the ceasefire will enable Pakistan to target the fence and destroy important sections of it.
In this context, the telephone conversation between national security adviser Ajit Doval and his US counterpart Susan Rice is significant. Even if the the Indian cross-LoC raid was not discussed – according to Indian officials – the measured reaction from the White House and State Department once the Indian side went public suggests top administration officials are likely to have a “serious” conversation with senior Pakistani officials as well.
The Wire September 29, 2016

The dilemma? To compel or deter

Every now and then, a book appears so well timed that you wonder how the authors managed it. George Perkovich and Toby Dalton’s Not War, Not Peace: Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism is one of them. The book, which was released in Delhi last night, takes up the theme that has roiled the country for the past ten days — how do we persuade Pakistan to abandon its support to terrorism?
The central theme of the book is that the existence of “survivable” nuclear arsenals by India and Pakistan make any conventional war “suicidal as a means resolve the disputes that bedevil their bilateral relations.”
The authors are associated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Perkovich is the author of a seminal study on India’s nu­clear weapons capability. The book is a classic US think tank project, a product of rigorous scholarship and analysis, based on scores of interviews co­nducted by the authors in both countries. Its arguments are laid out quite bluntly and the authors say they are not recommending any specific course of action, only laying out a menu which can help India to work out its response. For that reason it must be taken seriously — very, very seriously.
The book has systematically examined the policy and decision-making background and then studied the options individually. So they look at army-centric responses associated with the proactive or “Cold Start” doctrine; the option of air power, which many today claim would be the least escalatory, covert action, and the manner in which nuclear weapons are factored into the equation. Finally, they examine the issue of “non-violent compellence”.
“Compellence” is a peculiar nuclear-era concept which goes beyond deterrence, because deterrence is preventing the adversary from doing something, whereas compellence is a mix of policies, postures and capabilities which seek to push the adversary towards a desired direction, such as, say, abandoning support for terrorists. What the authors do is look at its elements like sanctions, diplomatic isolation, financial punishment and even naval blockades as a means to pushing Pakistan to do the needful. The authors argue that India’s growing clout in world affairs can enable it to undertake a strategy of “non violent compellence”.
We are perhaps detecting eleme­nts of the last strategy in Modi gover­nment’s dealings with Pakistan. The Modi strategy — cornering Pakistan across the world, his addresses to the US Congress, BRICS leaders meeting in Guangzhou, the G20 summit and, indeed, wherever he has gone in the last six months. His refrain has been constant — Pakistan is a rogue state which needs to be isolated.
Modi’s reference to Baloch, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakhtunistan indicate that playing around with Pakistani faultlines may be part of the strategy.
Parallel to this have been the revival of Indian diplomatic efforts to promote a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) and to push with the need to colar people designated by the Al Qaeda-Taliban sanctions committee.
Perkovich and Dalton have refer­red to the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1373, a Chapter VII resolution banning funding of terrorism and calling on states not to support terrorism. But there are a clutch of other resolutions like 1566 of 2004, also under Chapter VII, calling on states to “find, deny safe haven and bring to justice” all people involved in financing planning or commissioning terrorist acts.
There has been talk of things like naval blockades and scrapping the Indus Waters Treaty. It does not take too much to say that these are not easy options. A blockade minus war goes against international law, and in addition, not workable unless China and the US are on board. As for IWT, denying water is not a feasible option. It also opens up India to similar action by Nepal or China.
Non-violent compellence is hazily understood and applied by Indian policy makers for the past 30 years with indifferent results. The reason for this is the lack of analytical rigour in working out and applying policies in general in the country. India tends towards ad hoc and instinctive approaches. As spelt out by the authors, and as hinted by Modi, a more systematic application could come up with different results. It could involve an offensive on multiple fronts aimed at isolating and punishing Pakistan thr­o­ugh sanctions. People say that sanctions don’t work, but in the case of Iran recently, they certainly did. The issue is the manner in which they are brought about. The world is currently in a funk over the rise of Islamist radicalism; this could be a good opportunity to revisit the issue.
In this context, one of our greatest failings has been in our inability to break what we call the ‘Sino-Pak nexus’. This has been around since the mid-1960s, yet New Delhi has not worked out a strategy through which we could break or at least moderate this nexus. It is not as though the lines of policy to do this are not visible, as have been the opportunities.
September 27, 2016