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Friday, May 11, 2018

Donald Trump’s review could help India nuance its nuclear doctrine

The Trump disruption continues. Now, it is reaching into the area of US nuclear policy. The new American nuclear posture review (NPR) comes on the head of a series of decisions taken by the Trump Administration that has brought a more combative edge to the American nuclear strategy.
Late last year, Trump ordered the Department of Energy, which oversees the US nuclear weapons programme, to be ready to conduct a nuclear test within six months, if ordered. As it is, he has authorised a $1.2 trillion programme to overhaul the nuclear weapons complex and authorised the development of a new nuclear warhead, the first time in 34 years, according to Time magazine. All this has led to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moving their famous atomic clock 30 seconds forward towards Doomsday.
None of these developments affects India directly, but many of the dilemmas that Trump is responding to have a resonance in India. Primarily, adversaries who believe that they can use low yield nuclear weapons to lower the nuclear weapons use threshold and create a shield behind which they can conduct hostile activity.
The Americans are reacting primarily to Russia which it says is developing low yield or tactical weapons to gain coercive advantage in a crisis. The new US NPR is aimed at meeting the Russian challenge and preserving deterrence stability. Even while emphasising that it will not enable “nuclear war-fighting”, the Pentagon claims that it will give the US new options for which it seeks to develop new weapons. The aim is to raise the nuclear threshold so that Moscow does not perceive any advantage in limited nuclear escalation.Pakistan’s development of Theatre Nuclear Weapons (TNW) has often been explained by the argument that they seek to offset the increasing gap in their conventional capabilities. In reality they are a means to give Pakistan a shield against an Indian response to terrorist attacks carried out by its proxies. This is a dangerous game. But it does pose a conundrum for India’s nuclear doctrine which speaks of No First Use and eschews Tactical Nuclear Weapons. In a 2015 conversation with former US official Peter Lavoy, Lt Gen (retd) Khalid Kidwai, who had steered Pakistan’s strategic plans division from 2000 to 2013, said that the rationale for Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons was India’s Cold Start doctrine. He claimed it was “Pakistan’s defensive, deterrence response to an offensive doctrine”. He bragged that through tactical nuclear weapons, “we have blocked the avenues for serious military operations by the other side.” Only after some prodding he responded to the point in everyone’s mind—that India’s so-called Cold Start doctrine is the product of the frustration of dealing with Pakistan’s use of terrorist proxies. However, Kidwai claimed that terrorism and militancy were consequences of India’s refusal to allow self-determination in Kashmir and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan was merely a victim, taking steps to preserve itself.
Hindustan Times Feb 25, 2018

Expect greater rivalry between India and China in South Asia

s China’s economic and military power expands, and as it seeks to position itself at the center of the world stage, it is seeking to become the regionally dominant actor, east, south, north, west.
In South Asia, long thought of by India as its back yard, Beijing is already a significant economic actor and military-aid provider, and is now emerging as a diplomatic player. This is manifested by its increasing willingness to get involved in resolving disputes between various parties in the region.
In the past, China elevated a globally self-centered approach into high principle by declaring that “China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries or impose its will on others.” This reflected as much on the Chinese inability to do so as the fact that often their interests have been better served by not doing so. In this way Beijing befriended a clutch of unsavory regimes and dictators and avoided taking a stand on a range of burning issues of the day.
But now China has developed economic and political interests across the globe and finds it much more difficult to sidestep issues. Indeed, to protect and further its interests, it is involving itself in dealing with local tensions and conflicts.
In South Asia in the past two years, Beijing has offered to mediate between India and Pakistan, and between Bangladesh and Myanmar, and is already involved in resolving issues between Myanmar and its ethnic rebels, as well as between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
China is the largest trading partner of India, Pakistan and Myanmar and has growing ties with others in the region. It is the principal supplier of military equipment to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it is emerging as a major investor in infrastructure projects.
This month, China rejected United Nations intervention as a way of settling the Maldivian crisis. But it offered to mediate between the various parties. During the official briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said: “China is willing to maintain close communication with the relevant parties in Maldives so as to promote and restore normal order in the Maldives as soon as possible.” China now has a dominant role in the Maldivian economy, with large investments in the infrastructure and tourism areas.
In Myanmar last year, China not only put up money to support the peace process but continued its two-pronged efforts to resolve Myanmar’s complicated ethnic quarrels. In 2016, it had persuaded three rebel groups – the National Democratic Alliance Army, the Union League of Arakan Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – to participate in a biannual Union Peace Conference run by the Myanmar government.
Simultaneously, it also helped create the rebel-backed Federal Political Negotiating and Consultative Committee, which has sought to negotiate with the Myanmar government.
Myanmar is, of course, a strategically important country and neighbor of both India and China. It offers Beijing important access to the Indian Ocean. A gas and oil pipeline already links Kunming to Kyaukpyu, where China is building a deep-sea port and an industrial zone, though plans to build a railway line are in abeyance for the present. China is the dominant investor in Myanmar, focusing on infrastructure connecting to its own southern provinces.
In April 2017, China offered to help resolve the Rohingya crisis by mediating between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Its special envoy Sun Guoxiang traveled to both countries to explore the process. By the end of the year, the Chinese had offered a three-point plan to resolve the issue and also provided relief materials for the refugees.China is establishing a strong presence in Bangladesh, building roads and power stations there, in addition to its arms-supply relationship. In 2016, Xi Jinping made a visit to Dhaka, the first by a Chinese president in 30 years, and deals involving US$24 billion of Chinese funding were signed.

Afghanistan, Bangladesh and CPEC

China has also stepped up to the plate in Afghanistan as a mediator. Earlier it was part of the now-defunct Quadrilateral Coordination Group along with the US and Afghanistan. In mid-2017, China began a formal process to mediate to ease Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi shuttled between Kabul and Islamabad and managed to hammer out a two-point agreement that saw the establishment of a crisis prevention and management machinery and a trilateral dialogue among China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose first meeting took place last December. The outcome of the effort was to signal China’s readiness to play a role in Afghan-Pakistani relations and also give a commitment to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor into Afghanistan.Kabul hopes that Beijing will use its clout to get Islamabad to stop using its territory to provide sanctuary to the Taliban, while Pakistan is hoping that China’s greater commitment to Afghanistan will help reduce India’s influence there. As for China, it views the stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan as being vital for the security of Xinjiang.
India, the largest state in South Asia, cannot avoid being the context of many of these activities. Pakistan has long been the means through which Beijing has been able to contain India in South Asia. Now, China’s compulsion is greater. As it seeks, in the words of Xi Jinping, to “take the center stage,” it needs to subdue or overawe regional actors like India that have their own local interests.

‘Constructive role’

In keeping with its image as a benign player in South Asia, China has also offered to mediate between India and Pakistan. Last July, in response to a question, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang noted that China was “willing to play a constructive role in improving relations between India and Pakistan.” He was speaking in the context of the ongoing India-Pakistan tensions on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir state.An increasingly assertive Beijing is in two minds about India. At one level it sees itself as above the fray and a great power that seeks to have good relations with all the states of the region. On the other, it sees New Delhi, in alliance with Tokyo and Washington, as a peer competitor that must be checked at every step.
Writing in the Global Times last year, commentator Hu Weijia noted with reference to the Rohingya issue that the rise of China had provided it an increased ability “to mediate in conflicts outside the country.” Adhering to the principle of non-interference was important, but Beijing also had to protect the overseas investments of Chinese enterprises.
Indeed, he said, given the “massive investments” made in the BRI, China “now has a vested interest in helping resolve regional conflicts including the dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan,” which he said was the toughest challenge in dealing with regional issues relating to Chinese overseas interests.
China’s new-found activism has confounded India, which has long worked on the assumption that not only was South Asia a part of its sphere of influence, but it was also a security provider to the states of the region. But for the smaller countries of the region, China offers a way of offsetting India’s overwhelming presence, as well as being a source of significant investment and aid.
India is singularly favored by geography in its region and has been a significant provider of aid and credit to its neighbors. But it lacks China’s heft on this score. Likewise, being an importer of arms, it cannot match Beijing’s ability to win friends and influence countries through military aid.
Asia Times February 23, 2018

Is Rawat shooting from the hip on Assam issue?

By now you should know that Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has a tendency to shoot from the hip. You always get off a shot faster this way, but it is usually less accurate. And so it is with his latest shot on the issue of migration into Assam.
In recent remarks, the general claimed that the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) led by Badruddin Ajmal had been growing faster than the BJP in the state and implied that this was on account of Muslim migration from Bangladesh, encouraged by Pakistan and China to destabilise India.
Is Rawat shooting from the hip on Assam issue?
The comment as such was over-the- top and downright ignorant. Rawat  had no business to make a public assessment of the politics of Assam. Just why a party grows faster than another is dependent on a variety of factors, not in the least the possibility that it is gaining at the expense of another party in the region.
Making sense of election results is a complex job that confounds the best of analysts and politicians. The results of the Assam State Assembly in the last three elections show the fluctuating fortunes of the Congress, the AIUDF and the BJP. The Congress  got respectively 31, 39 and 31 per cent of the votes polled in 2006, 2011 and 2016. The AIUDF got 9, 12.6 and 13 per cent. And the BJP got 12, 12 and 29.5 per cent.
The once-powerful AGP is the one that faced a meltdown from 20 per cent of the votes in 2006 to 16 per cent in 2011 and 8 per cent in 2016. Likewise the support of the Bodo People’s Front halved from 3.9 per cent of the votes in 2011 to 6 per cent in 2016 and the Communist parties have virtually vanished.
What these figures tell us is that the rise and fall of political parties have more to do with election dynamics than any insidious migration. This is not to say that there has been no migration. Assam and Bengal were part of the same polity under the British rule, so, there was nothing remarkable about migration which was encouraged by British administrators. In the post 1947 period, there have been various allegations tossed about and as per agreement, India has accepted all migrants who came before the 1971 war to be Indian nationals. In the 1980s, the Assam movement led by the Asom Gana Parishad sought to expel alleged migrants but nothing came of it.
The Army chief or anyone else has zero proof that  Pakistan and China were master-minding the alleged influx. As such the entire Bangla border is fenced and patrolled and if he has questions on its porosity, he would do well to take it up officially with the Border Security Force and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
There are virtually no circumstances in which Bangladesh will accept large-scale repatriation of these alleged migrants. So, the one part of the general’s statement that made sense was his acknowledgement that since nothing could be done now efforts should be made to properly amalgamate the alleged migrants into the polity and isolate the trouble-makers. Currently there is a process underway to identify illegal migrants but this is a fraught issue which is not in the remit of the Army. No matter how it pans out, it will require sensitive handling rather than “shoot from the hip” comments.In January the General generated controversy by calling for a revamp of Jammu & Kashmir’s education policy. He wanted the state to bring madarsas under its control as they were spreading disinformation. Now, the Army is operating under special circumstances in the state. But it is not yet under martial law where the Army could dictate its educational and other policies. There is, as we all know, an elected state government, indeed a coalition between the BJP and the PDP, and again if the general has complaints, it would be best to take them up quietly with the Minister of Defence who could take it up with her Cabinet colleagues or even the Prime Minister.
Early in 2017 Rawat had triggered yet another storm when he declared all protestors in Kashmir to be “overground workers of terrorists”.  This deliberate conflation of violent civil protestors with violent armed insurgents has not been particularly helpful. It  has seen a steady rise in the deaths of Kashmiri militants, but it has also a rising  toll of the security forces. If anything the hardline has led to young Kashmiris joining the armed militancy in steadily growing numbers. In a written reply in the J&K Assembly the state government said that some 126 young men joined the insurgents in 2017 as against 88 in 2016 and 66 in 2015.
Likewise, despite the tough words of the general, infiltration across the LoC guarded by the Army had also gone up. The MoS Home Ministry Kiren Rijiju told the Lok Sabha earlier this month  that as against 223 cases in 2015, the number was 454 in 2016 and 515 in 2017 . This was also borne out by the number of infiltrators killed—64, 45 and 75 respectively. As such Army personnel have all the right to discuss politics and have views, strong or otherwise. But their conduct rules are strict about making public comments on political issues. Senior officers are often called on to speak on various issues in seminars and conferences. But, they are usually careful in their comments. Sensitive issues involving politics can be taken up with the proper civilian authorities but this is best done through official channels away from the media.
The repeated instances suggest that General Rawat seems to revel in making these  politically loaded remarks. One conclusion of this is that he is not being adequately supervised by the government of the day. The other is that the general is pushing the envelope with an eye on a post-retirement political career. Neither are a happy commentary on the state of affairs today.
Indian Express Online February 22, 2018

Iran-India chapter

President Hassan Rouhani’s visit to New Delhi is a confirmation of India’s balanced approach to the West Asian region. It comes amidst a flurry of visits by Indian leaders to the region, and key West Asian players like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and now the Iranian president to New Delhi.
The outcome of the visit is fairly routine. The agreements signed are  mundane and along expected lines, including the lease in Chah Bahar. No doubt, there will be issues that have been untangled such as that of India’s oil imports and the Fazad B gas field. But we will know of them only later.
India’s interests in Iran are fairly easy to outline. First, it is geographically the most proximate source of petro-energy resources for India. Already, it is a major supplier of oil to India and is a potential supplier of natural gas as well. Second, it offers India a major means of avoiding the Pakistani blockade and developing rail/road links to Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond to Europe. Third, it is a major market for Indian products, ranging from agricultural produce to engineering goods and pharmaceuticals. Fourth, it is an important destination for Indian corporates wanting to invest abroad. Fifth, Iran with a large middle class, is the source of a vast trove of human resources in terms of trained engineers and software specialists. Companies like eBay, Google, YouTube, Dropbox, Twitter, have been founded or given leadership by Iranian-Americans who are more numerous than Indian Americans.
But there are many potential obstacles that hold back the relations from reaching their full potential. American unhappiness with Iran going back to the days of the 1979 hostage crisis is a major issue. Subsequently, it involved sanctions brought on by Iran’s nuclear programme between 1995-2016.  India was directly affected by the sanctions which drastically reduced our oil trade with the country. Now, it is bedeviled by the Trump Administration’s stance on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear programme which has been accepted by the Obama Administration and the other P5 countries plus Germany. 

The Iranians are difficult negotiators and India has found itself tripped up on the issue of the Farzad B gas field that Indian companies helped discover under an exploration contract. India has complained of   the Iranians shifting the goalposts on the deal at will. Many questions arise about whether Iran is even serious about exporting natural gas. Its aim is to remain a major oil exporter and gas is often used to flush the now ageing oil fields.
The third issue of concern are Iran’s geopolitical ventures in Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, which have brought it into conflict with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran, of course, has the right to act in the region as per its perceived national interests. Contrary to perceptions, Iran is driven by nationalism, rather than any desire to promote Shia Islam. Here it finds itself at odds with the US and the Arab world. Contrary to appearances, Iran is driven by pragmatic concerns which have led to it cooperating with the US and others to defeat the Islamic State.  
The fourth matter which we must navigate is that of Iran’s internal politics. There should be no doubt that despite some trappings of democracy, the country is ruled by a mullah regime. The President and the secular government system is severely constrained. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which acts as an enforcement arm for the mullahs, has an unhealthy spread in the corporate and business life of the country. But its branches like the Quds Force also play a significant role in Iran’s security policy.  
In all this, there is need to put the Iranian nuclear programme, the issue that is roiling its relations with the US, in perspective. It has two drivers, the first being regime safety for the mullahs who are aware that the US and the West successfully toppled governments in Iraq and Libya which were alleged to have nuclear programmes, but are hesitating to do so in the case of North Korea which has a proved nuclear weapons capacity.
But equally important is the perception of security in the minds of the average Iranian. In 1980 encouraged by the US, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Iran. In the bitter eight-year war Iran’s casualties were 200,000 dead, though some estimates put it at twice that number, and this in a population base of around 30 million. Iraq also used chemical weapons against the Iranians. All the big powers backed Iraq and the US also helped it through a variety of ways.
It is true that Iraq no longer offers the kind of threat it did under Saddam, but with continuing US hostility and containment policies, Teheran’s insecurities have only grown. The Iranian help to the Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Hamas in Gaza is, as Vali Nasr put it, a form of forward defence.  
Whatever it is, India has to step nimbly over these minefields to move ahead. The payoffs are, of course, significant. Iran is a huge country, some two-thirds the size of India and a strategically located one. Not surprisingly, we face considerable competition there with the Russians and the Chinese. The latter are a major presence in Iran which has been the largest recipient of Chinese aid between 2000-2014.
With the lifting of the sanctions in 2016, Chinese investments have been surging in a range of areas from railways to hospitals while other western investors are still hesitating to go in. In February 2016, the first train from an east coast city in China arrived in Teheran, signalling its role in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Greater Kashmir February 19,2018

Success of Modi’s ‘Act West’ Policy Opens Doors to Gulf Potential

Prime Minister Narendra Modi deserves full credit for his West Asian diplomacy. With the exchange of visits by the Indian and Israeli Prime Ministers within six months, Modi’s most recent visit to Palestine, Oman and UAE, and the upcoming visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, India has skillfully stepped over the numerous fault lines in the region.
Our ‘India First’ approach is likely to yield significant payoffs for India’s security, economic well-being and global standing.

India’s West Asia Balance

This is, by far, the most important external region for India, providing oil and gas that constitute 65 percent of energy imports, USD 35 billion in remittances from 9 million Indian nationals working there, and taking up 20 percent of our bilateral trade. With more than 700 flights a week, the region is, through the web of history, contemporary links, trade and expatriates, virtually a neighbour of India.
You may quibble with Modi’s ideological affinity for Israel’s distasteful policies, but when you do the math, you will see that Modi has, by and large, maintained an even keel in India’s relationship with the region.
There has been criticism that Modi’s visit to Palestine was a bit of ‘tokenism’ at play. Even so, given their plight, the visit by an Indian Prime Minister, howsoever brief, would have been a heartening one in the minds of the beleaguered Palestinians.
Not to mention, this gesture would also act as a signal to the other countries of the region, that despite ideological affinities with Israel, the BJP government would not abandon the long-term perspective.

Notwithstanding the economic aid and political support we give to the Palestinian cause, we are not big players in the prolonged end-game for the Palestinian state. There, it is entities like the US, Russia and the EU that count.

Foreign Investment from Gulf Region

During his last visit to UAE in 2015, Modi made a strong pitch to attract investment in India’s infrastructure. As a result, in 2017, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority put USD 1 billion into the special HDFC affordable housing scheme, USD 1 billion in the NIIF, and USD 300 million in a renewable energy project.
Major port operator, DP World, announced that it would add another USD 1 billion to its existing USD 1 billion investment in India in May 2017. DP World has invested in five international gateway ports in India already.
This time around, India got its first oil concession in the Gulf. An OVL-led consortium got a 10 percent stake, out of the 40 percent available in the Lower Zakum field. And we finally sealed the strategic petroleum reserve agreement – which means that we should soon have six million barrels of UAE crude in our caverns in Puddur, near Mangalore. Significantly, among the agreements is a commitment by DP World to set up a major inland container terminal in J&K – a significant message to the troubled state.

India-Oman Longstanding Ties

The UAE’s role in Indian security goes beyond oil supply lines and expatriate population alone. The UAE is an important partner in our efforts to combat organised crime, smuggling and, most importantly, counter-terrorism. Since 2011, both countries are bound by an agreement on security cooperation.
But though the UAE has been willing to give up Indian terror suspects, they are less cooperative on issues relating to Pakistan, whose clandestine services allegedly use the Emirates as a gateway to push illegal currency and money to militants in India.
India and Oman have had strong ties throughout history. A look at the map will show you why. Unlike other Gulf countries, Oman is our neighbour across the Arabian Sea and opens out into the Gulf of Oman, which faces Pakistan and the Indian Ocean. It faces Chabahar in Iran and Gwadar, the Chinese-run port in Balochistan, Pakistan. Incidentally, between 1783 and 1958, Gwadar, a small peninsula with a fishing village, was actually a part of Oman.

India’s Economic Ties with Gulf

India and Oman signed a treaty of friendship navigation and commerce as far back as 1953. The special element in the relationship have been our defence ties. We signed an MOU on Defence Cooperation in December 2005 (renewed in 2016) and established a committee which has had nine rounds of meeting since its establishment in 2006 to enhance this cooperation.
India has had an arrangement for the Operational Turnaround (essentially berthing) of ships involved in anti-piracy patrols and for technical support for landing and overflight for Indian military aircraft. The two countries regularly carry out naval, coast guard and army exercises.
Economic relations are no less important. The USD 969 million Oman-India Fertilizer Company is India’s largest joint venture abroad, having been established in 2006. India imports the entire production of its urea and ammonia.
The agreement for the Indian Navy access to Duqm port’s Naval Dockyard is a useful development, but some Indian media commentary has needlessly painted this as a major move against China, not knowing that a Chinese company has signed a project to develop a USD 10.7 billion industrial city near the port. Indeed, last year, the Omanis had to get an emergency USD 3.6 billion loan to balance their general budget from a group of Chinese banks.
And in neighbouring UAE, the Chinese are in an even bigger way, building a giant container terminal and setting up several free zones.

‘Act West’ — India’s Very Own Policy

Duqm is a relatively small port – the largest tag goes to Port Salalah, which is in the western part of the country near Yemen and strategically located at the cross-roads of trade between Asia and Europe. However, Sohar, a deep sea port that has a free zone, is Oman’s fastest growing port.
In contrast to ‘Act East’ where India is tying up with countries like the US and Japan to enhance its clout, the ‘Act West’ policy is India’s own. Unlike the Indo-Pacific where the US leads, here, we lead and shape our own policy which is, in some instances clearly at odds with the Americans.
Unlike them, we do not recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and neither are we willing to take a hostile stand towards Iran. This will be evident later this week, when the Iranian president lands in New Delhi.
And unlike the Indo-Pacific where the payoffs are limited, West Asia offers us vast energy resources that are vital for our development, investment opportunities for our corporates, and jobs by the millions for our skilled and semi-skilled workers, engineers, and managers. Iran offers us a platform for connectivity to Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond to Europe, and countries like Oman help us extend our reach into the western Indian Ocean.
The Quint February 14, 2018

The Trump force

President Donald Trump signed a budget bill last Friday  which will lead to the US Department of Defense’s (Pentagon) biggest budget. The defence expenditure will go up to  $ 700 billion this year and $ 716 billion in 2019. This year alone, the Pentagon will get $ 94 billion more than last year. Unlike the past when wars led to a jump in defence spending, this time around the increase is aimed at a range of overhauls and upgradation—training, high-tech missile defences and nuclear weapons.
There are many critics of this massive expenditure, some who point out that infant mortality rates in the US are the highest in the developed world. The US has many other problems that could do with the money—a crumbling infrastructure, opioid epidemic, poor healthcare services for the poor. But Trump has from the outset indicated that he would seek a sharp hike in defence spending as part of his America First vision.
But the US is also driven by its self-image as the world’s hegemon and in its new national defence strategy last month, the US Secretary of Defense called for more money to ensure that the US retains its military edge globally. Following the US National Security Strategy issued in December, the defense strategy says that the challenge now is that of states like Russia and China who are trying to undermine American power.
This puts an end to the limits on defence spending placed by the so-called process of budget sequestration initiated in 2013 under the Budget Control Act of 2011 to tame America’s budget deficits. Under this, defence spending would be cut $ 500 billion in a 10 year period. Spending would be cut evenly between domestic and defence programmes with half affecting non-discretionary expenditure like weapons purchases, base operations and construction work, and the rest to mandatory spending such as regular payments,  social security and Medicaid.
Though subsequent bipartisan deals in the US Congress ensured that the cuts were not drastic, they nevertheless put US expenditures at what we could call austerity levels. In any case war funding was not affected by the sequester and since this was not well defined, it was used to get around the sequester.  Also pay and allowances of military personnel and some of their benefits were exempted.
So, over the years exercises were curtailed and the repair of bases postponed and new weapons purchases delayed. All this was the outcome of the Republican Party’s theological belief that deficits were bad for the economy.But Trump has been a critic of the  BCA and said, not only would he undo it, but boost defence spending dramatically. So in their budget negotiations, the Democrats have insisted that budget relief for the Pentagon should come along with an equal relief to the social programmes. Such is Trump’s command of the Republican Party that it has tamely gone along with the new budget proposals, with little or no concern for the deficit.
In the last few years, the pressure on the US to spend more of defence has been growing on account of China. Speaking while introducing the new National Defense Strategy, US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis noted, “If you don’t get resources, then your strategy is nothing more than a hallucination.”
The US Department of Defense says that it needs larger stockpiles of munitions, more modern and effective systems to defend US bases in Asia, more sea and airlift to project forces and move them about in the vast spaces of the Pacific, upgrade their AWACS and battle management systems, more ships and fifth generation aircraft. On a longer term, they need to keep up their technological edge in the face of Chinese advances in AI and cyber.
Over the years the Chinese have developed an impressive capacity to raise the cost of the US intervention in areas close to the Chinese mainland through what is called the Anti Access Area Denial (A2/AD) systems. Just like India, the Americans have been busy using their military to fight terrorism, meanwhile their adversaries like Russia and China have created networks of long-range missiles, radars, cyber and space systems that are designed to keep the Americans from projecting power to their shores.
The American military is by far the most powerful today, but what the Chinese and the Russians have done is to increase the cost they would have to pay to intervene in regions like the Baltic Sea or the South China Sea. They would make the US to hesitate to intervene on behalf of, say, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam and open them up for greater bullying by China.
In 2014, the US announced that it would come up with an offset strategy emphasizing futuristic systems using AI and machine learning. But this is touch and go, because Russia and, more so, China, have also invested hugely in these areas. Fighting what the Chinese call “informationised” wars will be at the heart of military conflict. Everything will crucially depend on the dominance of the electro-magnetic spectrum.
Greater Kashmir February 12, 2018