As 2023 dawns upon the world, both India and EU need to contemplate and rethink on the essential components of their administrative policies.
INTRODUCTION
The skirmish that took place between Indian and Chinese troops at the boundary line between the two countries at Yangtse in Arunachal Pradesh on 9 December 2022 could possibly trigger a fresh approach and alteration in so far as responding to such incidents by the Indian government is concerned. This approach, however, will not be as much about conventional and military tactics and responses to such happenings as it would, in all probability, be more about acknowledging and duly responding to a new or rather a parallel domain of conflict that will only become more consequential as we move forward from 2022 to 2023 and generally in time. Similarly, as the Russian war in Ukraine has entered its 10th month—a renewed security environment and a looming threat of adventurism by the regime of Putin along with America further tightening its stranglehold over the security and diplomatic apparatus of the European Union (EU) —will require EU to rethink its long-term strategy, posture and diplomacy.
THE CONTEXT
The attempts by the Chinese PLA to change the status quo at the border at Tawang, as expected, has generated a massive wave of opinions and commentaries on popular media as well as analyses by experts in India and elsewhere. While reactionary and frenzied posts on social media and a flurry of opinions, observations, explanations and interpretations by television studio panellists and professed subject experts is a natural outcome in a country which has a free and relatively unregulated media that often gets amplified by the simultaneous continuance of countless channels, portals and platforms, the role, however, of the “Opposition” in a democracy is not merely to add to the aggravating chaos of the digital and social media world. An opposition, particularly a responsible one, should not behave merely like some loud “pressure group” or a perennially outraged and reactive coterie of dogmatic individuals. It has a very sanctimonious role to play that essentially is about parting a restraining role in the government’s operations as well as to chalk out its own alternative and supplementary plans with regards to governance. However, India has been unlucky in the past several years when it comes to the effective functioning of the opposition is concerned. Having gone too far to the left of the political spectrum, particularly the principal opposition party of Congress, India’s opposition at the national level has resembled more of directionless disruptors.
At a time when sections of the opposition led by the Congress led a walkout in the just concluded winter session of Parliament, attributing their action to supposed opacity on part of the government to discuss the recent clashes between Chinese and Indian soldiers at the LAC, a few vital points were missed by them in their usual haste to malign the strongman image of the Modi government. Largely, those different and mutually specific points or considerations range from—India’s growing clout and presence in the global arena, the issue of an aging Dalai Lama and the question his successor, China’s questionable role in the spread of the Coronavirus along with the current wave of the virus that has overwhelmed it, India’s resolute response to China in both Galwan Yangtse at Tawang, the “Arunachal Highway Frontier”, a flagship project of the Indian government—are among the several reasons that seem to be provoking current activities of the Chinese State. And instead of taking stock of these factors, the opposition ecosystem, driven by militant language and blaring rhetoric seems to be leaving no stone unturned in disparaging the cognitive faculty of the general public, deliberately or otherwise.
IDEOLOGICAL CHARADE AND NEGATIVISM
Compulsive negativism, contrary to a perception of erudition and nuances, is often a mark of a total loss of vision, integrity and imagination. And talking about vision and imagination, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in a recent speech, had spoken of India as being a “union of states” in contrast to the ruling party’s unifying and a comprehensive vision of India. This seemingly dispassionate portrayal of India as a nation created by blocks and compacts and sustained merely through contractual negotiation might satiate the intellectual yearnings of a particular lot, but it woefully lacks an organic and nationalistic content. Using sensitive and highly strategic issues like the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to spread disinformation and scoring political points over the Modi government not only reveals their lack of seriousness towards the issue but it also, in the face of impressive infrastructure work and bettering military modernization efforts by the current government, only reveals the chicanery of the opposition at the national level. Additionally, it aids the forces inimical to India’s progress.
INFORMATION AND INFANTILISM
China had published a ‘Defense White Paper’ in 2019 that focused on the gathering of intelligence and then using the same to target the faculty of ‘intelligence’ of its aimed targets. It resolutely talks about weaponizing the domains of information and knowledge and employ it as an effective tactic or rather a whole strategy of warfare. To that effect, it has been working on such related technologies and operational concepts.
Trust and Democracy
The emotion and the feeling of trust is the linchpin of any country, particularly a democratic country’s legitimacy as well as its fortitude. But with the advent of information warfare, the same clout can be neutralized using such assaults with very meagre usage of finances and resources, while results are disproportionately profitable. In fact, as time passes by, it is this kind of a method and its ensuing non-physical and non-mortal delivery, that could well alter the focal point of many ensuing conflicts like the Russian-Ukraine conflict as well as others in the future from mechanized and armed clashes to propaganda and narrative-based campaigns. Contextualizing this observation, Kadygrob (2022) notices that during the course of military assaults on Ukraine, certain Russian media platforms, partly with the aid of proxies, took exertions to portray the EU as a decadent and feeble institution going through one crisis after the other. Such assaults in the cognitive domain can also be carried out and on for the specific goals of cultivating apprehensions regarding the administrative and legislative tasks being carried out by the incumbent government in a democracy like India.
CONCLUSION
As 2023 dawns upon the world, both India and EU need to contemplate and rethink on the essential components of their administrative policies. Being remarkable examples of successful democracies in their respective regions plagued by authoritarian regimes, religious extremism and subversive elements that exist both outside and within them, both the entities cannot afford to overlook a creaking reality—that the relatively successful delivery and maintenance of democracy along with the intrinsic liberties and rights that come along with it, provides opportunities to anti-democratic forces and saboteurs to induce instability, run disinformation campaigns against democratically elected governments. All of this happens under the cloak of platitudes like “transparency”, “civil liberties”, “democracy”, “anti-fascism” etc. Thus, going beyond conventional means, both India and EU need to exercise all the expertise, inheritance and competence at their disposal to confront and neutralize this fresh and parallel threat that can be broadly classified as warfare in the “cognitive” and “information” domain.
Manish Barma is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for European Studies, School of International Studies, JNU.