India is in a disadvantageous position due to an intellectual deficit in the overall structure. Deep-rooted research requires investment in time and allowing changes with continuity.
For India, today there is no denial that China poses the main threat to India during Xi Jinping’s third term. While India pursued a more benevolent utopian policy towards China, it has not been reciprocated equally by China for achieving peaceful coexistence or solving the border issues. This will be furthered by the latest re-election of Xi Jinping for the third term as President only a few days back.
The net assessment of China and assessment regarding Chinese National Power ensconced within the military and non-military dimensions are of prime interests to India. As Indian defence analysts and as policymakers one has to factor in the issues of historical legacies, cultural preconditions and the psychological parameters of how the Chinese psyche of 100 years of their humiliation has fortified their resolve to emerge as a super power. Hence in our net analysis apart from the mechanical calculation which is done by Indian researchers with narratives and possible scenario building of a hypothetical nature we have to educate ourselves, employ more scientific temper and academic rigour in our research endeavours to understand the India-China relationship at all levels. The complexities that have arisen because India and China are basically civilizational states where “frontiers” have more compelling reasons to be understood than the concept of borders leading to conflict situations.
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE OF ASSESSING ADVERSARIES
The American team was led by Andrew Marshal in his 48 years as the head of Net Analysis in Pentagon, the US. It is rumoured that to have authored only 24 Net Analysis surveys. There were eight main considerations.
First, the resilience of the targeted adversary as a military power. Second, capacity building in terms of infrastructure for military preparedness of the adversary. Third, readiness response in time by own military power. Fourth, alliance politics of the adversary vis-a vis of one’s own political system. Fifth, projection of capacity to wage war and the assessed period of such an eventuality. Sixth, econometric calculation of war expenditures and the factors of sustainability by considering the GDP and GNP of one’s own nation state and Seventh, projecting the worst case scenario that could be confronted by own nation state—politically, geostrategically and the shifting balance of power situationally.
LESSONS FROM AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
What then are the main observations of the American experience and from which we can draw out our own grand strategy in checkmating China’s threat towards India? The six observations are as follows:
1. Andrew Marshall was operating directly under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Chairman JCS) as Director of Net Analysis
2. Andrew Marshall was not even answerable to the Congress or the Senate or the DOD.
3. As a courtesy, as far memory goes of the period from 1973 to 2015, the various Secretaries of Defence, individually, were at best privy only to those Net Analysis done by Andrew Marshal during the term of office of that particular Secretary of Defence. So only the Chairmen JCS had access to all the 24 Reports done by Andrew Marshall.
4. Chairman CJCS was autonomous on military affairs related to Net Analysis and was not under Defence Secretary and the system continues even today as we know
5. Andrew Marshall’s successor when he demitted office at the age of 97 has been succeeded by Brig General James H. Baker on 15 May 2015 (Marshall retired on 2 Jan 2015 and died on 26 March 2015 at the age of 97) to carry on the legacy for at least three decades to come if not more with the focus on Communist states both of major or lessor powers origin.
6. There are rumours that Andrew’s Net Analysis was highly successful in prediction but less heeded by the American political decision makers. However, he has left behind a legacy of trained Net Analysts who have been nurtured over his lifetime. He often remarked that scenario building or war gaming never contributed to net analysis but often led to outputs which were desirable to be heard by decision makers.
Since the response is to recommend as desirable India’s action towards China, the following needs to be noted:
1. Chinese study in India is still in its infancy and needs to be fortified.
2. Existing China study units in the academia are based on the history and culture of China with a strong bias towards the language. Hence it lacks the rigours to integrate their understanding or assessment with the experience and the judgements of the practitioners of China policy makers in India.
3. Therefore the above fault lines do not address the temporality of historical methodology to aid decision making. It only advises without being advocating. Therefore, it fails to bridge the gap between the realm of ideas and the domain of public policy making.
4. The above-mentioned fault lines need to be addressed not only by the government but by those who teach public policy as a discipline in the centres of excellence in the field of education, leaders of corporate and the private sectors in India.
5. The Government sponsored think-tanks have little expertise to project long term goals or assessment about the threat from China in a quantified way by employing mathematical models to project risks that need to be taken and calculating the probability of success of politico military and geostrategic decision making.
6. One example of the above was carried out by an American university prior to Iraq war, which failed to predict the outcome of military operations but nonetheless its failure led to re-assessment of their research methods and methodology as a cleansing up process. It would not be wrong to conjecture that the office of net assessment had a clear hand in the sudden withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan and also the change of American policy of its involvement in Ukraine without committing combat forces but by massive support in terms of weapons and technology.
7. Diplomatic practices augmented by average levels of expertise in Chinese language have produced only well written English language briefs far away from the reality of threat assessments from China towards India.
8. Competing interest groups fighting for appointments by veterans from bureaucracy and the services in various organisations have seriously eroded the capacity to carry out real time threat analysis from China to India with innovative methodology of research rather than relying on experience and judgement of the domain experts alone. Domain experts, who mostly fall in the category of “veterans”, as defined above, carry the biases of the organisations where they served. They appear to lack the capacity to carry out adventure in ideas and lack the intent to justify contrarian narratives possibly even in their closed-door meetings for a thorough and rigorous discussion.
8. Existing non-government centres of Chinese studies are well on their way to extinction and the ones with the government are without any credible leadership.
CONCLUSION
India is in a disadvantageous position due to an intellectual deficit in the overall structure. Deep-rooted research requires investment in time and allowing changes with continuity. As can be seen from the American experience, the successor to Marshall has been in office since 2015, and will continue for the next three decades in all probability.
One can say that for India it is a wakeup call if she wants to be an actor of any standing and clearly India is languishing far away to lead the Global South politically, militarily and geo strategically. Hence policy towards China should have the following considerations:
1. There is a need to develop a common approach with the US, Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Tajikistan and Australia to checkmate the rise of China.
2. India needs to augment its defence technology—though it is already on an ascending mode.
3. Office of the CDS needs to play the pivotal role to assess the threat perceptions from China and the CDS should provide policy prescriptions on military affairs.
4. Political intent should be geared to bridge the gap of trade deficit with China in India’s favour.
Lastly it is imperative that India in diplomatic or in military security areas must develop an institutionalised alternative thinking. For without comparative alternatives being debated any policy options will become monopolistic to the extent of being deficit and limited.
Professor Gautam Sen Pune is presently with National Institute of Advance Studies, Centre for Land Warfare and Perspective Policy Foundation.