Tuesday, February 6, 2018

GREAT GAME :Great Game in Indian Ocean

Source:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/657542/game-indian-ocean.html

Great Game in Indian Ocean
By
Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd)

Feb 4, 2018

It is now clear that a grand-strategic, multi-contestant, maritime ‘Great Game’ is being played out in the Indian Ocean region. Of the two major participants, a ‘resident’ India and an ‘interloper’ China are each playing by different rules. While India imagines that the conventions of traditional Shatranj (Chess) will suffice, the Chinese, shrewd practitioners of realpolitik, are playing by the far more complex rules of their strategic board-game Wei qui, or more commonly Go, about which we know very little. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game) ]

A discussion of this unfolding geopolitical drama must start with an acknowledgment of the audacious vision which has charted the transformation of a traditionally land-oriented China into a maritime power. Early Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine had relegated the navy to coastal defence, using small craft and submarines to wage ‘guerrilla war’ at sea. The past two decades have, however, seen a dramatic change in China’s strategic outlook. Swift growth of the Chinese economy and the consequent expansion of its commercial interests abroad has enhanced its dependence on overseas energy, natural-resources and markets, as well as the sea lanes of communication (SLOC) that carry them. While China’s land borders are relatively tranquil, the unresolved Taiwan issue and complex maritime disputes with six neighbours have led to enhanced focus on sea-power.

Although the die must have been cast at the turn of the century, it was only in 2015 that China’s Military Strategy acknowledged that, “The traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned...given the new strategic requirement of ‘offshore waters defence’ as well as ‘open seas protection’, the PLA Navy (PLAN) will shift its focus and build a combined, multi-functional marine combat force.”

China’s leadership has astutely grasped the reality that ‘maritime power’ is much more than just a ‘fighting navy’. The results are truly striking; China is today the world leader in ship-building and its 5,000-ship strong merchant marine ranks No.1 in the world. It also owns the largest number of coast guard vessels that protect the world’s biggest fishing fleet. It is noteworthy that China’s sea-going fishing fleet is viewed in strategic terms as a guarantor of national food security and the marine economy. Chinese shipyards are rapidly adding to its fleet of modern warships as well as merchantmen. Its force of home-built nuclear submarines is operationally deployed, and its first aircraft carrier is at sea, with more to follow.

By 2020, the PLAN will overtake the US Navy in numbers, and remain at No.2 only in capability.

As for India, its ancient sea-faring skills and maritime tradition had lain dormant for a thousand years; till revived by a visionary post-Independence naval leadership. The maritime-awakening of our

‘sea-blind’ politico-bureaucratic decision-makers, however, was triggered not by a sudden ‘epiphany’ but by a series of disruptive developments, that included the globalisation of trade, rampant piracy, the trauma of a sea-borne terror strike on Mumbai and the spectre of a PLA Navy on the rampage in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

India’s naval leadership has steadfastly striven for the creation of a strong and balanced three-dimensional navy with indigenous roots. The Indian Navy (IN) has also created its own roadmap via a succession of ‘Doctrine’ and ‘Strategy’ documents whose contours are shaped by the need to protect India’s national interests, resources and diaspora; to support India’s foreign policy; and to assure safety of SLOCs by upholding freedom of the seas.

China’s acquisition of economic heft and coercive military power has led to a display of increasing belligerence through a campaign of ‘cartographic expansion’, as manifest in the ‘9-dash line’ in the South China Sea and repudiation of the 1914 McMahon line on the India-China border. Having already established a chain of maritime footholds in the Indian Ocean, China inaugurated its first overseas military base in Djibouti last year, and PLAN warships and submarines have now become frequent visitors to the Indian Ocean.

Since China’s grandiose Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) relies on Indian Ocean ports and sea lanes, India’s refusal to participate in this project has caused concern in Beijing. In the emerging maritime equation, former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s ‘Malacca dilemma’ may come to haunt the PLA Navy, given the Indian Navy’s ability to dominate IOR sea lanes. In a related context, the recent conclusion of an Indo-Seychelles agreement regarding creation of air and naval facilities on Assumption Island is a welcome development. Similar accords could be in the offing with Mauritius and the Maldives. Similarly, membership of the inchoate US-Japan-Australia-India ‘Quadrilateral’ is being recommended as a hedge against Chinese hegemony in the Indian Ocean Region. None of these measures would, however, render expected benefits unless they are components of a carefully thought-out, overarching maritime masterplan. [ Chinese answer to ‘Malacca dilemma’ will very soon get converted to the construction of KRA CANAL in South Thaiand - VASUNDHRA ]

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Indian Ocean ‘Great Game’ and India’s role in it will be keenly watched by the larger Indo-Pacific region. So, India’s decision-makers need to be mindful of a few important factors.

Firstly, India’s modern and professionally competent navy is said to be largely home-grown, but until Indian warships and submarines are equipped with indigenously designed and manufactured weapons, sensors and machinery, the navy will remain import-dependent and vulnerable in war. Far from being a regional ‘net security provider’, the IN may find it a challenge to sustain its own units in distant waters.

Secondly, unlike their Chinese counterparts, Indian decision-makers have failed to comprehend that the navy, by itself, constitutes just one component of the country’s maritime capability. Without the remaining elements, India’s maritime power will remain hollow. Despite exaggerated claims, India’s ports and infrastructure remain backward, our shipbuilding industry is stagnating, the merchant fleet is static, we lack a viable fishing-industry, and sea-bed exploitation is yet to commence.

Finally, the Indian Navy’s maritime doctrines and strategies, as well as initiatives like ‘Sagar’ abroad, and ‘Sagarmala’ at home, will lack logic and coherence unless backed by a comprehensive national strategy for maritime security. The faithful implementation of this strategy will create urgently-needed capacities that will not only benefit our economy but also reinforce maritime security.

(The writer is a former chief of the Indian Navy)

AN ARMS DEALER SAYS LIFE UNDER TRUMP IS A 'WIN-WIN'

SOURCE
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/asked-international-arms-dealer-life-trump/E:

AN ARMS DEALER SAYS LIFE UNDER TRUMP

IS A

'WIN-WIN'

David Marks—not his real name—is an international arms dealer. He acquires military technology, including weapons, aircraft, tanks, missiles, and computers, on behalf of governmental clients around the globe. He operates legally, working only works with countries that are allied with the West. He has modest homes in two locations around the globe–his primary residence is in Europe–as well as offices that anchor his presence in the countries within which he does business.

Marks closes hundreds of millions of dollars in arms deals every year, taking a single-digit percentage for each as his company’s compensation. He travels monthly around the world to meet clients and governments, brokering deals and conducting due diligence on both the buyers and sellers. He works with large prime contractors, civilian corporations, and small weapons manufacturers. He describes his role as an “outsourcing specialist," someone who can step in to manage transactions and acquisitions that might be sensitive or politically unpopular.

By virtue of his network of clients and sources, he can offer unique insight into international geopolitics. (He describes his personal politics as centrist, though slightly more right-leaning as he gets older.) I spoke with Marks via a secure communications app to find out what impact the Trump administration might have on global security.

WIRED: First, some background. How do you gather your information when conducting business?

Marks: You establish a network over a long period of time. I have contacts in intelligence, government, commerce, and banking. It behooves you to have a diverse range of sources. They all have their own vantage points, so you use your experience and knowledge about how the world really works, and then balance all of that input so you can gauge things for yourself. You have to judge whether to go ahead with a given deal or deem it too risky. A lot of it has to do with experience and common sense, but also understanding geopolitics and global business. We walk the line in the middle.

What’s an example of a deal that’s too risky for you?

There was an incident a few years ago in the Ukraine—which, I’m sorry to say, is a tough place to do business. We were invited to participate in the procurement of non-military vehicles that were going to be used by a government agency. I had access to extremely good products, and have sold hundreds of these vehicles in the past, so I thought it would be a piece of cake. It’s close to Europe, the Ukraine is our friend, etc. But then I got a phone call from a friend at three-letter US agency: ‘We have actionable intelligence that you might get kidnapped.’ This is a person with 30 years of experience. I don’t take comments lightly from someone like this, so I backed out.

What do you think of the Trump administration so far?

What I see is what I expected to see. The first year is going to be a reality show—and yes the early stuff out of DC is mind-boggling. From a geopolitical perspective, countries know they at least can’t bullshit him the way they could past administrations. If they do try to bullshit him he’ll come at them full-power, so they’re going to have to sit down and negotiate. This scares the crap out of both allies and adversaries.

How will that manifest itself?

There are a lot of niceties and protocols involved in foreign policy and structuring international deals. Trump can’t stay ignorant of those details, and you must respect international laws and protocols, but he’s going to run this like he runs a business. In the last 25 years, international relations deviated from focusing on statecraft to all the politics and niceties. Now there will be more dialogue, lots of back and forth, and this administration will try to find a medium between statecraft and business. We’re going to get a dose of realism, and frankly we need that. Sure, it’s all going to be filtered through the Trump lens, and we don’t really know what that means yet, but we’ll get clarity. I truly believe that.

What are others in the global military community saying about the new administration?

They’re confused. A lot of them don’t know what to expect. Take the fact that he hung up on the Australian prime minister. Contrary to what people might think, I really, really don’t believe he’d act like that if he didn’t feel the need, given his desire to change the tenor of conversations even with our allies. He knows what it means to be President of the United States. But that doesn’t change the fact that people are confused.

How will the arms business in general change?

Saturday, February 3, 2018

ARMS PROCUREMENT : NOT MADE IN INDIA

SOURCE:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/not-made-in-india-fdi-in-defence-foreign-investment-military-budget-5045360/

Continuing dependence on foreign arms, coupled with a dysfunctional acquisition process, is eroding the combat readiness of India’s armed forces.

NOT MADE IN INDIA

BY

Arun Prakash

January 31, 2018

India’s acute dependence on imported

arms and ammunition, 60 per cent-70 per

cent of Russian origin, will constitute a

grave handicap and vulnerability in a

conflict

The public is often bemused on hearing senior military leaders make gratuitous public pronouncements regarding India’s readiness to “fight a two-front war”. Bewilderment, however, turns into trepidation on reading media reports that

the army is looking for eight lakh rifles, carbines and machine-guns, in the international market, to equip its 13-lakh jawans! Our uninhibited Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) leaves little to the imagination, as he tables annual reports in Parliament, exposing India’s deficiencies in military wherewithal.

Further proof of our “readiness” comes from the previous Raksha Mantri, who revealed to the media that days before the Indian Army’s cross-border raids into Pakistan, he had to send officers abroad, “…with authority to carry out on-the-spot purchases.” If a relatively minor army operation (hyperbolically described as “surgical strikes”), involving a few dozen soldiers, required urgent “on-the-spot purchases” from abroad, how would India manage to sustain half a million troops deployed in an intense and protracted conflict on two separate fronts?

While this conundrum does not seem to trouble our decision-makers, the tax-payer needs to reflect on some facts about our two potential adversaries, China and Pakistan.

Pakistan has the world’s seventh largest army, and even though permeated by religious fundamentalism and embroiled in politics,

its professional capabilities cannot be ignored.

Those who sneer at the Pakistani “deep state” overlook its strategic master-stroke, whereby, as a military-client of “all-weather friend”, China, it has ensured steady arms transfers to all wings of the Pakistani military. Having created a high level of equipment commonality with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Pakistan can go to war, confident that its attrition losses will be expeditiously replaced from PLA stocks.

By comparison, India’s acute dependence on imported arms and ammunition, 60 per cent-70 per cent of Russian origin, will constitute a grave handicap and vulnerability in a conflict. Over the years, not only have Indo-Russian relations become purely transactional, but the (post-Soviet) Russian arms industry has been found incapable of providing timely support for its products; a fact repeatedly pointed out in the CAG reports. Other foreign suppliers may prove equally unreliable in wartime.

Coming to India’s main adversary, the Chinese PLA constitutes the world’s largest military organisation, with formidable capabilities in the conventional, nuclear, cyber, maritime and space domains. Of greater significance is the fact that China is self-sufficient in major weapon systems, and has surpassed Britain, France and Germany as an exporter of arms, 70 per cent of which are supplied to neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Ironically, in 1949, when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) came into being, India was industrially well ahead, because the demands of WW II had led to the establishment of arms, ordnance and aircraft production facilities to support the Allied war effort world-wide. So, how did China overtake us?

In the early 1950s, a fraternal Soviet Union commenced a massive transfer of arms to the PLA, under a Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship. However, as ideological fissures emerged and the Soviets threatened to stop aid, the Chinese leadership ordered seizure of hardware as well as drawings and technological data relating to Soviet weapons. Once the split actually occurred, in the mid-1960s, the Chinese leadership took a far-sighted decision to launch a project for attaining self-reliance in arms, through reverse engineering (“guochanhua” in Mandarin), as a national endeavour.

The first phase of “guochanhua” helped China establish, by the mid 1980s, serial production of Soviet-origin tanks, artillery, submarines, jet fighters and bombers, as well as strategic systems like ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines. Manufactured without Soviet licences, many of these products had serious flaws and contained imported Western components. But they were “Made in China” and constituted a “great leap forward” towards self-reliance.

China has, subsequently, launched repeated cycles of “guochanhua”, with the aim of acquiring the latest military and dual-use technologies; legitimately, if possible, but through industrial espionage and violation of intellectual property rights, when required. At the turn of this century, China had reached a level of technological development surpassing Russia’s.

Today, China has stunned the world by its ingenuity, exemplified by the world’s fastest super-computer (the Sunway Taihu-light), J-31 fifth generation stealth-fighter, an electro-magnetic aircraft catapult to equip its new aircraft-carrier and huge strides in robotics, artificial-intelligence and drones.

India, by a quirk of circumstance, has become a military and economic entity with great-power aspirations, before it has become a significant industrial power. Consequently, it is in the anomalous situation of being a nuclear-weapons state with the world’s fourth-largest armed forces, but having to support their operational needs through massive arms imports. All this, inspite of a vast military-industrial complex, with a large pool of DRDO scientists and a network of sophisticated laboratories, backed by advanced production facilities of the defence PSUs.

The Bangladesh War was won only because General Manekshaw sought a grace of nine months to equip his troops.

COMMISSION WALLAHAS

The brief Kargil War required desperate replenishment of ammunition, midway through the operation. India’s continuing dependence on foreign arms, coupled with a dysfunctional acquisition process has eroded the combat readiness of our armed forces.

Foreign arms purchases, considered a

“golden-goose” for political war-chests, have

also engendered a morally-corrosive system of

corruption at many levels.

Our myopic failure to learn from experience, and to acknowledge the deleterious impact of this void on India’s national security, may cost us dearly vis-a-vis future machinations of the China-Pak axis. It is a pity that not one of our post-independence political leaders showed the foresight to launch a strategic initiative that could make India self-reliant in weapon-systems. Today, we do have the dream of “Make in India”, but it awaits fulfilment by a languid bureaucracy and a complex document, the “Defence Procurement Procedure”, which, after six iterations, has failed to deliver anything substantive to the military.

What we need is a 50-year vision for self-reliance in weaponry and a clear-cut strategy, for its implementation by an empowered “czar”. To those who ask, “Isn’t it too late?” one can only say, “If we never make a start, how will we ever get there?”

The writer is a retired Chief of Naval Staff

Vasundhra