Is India's Military a Pawn On the National Chess Board?

SOURCE
http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/1/9554/Is-Indias-Military-a-Pawn-On-the-National-Chess-Board

         

       Is India's Military a Pawn

                              On 

            the National Chess Board?

MAJOR GENERAL S.G.VOMBATKERE

Thursday, December 29,2016

MYSURU: CBI's arrest of Air Chief Marshal S.P.Tyagi, India's former Air chief, in connection with the Agusta Westland helicopter purchase deal is unprecedented. It raises some questions not only about the functioning of government (combination of the political leadership and the bureaucrat-police network), but also about hidden motivations and unintended compromise of national security due to its effect on the morale of India's military. 

Apart from the valid points made by the Court when granting ACM Tyagi bail, questions arise as to why he was arrested when others involved were not. Was it done deliberately to humiliate him and thereby India's military? Was this the handiwork of bureaucrats and/or the police, and who among the political hierarchy authorised the arrest? 

These questions are not about whether or not ACM Tyagi is guilty of receiving bribes or any other offence. That matter will be settled by the courts after examining all evidence. But when evidence is still being collected, when ACM Tyagi is cooperating with the CBI in collection of evidence, and there is no prima facie case against him, his arrest smacks of victimization. So, why was ACM Tyagi singled out for humiliation? 

This leads to the point that during the NDA-1 rule under then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vjpayee, defence minister George Fernandes summarily dismissed Navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat from service, giving him no chance to respond. It is clear that the government wanted to show its power over the military by summarily dismissing a defence service chief, because the proper and sensible thing to do was to summon Admiral Bhagwat, confront him with his “crime” (whatever that was), and ask him to resign. The most generous view one can take is that government (politician-bureaucrat) had no clue as to the repercussions that the public humiliation of a serving defence chief would have on the morale of the Indian Navy and the sister services. Or if it knew, either it did not care, or else the summary dismissal was by design. One wonders what purpose was served by humiliating Admiral Bhagwat and the military as a whole. 

Now that ACM Tyagi has been humiliated by the NDA-2 government, in retrospect Admiral Bhagwat's dismissal appears to fall in place, especially because in between the Bhagwat and Tyagi incidents, there have been incidents in the NDA-2 tenure which has affected the soldiers' morale, thereby compromising national security. 


To name a few in random sequence: 

-Sending police to manhandle peacefully agitating Veterans at Jantar Mantar; 

-Stating that OROP would be given to military Veterans by taking it from dues to poor farmers; 

-Notwithstanding reservations of the defence services chiefs, peremptorily directing the three Service Chiefs to implement the 7CPC award without delay; 

-Keeping the military without access to the 7CPC Anomalies Committee which was secretly arranged for civilians; 

-Raising the salaries of CRPF above that of soldiers; Downgradation of military ranks vis a vis civilian officials; 

-Granting NFU to IPS but not to the military; 

-The issue of pay parity with IAS/IPS; 

-Lower hazard allowance than IAS/IPS; 

-Stating that the army did not know its own capability to carry out the post-Uri surgical strike until it was told so;

-Reducing disability pension immediately following the post-Uri surgical strike; 

-The military commander being pushed aside by a bureaucrat at the 2016 Red Fort Independence Day function; 

-Insulting military war memorials and guard of honour by a functionary deliberately dressing inappropriately or casually. 

These are apart from the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare appealing as a matter of policy against every judicial decision given in favour of individual Veterans. 

The recent unprecedented step of “deep selection” of Lt Gen Bipin Rawat as army chief designate by superceding two senior officers, even though this is within the discretionary powers of the Union Cabinet, has caused disquiet among soldiers and veterans. The reason for disquiet is that government appears not to understand that Lt Gen Rawat is not superior in merit to his two seniors whom he has superceded, and if his experience in counter-insurgency is the criterion for his selection, it glosses over the fact that the army is deployed in counter-insurgency only because of the decades-long failure of the bureaucracy-police in its primary role of internal security. 

If however deep selection was a political decision, this could seriously compromise the army (the military, in general) remaining as India's last bastion of secular practice, and encourage sycophancy among officers to the permanent detriment of military professionalism. 

It is necessary to note that previous governments including NDA-1 and the Congress regimes preceding and including UPA-1 and UPA-2, had undoubtedly given the military a raw deal, particularly with regard to successive central pay commissions and the OROP demand. Gen Vaidya was appointed army chief by superceding Lt Gen Sinha, and army chief Gen Rodrigues was publicly castigated for his “bandicoots” remark. Even though the political leadership was primarily responsible, the hand of the bureaucracy was clear to every serving and retired soldier. 

Civil-military relations are today at an all-time low and although the decades-long continuity of the bureaucratic hand is obvious in the current NDA-2 dispensation, the role of the political leadership in humiliating the military is also clear. 

Considering that for the first time the NSA is a police officer with enormous clout at the top-most level, upgrading of the status of the police over the military while simultaneously humiliating the military is extremely dangerous for the security and safety of India. Powerful national leaders in Europe of the 1930s and 1940s similarly elevated the police over the military. Is history repeating itself? 

(Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired as Additional DG Discipline & Vigilance in Army HQ AG's Branch.)

SOURCE:
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/choosing-an-army-chief-the-perils-of-choice/20161228.htm

Choosing an Army Chief: The Perils of Choice                                               

                                   By

                      Ajai Shukla  

 December 28, 2016

With ambitious generals knowing that political patronage might be rewarded, a worrying era of politicisation of the military looms ahead, observes retired Colonel Ajai Shukla who has known Generals Rawat, Bakshi and Hariz for a long time.

In 1949, when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was appointing India's first commander-in-chief (downgraded in 1955 to 'chief of army staff'), he faced a choice between three top professionals.

The senior-most was General K M Cariappa, a dead-honest Anglophile with a marked aversion to dhotiwalas, as the army disparagingly referred to Congress leaders.

Next in line was General Maharaj Shri Rajendrasinhji, the princely brother of the Jam Saheb of Nawanagar.

The third was General Nathu Singh, an earthy, Rajput son of the soil.

Rajendrasinhji and Nathu Singh together told Nehru that Cariappa deserved to be appointed, given his seniority and competence.

Nehru, fearful that an over-assertive general might destabilise India's foundling democracy as was happening in several newly independent countries, wondered aloud whether the Indian Army should continue to have a British commander-in-chief, because of the inexperience of Indian generals.

After all, British generals had commanded the army till then, and the navy and air force continued with British chiefs for several more years.

However,  Gen Nathu, with his patriotism offended, told Nehru only half-humorously that, by that token, maybe India should have a British prime minister as well.

Cariappa was appointed without further ado.

It might be unrealistic to expect a similar sense of fair play today.

Indeed, it is more or less accepted now that seniority should not be the single criterion for appointing an army chief, with merit also counting towards the government's eventual choice.

Even so, with the government having named Lieutenant General Bipin Rawat as the next army chief, superseding two lieutenant generals senior to him -- Praveen Bakshi and P M Hariz -- on the grounds that Rawat is better equipped to handle the challenges of the future

 important questions arise over what 

constitutes 'merit.'

I am no dispassionate observer in writing on this supersession drama. I have personally known all three protagonists for four decades, especially Bakshi and Rawat, with whom I shared a squadron in the National Defence Academy.

Later, Bakshi, Hariz and I commanded our regiments together, after which I left service prematurely to become a defence journalist, while the other three went on to high command.

As one who has observed them closely, I can confidently state that all three are superbly equipped to lead the army.

Like Bakshi and Hariz, I was a mechanised forces officer, which meant I spent long years in the deserts of Rajasthan and the plains of Punjab.

Yet, like all armoured corps and mechanised forces officers, I also served tenures in Nagaland, Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir and even Africa.

To argue, as government mouthpieces have done since December 17, that Bakshi's shorter experience (Note: Not absence of experience) of counter-insurgency operations renders him ill-equipped to be army chief is as mischievous and misleading as declaring that Rawat's shorter experience in the plains renders him unfit to command the army in a war with Pakistan, when the bulk of India's offensive power will be applied through its mechanised strike corps.

This criticism of Bakshi and his supersession by Rawat amounts to accepting that the army's prime job is no longer conventional war, but counter-insurgency operations.

And that is tantamount to admitting defeat to Pakistan, whose military strategy has always been to tie down India's military with sub-conventional forces (jihadi militants), while its nuclear arsenal deterred India from retaliating with conventional warfare.

Today, as always, a chief's first preoccupation must remain conventional operations and full-scale war.

Low-intensity operations against separatists must remain a secondary business.

Political decision-makers should also be aware that the side-lining of two mechanised forces officers is being watched with dismay by three quarters of the army, which is deeply divided over the inequitable cornering of promotion vacancies by the infantry and artillery -- the two arms that have monopolised the army chief's office for two decades.

In February, the Supreme Court finally intervened, ordering more vacancies to be distributed to other arms. Yet, there are continuing lawsuits against skewed promotion policies that favour the infantry with disproportionate promotion vacancies.

Now, after two decades, when an armoured corps general was becoming chief in the natural course, an infantry general has superseded him on grounds that would apply, with only minor modifications, to every non-infantry general who is considered for chief in the future.

This is not going unnoticed in the army.

Given the emerging consensus that service chiefs should be selected on the basis of merit, not just seniority, the central question then becomes: 

'Should there be an objective set of 

criteria to evaluate merit?'

There are absolutely none at present.

It could be argued that a general found professionally meritorious enough to be made an army commander (the lieutenant generals one rung below the army chief, who command the Northern, Western Command, etcetera) would also possess the qualities needed to become army chief.

That, however, is only partially true. An army chief has two other important functions.

First, he must be the symbolic and inspirational figurehead for the entire army, a man with the communication skills and media savvy to portray the service in a positive light and create public confidence.

Second, the political leadership must have confidence in the army chief.

Currently, given the leaders' superficial and transactional relationship with the military, the apex political leadership has negligible personal 

interaction with the gaggle of 17 army, navy and 

air force commanders that have sprung up over the years.

While selecting, say, an army chief, the defence minister and prime minister would have only superficially interacted with the generals they are choosing from.

Implementing the long-proposed structures of 'tri-service geographical commands' would narrow down the field to just 5 to 7 geographical commanders, who political leaders might come to know as individuals.

Until then, leaders would be forced to make the 'choice' based on others' inputs, possibly motivated or parochial.

Finally, as evident from Rawat's appointment, a so-called 'merit-based' choice permits the politicisation of the country's most apolitical institution.

Further, it incentivises senior military officers to establish political contacts, which inevitably diminish the military's own channels of authority.

Till now, the military had managed to walk the tight-wire, accepting nominal political authority while resisting political meddling in internal decisions.

This was possible because successive governments were content to allow the military to make its own choices.

Now, with ambitious generals knowing that political patronage might be rewarded, a worrying era of politicisation of the military looms ahead.

Ajai Shukla

Source: 

Related News: 

Bipin Rawat, Praveen Bakshi, General K M Cariappa, M Hariz, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

USA CHINA POLICY : An open letter to Donald Trump on the One-China policy

Dear President-elect Trump

SOURCE:https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/12/13/an-open-letter-to-donald-trump-on-the-one-china-policy/?utm_campaign=John+L.+Thornton+China+Center&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=39832103

ORDER FROM CHAOS

An open letter to Donald Trump on the One-China policy

Richard C. BushTuesday, December 13, 2016

Dear President-elect Trump:


You told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that you “fully understand the One-China policy.” I have no reason to doubt you. But because you may not have received a briefing from the State Department on this matter, I’d like to fill you in on a few aspects of a complicated policy that has not always been well-understood—even by experts on China—through the years. I won’t go over all the history and theology of U.S.-China relations and the Taiwan issue. Just the basics.

Author

Richard C. Bush

The Michael H. Armacost Chair

Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies

Director - Center for East Asia Policy Studies

Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center

richardbushiii

First, the One-China policy is something the United States adopted and has upheld for itself. Beijing did not impose it. And it dates back decades, to before our establishment of relations with the People’s Republic of China.

Second, the core of the United States’ One-China policy is that we don’t pursue a Two-China policy. The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing and the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan (ROC) each insisted during the Cold War that it was the sole, legal government of China. We would have been perfectly happy to have diplomatic relations with both, but they insisted that we had to choose sides. So, in 1972 the Nixon administration began a process to transfer recognition and diplomatic relations from the ROC (Taiwan) to the PRC, and the Carter administration completed that process in 1979 in return for statements of China’s “fundamental policy” to pursue reunification by peaceful means. In a 1982 communique with China, the Reagan administration formalized this position by saying that the United States does not pursue a policy of two Chinas, or one China-one Taiwan.

Third, because we gave up any hope of a Two-China policy, one consequence of recognizing the PRC was that we could no longer have diplomatic relations with the ROC (no country in the world has diplomatic relations with both). But the Carter administration and Congress created a mechanism to preserve the substance of our relations with Taiwan by working through a nominally unofficial organization, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT; point of transparency: I was a senior officer of AIT from 1997 to 2002). In fact, AIT is a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. government. Its personnel are government personnel, and the business it conducts is government business. The United States does a lot with and for Taiwan, and as long as we do it behind the facade of unofficial relations, China does not complain.

The mechanism isn’t the equivalent of diplomatic relations: Taiwan’s president has not had face-to-face meetings with the U.S. president, but through the years numerous channels have been created to facilitate communications between the two on political, security, economic, cultural, and people-to-people issues. There are some limitations on the conduct of relations, but many of these have been relaxed over time and can probably—but quietly—be relaxed further. Would Taiwan prefer the dignity of something closer to diplomatic relations? Of course it would. But it also understands that the hand it holds is the hand it was dealt and that, at the end of the day, its substantive achievements with Washington through the unofficial relationship are much more important. When bilateral communication has deteriorated, it’s not because of mechanism defects, but because American and Taiwan leaders have adopted conflicting goals.

A Taiwan Air Force U.S.-made F-16 fighter jet at the Chiayi Air Force base, southern Taiwan, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang.

Fourth, there is the issue of the U.S.-Taiwan security relationship. Washington sells a variety of weapons systems to Taiwan. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations each sold over $12 billion in arms to Taiwan. There is robust interaction between our two defense establishments, including on the fundamentals of Taiwan’s defense strategy. The United States warns Beijing about using force against Taiwan, the unstated implication being that we would come to Taiwan’s defense. It’s ironic: We have defense cooperation with a government that we do not recognize, to help it ensure its security vis-à-vis a government that we do recognize.

The PRC military threat to Taiwan arises because it has always asserted that the island is part of the sovereign territory of China. It has stated its fundamental policy to seek to resolve its dispute with Taiwan peacefully, yet Beijing has never renounced the use of force—and the People’s Liberation Army continues to acquire capabilities that would be useful in a war against Taiwan. Hence the need for U.S.-Taiwan security cooperation to ensure Beijing does not resort to force.

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One of the PRC’s stated reasons for its military build-up is to deter a movement on the island to create a Republic of Taiwan, totally separate from China. Beijing is particularly anxious, for historical reasons, that the Democratic Progressive Party—which President Tsai Ing-wen chairs and which is now in power in Taiwan—will move toward independence. But that’s highly unlikely: Taiwan’s core problems are domestic, the great majority of the island’s population and President Tsai want to preserve the status quo, and Taiwan people pragmatically understand that a move to independence would lead to an attack from China.

As part of the U.S. One-China policy, American officials have long said that the differences between Taiwan and China should be resolved by peaceful means. That should remain the cornerstone of American policy. Bill Clinton stated an important supplement to the One-China policy in May 2000 when he said: “the issues between Beijing and Taiwan must be resolved peacefully and with the assent of the people of Taiwan.” 

Related Books

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That last phrase was a welcome recognition that during the 1990s, Taiwan had become a democracy. That meant that Washington believed that the people of Taiwan should now have a seat at the table whenever leaders in Taipei and Beijing argued about the island’s future, and that Beijing had to tailor its unification proposals to accommodate their wishes. It also meant that the people of Taiwan have a stake in any discussions between the United States and China about Taiwan. Taiwan people know that there were times in Taiwan’s history when Washington ignored their wishes when conducting its China policy, and this statement was meant to reassure them that such days had passed.

This leads to two important takeaways regarding the state of the U.S. One-China policy:

• Washington and Beijing decided to establish diplomatic relations in 1979 to facilitate cooperation between the two countries on a whole range of issues. How we interact with Taiwan was a consequence of the decision and a part of a packaged deal. Whatever the current problems in the U.S.-China relationship today, our reneging on the Taiwan part of the packaged deal would not provide leverage on trade, North Korea, the South China Sea, or any of the other issues that roil the relationship. More likely, it would rattle the entire framework of the relationship, and cause Beijing to rethink its policy of seeking reunification by peaceful means. To make matters worse, Taiwan could suffer collateral damage as a result.
• Not only would it not work as a practical matter to try to use the One-China policy to leverage U.S. objectives on other issues, it would be immoral to do so. Taiwan is not a “tradeable good.” It is an island composed of 23 million people who have created a prosperous, stable, and democratic society—a society, by the way, that China might emulate. They are good friends of the United States. They don’t deserve to be treated as a bargaining chip.

To enter into negotiations with China on the One-China policy is to create a zone of uncertainty that puts Taiwan at risk.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Bush