AFGHANISTAN: STRATEGIC LESSONS FOR INDIAN POLICY ESTBLISHMENT

AFGHANISTAN: STRATEGIC LESSONS FOR INDIAN POLICY ESTBLISHMENT

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

The Indian policy establishment should really now devote more time to a strategic audit and stock taking of its policy failure on Pakistan and Afghanistan. There can be no two opinions that India’s policy formulations both on Pakistan stand effectively checkmated by Pakistan aided by those who value Pakistan’s strategic utility to their interests more than India in Afghanistan.

The Indian policy establishment cannot offer the plea that it stood surprised by developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the last year or so. The indicators emerged with the unveiling of the Af-Pak strategy of the new President Obama in March 2009.

Implicit in the United States Af Pak strategy was that Pakistan despite the developing wide trust deficit between the United States and Pakistan, was to be central in facilitating a honourable exit from Afghanistan by the United States and NATO Forces.

Pakistan’s renewed centrality in United States Afghan policy was to endow on it by the United States of hard bargaining power in relation to Pakistan Army’s strategic insecurities arising from India.

The resultant outflow from the United States – endowed centrality of Pakistan assumed at least three different but inter-related dictates to the United States by Pakistan, namely (1) United States should pressurise the Indian Prime Minister to resume the Composite Peace Dialogue with Pakistan and also yield concessions on Kashmir (2) United States should yield no ground in Afghanistan to India’s legitimate national security interests (3) United States should enhance its military hardware largesse to Pakistan to offset India’s asymmetric military advantages over Pakistan i.e. maintain a regional balance of power.

The Indian policy establishment has horribly gone wrong in mixing up its strategic priorities on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan’s strategic redemption by an Indian crusade of “peace at any costs” with Pakistan should not have been an Indian policy priority. India’s foremost policy priority should have been the strategic redemption of Afghanistan. India cannot achieve the strategic redemption of Afghanistan in favour of India’s national security interests without adopting hard line strategic approaches to Pakistan, independent of extraneous pressures.

Grudgingly, one has to admit, that for the time being, Pakistan has outclassed both the United States and India with its ‘real-politick’ hard bargaining strategy.

The United States has yielded to Pakistan on all its demands with a vain hope that Pakistan may now desist from its ‘double-timing’ America and emerge as a more collusive entity.

Consequently, India stands strategically diminished in that the United States has nothing to offer to India neither on Pakistan nor on Afghanistan. The Indian Prime Minister has yielded by agreeing to resume peace dialogue with Pakistan by an abrupt reversal of his stated policy. On Afghanistan, India stands side-lined effectively with no role in the US Af Pak Strategy or being substantially co-opted in any regional solution envisaged. All that India has received from the United States on Afghanistan is mere praiseworthy rhetoric on India’s reconstruction role in Afghanistan.

India’s policy establishment must now grapple with the complex challenge of in which direction India should move to arrest the further regional strategic diminution of India. Obviously, the Indian policy establishment needs to recast its existing approaches to India’s policy formulation. Afghanistan can offer many strategic lessons to the Indian policy establishment arising from India being effectively side-lined despite its regional strategic predominance.

Accordingly, this Paper intends to focus on the examination of the following issues:

India’s “Soft Power” Strategy Results in Strategic Diminution
Taming of Pakistan: An Unavoidable Indian Strategic Imperative
India Fritters Away its Strategic Bargaining Chips
India’s Major Chink in its Strategic Armour: Lack of Peak War Preparedness

India’s “Soft Power” Strategy Results in Strategic Diminution

Nothing underlines India’s strategic diminution in Afghanistan and consequently in regional and global terms, than it’s rigidly sticking to pursuit of a “Soft Power” Strategy. Has this pursuance of “Soft Power” Strategy brought any strategic gains to India?” Not really; on the contrary, India stands side-lined from any substantive role in Afghanistan.

India’s “Soft Power” Strategy may have won India many hearts and minds in the Afghan people by the commendable role India has played in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, economic development and social upliftment.

But this noble endeavour has not brought any strategic gains for India in its prime objective of pre-empting the return of Pakistan’s embedment in Afghanistan’s strategic and political firmament.

India had legitimate reasons to opt for the “Hard Power” option of military involvement in Afghanistan as long as the US-led war was against the Al Qaeda and Taliban. It is well known that both these entities along with LeT were involved in worsening the situation in Kashmir. Nor should be overlooked the fact that the overwhelming number of Afghan people hated the re-emergence of the Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.

But India shirked and recoiled from this option, presumably on dismal forecasts from some in the establishment that India could be left holding Afghanistan alone with the inevitable exit of the United States.

The point that is sorely missed in such analyses is that the US & NATO Forces continue to be embedded in Afghanistan for the last eight years, primarily because the overwhelming number of the Afghan people who oppose Pakistan, the Al Qaeda and the Taliban and all three put together for the medieval Islamist barbarism inflicted on Afghanistan for more than a decade and thereafter fouling-up the stabilization of Afghanistan by the United States.

Consequently, there are no reasons to think otherwise that the same support of the Afghan Government and the Afghan people would not have been extended to an Indian military presence there. On the contrary Afghan public support for India would have been that much more.

However, with the United States having now foreclosed all Afghan options in favour of Pakistan, India’s military involvement in Afghanistan now sands ruled out. But as pointed out by this Author in an earlier Paper that India may well have to do so “On The Day After” the exit of the United States from Afghanistan.

Had India opted for the “Hard Power” Option 3-5 years earlier Pakistan could not have achieved the restoration of its centrality in US strategic calculus on Afghanistan today and which has emboldened it to strike strong postures on India’s recent ill-advised peace initiatives.

Taming of Pakistan: An Unavoidable Indian Strategic Imperative

In the last sixty years, Pakistan has persistently caused the embattlement of the Indian security environment by four aggressively initiated major wars, proxy war and undeterred terrorism attacks on India by affiliates of the Pakistan Army. India with matching persistence has shirked from strong retaliatory actions against Pakistan to tame its military adventurism.

While on Afghanistan, India has displayed strategic timidity, in the case of Pakistan, India has displayed pitiable strategic and political timidity as Pakistan’s more powerful neighbour. India cannot strategically afford to outsource its Pakistan policy to foreign capitals. India’s Pakistan policy needs to be made in New Delhi and made strongly befitting the strategic calls as the regional power in South Asia and by the exclusive dictates of Indian national security interests.

The Indian policy establishment in the last sixty years has politically, militarily and economically failed to neutralise and dilute the Pakistan-United States and Pakistan-China strategic relationships. It is a notable failure of Indian diplomacy besides the failure of Indian Special Envoys on Pakistan, Kashmir specialists and back-channel diplomacy boys that adorn the Prime Minister’s Office.

Pakistan is not India’s equal in terms of Comprehensive National and Strategic Power attributes. The prime focus of India’s policy establishment and the worthies stated above should be not to persuade Pakistan to come to the negotiating table or find solutions to issues made contentious by Pakistan. The prime focus of the Indian policy establishment should be on neutralization and making redundant Pakistan’s strategic utility to the United States and China.

Short of war, India enjoys numerous strategic, political, military and economic leverages and options to tame Pakistan. It should be the prime task of India’s policy establishment to illuminate these for the Prime Minister.

India would be well served if India’s Pakistan policy is not allowed to become the personal preserve of its Prime Ministers and to be determined by their personal predilections, rather than India’s national security interests.

All of India’s Prime Ministers in the last sixty years, including illustrious ones, have failed to make a Pakistan Army-dominated Pakistan see reason on the imperatives of India-Pakistan peace. Constant recitation of the ‘peace mantra’ by Indian Prime Ministers amounts to flogging a dead horse, and should cease now.

Pakistan studies India more than India studies Pakistan following the classical strategic concept of “Know Thy Enemy”, if you want to deal with it successfully. It is high time that Indian policy makers to follow this strategic maxim.

It is high time for India’s policy establishment to re-evaluate its Pakistan policy formulations in cold, hard and strategically pragmatic times.

Silence is another principle of war and diplomacy and until such time India can devise pragmatic policies on Pakistan, the least Indian Prime Ministers can do is to remain studiously “silent” on Pakistan and “ignore” Pakistan as not worthy of receiving attention as India’s strategic equal. Other than maintaining the bare modicum of diplomatic contacts, no other engagement with Pakistan should be resorted to.

India Fritters Away its Strategic Bargaining Chips

India’s previous Prime Ministers had with great effort weaned away Iran from Pakistan and convert it to an India- friendly country. It took Dr. Manmohan Singh to throw away India’s “Iran Card” so assiduously cultivated to further India’s national security interests in relation to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Dr. Manmohan Singh may have pleased the United States, but did not gain any strategic quid-pro-quo in the bargain.

While India continues to maintain its strategic partnership with Russia, but it seems to be more determined by the Indian military equipment dependency on Russia. Gone are the days when intense political exchanges would take place on every regional or global crisis. Under the present Government, there seems to be a subtle change underway to reduce India’s military dependency on Russia.

India could have been successful in not getting marginalized on Afghanistan, had it not frittered away its “Iran Card” and “Russia Card”. Similarly the Indian policy establishment should have visibly played its ‘Northern Alliance Card’ to ensure that it was not sidelined on Afghanistan.

Similarly, India has strategically shrunk away from exploiting Pakistan’s vulnerabilities in Baluchistan, Pashtunistan, Balawaristan, Gilgit and even Sindh. India needs to play these cards to force Pakistan Army and the ISI to recoil on Afghanistan, Kashmir and proxy war and terrorism against India.

Obliquely, India by playing these cards, could have obliquely contributed towards lessening Pakistan Army’s political hold on Pakistan and restoration of democracy in Pakistan.

India’s Major Chink in its Strategic Armour: Lack of Peak War Preparedness

India’s political masters have not devoted serious and devoted attention to maintain Indian Armed Forces in a state of peak war preparedness. India’s defence budget allocations this year by the present Government is the present indicator of this continuing trend.

Lack of peak war preparedness of the Indian Armed Forces foreclosed the Government’s widening of the Kargil war to the international border. Lack of peak war preparedness foreclosed the present Government’s options for retaliatory actions against Pakistan in the wake of Mumbai 26/11 full scale attacks by Pakistan Army affiliates.

With economic resurgence, the speedy build-up of Indian Armed Forces in terms of modernization and upgradation of its capabilities could have been possible by ‘off-the-shelf’ acquisitions. It has not happened.

With economic resurgence, India by now should have had an operational arsenal of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles and a functional ‘nuclear triad’ It has not happened.

Once again India’s effective peak war preparedness is held back by lack of political will of India’s political leaders and a lethargic civil bureaucracy imposed on India’s governance by India’s polity.

The least that India’s political leaders can recognise is that given their lack of political will to use power to protect India’s national security interests, Indian Armed Forces maintained at state of peak war preparedness could provide ‘existential deterrence’ to India’s adversaries and more notably Pakistan.

Concluding Observations

The Indian policy establishment needs to be conscious that its prime duty is to serve India and not the personal predilections of any particular leader in office. India’s national security interests are paramount and it is these that need to be safeguarded.

India’s policy establishment’s policy formulations have been a singular failure on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Existing policies would need a complete over-haul and shift from one of ‘soft-power’ approaches to those of exercise of pragmatic ‘hard power’ approaches, when the last named option becomes inescapable.

Pakistan’s redemption cannot logically be an Indian strategic imperative, but Afghanistan’s strategic redemption is an over-riding Indian strategic imperative to secure Indian national security interests. India cannot redeem Afghanistan without adopting ‘hard power’ options on Pakistan and forceful use of bargaining chips.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email: drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com)