Articles

Early January 2012, the US Defence Department came out with its Strategic Guidance Document, nineteen years after the last was brought out in 1993. Spelling out American “Priorities for 21st Century Defence,” this document delineates the future arc of competition and conflict extending from Asian Pacific to West Asia. Geographically, the median point of this strategically important region passes through India. This positions India in a setting that accentuates its strategic vulnerability as also provides openings for playing a more dominant and pro-active role in the region.

The new strategic guidance for the US Department of Defence, issued on January 5^th 2012, in an eight page document entitled “Sustaining US Leadership: Priorities for 21^th Century Defense”, merits careful study. It not only provides insights into the emerging global security challenges as envisaged by the US and its projected response thereto but also enumerates the primary missions for the US Armed Forces.It may be recalled that the last occasion on which a similar document was prepared was in 1992, in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

The highly disturbed and extremely volatile security environment in India’s neighbourhood underlines the need for India to substantially strengthen its national security apparatus with a range of strategic and tactical battlefield missiles featuring cutting edge technologies. In particular, the combative mood of the China over territorial and boundary disputes with India has highlighted the need to deploy long range ballistic missiles for deterrence purposes.

That a country, which has successfully accomplished a lunar mission and emerged as a global software and IT hub but continues to meet around 70 percent of its defence requirements through imports can hardly lay claim to the status of a military power of global standing. The very fact that India is today the world’s largest arms importer calls for a serious rethink of India’s arms production and defence acquisition strategy.

Indian policy and strategic establishment is exhibiting little or no concern about growing Pakistani nuclear arsenal, this is despite the fact that Pakistan is touted to have more nuclear weapons than UK and has emerged as the fifth largest nuclear weapon state behind, USA, Russia, China and France.

India’s tender for 126 Medium Range Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) has been the object of intensive and prolonged international interest. Such a massive order for advanced aircraft by a single country for procurement from the international market is rare. All the major defence equipment exporters in the world have been eyeing this $10 billion contract avidly, with US, Russia, France, Sweden and the European consortium of Germany, UK, Italy and Spain in the fray.

Dietmar Rothermund and Harman Kulke state that the non-revolutionary transfer of power from the British Empire to the Indian Republic enabled it to inherit intact the instrumentalities of governance like the armed forces and the civil and police bureaucracies. The new born republic was beset with the trauma of partition and the First war in J&K and thus forced to focus on immediate consolidation. It had little time or energy to transform the colonial instruments to the needs of an Independent Republic.

One of the most keenly watched part of the Union budget is the allocations of funds for defence expenditure. Given the prevailing security environment, modernization of the armed forces and keeping them militarily prepared is a major challenge faced by both the political and military establishments. Particularly so given the fact that our relations with two important neighbours; Pakistan and China can at best be said to be in cold storage, with little sign of early thaw.

Introduction
The international environment remains in flux. Even though there is a belief that major wars are unlikely yet history has the uncanny knack of surprising us; it is therefore encumbent for nation states while abjuring conflict to remain prepared for the same. As Asia becomes economically the most dynamic region it is riddled with maximum trouble spots either on account of historical legacy or emerging balance of power equations.

Selig Harrison’s report on the deployment of 7-11,000 Chinese troops in the Gilgit Region of POK has caused considerable concern in India. By way of denial the Pakistanis and Chinese have not refuted the presence of the troops but their purpose. The Pakistanis claimed they were there to assist in “Flood Control”. Zhao Gang Cheng of the Shanghai based Institute of International Studies stated that the purpose was “for considerations of economy and energy and not to pose a threat to anyone”.