INDIA-THE NEXT DECADE AND BEYOND

INDIA – THE NEXT DECADE AND BEYOND
Security and what might happen by 2025


The changing scene

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the abiding image of an India that is a chaotic soft state without a strategic culture persists but also that, somehow, miraculously and in its confused sort of way seeking to rise as a regional power. For decades, the leadership’s postures have mostly been defensive portrayed as being responsible in the face of grave provocation. The US, still a mighty power and likely to remain so for decades, is in relative decline in terms of influence and ability to have its way is a major change. The strategic stalemate in West Asia (Iraq) and Afghanistan and the economic meltdown are the recent examples of this. Along with this is the emergence of China as a major power that will assert itself increasingly in the next decade is something India’s policy makers will have to factor this in their calculations. Japan will simultaneously emerge as a ‘normal’ power and all three Asian powers will compete for the same resources, markets and influence. Russia is a major nation, still a global power with tremendous energy resources that are globally running short, a strong military machine and a well-developed science and technology sector. The EU is a massive global economic power with which India must learn to deal for economic advantage. One of the consequences of globalization will be the continued struggle and competition for resources, for precious mineral resources and other natural resources that will shape military policies of nations and choke points will be unstable.

Our own neighbourhood would remain more or less as it is today. Pakistan is unlikely to give up its obsession with India or its terrorist option despite the irreparable harm it will continue to do that country. Nepal’s experiment with democracy will remain tortuous and prolonged. Bangladesh’s current leadership is showing tremendous vision in having learnt the right lessons from Pakistan’s decline to obscurantism and would be in everybody’s interest -- if Bangladesh made this trend irreversible. Sri Lanka is recovering from a major insurgency that had threatened to divide the country. The next few years are going to be difficult as the country’s leaders now have to distribute the dividends of peace fairly among the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority otherwise the insurgency will resurface.

In its external relations, India will have to deal with these, at times, conflicting interests.

There will be other problems along the way some global like climate change, terrorism, energy, some regional like water shortages, migrations, and some purely our own – our abysmal law and order, leading to insurgencies in many cases, health, education and infrastructure issues. Rapid economic growth will create socio-economic pressures arising from exploding expectations and demographic pressures on the urban areas.

The US misses its chances

The United States destined to remain as the world’s strongest military economic and technological power for decades to come had three opportunities to be the dominant ideological, idealistic power but missed all three. The first was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when instead of showing magnanimity towards the vanquished it went after the emerging Russia in the Nineties and frightened it into nationalistic reaction later. Soon after the attack on the Twin Towers and Washington, the US could have led a truly Global War on Terror instead it was neither a war on terror, nor was it global because it was only about securing America and American interests. Finally, in recent weeks and months, the US could have led the world by example but squandered this opportunity at the Copenhagen Climate Summit by not bringing enough to the negotiating table.

The previous century, although described by Eric Hobsbawm (The Age of Extremes) as a short century from 1914 to 1991 was also the most violent. During these 75 years, violence which was mostly state led, accounted for 187 million deaths during the two world wars, largely due to Hitler’s holocaust, Stalinist purges and Mao’s bizarre schemes that amounted to genocide. The killings of the 21st century are the mixed results of state and private violence and show little signs of abating as new threats are added to the list.

The fall of the USSR was not accompanied by US magnanimity but was instead replaced by hubris of the 1990s. US thus muffed its chances of being the ‘citie upon the hill’ …. And be the true leader of the world and try mould it in its own image. There was too much of finger wagging do as I say but not lead by example. It remained too obsessed with control and domination. Fired by a new zeal and imagination, American leaders began in the 1990s onwards to start nation building in the underbelly of the former Soviet Union the Balkans and ME/WA. This nation building was in reality state replicating or carving out US clones under the mistaken belief that the rest of the world wanted to be like the US but only didn’t know how. So it became American manifest destiny to do this. The idea of imposing freedom as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan or even in Pakistan, subverts it.
As Niall Fergusson in his book ‘Colossus’, which is about the rise and fall of the American Empire, says that if the Victorians spread ‘civilisation’ through the Maxim gun there was something quite fishy about spreading democracy to Fellujah and Kandahar through the Abrams tank and the Predator. Even though the US is still the colossus that Thomas Jefferson predicted it would be in 1816, it is a diminished colossus despite its massive economy, military might, global military presence with its 731 bases. Powerful though the American empire was at the end of the second world war, it was never as powerful as the European empires had been half a century before that and it never quite understood the limitations of military power, despite Vietnam, Iraq once, Iraq twice and now in Afghanistan. Consequently, the US is suffering from the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.

The Nineties were a period of arrogance in Iraq, West Asia, excessive and in your face militarism and that too as if all this was proclaimed to be for the good of the third world. The sudden surge in information and technology, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism generally and terrorism in Kashmir, occurred simultaneously. Nuclear delinquency by Pakistan was ignored in the west as someone else’s problem until it was too late.

It is agreed that the 21st century belongs to Asia and the World Bank has predicted that by 2025 India will contribute 13 % and China 26% of the global output. This will be equal to that of the US and EU. Add the rest of Asia and it will be comfortably more than 50%. China and India account for more than a third of the world’s population, have the highest rates of economic growth they will remain the biggest guzzlers of energy, will compete for resources and markets and there will be occasions of competition and even confrontation although conflict maybe avoided. An un-demarcated border between the two largest armies and nuclear nations does not make for comfortable relations and prevents the development of full relations.

The Decline of USA

The rich and ubiquitous CIA, through its National Intelligence Council, periodically collects some of the best brains in the US and after considerable debate they publish a detailed treatise predicting the future and the last one – Global Trends 2025 -- came out in November 2008. The report’s most important assessment is that in 15 years there will be a gradual decline in US preeminence along with the rise of new powerhouses, China and India. The report says “although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor,” the country’s “relative strength – even in the military realm – will decline and US leverage will become more constrained.”

In actual fact the decline has been far more rapid and has gone unnoticed because this was obscured by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. US predominance in the IT sector of the global economy also covered the country’s decline as a manufacturing hub. Several other moves/events in recent years point to this direction of a US decline.

At the Pittsburg global economic summit, the mantle of looking after the functioning of the economy passed on from G-8 to G-20, which includes China, India, Brazil, Turkey and other developing countries. It is not yet certain that this group can exercise any really effective control but the move is significant in that it took place. The true significance as Geoffrey Sachs put it, was not that the baton had passed to G-20 but that it had actually passed on from G-1, the US who had really called al the economic shots in the past 30-odd years of the G-7 forum.

There are increasing reports that major countries who are America’s economic rivals have been discussing among themselves, sometimes in secret, to explore a diminished role for the US $ in international trade where it is losing value. Saddam Hussein in 2002 tried to move away from the dollar to the Euro but that was more political than economic; the Iranians too have tried to establish oil bourses in Euros for the same reason. But this one is different. Major trading countries China, Japan, Russia, Brazil and the Persian Gulf states -- are considering the Euro or a basket of currencies, as an alternative. Obviously, if this is accepted this will adversely impact on American dominance in international economic matters. Link this to BRIC and we have a new international economic paradigm.

The international order has always been about control and dominance. The old Palmerston dictum about permanent interests and not permanent allies has changed. In the new international order there are permanent interests but no permanent enemies. Diplomatically and strategically, the US has had problems. US actions in West Asia for instance have given room for others to walk into the space provided by American misadventure in Iraq was as brainy as a World Wrestling Federation bout. Russia and China have refused in recent months to accept the US proposal that Iran be placed under sanctions, even though President Obama tried to assuage Russia by canceling plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in Eastern Europe. The US can no longer press for sanctions in Iran while condoning similar action by Pakistan. In fact, Iran, China and Russia seem to have worked out an energy sharing /distribution map that largely excludes the US from this. These three countries have been the biggest gainers from America’s Quixotic adventures in Iraq which ended making Iran the strongest power in the region.

The US will lose ground in the economic sphere as well. US GDP in 2005 at US $ 12.4 trillion exceeded that of Latin America and Asia. By 2020, the combined GDP of Asia and Latin America will 40% greater than that of the US and growing. By then, the US will be deeply indebted to the more solvent nations. It will be dependent on them for funds needed to pay for budgetary deficits which have been there since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, meting the annual Pentagon budget and so on. Nevertheless, the US will remain the world’s pre eminent economic and technology power but with a military power that is unable to undertake significant military missions abroad of the Iraq and Afghanistan kind on its own.

The stalemate in Afghanistan is really a srategic defeat for a superpower. A super power cannot be seen to have tried to find ways of getting out of a quagmire without a resounding victory. Support for the war is grudging both at home and abroad among allies. The US is in the unhappy situation where one of its prominent allies in the region – Pakistan -- has been duplicituous, another – Saudi Arabia – stands for creeds that are the very antithesis for all that America stands for and the third, China, is simply waiting for the US to get sufficiently unpopular before it will move into the vacuum that will unavoidably occur once the US leaves. The US could have had three friends and allies – Russia, Iran and India who do not want Afghanistan to become a Talibanised Wahhabi state. But the Americans chose otherwise. What the Americans were slow to understand was that whatever be the merits of the case, and in Afghanistan, defeat of terrorism was one, Washington can no longer say, “I am in Afghanistan to make America safe” and it does not matter if some Afghans die in the process.

Perhaps, the last setback may be symbolic but it is still powerful. The US could not win the race for the Summer Olympics for 2016; worse, it got eliminated in round one.

The Rise of China and Resurgence of Russia and Energy Security

In the years ahead, both China and Russia, in competition with each other or jointly in asymmetric opposition to the US, will seek geo-strategic space and vital strategic minerals in Central Asia and the Caspian region. China can be seen to be increasingly present in what has been Russia’s traditional heartland. Having resolved its territorial disputes with Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, China has begun to assert itself. China also seeks a transport corridor for its exports all the way to Europe and the Persian Gulf. One route is the China-Pakistan-Karakoram Highway to be expanded further starting from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, with Kazakhstan added as another destination. At the same time, Russia and China have been moving closer to each other in the last two years as relations between the US and Russia began to sour. The border issue between China and Russia having been settled; there have been military exercises and increased Russian arms and energy sale commitments. (45% of Russian arms sales have been to China and at the rate of US $ 2 billion annually).

In the context of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and rising demands, he who controls not just the production but also the supply and has discovered substitutes, will rule the world. India, whose buoyant economy has a 70 % dependency on imported fossil fuels and weaponry for its security, is disadvantaged as it has neither the deep pockets of the Chinese and the Americans, the military power of the Russians and the Americans and nor the single mindedness of the Chinese or the Russians. The jostling for vantage positions to control energy resources in the years ahead is going to be ruthless and urgent. This will largely determine each country’s future in this century.

In the 1990s, the Russians had watched helplessly after they dismantled the Warsaw Pact only to find NATO extending its eastern frontiers and the energy giants moving in as Boris Yeltsin and his groupies sold off national assets on the cheap. This was till Vladimir Putin arrived on the scene to reclaim history and geography. Russia may no longer be a Super Power, militarily or economically but it is still the world’s second largest oil exporter and the largest outside OPEC. It remains a major player in the energy market outside total US control and has continued interests in Iran and the Gulf. Russia and China have been investing in military sales to the Middle East. A Russia that was supposed to have been finally defeated after the Afghan jehad and the fall of the Berlin Wall is resurgent. Forty-five per cent of Russian arms sales have been to China, at the rate of $ 2 billion annually and has along with China, been a protector of Iranian interests. Russia is thus back in international reckoning. Russian importance in the decade ahead will increase and India would need to pause and not go to the other camp on the rebound, as it were.

India’s Neighbourhood

Situation in India’s neighbourhood, emphasis on China, Pakistan and others.
Pakistan has become a delinquent nation as the epicentre of international jihadi terrorism. Sadly, this does not seem to bother its leadership, military and political, so long as they can pursue their pet obsession of trying to arm themselves against pet hate India and using jihadis to keep India at bay. Besides years of experience has shown that this is an effective way to extort funds from a gullible and pliable west. In the process, Pakistan has not realised what a scourge has been laid upon its hate.

Afghanistan has been at war since 1979 -30 years – it is now the longest running Third World’s War. Afghanistan’s misfortune has been its geographical location at the cross roads of empires in the past and the vital routes to globalization today. Super powers unable to learn the lessons of Vietnam have repeatedly and alternately, entered Afghanistan presuming that they would do better that the other. It did not work out that way and today it is not simply a case whether or not Taliban will take over. It is now near certain that they will as the US remains caught in a quagmire. It is just not the Kalashnikovs or the IEDs that threaten us today but the mindset that dooms the future of this region. With its abominable literacy rate for women of less than 5%, the fertility rate is 6.9 and the threatened take over by Taliban with their regressive attitude towards women will mean that country will continue to remain in the dark ages. It means the exponential growth of children brought up uneducated and un-emancipated who will provide more foot soldiers for the jihad.
There is no getting away from several aspects of this ardouos campaign. The US needs to have substantially increased troop deployment if it wants to subdue the Taliban. There is just no other alternative. Worse than no troops is an inadequate force which runs the risk of military defeat or overkill tactics. The present spin portraying the Taliban as a local territorial problem that does not threaten the US is patently shortsighted and leaves no one in doubt that the US is preparing to negotiate with the very force that it has been battling for eight years and which has now regained dominance in varying degrees over 70-80 % of Afghan territory. Negotiating with the Taliban at this juncture will be appeasement. Instead the US/NATO has to be prepared for the long haul. Any dithering now in Washington will only strengthen the hands of the fundamentalists in the Pak Army. The Afghans do not understand democracy the way the Americans do but to leave them now in the hands of the Taliban would mean leaving them in the hands of the Al Qaeda, under a strong Sunni Wahhabi Islam preached in Saudi Arabia and increasingly in Pakistan.
The American forces must not give the impression that they are fighting for themselves. This makes it America’s war and a war of occupation. Instead, foreign forces must fight for the Afghans and show it. This means spend more money on them instead of on the forces or the for-profit private military companies or the not-for-profit NGOs. It would be difficult for the ISAF/NATO to protect themselves without protecting the Afghan from the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Apart from sheer military force, in a country where 40% of the men are unemployed it is not enough to dole out money. They need jobs and the dignity that goes with it. It is not easy to eradicate opium production– which is a source of revenue for the Taliban and livelihood for the peasant- unless there are simultaneous provisions for an alternative source of income for the Afghan peasant.

The fear is that unable to go in for the long haul, the US may opt for a surge, a quick thrust, parry and withdraw after proclaiming victory. The US is realising, perhaps a bit too late, that Pakistan never intended to be the most suitable boy, who would let his benefactors down repeatedly. In tremendous difficulties in the Punjab, the Pakistan Army is unlikely to be willing to do anything substantial for the Americans, citing dangers from its traditional enemy. It is not that the Pakistan Army fears an assault by the Indian forces but for them to move troops away from its eastern borders would mean that the threat from India is minimal and this would undercut its very own primacy. Then there is China, waiting in the wings for the Americans to get sufficiently unpopular and then move in with its deep pockets. Pakistan would be comfortable with an increasing Chinese profile in Afghanistan but not with an Indian profile.

This is where India comes in. It must stay the course in Afghanistan and concentrate on the various infrastructure projects in the country – roads, dams, bridges, communications, schools, hospitals, power stations and transmission lines. Training of the Afghan Army and police, civil servants, education in various disciplines can be handled by the Indians. This would be far more economical and relevant to local conditions and requirements. Pakistan will respond in its own way. There will be more bombs and attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan. Sending troops to Afghanistan is not an option.

We should be prepared to train Afghans in India, in whatever discipline and numbers they want this. We should offer additional infrastructure building, taking care to match this with the Afghan capacity to absorb. We need to ask Afghans what they want and not decide ourselves what we want to give. We need to co-ordinate with Iran, Russia and Central Asia in our endeavours. Post US, there has to be a regional agreement ensuring peace and neutrality in Afghanistan.

Pakistan will naturally assume that its moment has come again and it could now acquire its much dreamt strategic depth, throw the Indians out and be the overlord in Afghanistan. The Iranians are unlikely to remain idle spectators as a Sunni Wahabbi neighbour is going to be unsettling factor for them. The Chinese have already begun to move in with their commercial and resource interests into Afghanistan as they would see an opportunity to move closer to the Persian Gulf, given their steady relations with the Iranians. They also need to keep the Islamist extremists away from sensitive areas like Xinjiang. The Central Asian Republics and Russia have their concerns about the dangers of Talibanised ideology spreading into their countries. Finally, the absence of a strong centralised authority will only create more confusion in a country that has been run on drug money and foreign doles.

Pakistan’s exultation may be temporary. Unable to control its own territory it is unlikely to be able to run Afghanistan in the way it may want to. It does not have the resources to do so and the US will not sub lease Afghanistan to Pakistan this time. The other very real danger is that the Pushtuns on both sides of the Durand Line, joined together in a common fight for decades, may well ask if they fought all these years only to end up being minorities in both countries. The departure of the Coalition Forces will only add to the instability of the region and India needs to be prepare itself for this eventuality.

Pakistan’s own future looks uncertain and unless Pakistanis themselves resolve to change their priorities there will be no respite for them. The rulers of that country have not yet learnt how to live with a bigger, more powerful and successful neighbour; it has continued to confuse equal sovereignty with equal power. It must accept that Islamic extremism is no longer fashionable nor will it deliver results but has instead rebounded on the creators of this warped policy. The decline will become inexorable and faster toward the end of the decade as its internal problems mount while it continues to believe in punching above its weight, seeking equality with India.

There is a legitimate fear about the course Pakistan is taking, considering the internal strife there and the state of denial that pervades in that country. The course that Pakistan takes in the decade ahead is naturally dependent on the policies it chooses to discard and the ones it chooses to adhere to. Its present predicament of having to follow the US on the war on terror without jeopardizing its position on its assets facing India is increasingly untenable because it is duplicitous and rebounding on Pakistan. Should is choose to follow the path of encouraging jihad it is bound to be internally unstable. There is a real fear among some that Pakistan may eventually fall under its own weight. Several factors would have to be considered. The attitude of the neighbouring Islamic countries, notably Saudi Arabia, who consider Pakistan as the bastion of security with its nuclear capable armed forces will be important. The Chinese stand on this having invested so heavily and consistently for decades in a policy that made Pakistan the most important pillar for its policy in West Asia, the Arabian Sea and South Asia, is not likely to stand by idly as this country continues to sink. Thirdly, Russia and the Central Asian republics are fearful that a troubled Pakistan will not be able to control the spread of Islamic fundamentalism into their countries.

Pakistan’s future is also dependent on US policies in the region. It is difficult to predict if and when the US will change its decades old policy of pardoning Pakistan all its transgressions. What we need to take into account is that one of these days the US will carry out its much vaunted but ridiculously inadequate much delayed surge, declare mission accomplished and thin out. Its long-term policies are dictated by election year compulsions. Once the coalition forces begin to pull out there will inevitably be confusion and disruptions as other interests try to fill the empty spaces.

It is likely that the US will thin out in Afghanistan but it is unlikely that it will leave the region entirely. It would have to continue to stay so long as it has not a found a solution to the Iran issue and so long as the Al Qaeda threaten Yemen and later Saudi Arabia.

China making place for itself

Chinese leaders probably assess that US influence in Asia is on the decline and its moment has come. They have maintained their stand that there is place for only one nation in Asia.

From an initial pretence of disdain about India’s economic rise, the mood has switched to some irritation with India’s new relationship with the United States, which the Chinese today probably evaluate as being more strategic than just relating to a civil nuclear deal. In recent months since August 2009, there have been increased intrusions into India, accompanied by a marked sharpness in tenor. The decibel of references to Arunachal Pradesh is higher — protests about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang and belated protests about our Prime Minister’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh. There have been other worrying signs, notably the practice of issuing paper visas to residents of Jammu and Kashmir, thereby conveying that the state was disputed territory. All this underscores the reality that improved trade relations between neighbours do not necessarily mean improved political relations as long as there are undemarcated borders. Questions of demarcation have now been converted into territorial disputes, with the Chinese now repeatedly referring to Arunachal as "Southern Tibet".

There are international and domestic issues that may be worrying the Chinese. The Tibet disturbances of March 2008 and those in Xinjiang in July this year alarmed Beijing. The decline of Pakistan and the present situation in Afghanistan are both challenges and opportunities for the Chinese. Pakistan’s instability means that an important plank of Chinese policy in the region, to contain India and secure access to the Arabian Sea, has become unsteady and may have an uncertain future. Apart from that, a weakened but Islamised central authority in Islamabad could have repercussions among the restive Uighurs of Xinjiang. The China-Pakistan will strengthen in the next decade. It will continue to augment Pakistan’s military, including missile capability, just as it had almost certainly provided assistance in the upgrading of the Babur missile to a cruise missile.

America’s predicament in Afghanistan provides China an opportunity to raise its profile in Afghanistan/Iran and Central Asia. With a $3.5 billion investment in the Anyak copper project China is today the largest investor in Afghanistan. If China builds a railway line and a power plant this would treble its investment.
As India and China seek to progress there will be greater competition for resources, markets and influence. Cooperation will remain an ideal and both would want to avoid confrontation, or worse, conflict. In terms of military spending, India does not have the capability or even the intention to match China weapon for weapon, force for force. It is extrapolated that by 2050 China will be spending $775 billion on defence — three times India’s defence budget despite our huge land and sea boundaries.

As Michael Klare says in his recent article ‘The Blowback Effect 2020’ - “If China is an economic giant today, it will be a powerhouse in 2020 …[its] GDP will jump from an estimated US $ 3.3 trillion in 20910 to US $ 7.1 trillion in 2020, at which time its economy will exceed all others save that of the US…. As the decade proceeds, China is expected to move steadily up the ladder of technological enhancement, producing ever more sophisticated products, including advanced green energy and transportation systems that will prove essential to future post-carbon economies.”

China will use its growing wealth and technological prowess to enhance its military power, says Klare. Even though at an estimated US $ 85 billion on defence expenditure in 2008 pales into insignificance compared to the US expenditure of US $ 607 billion and its technology as well as weaponry unsophisticated, this will rapidly change in the next decade.

So how will China behave in the years ahead. It has preferred to speak of a harmonious rise, used the power of the $, development aid, quiet but vigorous diplomacy to pursue its national interests. But one can see early signs of a willingness to outstare the opposition. The Chinese has restricted US President Barack Obama’s access to media during his visit to Beijing last year, yielded no ground on Tibet or agree to sanctions on Iran. Later in December it sent a low ranking official to the Copenhagen summit at a crucial stage of the negotiations to extract concessions from the others on carbon emissions.

Quite often, many ask if India will ever catch up with China. The figures of military spending, the size of the economies, the rate of growth, the amount of money spent by each country on infrastructure, electricity production, agricultural produce, research and development and reserves held, confirm that the gap is enormous. Even though Goldman Sachs predicts that China, the US and India will be the three largest global economies by 2050, it would be more realistic for India to aspire to be a global player whose voice will be heard rather than attaining the status of a superpower. The question we need to ask is can China afford to catch up with India’s raucous democracy and still survive?

China has endeavoured to restrict India’s influence to its borders. Only recently, it reminded our neighbours that India had hegemonistic tendencies while extending its "peaceful" relationship with them, while claiming "harmonious rise" in a wary neighbourhood. The prime example of this is the manner in which China has godfathered Pakistan’s India-specific nuclear and missile capabilities. China is our powerful neighbour and India and China are not in the same league. Pakistan refused to accept this reality in its relations with India and today finds itself adrift despite valiant US efforts to shore up its ally. It is best to accept the India-China reality and fashion our responses accordingly.

China’s current phase of aggressive action and moves has been making and maybe even signs of premature hubris but India cannot leave it to chance. Having been anointed by Z Brzezinski as a member of the G-2, China seems to have taken this role seriously. The Chinese have suggested to the Americans that they could divide the pacific into two spheres of influence, that the Indian Ocean was China’s zone of influence. With its interest in the Pakistani port of Gwadar undiminished, it has shown considerable interest in Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea islands. China no longer exports ideology and dogma but uses its deep pockets to extend influence. Pakistan has been the Eastern theatre of a Great Game that has been played by bigger powers in recent decades for control of energy resources, access to the sea or to Central Asia and watching the Indian Ocean and South Asia.

China has made inroads into areas where US interests have been adversely affected in recent years – Iran, Iraq, Central Asian republics like Kazakhstan as more and more energy flows eastward into China, and Afghanistan. The seas from the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman to the Malacca Straits through to the South China Sea provide vital energy sea lanes for China, India and Japan. This will be even more vital in the years ahead. In this context Chinese growing interest in Sri Lanka and Hambantota should not be merely considered as moves for economic interests. These are moves designed to secure long-term strategic interests and form part of a link that extends from the Gulf of Oman to the Malacca Straits in the Indian Ocean Region. China will thus continue to strengthen its presence in the South Asian and Indian Ocean region in the decade ahead. The recent interest the US has taken in showing renewed interest in Myanmar is an indication that the US has begun to realise the growing influence of China in the region. Nevertheless, China would endeavour to become the paramount naval power in the Indian Ocean in the years ahead, though this may not happen in the next ten years.

The growth of the Chinese Navy is something Indian strategists would be watching in the next few years. Today there estimated to be 1000 Chinese commercial vessels and oil tankers that have to sail through troubles d waters and China imports 60% of its oil by sea. Simultaneously, China seeks to establish land routes through Gwadar and Myanmar and from Central Asia. Chinese defence expenditure will continue to rise (it has been estimated to be growing at 16.2% since 1999) and was US $ 70 billion in 2009 according to the PLA budget. US published estimates of the Chinese defence expenditure place the figure at US $ 150 billion, compared to the Indian expenditure of US $ 40 billion. The gap will widen in the years ahead.

Searching for greater strength and in a hurry to do so, there are reports of the Chinese resorting to cyber war against other countries. Sensitive Indian institutes have not been spared from this and this will continue into the future.
We simply have to evolve a method of peaceful cohabitation; there is nothing to be gained by jingoism and everything to be lost by seeming to be weak and succumbing to pressure. It is quite likely that the Chinese leadership will glower at us from across the Himalayas; should that happen we should not blink.

Thus, we need to be able to protect our interests more effectively, at and inside our borders, in our neighbourhood, the seas that surround us and in Asia. Therefore, massive infrastructure development is required in the Northeast which is people-friendly and not simply meant to cater to our strategic requirements. There has to be two-way socio-cultural assimilation of the region with the rest of India. Instead of buying loss-making companies abroad, we should be adopting regions for development. It is in our interest to develop friendlier relationships with countries on China’s periphery and strengthening relationships with the US and Japan is part of this policy.

The armed forces — all three wings — need upgrading, with long-range strike aircraft as well. This interminable discussions and negotiations where we are unable to get jet trainer aircraft in less than 15 years or the seemingly inconclusive negotiations on the Gorchkov, do not help our defence preparedness. Ultimately, we need to become self-reliant in defence production with indegeneous private sector but present indications give little satisfaction. Until we achieve this in a significant manner for the big-ticket items our claim to being a major power are going to be hollow.

Dealing with the US

Dealing with the US would be India’s greatest challenge and opportunity in the next decade and more. Today there is considerable euphoria in India and in the strategic community in the US about the future of India-US relationship. We are lauded, and we lap this up as the ultimate sign of acceptability when there is reference to common values, common democratic ideals and common interests. There are limits to this and we should accept them before disillusionment takes over. There are, what the Americans think, three issues of possible discord. These are trade relations, WTO and so on, climate change and Iran. The US does not consider that its approach to China and Pakistan causes concern in India. This is not likely to change in the times ahead and India’s concerns will only increase because US ambivalence towards Pakistan will remain unchanged.

Recent US pronouncements that India and the US could work together for global peace, can be more than just a little bit overwhelming considering that the strategic interest of the two countries match only at a very low level. Time and again the US has shown an extra-ordinary insensitivity to Indian concerns in the region, especially when these relate to Pakistan. This is not likely to change substantially in the next few years ahead. We will have to fight our war on terror largely on our own

The US currently has one major interest in the region which is how to honourably exit Afghanistan without this appearing to be a defeat. On the other hand, Pakistan has succeeded in convincing the US that they need to keep India out of any reckoning in Afghanistan if the problem has to be solved and that Pakistan would need additional satisfaction on the Kashmir issue for it to fully co-operate on the Afghan front. Ideally the US will seek to retain its influence in Pakistan while extending its influence in India without this becoming a zero-sum game. Pakistan is needed for its geo-strategic location and because it is the epicentre of terrorism although the US has begun to accept this rather reluctantly. The fear that Pakistani nuclear weapons may fall in the hands of extremists is perhaps not as real as the fear that extremists within the Pakistan Army may one day think it prudent and desirable to hand them over to the terrorists. Since the main current aim of US presence is to make US safe from nuclear attacks or other terrorist attacks, all activity is geared towards that. Everything else is subservient.

The paradox is while the US fears this outcome, it strengthens the Pak Army, the very force that can cause US interests the maximum damage when the Pak military resorts to action through Islamist terrorist organizations that it has nurtured all these years.

US interest in India is the huge market and investment potential – a perfectly legitimate national interest and sees India as a possible counter to China, also another perfectly acceptable geo-strategic interest of a major power. Yet it continues to strengthen its own political and economic relations with China. India simply has to ensure that it must not let its own strategic interests be guided by another nation’s interests.

Power of science and technology – Singularity is near

We have all spoken and read about the exponential transformation in technology in the past two decades. From the first text message which was sent in Britain in 1992 and ten years later 100 billion SMS messages were being exchanged every month and today 4.1 billion messages are sent daily -- is just a common day example. Not only is this the manner in which technology is changing; today we talk of gigabytes and terabytes. But another improvement is on its way – petabytes. When this happens, then it would be possible to store the entire Library of Congress -- the world’s largest with 120 million books/journals stored on 850 kilometres of shelves with 10,000 books added daily, and these could be stored in just 0.02 petabytes. In March 2007, the CIA began working on a digital library of national intelligence information that would be have everything from raw data to analytical information which was expected to be bigger that the Library of Congress.

Two years ago the size of the Web was such that Google could search 60 billion pages in a second or less. But there is a Deep Web, that cannot be accessed and it is estimated to be 50 times larger. There is so much information overload that the 16 US intelligence agencies employ 45000 analysts. Of course in India, we don’t have that kind of global threat perceptions or requirements or even the funds but need some scaled down model. There are 1.6 billion people on line today, up from 1 billion two years ago. 60 % of the world’s population of 6.6 billion today uses cell phones up from 12% in 2000. Islamist groups are known to use mini-cameras to post their propaganda films on YouTube. Steganography is commonly used to embed secret messages on the net.

Given the growth of technology, scientists like Ray Kurzweill had predicted in his first book The Age of Intelligent Machines that in the first half of the 21st century machine intelligence would become undistinguishable from its human creators. Few have thought about the implications of this merger between our biological thinking and the one we are creating. It is the destiny of this human machine civilization which Kurzweill describes as the Singularity in his latest book The Singularity is Near.

Kurzweill’s thesis underlying the impending Singularity is that the pace of change of our human created technology is accelerating and its powers are expanding at an exponential rate. At today’s rate of progress, we will see doubling of progress every ten years which will be equivalent of a century’s progress. What this means is that human beings, or some human beings at any rate, will have the hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers by the end of 2010. And there will be personal computer sized devices with effective software models of human intelligence by about 2020.

With both hardware and software ready to emulate human intelligence, computers will be able to pass the Turing test by 2025, which means that artificial intelligence would be undistinguishable from human intelligence by the end of 2020s. When this happens, computers will be able to combine the traditional strengths of human intelligence with that of machine intelligence. Given that there are no limits to human creativity, to the power of ideas and also to human depravity, the use of this power will have wide consequences for mankind. And as Winston Churchill said “The empires of the future will be the empires of the mind.”

Science and medicine would of course benefit from these advances reversing the process of aging or enhancing the human brain are some of them. Doubtless these advances will have applications in defence and warfare as well. Smarter weapons that “think” designed as precise missions to maximize damage and minimise own casualties, is the trend. The present day state of the art Predator-armed UAV could become rapidly out of date with this new minitiarised technology where the future UAV would be the size of a bird and much more lethal. Pentagon’s research has been towards Future Combat Systems which will be smaller, lighter faster more lethal and smarter. The US Army, for instance, plans Brigade Combat Teams of 2500 soldiers, unmanned robotic systems and FCS equipment. The Pentagon researchers are also working on a battalion of 120 military robots fitted with swarm intelligence software to enable it to mimic the organized behavior of insects. They are even developing Smart Dust which are devices smaller than birds and bumble bees not bigger than a pinhead. Once developed and deployed, swarms of millions of these could be dropped in enemy zone to provide detailed surveillance intelligence and also support offensive military operations. There would be nanoweapons rendering present weapons as unwieldy and out of date and smart weapons replacing the present dumb missiles The US Joint Forces Command’s Project Alpha plans for a largely robotic force by 2025. This would mean far less incidence of human loss for forces and therefore make intervention and occupation far more possible and tempting.

Energy and The Great Game In Our Neighbourhood

In today’s terminology, he who controls the energy belt in West Asia and the Caspian region controls the world. The Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea region -- Eurasia – remains the most vital region today for powers seeking dominance or economic growth or both.

It is necessary to recapitulate a few facts to capture the importance of the region. The US imports about 30% of its requirements from the region, 40% of the world’s energy requirements pass through the Persian Gulf, and in the years to come India will need to import 90% of its requirements.

Under the previous order of world affairs, private multinational oil companies controlled a large percentage of the resources of energy and their development.

Oil is no longer just traded on the spot market in New York or London, but countries like China and India with their rapidly growing economies will continue to buy assets in the country of origin in long term bilateral or trilateral arrangements.
An important game is being played in our neighbourhood. Pakistan has renamed the Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir as Gilgit-Baltistan as a move to integrate the region with the rest of Pakistan. China too would be interested that Pakistan keeps total control over Gilgit and Baltistan. Otherwise the 298-million dollar investment in the development of Gwadar is a financial or strategic waste. Xinjiang is only 2500 kms away from the Arabian seaport of Gwadar. On the other hand, it is 4500 kms away from the Chinese east coast. A fully developed port at Gwadar would help in the economic development of Xinjiang. Gas and oil pipelines from Gwadar to Xinjiang and Tibet would enable China to overcome the uncertainty of sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf through the Malacca Straits patrolled by the US.

The Chinese will be building the Gwadar Dalbandin rail network into Xinjiang as an extension of the development of Gwadar port which will have an exclusive SEZ for the Chinese. China has set aside US $ 150 million to upgrade the Karakorum Highway and widen it from 10 metres to 30 metres for heavy vehicles in all weather conditions. A rail link is also planned in the region with technical advice from an Austrian firm to connect Pakistan and China. This link will be connected further south into the main Pakistani rail grid. Fibre optic cables are being laid. An Islamabad-Kashgar bus service has been planned. All these will become active in the decade ahead.
Both China and Pakistan are getting ready for an economic boom that will include transit trade to Central Asia. The Pakistan Army’s National Logistics Cell, which has a near monopoly, will handle this freight traffic all the way up to Kazakhstan and Xinjiang. There is money to be made. Thus development of both Gwadar and control of Gilgit and Baltistan are interlinked and the Pak Army will gain financially from both. In fact, it is going to be a financial bonanza for the already huge corporate interests of the Pak Army. It is therefore quite likely that the region will continue to see Pakistan Army as the dominant factor in Pakistan. Kashmir and India will be the overt reason for this dominance.

The Chinese are also going to construct 12 new highways into Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan as part of their plans to extend eastwards along the old Silk Route into Europe and access to warm waters. The longest one will stretch 1,680 kilometers from Urumqi, capital of the autonomous region, to Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, Iran’s Mashhad, Turkey’s Istanbul and finally reach Europe. The road was to be completed before 2010.

Food security

There is grim news here. It is highly unlikely, given the situation as it exists today, that the globe can sustain a population of 10 billion if all of us continue to devour resources the way we are doing today in richer societies or even at half that rate, and where a vast majority is not even above the poverty level. The word will meet at Copenhagen soon but I doubt if there will be any salvation from the dangers that that are already upon us. Mankind has not yet learnt to give up profligacy in almost any aspect. Take food consumption in the west, for instance.
Tristram Stuart, author of a new book on food waste calculated that the hunger of 1.5bn people could be alleviated by eradicating the food wasted by British consumers and American retailers, food services and householders, including the arable crops such as wheat, maize and soy to produce the wasted meat and dairy products. The production of wasted food also squanders resources because the irrigation water used to grow food that was eventually wasted would have been enough for equivalent domestic water needs of 9bn people.

Water wars

Environmentalists and scientists believe that the biggest potential destabilisers in the world are water scarcity and global warming. Boutros Boutros-Ghali had warned in the Eighties that future wars could be fought over water. His successor Kofi Annan was also worried about fierce national competition over water resources that contained the seeds of violent conflict. Ismael Serageldin, vice-president, World Bank, had predicted in 1995 that “if wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water”.

In China, the lower estuaries of the Yellow River are now dry two-thirds of the year, the water table is falling by 1.5 metres a year and a third of Beijing’s wells have dried up. China wants to construct two more dams equal to the size of the massive Three Gorges Project on the Yangtse. China is also planning a series of giant dams across the Mekong, the Salween and Brahmaputra rivers whose waters are vital to all the downstream countries.

By 2025, all of West Asia, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Singapore and South Africa and parts of India and China will face absolute water scarcity — defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year. These countries would not be able to meet their needs for irrigated agriculture, or for domestic, industrial and environmental purposes. Water will have to be transferred out of agriculture to other needs, making these countries increasingly dependent on imported food.

If there is no water, then there is no food either. The ecological cycle having been broken we could get into an endless cycle of droughts, famines, floods and cyclones. The poorer countries will be left with no alternative but to import not only food but also water and oil. The pity is that this could happen to those who are self-sufficient in food today and with better water management even ward off the perils of 2025. But the possibility that the same transnational company could be controlling supply of oil, water and food only means the return of the East India Company in another incarnation.

Potential conflicts are likely where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country. The Nile, the Jordan, the Indus, the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong are some of these. In times of water stress and shortages, regions will face water refugees from one region to the other within the country or between two countries.
There could be wars for the control of water supplies; or water resources or systems used as a weapon during a military conflict; or used for a political goal; terrorists could threaten using water sources as a weapon of coercion. Water systems themselves could be targets of military action. Then, with multinational giants having entered the business of supplying water privately, for profit, there could be wars for entrepreneurial control. Inequitable pricing and monopolistic practices have already caused distress in Latin America and South Africa. The most dangerous is naturally the one fought with weapons.

Pakistanis fear that India, as the upper riparian, could one day choke off the Indus waters with disastrous consequences to Pakistani Punjab. Kashmir is thus a matter of life and death. Should the rivers that flow into Pakistan begin to lose their flow because of natural reasons, the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan will come under stress.

Sindhi nationalists in Pakistan have accused the Punjabi-dominated establishment of signing away Sindh’s needs by accepting the Indus Waters Treaty which ignored their needs from the waters of the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas — whose waters flows to Sindh. They also accuse Punjab of diverting more than its share of the Indus waters and regard plans to construct the Kalabagh Dam upstream as another way of depriving Sindh of water. The distributaries of the Indus Delta are dying and the salt water from the sea is creeping up to destroy the mangroves of Sindh.

If better water management and all that goes with it is not put in place quickly enough, it is possible that one day reservoirs like the Nagarjuna Sagar or the Nangal or the Mangla Dam could run dry. It is difficult to imagine a situation where the mighty rivers of South Asia become rivulets unable to reach the sea. As the taps run dry and the crops wither away, there would be upheavals — mixed as they would be with regional, caste, sectarian and communal colour. All this may be difficult to imagine, but this is a calamity waiting to happen. It is a nightmare about to come true.

The future of this planet will be determined by the decisions mankind takes now and how it implements them in the next few years. If there is no change in our pattern of consumption and wastage and pollution, if there is no effort to change our way of life, then that day is not far off when this planet will become a dustbowl. Only sustained early action can prevent this country from becoming a 21st century Mohenjo Daro. India must not wait for the rest of the world. A beginning has to be made here and now; we must learn to worship and conserve water like our ancestors did.

Climate change and security

Those countries well endowed with precious gifts from nature react differently to this impending disaster of climate change. Copenhagen 2009 was an example of differences having been papered over but the essential problems remain. This is that the rich are not willing to give up and the poor insist on a debt repayment whereas they should be looking for ways out instead of trying to repeat the same mistakes that the rich made. Continued and uncertain climate change has security implications and these will be more for the undeveloped and developing nations than for the developed.

It is not the laws and the technical discussions by very knowledgeable legal minds alone that will solve the earth’s problems. It is how we behave and how we regulate ourselves that will determine our future. While global leaders will meet periodically in high profile jamborees, to make grand sophisticated arguments to impress domestic audiences and interests, in countries like India the problem is also of a different nature. In a country where the education levels and the sense of social responsibility are abysmal, where laws are violated with impunity in urban areas, it is going to a massive task to teach the average person his social responsibilities not to add to environmental pollution and global warming. We must dramatically raise the general public’s awareness about the effects of current levels of consumerism, waste management, water preservation will have on our lives. A nationwide campaign of the kind that is already underway in Europe must begin now. There is not much time left and a decade from now would be too late.

The US based Centre for Naval Analysis, an independent think tank close to the US Navy, stresses that climate change will have massive effects across the world, especially in the poorer regions. In its report two years ago it said that “Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world. Projected climate changes will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian and African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.”
This has a potential to threaten security from a US perspective and from an Indian perspective because we are surrounded by failing or failed states. The report adds: “Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement towards increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies.” The impending threat is described as being greater than the confrontation between the NATO and Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War because if there is no response soon enough, the instability will get endemic and unpredictable.

There are questions for the future –how will the earth’s resources support a population of 8.5 billion by 2025, what kind of systems will we have when money will cross borders in the flash of a milli second, what will happen to job security then, and what will be new conflicts that states that will arise from growing disparities and exploding expectations, demographic changes from growing economic disparities, uneven development and the consequences of climate changes.

Global Terror

Terrorism is now truly global and as multinational as Microsoft. The US and Al Qaeda are the two that have global reach today. But terrorism is unremittingly lethal and it is cheap. (The ingredients for sirin gas which, when used properly with a spray, could kill anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand, cost only $ 150.) The irony is that the American state spends multi-million dollars in developing state of the art drones, armed with advanced weaponry, can now be hacked into by insurgents with a US $ 26 off the shelf Russian software which highlights the disparity between costs to insurgents and counter insurgents.

There are many players in the field today — the fanatics, the criminals, the drug-traffickers, the human traffickers. The masterminds are not the archetypal villains epitomised by Bollywood, but could be the boy or girl next door in the suburbs of Atlanta or Marseilles or an alumnus from Binori mosque in Karachi. For us in India we have learnt to live with it, having been victims of this for the last three decades and more. It is a problem that will not go away easily, soon or completely.
Future wars are unlikely to engage massive armies locked in prolonged battle for real estate. Attacks could now come by stealth, master-minded by some computer whiz kid along with some science graduate, and the targets are our ways of life. The terrorist of the day wishes to use 21st century tools to push us all back to the 7th century. It is a highly unconventional war that the State hopes to fight only with conventional weapons or tactics. Unless the State learns to be flexible and agile and unless there is full scope cooperation internationally, it will always be an uphill struggle with the peak never really visible.

It is the use of modern technology by the terrorist that has led the counter terrorist to evolve expensive, all pervasive surveillance and counter terrorist techniques in ways that leave the espionage and counter espionage activities of the Cold War years far behind. In the west, especially in the US there has been an upsurge in intelligence activity as the US battles to secure itself in the new global war. Faced with an information overload where every email, every telephone call, every sms, every fax is subject to surveillance apart from the literature floating on the web, intelligence activity has been outsourced in a major fashion. From just being an military-industrial complex it is now an intelligence-industry complex where major players like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen and Hamilton, CACI International, SAIC and IBM are now active associates of the CIA, NSA and the Pentagon in intelligence activities at home and abroad. Blackwater and Dyncorp as well as others provide the muscle power. Their charter includes covert operations and interrogations of suspects. Privatisation of espionage and authorised privatisation of violence will change societies in ways that will realise only later when the power of these groups may exceed those of the state, especially in weaker or smaller states.

Pakistan is not expected to give up this weapon of state sponsored terrorism as a force equaliser against the stronger India. This can happen only if the price of terrorism is more than what the Pakistan can afford to pay and Pakistan overcomes its fear psychosis about India. In the decade ahead we should not expect any appreciable change in the level of terrorism. In fact we should be prepared for new kinds of terrorism. Despite having become a victim of its own terrorism, Pakistan is unlikely to be able to reverse this without further trauma.

China will remain overtly polite but will also become more aggressive in the time ahead. It probably assesses that its moment has come and should position itself in its periphery to ease the US out. There could be co-operation between China and India on issues like climate change, competition between the two, for resources and markets, and confrontation at times on border issues, Dalai Lama and Tibet and China will continue to support Pakistan in every possible manner.

Diplomacy would need to be more nimble-footed and proactive rather than reactive. We have to look ahead and work accordingly. Short-term "band aid" solutions will not do. Yet diplomacy alone will not do because it is only one extension of pursuit of national interests. A country is respected for its military prowess and economic power accompanied by a willingness to assert its interests. We must therefore modernise both our military and economic prowess. Further, it will have to be at a much faster rate and far more focused as well as indegenised than it is currently. Diplomacy merely reflects this interest and prowess. The other way to exert influence is through ‘soft power’ - economic engagement and building favourable perceptions through creatively guided and co-opted media that better understand and accept the national imperatives. India does not have anything similar to CNN, BBC, Reuters or AFP. Our major newspapers do not even have correspondents resident in our neighbouring countries. A sharper well endowed intelligence service that reacts in advance to the anticipated changes and is not merely reactive to developments, is the first weapon of any state that has aspirations beyond its frontiers. Not enough attention has been paid to this important aspect in recent years. The concept of security has changed in recent years to make this an all inclusive definition which requires new skills and techniques. On the ground sound governance – that includes law and order, which is really a fundamental right of any citizen, justice seen to be delivered, education and health, all provide for internal strength.

Until then it would be good to follow Sun Tzu’s advice: "The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be travelled, walled cities not to be assaulted".

Vikram Sood
Appeared in the February issue of Eternal India, New Delhi