As a ‘veil of ignorance and mystery’ covers the Chinese defence budget, there are no takers for its official figures. By all estimates, China spends much more than it reflects.

Bhartendu Kumar Singh

Indian Defence Accounts Service

Until a few years back, China’s defence budget was eagerly awaited and reacted upon. However, of late, international reactions have been muted – like when China recently declared its defence budget for 2018 at $175 billion, up by 8.1 per cent over the 2017 figures. The single-digit growth rate has been there for three years, departing from the days of double-digit growth year after year. The absence of major reactions notwithstanding, China’s defence budget still remains mystery for outside world and needs to be decoded properly. China’s defence budget’s justifications as ‘conservative’ and ‘defensive’ are based on shaky platforms. China claims that it accounts for just one-fourth of the US military spending. This has been the core polemics and not long back, China was estimated to spend anywhere between two and three times of its official figures. Consistent efforts by international community ensured more transparency and reforms in China’s defence budget administration, accounting and reporting, thereby, reducing the gap between the competing claims. However, the ‘veil of ignorance and mystery’ continues to define Chinese defence budget and there are simply no takers for its official figures. By all estimates, China still spends much more than it reflects. China’s other claim that many other countries have faster defence budget growth ignores it own double-digit growth for almost two decades until 2013. China could again resort to such a trend in future. Similarly, China’s claims that it lags behind major countries on per capita military expenditure has no takers since reputed annual publications, like the Military Balance (published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London), have been publishing year after year all aspects of Chinese defence expenditure, along with that of other countries. Many countries spend much less than China on a per capita basis. India, for example, spends roughly one-third of Chinese per capita figures. China’s conservative declarations on defence spending notwithstanding, estimating its correctness is a futile exercise without reflecting the appropriate military standing of China. One example would suffice. Most attempts towards military strength index place Russia marginally ahead of China. However, China has already emerged as the most important military power after the US. Most importantly, it is closing in on the US and would surely even up by 2050. This leapfrogging is not possible without massive investments in military modernisation. China, therefore, indulges into cross-subsidisation of its defence budget. Perhaps, this speaks why it is placed in low transparency category (category 5) of defence budget by Transparency International, a global NGO. The higher side of the defence budget can be ascertained in several ways: 1 First, many economic aspects of the defence modernisation process have changed in last two decades. For example, the guns vs butter debate is no more contextual in China’s case. Given the huge economic base, even single-digit growth rate translates into a huge budgetary amount for the Chinese PLA. So, the PLA does not mind preferential treatment to developmental priorities, like the eighties and early nineties. Similarly, technology and arms imports have dropped down; decades of techno-nationalism have, instead, ensured that China is exporting them to earn foreign exchange and diplomatic influence.  2 Second, China has established self-sufficiency in most areas of weapons production. China’s domestic military-industrial complex (MIC) is producing artillery guns, fighter jets, tanks, submarines, ships and has a steady going project on domestic aircraft carrier. Xi Jinping has long-term plans to facilitate China’s leadership in strategic areas of weapons production, dual-use systems, high technology and advanced manufacturing. Moving beyond the realm of state-led growth, Xi is also encouraging private sector participation to plug the loopholes in financial and technological gaps in domestic arms production. 3 Third, China has effected a transformation of the PLA: from being a manpower-oriented army capable of defending at best continental interests to a lean, thin and technology savvy army. It has undergone a complete change of command and control system through the establishment of a ‘theatre command system’ on the US pattern and is shedding extra manpower. The blue water capacity is now within reach and China is engaging foreign armies in more than 150 joint exercises every year. China has also established lead in aerospace and cyber command, something still beyond the reach of many aspiring great powers.  The impact of Chinese investments in military modernisation is visible in its approach towards neighbours, far-off countries and great powers. China is indulging in offensive realism and aggressive strategic culture, as is evident in South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region. The US’ National Security Strategy (December 2017) named China as a revisionist power and placed it as a central threat along with Russia. A February testimonial before the US China Economic and Security Review Commission highlights how the Chinese PLA is challenging the US in its Pacific Command Operations and elsewhere. Other great powers are also feeling the heat of China’s military power projection in Asia and Africa. Such a forceful power projection is not possible through the official budget alone! It is debatable if China would ever usher in defence budget transparency as per international benchmarks. Therefore, more investment is needed in studying Chinese defence modernisation trends, its strategic arsenals, and above all, its posturing on major issues challenging Asian security. 

(Views are personal)

A view of the gallery based on the Kuka movement at the renovated memorial of Bhagat Singh at Khatkar Kalan in Nawanshahr. Photo Sarabjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Khatkar Kalan, March 22

Capt Amarinder Singh will formally dedicate the newly-constructed Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Museum and Memorial to the nation at the martyr’s ancestral village Khatkar Kalan on the occasion of the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on Friday.Union Minister of State for Cultural Affairs Dr Mahesh Sharma will also be present at the function.It has also been decided that from tomorrow, the day will also be celebrated as Youth Empowerment Day in Punjab. The Punjab CM intends to initiate a crusade against drug abuse by launching Drug Abuse Prevention Officer, a campaign at the state-level by administering pledge to all participants on this day.Now, for the entry to the newly-built museum and memorial has been shifted from the main Jalandhar-Chandigarh highway to Khatkar Kalan village road where beautiful greenery welcomes the visitors. Director Cultural and Tourism Affairs Shivdular Singh Dhillon said Rs 18 crore had been spent on the construction of the museum and memorial. He claimed that the department would take concrete steps for the expansion of the museum.On this occasion, CM’s Political Secretary Capt Sandeep Sandhu and Special Principal Secretary Gurkirat Kirpal Singh, Deputy Commissioner Amit Kumar, SSP Satinder Singh, Dr Harpreet Kainth and others visited the museum. A programme will be shown on video conferencing in all districts.

It’s a pleasure and an honour to be a regular invitee to Armed Forces training establishments to participate in seminars or deliver guest lectures. The quality of awareness of members of various courses is so high these days that one had better be well prepared for the interactive sessions. This is not alone the opinion of a hard core Army loyalist but of the numerous veteran diplomats, bureaucrats, intelligence specialists and corporate personalities who form part of seminar panels and deliver standalone lectures. Without a doubt,  the quality of knowledge I have come across in civilian training institutions matches that of our service  institutions.

The Lal  BahadurShastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) or Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel National Police Academy (SVPNPA) are both outstanding institutions  I regularly visit and never fail to be impressed with. I even have post event discussions and guidance sessions with some course members, through email. A recent visit to Naval Academy, Ezhimala gave me an excellent insight into the new generation which will execute India’s future maritime security. The quality of questions I received at National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakvasla and Indian Military Academy, Dehradun augurs well for the nation. Army War College (AWC), College of Air Warfare (CAW) and Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), all which I recently visited displayed extremely high intellect. In fact at DSSC I had the opportunity to conduct a dissertation guidance session and came away truly impressed.

While all these institutions are doing yeoman service in preparing the next generation of leaders I am not so sure how much they are being exploited towards research, problem solving and innovative thinking. Knowledge appears to being an individual domain and not institutional. High quality individuals who pass through these institutions go on to contribute in their individual capacity to the appointments they hold and that’s about all. What they research and write at these institutions remains in their personal luggage or these days in their PCs or laptops where it languishes. A good six month effort is utilised only by a single individual, the one who did the research. The need is to share and share liberally as most of the research projects are unclassified.

If knowledge has to be institutionalised the first thing we need to look at is the concept of sharing. We need training institutions to have regular websites on the World Wide Web where the finer dissertations and area study papers are uploaded as distinct subject wise groups. We need links to all websites of other important training institutions embedded here and perhaps prize winning dissertations could be uploaded on the websites of all such institutions. I find institutions such as Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) and Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), which are doing such great work, insufficiently using the work of course members of different institutions. While so many seminars are conducted based on the work of research scholars within CLAWS and CAPS never do we find the winner of the Army Commanders Gold Medal from the Higher Command Course of AWC ever being invited to present his paper. I wonder if HQ ARTRAC has ever bothered to invite the medal winners of long courses to present their papers at any institution.

There is no end to the ways knowledge sharing can be done in today’s world. However I must share my idea and concept of knowledge exploitation too. As the Military Secretary of the Army I realised that we were posting officers from long courses without any consideration for the research work they were undertaking. These are the random ways that the Branch was infamous for. I wanted to kill that perception through demonstrated examples. We convinced the institutions through our most proactive GOC IN C ARTRAC of those times that they needed to share only the title and a one line statement on the dissertation being written by each member of the Higher Command Course at AWC and Army members at DSSC. Based upon that we could make a humble beginning in posting officers to appointments in which they could do justice on the basis of some element of their research work. As an example I can quote the case of an Armour officer who wrote on Employment of Light Tanks; we posted him as the GSO 1 to a brigade in North Sikkim. An officer of Higher Command Course who wrote on Water Wars was posted to the division in Rest of Arunachal Pradesh (RALP). More experimentation and refinement can make this system work beyond just demonstration.

As a follow up to the above the dissertation title of the research done by each officer at the training institutions was captured in his personal data recorded by MS Branch. This would allow an officer who can followed a common thread of subjects through the courses to become a reasonable expert in that field.

Ideally, the system by which College of Defence Management is tasked to conduct management study on a subject thrown up by the environment is a fine basic model for application in all other institutions so that studies and research conducted by the members of courses and programs are result oriented and based on the needs of the organisation.

The last issue which I am flagging only briefly relates to institutional research. Each training establishment has a core competence and a fine Faculty of Studies posted for the purpose of taking forward research in that field. The AWC is perhaps the best institution geared to lead the way and establish itself as a centre of excellence. Its studies and research should be such as to be virtually quoted as authority. Perhaps infusion of an academic element in the Faculty should be experimented with.

Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 20

Over two years after a committee of experts had suggested far-reaching measures to reduce litigation in the Ministry of Defence and strengthen the mechanism for redressing grievances of defence personnel, only one out of 75 recommendations has been implemented.Sixteen recommendations have been accepted for implementation and another 16 have been accepted in-principle, according to information placed before Parliament by the Defence Ministry during the ongoing session. “The Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare has implemented one recommendation out of 16 accepted for implementation,” the ministry’s said.The five-member committee, convened by then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had submitted its 509-page report in November 2015. In August 2016, the Defence Minister issued orders that action be taken on the recommendations within 45 days.Sources said the accepted recommendations include abrogation of sudden changes in policy and fresh polices to be introduced after discussions with stakeholders, mandatory time-bound response to veterans’ grievances, high-level study group for recommending legislative changes in military law, restoration of medical facilities to short-service officers, not filing appeals on issues that have already been decided by high courts and the Supreme Court and all administrative orders to be speaking orders.Other accepted recommendations are that issues related to women officers be decide in consultation with the stakeholders, including women representatives, and review of the system to grant maintenance allowance to wives.

Indian troops effectively retaliated. Tribune file

Jammu, March 4

Pakistani troops heavily shelled forward posts and villages along the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir overnight, the police said on Sunday.

The shelling from across the border in Balakote sector started late last night and continued for over two hours, a police official told PTI. Indian troops effectively retaliated.

There was no immediate report of any casualty or damage in the shelling, the official said, adding that forward villages and posts were targeted by Pakistan during the ceasefire violation.

There has been a spurt in ceasefire violations along the LoC and International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir this year. PTI

EVEN though an election platform permits considerable rhetorical latitude, yet when the Prime Minister chooses to allege a “foreign hand” in an ongoing state-level poll battle the matter acquires a serious dimension. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused the Congress, particularly its suspended leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, of colluding with Pakistan to affect the outcome of the Gujarat election. It must be presumed that the Prime Minister has sufficiently credible information to make the charge. National security interests demand that stern penal action be taken against Mr Aiyar for hosting a meeting at his residence for visiting Pakistani interlocutors; among those who attended the meeting include a former prime minister, a former vice-president, a former chief of the Indian Army and a number of retired distinguished diplomats. A message should go out that India is not a banana republic that foreigners can meddle in its internal affairs; nor is India a United States where the Russians could wantonly interfere in the presidential electoral process.If there is even an iota of credibility in the Prime Minister’s fusillade  against Mani Shankar Aiyar, then it invites very serious questions about the management of our national security on Modi’s watch. Questions need to be asked as to when did the Prime Minister or his national security team come to a conclusion that Pakistan was becoming an active source of interference in our internal political affairs; and, why has the government so far failed in its duty to act against those who attended this “anti-national” gathering. To keep this serious breach of security under wraps and use it as a “smoking gun” in an assembly election, raises doubts about the competence and commitment of those entrusted with our national security. No keen observer of the Gujarat scene would be surprised that Pakistan has been weaved into the election rhetoric. Faced with the heavy baggage of a 22-year-old anti-incumbency, the BJP leadership feels desperate enough to invoke, once again, Pakistan, as an “election issue”.  The sub-text of this sales pitch, sadly enough, is introduction of the old Hindu-Muslim divide. The poor, old “Gujarat model of development” stands totally forgotten and abandoned.   

A decision to remain militarily engaged in Afghanistan is only an assurance that the Taliban cannot take over major urban centres, not of the return of stability. For that the suspension of assistance to Pakistan will not be enough.

Afghan security personnel stand guard near Hotel Intercontinental during a fight between gunmen and Afghan forces in Kabul on January 21. AFP

Vivek Katju

Former secretary, Ministry of External AffairsJanuary was a cruel month for Kabul. On the 27th, the Taliban in a suicide terrorist attack blew up an ambulance in a busy market in the city centre, killing almost a 100 people. A week before that, it breached the security of a major hotel and killed more than 20 persons, including foreigners. Meanwhile, the ISIS claimed that it was responsible for an attack on a military academy on the Afghan capital’s outskirts on the 28th, in which more than 10 soldiers lost their lives.These terrorist incidents, once again, drew international attention to the fragility of the Afghan state. Worse, they raised serious doubts about the effectiveness of President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan and South-Asia policy. It is floundering. Certainly, Trump’s bluster and threats against Pakistan for its villainy in Afghanistan only expose the US to ridicule; it did not contribute to any positive movement in Afghanistan. And on its part Pakistan simply shrugged off the threats and did nothing to rein in the Taliban.The fact is that, for Trump, as for his predecessors, the key to bringing about lasting and positive change in Afghanistan does not lie in that country but across the Durand Line in Pakistan. However, over these past 16 years Pakistan, through its Taliban proxies, has kept Afghanistan destabilised. Both Presidents Bush and Obama sought to persuade Pakistan that it was in its interest to ensure that the Taliban abandoned the path of violence and negotiated a power-sharing agreement with the Afghan government. They essentially relied on non-coercive approaches, which included rewarding Pakistan with billions of dollars in assistance and overlooking the loss of almost 2,500 American soldiers at the hands of the Taliban. Pakistan happily pocketed the money, played the terrorism victim card, and continued with its protection and support to the Taliban. Unwilling to use strong action against Pakistan, Obama had to abandon his pledge to end the war and bring the ‘boys’ back.Trump personally announced his Afghanistan and South-Asia policy last August. He emphasised he would not lay down artificial deadlines for the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. They would remain as long as they were needed. Through this measure he signalled to Pakistan and the Taliban that they would never succeed throwing out the Afghan government through terrorism and violence. He put Pakistan on notice to close Taliban safe havens on its territory. Finally, Trump asked India to enhance its role, especially in the economic sector, in Afghanistan.Trump’s policy initially rattled Pakistan. Expectedly, and as it has consistently done over decades, it denied responsibility for intervening in Afghanistan. Going a step further, it blamed Afghanistan for allowing the Pakistani Taliban to remain on its territory from where they launched terrorist attacks in Pakistan. It also blamed the US for seeking to push the onus of its failures in Afghanistan on Pakistan. Clearly, encouraged by the new Sino-Russian alignment on Afghanistan, which is in line with its own position on the Taliban, Pakistan did not publicly buckle under US pressure though it gave the US assurances that it would seek to move the Taliban to the negotiating table. Through all this it also conveyed its unhappiness at the prominent role being assigned to India in Trump’s calculations on Afghanistan.It soon became apparent that Pakistan had no interest in modifying its Afghan policies. US-Pakistan engagement continued fruitlessly over the months as it had during the previous administrations. A frustrated Trump gave vent to his feelings this New Year’s Day. Then on January 30, Trump delivered his State of the Union Address but did not even mention Pakistan by itself or in the context of Afghanistan. In this context he confined himself to saying, “As of a few months ago, our warriors in Afghanistan have new rules of engagement. Along with their heroic Afghan partners, our military is no longer condemned by artificial timelines and we no longer tell our enemy our plans.”Meeting a UNSC delegation a day earlier at the White House, Trump, while noting the Kabul attacks, said there might be a time to talk to the Taliban but not while they were killing people ‘left and right’. He added that the US would have to “finish what we have to finish”.A decision to remain militarily engaged is only an assurance that the Taliban cannot take over Kabul and other major urban centres, not of the return of peace and stability. For that the suspension of assistance to Pakistan or drone attacks will not be enough. These will not succeed in moving Pakistan to give up on the Taliban and close its safe havens. Much more will be needed for that purpose, including targeted economic sanctions, sustained ground actions across the Durand Line against the sanctuaries, and fully exposing the Pakistan army. China and Russia will make many noises against the US but confine their support for Pakistan to only words.Without such decisive steps, Trump’s policy will fail to impact the Afghan situation. Does he have the stomach for them? Unlikely. Indian policymakers should take note.