War games

Joint naval exercises are a good opportunity for evaluation, not a warmongering alliance

Srinath Raghavan London

India's participation in joint naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal with the US, Japan, Singapore and Australia has occasioned much controversy. Although India has conducted exercises with the US navy on a dozen occasions since 1994, none has been held on this scale. Coming at the heels of the conclusion of the 123 Agreement and the meeting of the 'quadrilateral initiative' (between US, India, Japan and Australia), the naval manoeuvres are understandably seen as a sign of the growing strategic ties between India and the US. The Left parties have decried the exercise as a step towards India entering the US-led military arrangements in Asia, and organised protest rallies and processions. Other political parties and commentators have approved of it, claiming that the exercise was merely an indicator of India's inexorable rise to great power status. But what exactly are the pay-offs and pitfalls of engaging in such exercises?

Military exercises are increasingly becoming a part of the diplomatic toolbox. The term 'defence diplomacy' refers to non-coercive use of armed forces, wherein the military is considered as yet another means for averting conflict. By introducing greater transparency in the military sphere, defence diplomacy aims at fostering better ties between countries. Along with other activities such as military visits and exchanging personnel for military training, joint army, air and naval exercises play an important role in it. It affords an opportunity for the armed forces of the participating countries to remove misgivings and to build confidence and trust.

Then again, joint military exercises could be construed by third parties as being aimed at them. But this is no reason to eschew them entirely. Rather, it indicates the need for greater sensitivity to such concerns and the importance of taking adequate steps to alleviate them.  

Interestingly, the leading practitioner of defence diplomacy is China. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is actively engaged in establishing and improving links with the armed forces of about 140 countries. In so doing, the PLA seeks to convince these countries that a rising China is no threat. Indeed, the Chinese government views this as a vital component of its policy of a 'peaceful rise'.

The Indian government, too, has participated in military manoeuvres for such purposes. Not many recall that as far back as the late 1980s some littoral states of the Indian Ocean (including Australia) expressed concerns about India's naval build-up. The army exercise scheduled with the PLA later this year is another step in this direction. Such interaction, it is hoped, will contribute to better relations among the forces, strengthening the existing arrangements for peace and tranquillity along the contested borders.

Furthermore, joint exercises provide a peek into the other side's operational capabilities, battle drills and command and control techniques. This could be a useful pedagogical tool. It is not surprising that many countries wanting to conduct combined manoeuvres with India are particularly interested in high altitude warfare and counter-insurgency: areas where Indian forces claim expertise. Besides, such encounters could serve as a useful benchmark to assess one's own training standards. For instance, following an air combat exercise between Indian and US air forces in 2004, a US officer noted in a service journal that the exercise had forced them “to re-evaluate the way the service trains its fighter pilots”. The US Air Force chief of staff added that the results of the exercise were “very revealing”.

Combined military exercises are also important in upholding shared security interests such as protecting key sea lines of communication or preventing international terrorism. By enhancing coordination, synergy and interoperability, they could enable a timely and effective response to crises. It is worth noting that in recent years India has undertaken such exercises not just with the US but also with Russia and Iran. Moreover, contrary to the claims of some critics, improved interoperability does not automatically translate into an ability to prosecute joint operations of the kind undertaken by close military allies. If India wishes to become a US partner in serious combined operations, it will have to embark on far reaching changes to the way its armed forces operate. This will include a range of areas from doctrine, training and information systems to logistics and compatible fuels. Such a change of course would naturally entail decisions at the highest political level. In short, joint exercises do not inevitably point towards a military alliance of some kind.

The potential problems of partaking in military manoeuvres with the US have eluded opponents and supporters alike. For one thing, such exercises offer the US armed forces the best opportunity to flaunt their technological prowess. In the process they could influence the direction of military modernisation being undertaken by the Indian armed forces. In particular, the Indian military must resist the seductions of the technologically driven 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA) being proclaimed by the US.

The RMA holds out the promise of rapid battlefield victories by harnessing precision strike capabilities to systems that enable information dominance. RMA has admittedly enabled US forces to dominate the battlespace in unprecedented ways. Yet it has proved largely irrelevant to contemporary military challenges being faced by the US. America's adversaries have understood that the best way to negate its technological superiority is to threaten either escalation using weapons of mass destruction or the quagmire of unconventional warfare. Israel's experience with using RMA type capabilities has been no more successful. As the Winograd Commission enquiring into the recent conflict with Lebanon notes, the Israeli forces failed to achieve their objectives primarily because they reposed too much faith in these technologies.

The strategic challenges confronting India pose similar problems. Both the countries with which India has ongoing disputes — Pakistan and China — possess nuclear weapons; and non-state adversaries are unlikely to offer pitched battle. Whilst military modernisation is imperative, the Indian armed forces must not succumb to the US dogma that technology can offer a panacea for strategic problems.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the likely impact of participation in such exercises on Indian civil-military relations. As military to military contacts increase, the Indian armed forces will come to be important actors in their own right. This trend is bound to be accelerated by the US military's proclivity to deal with other states' armed forces as entities separate from the state. This, of course, is a reflection of the US military's clout as an autonomous actor. Nonetheless, this has tended to strengthen other militaries as organisational actors, a development that has usually had deleterious consequences for civil-military relations in those countries. Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines and Brazil are a few cases in point.

Participating in military exercises, especially with the US, could thus have insidious effects on the strategic and organisational outlook of our forces. Preventing a slide in this direction will require greater involvement of political leaders in the management of strategic affairs, and stronger oversight by the attentive public. Critics and the opposition would do well to channel their energies towards this end rather than raising the bogey of an Indo-US military alliance.