National security theatre can be dangerous

Here’s the thing

For over 20 years, since the notion gained currency that India is a rising world power, based on the high economic growth rates around the turn of the century and Goldman Sachs’ estimation that we would be the third largest economy by 2043 if we grew our GDP at 6% every year until then, there has been much debate around the world as to what kind of a world power India would be. What would India’s rise mean for the US-built international system – underpinned by an unwritten taboo on the use of nuclear weapons, the Bretton Woods institutions, and globalisation? The question has been asked particularly in comparison to what the rise of China means for the same.

China is seen as the rising challenger to the US-led international system and order, on a long march to global power status, breaking everything in its path – through deflationary production and trade, through nuclear proliferation to its lackeys Pakistan and North Korea, through stealing technology and intellectual property to grow its economy and technological strengths, through building hegemony over the South China Seas and beyond. If China rose to global power, it would seek to replace the ‘Washington Consensus’ with the ‘Beijing Consensus’.

India, on the other hand, is seen to be the ‘status quo’ist power – one whose rise is predicated on greater integration into the US-led system, on continuing as a liberal democracy underpinned by a secular state, a modernising society and an increasingly free market economy; and one that would not seek to alter boundaries by force, indulge in horizontal nuclear proliferation nor even change its nuclear posture to hair-trigger alert madness. It would become a global power by sheer accretion of economic – and concomitantly, military – and diplomatic power, and the greater moral legitimacy it would acquire by not changing the essentials of its being even when able to do so. It would project force, but not threaten; it would exert influence, but not bully; it would seek change and a place for itself, but not to overturn things overnight. This was the understanding of India among the world’s Great Powers during the Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh years. It was the basis for the India-US nuclear deal and the growing strategic partnership.

What, then, would the world powers and our adversaries make of recent actions and pronouncements of the Narendra Modi government – on Kashmir, on the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), and on the nuclear ‘no first use’ (NFU) policy? Sure, the first two are purely internal matters of India and we should be able to make those decisions ourselves. Yet, we cannot help how others read the signals and make their own plans. On Kashmir, if today we have moved to integrate tightly the part of Kashmir that’s in our possession, might this be the first step towards making attempts to take back from Pakistan (and China) the parts they hold? Modi’s ministers have been shouting about it, after all. The CDS decision, too, is a long-pending “first step” towards greater integration of the military into national security decision-making. But even if we are not aware of it, other countries know that once you build a strong military bureaucracy, over time, it will begin to acquire its own dynamics. Pakistan and China (and our other neighbours) will be asking: hmmm…where is India headed with this decision?

Speaking loosely about the ‘no first use’ policy is perhaps the most dangerous theatre to play. This is not an internal matter. The corollary to reviewing NFU is the question: could India attempt a first strike? A strategically weaker adversary – which Pakistan is, apart from being only minutes away by missile – would then have to factor in that in its warfighting thinking. Pakistan, by virtue of its weakness, may have to play this theatre. Should India? How will China, with its already greater capabilities, react? How will the US view India altering its NFU policy since it has implications for the postures of all other nuclear weapons powers? This is not a plea to not review NFU, or any other policy. This is a plea to think things through and do things quietly.

Political theatre is bad enough, but national security theatre, fuelled by a populist leader, is dangerous. When America was rising, US President Theodore Roosevelt cautioned it with the dictum “Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.” China rose by following Deng Xiaoping’s dictum “Observe calmly; secure our position; hide our capacities and bide our time.” Are we not thumping our chests too soon?