The twentieth century saw the eruption of total conflict in two World Wars which were unprecedented in scope and scale and havoc thus caused. Near the end of the Second World War, America used nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought about a staggering paradigm shift in the power of destructive ordnance. Nuclear weapons transformed the nature of war forever. Many independent historians and experts have since questioned the use of n-weapons as it was known in leading capitals that Japan was already negotiating the terms and language of surrender.
In his eminently readable Limited Wars in South Asia: Need for an Indian Doctrine, Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi explains that America used the nuclear weapons against Japan to signal its new power to the then Soviet Union, whose massive conventional military power was a serious concern in Washington. Moscow received the message loud and clear, but the consequence – perhaps unintended for Uncle Sam – was that the USSR refused to demobilize after the end of war. This in turn triggered fears in a Europe that was already exhausted by the destruction of two world wars. The fear of Soviet tanks began to haunt Europe and also the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and in response Washington created the doctrine of Massive Retaliation. This meant that any Soviet conventional attack in Europe would be met with an all-out American nuclear attack on Soviet industrial heartland and cities. But by 1949, the Soviet Union managed to establish nuclear parity with the US and this made nuclear counter-attack less credible.
The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons made their use under conditions of symmetry impossible, and this made nuclear war notional, giving rise to concepts like Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) in strategic parlance. The weapons thus had the effect of ushering in a relative peace.
This resulted in the return of limited wars, the theme of Bakshi’s current endeavour. Limited wars, he notes, initially erupted as limited conventional wars between the proxies of superpowers, in theatres outside the critical arena ofEurope, where the two superpowers faced each other directly. Strategic thinkers now began to focus on how to avert war, rather than how to win a war.
The first test of the fragile, post-nuclear status quo came in Korea in 1950, where a limited war (in geographical space) raged for three years in the remote Far East. The only limitation was in the ‘non-use’ of nuclear weapons, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur was sacked for urging their use. Beijing threw in a million troops; both sides used the latest conventional weaponry; and Washington alone suffered 137000 casualties. Thereafter, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought the world close to a nuclear holocaust, which was averted only by Moscow agreeing to remove the Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles from Cuba, in exchange for Washington removing US missiles fromTurkey. Interestingly, Bakshi is the first major commentator who has projected the Cuban crisis as a draw between the superpowers, as most of our West-centric analysts have for decades written about it as a unilateral American triumph, which it clearly was not.
The established nuclear status quo now began to witness a new genre of threats in the form of guerilla warfare, insurgencies, and low intensity conflicts, viz., in Indo-China where the Vietnam War (1968) became a quagmire for theUSas dense jungle restricted mobility and canopy hindered air power. The ground war spread to Laos and Cambodia. America extended the air war to North Vietnam, used chemical defoliants and Agent Orange, but lost.
Cold War thus saw absence of large scale conflict or direct clash between the superpowers in Europe, with the arms race serving as a surrogate for war. But the most decisive campaign of the Cold War era wasIndia’s liberation ofBangladeshin 1971. then, by the end of 1978, Vietnam liberated Cambodia from the murderous Pol Pot regime, and in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The same year China tried to teach Vietnam a lesson by border invasion, and ended up with a bloody nose. In Afghanistan, America used short term and short-sighted measures by stoking Islamic insurgency to raise the costs forSoviet Union, which in turn boomeranged with 9/11.
We are now in what Bakshi calls the Second Nuclear Age. Asia has six indigenous nuclear powers –Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – and Iran is desperately trying to join the club. The question arises – will the nuclear theology of the Cold War apply in an Asia where nationalism is at a peak?
India localized the Pakistani intrusion in the Kargil sector in 1999 by ordering only partial mobilization. But Islamabad learnt that it had pegged South Asia nuclear threshold too low in Kargil. India was innovative – with two divisions, heavy artillery fire, air power and navy – it removed the Pakistan Northern Light Infantry troopers from the heights overlooking the strategic Leh-Srinagar artery, in the course of just one month. But India’s great failing, feels Bakshi, was its failure to cross the Line of Control, a defensive military response which gave Islamabad the wrong message, though it did keep international pressure at bay.
New Delhierroneously felt the N-parity negated a conventional edge and into a sort of strategic paralysis. This encouraged Pakistan to attack the J&K Assembly and the Indian Parliament attack, and our Operation Parakram fizzled out under international glare. We paid the price in terms of terror strikes in the metropolitan cities of Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, New Delhi and Guwahati by LeT in PoK, until Mumbai 2008 removed the scales from our eyes.
Bakshi warns that the fearfulness of the Indian elite which believes the military option us no longer viable has prompted the jihadi sub-conventional assaults to continue. WhatIndia needs, he opines, is escalation planning likeChina. We are on the way to a multipolar world order, and the focus of global power has shifted toAsia. Here, the trans-national Islamic movement is the greatest threat to peace.
It was Gen N.C. Vij who enunciated doctrine of Cold Start, a subset of Limited War Doctrine derived from Operation Parakram when our forces raced for the Pak border & beat Pakistani counterparts to the draw and could have done deep penetrations, but were held back by political strategic paralysis. The new doctrine (officially denied byIndiaafter WikiLeaks disclosures made fun of Indian bumbling responses) involves: smaller integrated battle groups to mobilize and strike more quickly, and hit enemy capabilities at ground level in concert with air and fire power. It takes war to the enemy territory fast, in keeping with the Kautiliyan adage: avoid battle unless strong and have a decisive asymmetric edge.
India, Bakshi asserts, has much to learn fromChinawhich is not deterred by n-weapons of adversaries. While its official defence budget stands at $75b, Pentagon estimates that it is really US$139. China strength is that it believes it fights ‘just wars’ of self-defence. It does not wait passively, but grabs the initiative to catch the enemy unprepared, as in 1962.
Strangely, despite the Indian economy recovery with nine percent annual growth of GDP, the country has taken no steps to close the vulnerability gaps vis-à-visPakistan; there is no usable military power; only bureaucratic red tape and a scam-tainted defence acquisition system. Worse, there is no national strategic doctrine, no realization that in today’s world we must give primacy to air and naval power over land power responses, as land war risks escalation across the nuclear threshold.
At the historic moment when the world should look with respect upon India as a rising world power (not just an economic market), the reality is that India’s force usage profile declining and lack of political will is sapping the credibility to defend national interests.Indianeeds urgently to create in its military strategy a space for limited conventional war between the spectral ends of nuclear war and sub-conventional conflict. Bakshi recommends that India retain escalation dominance and control. New Delhi must also realise that it does not bear the responsibility to prevent Pakistan from imploding… He concludes with a word of wisdom from Mao Tse-Tung: only a complete fool or a madman would cherish Passive Defence. A must read for those concerned with the defence of Indiain an era of great turbulence.
Limited Wars in South Asia: Need for an Indian Doctrine
Maj Gen G.D. Bakshi, SM, VSM (retd),
Centre for Land Warfare Studies & Knowledge World Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
Price: Rs 780/-
Karne ya ishirini iliona mlipuko wa mgogoro kamili katika Vita viwili vya Ulimwengu ambavyo havikuwa na mfano katika wigo na kiwango na uharibifu uliosababishwa. Karibu na mwisho wa Vita Kuu ya Pili ya Dunia, Marekani ilitumia silaha za nyuklia dhidi ya miji ya Hiroshima na Nagasaki, ambayo ilileta mabadiliko ya kushangaza katika nguvu ya silaha za uharibifu. Silaha za nyuklia zilibadili kabisa hali ya vita. Wanahistoria wengi wa kujitegemea na wataalamu wamekuwa wakishuku matumizi ya silaha za nyuklia, kwani ilijulikana katika miji mikuu ya nchi kwamba Japani tayari ilikuwa ikijadili masharti na lugha ya kujisalimisha. Katika kitabu chake kinachoitwa Limited Wars in South Asia: Need for an Indian Doctrine, Maj. Gen. Gagan Bakshi anaeleza kwamba Marekani ilitumia silaha za nyuklia dhidi ya Japani ili kuonyesha nguvu zake mpya kwa Muungano wa Sovieti wakati huo, ambao nguvu zake kubwa za kijeshi zilikuwa na wasiwasi mkubwa katika Washington. Moscow ilipokea ujumbe huo kwa sauti kubwa na wazi, lakini matokeo - labda yasiyokusudiwa kwa Mjomba Sam - yalikuwa kwamba USSR ilikataa kuondoa jeshi baada ya mwisho wa vita. Jambo hilo lilitokeza hofu katika Ulaya ambayo tayari ilikuwa imechoka kwa sababu ya uharibifu wa vita viwili vya ulimwengu. Hofu ya tanki za Sovieti ilianza kutisha Ulaya na pia Shirika la Mkataba wa Atlantiki Kaskazini, na kwa kujibu Washington iliunda mafundisho ya kulipiza kisasi kwa wingi. Hii ilimaanisha kwamba shambulio lolote la kawaida la Sovieti huko Ulaya lingekutana na shambulio la nyuklia la Marekani dhidi ya maeneo ya viwanda na miji ya Sovieti. Mwaka 1949 Urusi ilishinda vita vya nyuklia na Marekani na kuanzisha uhusiano wa usawa na Marekani, na hilo lilifanya uwezekano wa kushambulia kwa nyuklia kuwa mdogo. "Uharibifu mkubwa wa silaha za nyuklia ulifanya matumizi yao chini ya hali ya ""symmetry"" iwe haiwezekani, na hii ilifanya vita vya nyuklia kuwa ""notional,"" ikitoa dhana kama vile uharibifu wa pamoja uliohakikishwa (Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD) katika lugha ya kimkakati." Hivyo, silaha hizo zilitokeza amani ya kiasi. Hii ilisababisha kurudi kwa vita vidogo, mandhari ya juhudi za sasa za Bakshi. "Mashambulizi hayo yalianza kama ""vita vya kawaida"" kati ya mataifa yenye nguvu kubwa, katika maeneo ya nje ya uwanja muhimu wa Ulaya, ambapo mataifa mawili makubwa yalikabiliana moja kwa moja." Wanasayansi wa kimkakati sasa walianza kukazia fikira jinsi ya kuzuia vita, badala ya jinsi ya kushinda vita. "Mtihani wa kwanza wa hali ya sasa ya baada ya nyuklia ulikuja nchini Korea mwaka 1950, ambapo vita vilivyo na mipaka (kwa eneo la kijiografia) vilipiganwa kwa miaka mitatu katika Mashariki ya Mbali.""" Kiwango pekee kilikuwa katika "kutotumia" silaha za nyuklia, na Jenerali Douglas MacArthur alifutwa kazi kwa kuhimiza matumizi yao. Beijing ilitoa askari milioni moja; pande zote mbili zilitumia silaha za kisasa za kawaida; na Washington pekee ilipata hasara 137,000. Mshtuko wa makombora wa Cuba wa mwaka 1962 ulisababisha vita vya nyuklia, na Urusi ikakubali kuondoa makombora ya nyuklia kutoka Cuba, na Marekani kuondoa makombora ya nyuklia kutoka Uturuki. "Bakshi ndiye mwandishi wa kwanza wa habari kuelezea mgogoro wa Cuba kama ""mshindano kati ya mataifa makubwa,"" kama vile wasomi wengi wa Magharibi wameandika kwa miongo kadhaa kama ushindi wa Marekani, ambayo kwa wazi haikuwa hivyo." Hali ya sasa ya nyuklia ilianza kushuhudia aina mpya ya vitisho katika fomu ya vita vya wapiganaji wa kuvizia, uasi, na migogoro ya nguvu ya chini, yaani, katika Indo-China ambapo Vita vya Vietnam (1968) vilikuwa matope kwa ajili ya Marekani. Vita vya ardhini vilipanuka hadi Laos na Kambodia. Marekani ilipanua vita vya angani hadi Vietnam Kaskazini, ikitumia kemikali za kuondoa majani na Agent Orange, lakini ilipoteza. Vita baridi hivyo iliona kutokuwa na mgogoro mkubwa au mgongano wa moja kwa moja kati ya mataifa makubwa katika Ulaya, na mbio za silaha kutumika kama surrogate kwa ajili ya vita. Vita vya pili vya dunia vilipotokea mwaka 1971 wakati India ilipowakomboa watu wa Bangladesh, baada ya vita ya Vietnam ya 1978 na ya 1979 ambapo Vietnam ilikomboa nchi ya Cambodia kutoka kwa utawala wa Pol Pot, na baada ya vita ya 1979 ambapo Urusi ilivamia Afghanistan. Mwaka huohuo China ilijaribu kufundisha Vietnam somo kwa uvamizi wa mpaka, na kumalizika na pua ya damu. Katika Afghanistan, Marekani ilitumia hatua za muda mfupi na za muda mfupi kwa kuchochea uasi wa Kiislamu ili kuongeza gharama kwa Umoja wa Kisovyeti, ambayo kwa upande wake ilifika kwa boomerang na 9 11. Sasa tuko katika kile ambacho Bakshi huita Enzi ya Pili ya Nyuklia. Asia ina nguvu sita za nyuklia za asili - Urusi, China, India, Pakistan, Israeli na Korea Kaskazini - na Iran inajaribu sana kujiunga na klabu hiyo. Swali linatokea <unk> je, theolojia ya nyuklia ya Vita Baridi itatumika katika Asia ambapo utaifa uko kwenye kilele? India ilizuia uvamizi wa Pakistan katika eneo la Kargil mwaka 1999 kwa kuamuru uhamisho wa sehemu tu. Lakini Islamabad iligundua kwamba ilikuwa imeweka kiwango cha nyuklia cha Asia Kusini chini sana huko Kargil. India ilikuwa ya ubunifu - na mgawanyiko mbili, moto mzito wa makombora, nguvu za hewa na majini - iliondoa askari wa Pakistan wa Kaskazini wa Upangaji wa Upangaji kutoka kwa urefu unaotazama mshipa wa kimkakati wa Leh-Srinagar, katika kipindi cha mwezi mmoja tu. Lakini kushindwa kwa India, Bakshi anahisi, kulikuwa kushindwa kwake kuvuka mstari wa udhibiti, jibu la kijeshi la ulinzi ambalo lilimpa Islamabad ujumbe usiofaa, ingawa ilifanya shinikizo la kimataifa liwe mbali. New Delhi kwa makosa alihisi N-parity negated makali ya kawaida na katika aina ya paralysis kimkakati. "Hii ilichochea Pakistan kushambulia Bunge la J&K na shambulio la Bunge la India, na operesheni yetu ya ""Parakram"" ilifutwa chini ya mwangaza wa kimataifa." """Tuliwalipa bei kwa mashambulizi ya kigaidi katika miji mikubwa ya Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, New Delhi na Guwahati na LTTE katika PoK, mpaka Mumbai 2008 iliondoa magamba kutoka kwa macho yetu." Bakshi ameonya kuwa hofu ya wasomi wa India ambao wanaamini chaguo la kijeshi haliwezekani tena imesababisha mashambulizi ya kijihadi ya kawaida kuendelea. Kinachohitajika na India, ana maoni yake, ni mipango ya kuongezeka kama China. """Tuko kwenye njia ya utaratibu wa ulimwengu wa pande nyingi na lengo la nguvu za kimataifa limehamia Asia." Hapa, harakati ya Kiislamu ya kimataifa ni tishio kubwa zaidi kwa amani. "Jenerali N.C. Vij alianzisha ""Cold Start,"" sehemu ya ""Limited War Doctrine"" iliyotokana na operesheni ya Parakram wakati majeshi yetu yalipokuwa yakishambulia mpaka wa Pakistan na kuwapiga wapiganaji wenzao wa Pakistan hadi kwenye draw na wangeweza kupenya kwa kina, lakini walizuiliwa na paralysis ya kisiasa." "Mafundisho hayo mapya (ambayo India imekanusha rasmi baada ya WikiLeaks kufichua kuwa India ilicheka majibu yake ya ""kushindwa"") yanahusisha: vikundi vidogo vya vita vilivyounganishwa ili kuhamasisha na kushambulia haraka, na kushambulia uwezo wa adui katika ngazi ya ardhi kwa pamoja na hewa na nguvu za moto." "Kutumia nguvu za vita, unaweza kuepuka vita kama una nguvu na una makali ya asymmetric.""" India, Bakshi anadai, ina mengi ya kujifunza kutoka China ambayo haizuiliwi na silaha za wapinzani. Wakati bajeti yake rasmi ya ulinzi inasimama kwa $ 75bn, Pentagon inakadiria kuwa ni kweli $ 139bn. Nguvu ya China ni kwamba inaamini inapigana "vita vya haki" vya kujilinda. "Hakuna mtu anayesubiri kwa hamu, lakini huchukua hatua ya kwanza ili kumkamata adui bila kujitayarisha, kama ilivyokuwa mwaka wa 1962.""" "Kwa kushangaza, licha ya uchumi wa India kuimarika na ukuaji wa kila mwaka wa Pato la Taifa la asilimia tisa, nchi hiyo haijachukua hatua yoyote ya kufunga mapungufu ya udhaifu dhidi ya Pakistan; hakuna nguvu ya kijeshi inayoweza kutumika; tu ""red tape ya ubunifu na mfumo wa ununuzi wa ulinzi uliotiwa alama ya udanganyifu.""" "Kibaya zaidi, hakuna mafundisho ya kitaifa ya kimkakati, hakuna utambuzi kwamba katika ulimwengu wa leo lazima tupe kipaumbele kwa nguvu za angani na za baharini juu ya majibu ya nguvu za ardhi, kwani vita vya ardhi vina hatari ya kuongezeka kwa kiwango cha nyuklia. """ """Katika wakati huu wa kihistoria ambapo ulimwengu unapaswa kuangalia kwa heshima India kama nguvu ya ulimwengu inayoongezeka (si tu soko la kiuchumi), ukweli ni kwamba profile ya matumizi ya nguvu ya India inashuka na ukosefu wa mapenzi ya kisiasa ni kuharibu uaminifu wa kulinda maslahi ya kitaifa, India inahitaji haraka kuunda katika mkakati wake wa kijeshi nafasi ya vita vya kawaida kati ya mwisho wa vita vya nyuklia na vita vya kawaida." Bakshi anapendekeza kwamba India ihifadhi utawala na udhibiti wa kuongezeka. "New Delhi lazima pia itambue kwamba haina jukumu la kuzuia Pakistan kutoka kwa mlipuko... ""Alimalizia kwa neno la hekima kutoka kwa Mao Zedong: ""Ni mpumbavu kamili au wazimu tu ambaye angependa ulinzi wa passiv.""" Ni lazima kusoma kwa wale wanaohusika na ulinzi wa India katika enzi ya msukosuko mkubwa. Vita vya Asia Kusini: Uhitaji wa Mafundisho ya India Maj Gen G.D. Bakshi, SM, VSM (retd), Kituo cha Mafunzo ya Vita vya Ardhi na Ujuzi wa Ulimwengu Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. Gharama: Rs 780