Rethinking India’s Strategic Choices for National Security

For any nation, national security is one of its primary agendas and whether they like it or not, the face of national security is changing rapidly around the world. Those who will modernize, will survive. At the frontier of this change are ideas related to artificial intelligence enabled militaries, innovative trade and aid models, and the use of “soft power” through deft diplomatic maneuvering. For a few years now, there have been concerns regarding India’s preparedness in these areas and now the situation has come to a point where India can either embrace a multi-faceted realist strategy to secure its strategic interests or be relegated into the ranks of the “once promising, now archaic” second rate global powers. With events such as the Pulwama conflict where India’s capabilities to dominate its neighbor in a short war came into question, followed by the revoking of India’s status under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program of the United States leading to a potential loss of $5.6 billion in Indian goods that currently enjoy concessionary tariffs, and the apparent loss of control gradient in Sri Lanka and Maldives in the face of Chinese investment and aid – it seems that India seems to be lagging behind in its security agenda on all of the frontiers including military modernization, trade, and aid.

If India wishes to be a first-rate power in the world it needs to be at the frontiers of innovation or atleast move in lockstep with the leaders of the world such as the United States, China, France, and Russia. We are living in a world where nations like France already have well-functioning cyber warfare units (Cybercom or Le Commandement de la cyberdéfense) with investments dwarfing what India allocates to capital expenditure in the armed forces by 1.5 times. Where India has a shortage of aircrafts and the IAF calls upon Israeli engineers access to its old French Mirages so they could be modified to carry the Russian R-73 air-to-air missiles in order to replace the now obsolete Matra-530D, countries like the United States have started deploying AI capabilities for predictive aircraft maintenance culminating into an Automated Logistics Information System. Similarly, where India is still busy debating and dealing with the ghosts of the Gujral doctrine, China, Russia and the United States are utilizing the cyberspace and relying less and less on human intelligence. In fact, three years ago, Michael Rogers Cyber Command Admiral unequivocally stated that relying on human intelligence alone in cyberspace is “a losing strategy” and will keep a country always behind the “power curve”.

While there is no dearth of technically trained professionals in India, the problem lies in an archaic political mindset where reform is a bad word. The resistance to reform and modernize has led the government to keep investing nearly 42% of its defense allocations to pensions and salaries in a world which is moving towards non-human tech-enabled strategic leadership. Indeed, it may be politically disastrous for any government to reduce the expenditure on personnel and pensions, but not doing so or not finding an innovative approach to fund military modernization would eventually lead to a veritable survival threat in the long term.

For nations lagging behind in absolute military power such as Canada, Spain, South Africa, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, the usual good news is that military strength is only one part of the national security equation and that trade, aid, and diplomacy count for considerable global influence. Unfortunately, we lag behind on these aspects of the equation as well. India’s Rs 6,447 crorebudgetary allocations to foreign aid are dwarfed not only by our next door neighbor China which contributes nearly $ 2.4 billion (equivalent to INR 1.65 Lakh crores) each year making it one of the largest donors in the world, India’s contributions seem unsubstantial even compared to nations like Turkey which also provides upwards of $ 2 billion in aid each year. Only last month, General Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States made an astute observation when he said that “Dollar for dollar, every dollar spent on diplomacy and development…are immensely more effective … than having to deploy soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines to a crisis”. Comparing the 0.64% allocation to the Ministry of External Affairs with the 15.5% spend on defense shows our lack of appreciation for Selva’s doctrine which should apply to a developing country even more than it does to developed nations such as the United States, Germany, and Japan.

Perhaps if we shift some of our budgetary allocations from military spending to enhance our diplomatic efforts where a greater investment human capital can create incremental positive outcomes and there is still lesser dependence on artificial intelligence technology such as in the case of military, we may then be able to enhance our global influence. Our nation of 1.3 billion people only deploys around as many diplomats as New Zealand, which has a population of around 5 million. With approximately 950 foreign service officers, India has one of the most understaffed diplomatic force of any major country.

One of the key functions of a diplomatic system such as the Ministry of External Affairs is to create what Joseph S. Nye has called “soft power” – i.e. rather than forcing others to do what you want them to do, “it is about getting others to want what you want”. A 0.64% expenditure from the national budget on creating soft power does not do justice to our global agenda. It is ironical that whatever little success we are finding on the global level is thanks to our diplomatic efforts. With the International Court of Justice putting a stay on Kulbhushan Jadhav’s execution, and with nations like Afghanistan, Mongolia, Bhutan and Maldives responding somewhat favorably to even the paltry aid we provide to them– the signals are clear that India needs to invest more in aid and diplomacy. Yet the reason why we seem to be losing influence in countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, and even Maldives is because we are not able to exercise enough soft power through aid led development in comparison to China. It is natural for nations to prefer the large sums of investments and loans from China, even on disadvantageous terms than pledge allegiance to India when we engage in mere tokenism by disbursing very little and by multiple visits from the Prime Minister.

While the appointment of S Jaishankar as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the seemingly unending tours of our Prime Minister to every corner of the world may look good for on paper, it is important to not loose sight of the larger question of the efficacy of our diplomatic systems. With an understaffed diplomatic core, one can only imagine the extent to which our nation would find itself in a strong enough position to really exercise its will. Daniel Markey’s observation that “India’s own foreign policy establishment hinders the country from achieving great-power status” is indeed true as the foreign services are plagued by inaccurate selection processes, lack of mid-career training opportunities, and a lack of support from solicitedby experts out of the IFS system.

With these challenges in place, it is necessary for India to envision its strategic fitness from a long-term perspective and modify its stance by balancing efforts in defense, trade, aid, and diplomacy. After all, it is often balance that creates the difference between a good to great. As Indians, our striving should be for greatness. As a country colonized for two centuries we owe greatness on the global stage to ourselves. As the largest democracy in the history of the earth, we owe it to the world.