India Needs a Joint Chiefs | The Diplomat

India is investing billions in arms. But without a coherent organizational structure, it will never become an effective war fighting machine.

India is an aspiring super power, and one of the largest arms importers in the world. But this month, following the defense procurement corruption exposé by Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singhand the hullabaloo over supposed troop movements near Delhi, it seems that India isn’t ready either to effectively absorb the battle-ready equipment being imported, or even command it properly.

At the center of the debate has been a heated discussion over whether India should have a unified command system under which the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force, could operate coherently and to mutual benefit. But the debate should be even louder than it is now.

Our strategic and super power ambitions are manifest in all three armed forces: the Air Force, which is in the process of one of the largest arms deals ever in the acquisition of the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA); the Navywhich has developed so-called blue water capabilities far beyond coastal defense; and the Army, which is raising two strike corps capable of offensive operations into Tibet and for possible use against China. Yet we still don’t have the necessary organizational structure to wield such massive fire power as a coherent force, one that can either repel external aggressors or project India’s power overseas.

The reasons are many, but the most problematic one is the archaic World War II defense institutions around which our armed forces are organized. They were adapted from the needs of a colonial power, whose main concern was the subjugation of the indigenous population, and not designed to repel external aggressors. There has been little or no change since then. Post-Kargil conflict in 1999 to 2000, the Kargil Review committee headed by noted strategist R.K. Subrahmanyam also recommended a unified command. This organization needs to be restructured and updated, and the quickest way to start is to have a Joint Chiefs of Defense Staff to co-ordinate and synergize operations and equipment.

In war, the application of maximum combat power at decisive periods influences the outcome of battle. Maximum combat power, however, isn’t simply the sum of the forces used – it’s the product of synergies generated by using arms and services coherently. Today, the three services are autonomous, and any synergy that does exist is pure chance. Examples are the lack of, or minimal use of, the Air Force in 1962 against the Chinese and in 1999 during the Kargil incursion by Pakistan. In both instances, the Indian Air Force resisted the use of air power on various grounds, hurting India’s war effort. In 1962, air power wasn’t used at all, while in 1999, the Air Force came in many days too late, perhaps on the orders of the civilian government in New Delhi.

India doesn’t follow an integrated command system during peace or in times of combat, so each armed force prosecutes war as they see appropriate (and possibly in a manner where they get the most glory). There have been very few instances when the combat power of one force was deployed under a commander of another (the Andaman Command is a notable exception).  

Weasel Zippers » Blog Archive » Colombia's top diplomat demands ...

Sentinel says:

April 27, 2012 at 9:51 am

New World Encyclopedia;

“The city’s history includes its role as a center for the Spanish Inquisition and as a major slave market……….Colombia’s notoriety for illicit drug production, kidnappings, and murder required efforts to foster stability. To achieve this, Colombia increased its military strength and police presence throughout the country…….The remains of extensive Spanish fortifications dating from its colonial days have earned it status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site of cultural importance.”

Apologize to you for what? If you think your city is some cultural and virginal landmark; you are sadly mistaken. Even though I personally think the SS agents were some dumb motherfuckers and shouldn’t have conducted themselves as they did, your city is still a shithole.

Time for a Fresh Start with Taiwan | The Diplomat

Britain should rethink its support for the one-China policy, argues Lord Richard Faulkner. China should drop its claims to the island.

I have the privilege of co-chairing the British-Taiwanese all-party parliamentary group, the membership of which has grown steadily to almost 100 lawmakers across all parties in Britain’s House of Commons.

There are two reasons for the group’s popularity. The first is the hard work of the staff at the Taipei Representative Office, in recent months by Ambassador Lyu-shun Shen and up until last December, by his much-loved predecessor Katharine Chang. They undertake their responsibilities with charm and distinction and in the face of a number of difficulties that aren’t encountered by the diplomatic staff of other foreign missions in London.

The second reason why our all-party group does well is because of the very real sense of admiration felt by a growing number of our parliamentarians for Taiwan and its people. A great number of us believe that Taiwan deserves better of us in the U.K. than current British and EU government rules allow for.

What can our parliamentarians do to improve relations between Britain and Taiwan? A great deal actually. On a practical level, we do our best to ensure that visiting political VIPs from Taiwan have an opportunity to come to Parliament and meet MPs and peers.

We are delighted when Ambassador Shen tells us that this minister or that party leader is coming to Britain, and we will always try to ensure that some of us are available to meet them, sometimes in a formal meeting in a Lords or Commons committee room, sometimes over lunch, tea or dinner in the Palace of Westminster.

Occasionally we receive word that a visiting dignitary has fallen foul of the U.K. Border Agency and has had difficulty in obtaining a visa. Where it’s necessary and appropriate, we’ll seek to intercede and obtain a satisfactory outcome, as we did last September in the case of a senior government minister coming to Britain to take part in an important legal conference in Cambridge.

In addition to receiving Taiwanese visitors here, we also arrange for British parliamentarians to visit Taiwan. Generally there are two outward delegations each year, each consisting of up to a dozen MPs and peers. These visits are possible because of the generosity of the Taiwanese government, and are an important element in the process of ensuring that our parliamentarians understand the country better. The program that is arranged for us is first class, and nearly always includes a meeting with the President and a number of senior ministers.

Our other major role as friends of Taiwan in Parliament is to raise issues that are roadblocks on the way to establishing a proper normal relationship with this country, or prevent Taiwan from participating fully in world organisations in ways which would benefit all of us. A perfect example of that was Taiwan’s involvement with the World Health Organization. The case for Taiwan was overwhelming because of the very significant contribution it has made over the years to world health issues, such as the SARS epidemic and earthquake relief.

We campaigned vigorously on that for years, and finally, in May 2009, Taiwan was granted observer status at the World Health Assembly.

Another success was the granting of the visa waiver scheme for Taiwanese visitors to Britain. On 3 March, 2009, the U.K. granted visa-exemption to Taiwan passport holders for six months. We were followed by Ireland and New Zealand, and Taiwan has offered similar rights to British passport-holders. There’s no evidence that this has created any problems in any of the countries involved, and the visa waiver scheme is being extended to other countries.

Now we also support the cal for Taiwan to be admitted to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

If a visitor arrived from outer space and examined the various relationships between Britain and Taiwan – in financial services, in industrial investment by British companies in Taiwan and by Taiwanese companies here, in the provision of places for Taiwanese students at British universities, in collaborating on tackling financial crime and terrorism, in combating disease, coping with national disasters, and so much more – that visitor would come to the conclusion that here were two friendly countries working together closely in virtually every area that mattered.

But life isn’t quite like that. I well recall an exchange in the House of Lords back in January 2003, on a question from me about WHO membership. The veteran Liberal Democrat, Lord Avebury, asked Baroness Amos, then a foreign office minister, whether she couldthink of any of the attributes of a sovereign state that Taiwan lacks.

Her reply was: “My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that we do not recognise Taiwan. The majority of countries in the U.N. also do not recognise Taiwan.”

Can U.S. “Manage” Other Nations? | Flashpoints - The Diplomat

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What’s in a word? Quite a lot, sometimes. Exhibit A: “management.” U.S. officials and pundits oftentimes talk about “managing” China’s rise to great power. Are they guilty of hubris – the outrageous arrogance that the Greeks of classical antiquity insisted goes before a fall? To what extent may one nation oversee another’s rise to great power?

Good question. One of my department’s gray-haired eminences raised it during a recent faculty meeting. His point of departure was a famous – or was it infamous? – Pentagon memorandum compiled in 1992 under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Written shortly after the Soviet Union’s demise and leaked to the press, the draft Defense Planning Guidance enjoined the United States to “endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union and Southwest Asia.”

The language in which the Pentagon document was phrased set the foreign-policy community atwitter. Sen. Robert C. Byrd pronounced it “myopic, shallow and disappointing.” For Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. the memo represented “literally a Pax Americana.” Biden prophesied that “It won’t work. You can be the world superpower and still be unable to maintain peace throughout the world.” Today, though, the idea that the United States should supervise the emergence of China, India, or some other new contender occasions scarcely a murmur. It may now be woven into the assumptions protagonists bring to strategic debates. It’s an axiom we no longer think to question.

Exhibit B: in a recent column for private intelligence firm Stratfor, Robert Kaplan applauds the Obama administration’s much-heralded “pivot” to Asia for helping Washington manage China’s ascent. Kaplan offers a workmanlike vision of international management. The United States acts as a superintendent of the Asian order it inherited through its conquest of imperial Japan. “China,” he writes, “is an altogether dynamic society that is naturally expanding its military and economic reach in the Indo-Pacific region.” But “the rise of any new great power needs to be managed.”

This is especially true in Asia, maintains Kaplan, because new sea powers are taking shape there while old ones reinvent their seagoing forces to cope with new, more stressful realities. India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia entertain seafaring ambitions of their own, while established powers Japan and South Korea are outfitting their sea and air forces with the latest technological wizardry. For Kaplan, this adds up to an arms race that distorts the regional maritime order. As the overseer of navigational freedoms, the United States must pivot to the “Indo-Pacific” region lest disequilibrium degenerate into something far worse.

The truth quotient is significant in both of these arguments. Nor are they irreconcilable. As Kaplan contends, it behooves the leading power in any system – in this case America, the keeper of the international maritime order – to try to adjust the system gracefully to the rightful demands and interests of new entrants into that order. A wrenching transition is apt to give rise to conflict – perhaps violent conflict. To expect the international system to be self-administering in times of flux is to expect too much.

And while the Wolfowitz memo could have been more artfully worded, it mostly cleaves to U.S. diplomatic traditions. For at least the past century, two axioms of U.S. statecraft have held that Washington must preserve access to important regions, and that it must do so while preventing any overweening power from gaining control of Europe, Asia, or, worse still, the entire Eurasian landmass. At the turn from the 19th to the 20th centuries, Secretary of State John Hay circulated an “Open Door” diplomatic note imploring the imperial powers not to partition China or shut rivals out of the Asia trade. Statesmen like Theodore Roosevelt fretted that the Kaiser’s Germany, having built the world’s finest army, might conquer the British Isles – and thereby gain command of the world’s preeminent navy, Britain’s Royal Navy. Such developments could constitute a direct threat to the Western Hemisphere – triggering defensive reflexes in Washington. For the Roosevelts of the world, it made sense to essay some preventive management.

Yet there are two reasons policymakers and pundits should beware of the terms they use. First, introspection helps forestall self-defeating behavior. A word used in policy discussions can speak volumes about the assumptions held by the user. And, once accepted as workaday parlance, it tends to short-circuit introspection about those assumptions. It never hurts, and can often help, to reexamine the language used in discourses about weighty matters like war and peace. Otherwise leaders may set the wrong priorities, misallocate resources trying to achieve those priorities, or give needless offense in foreign capitals. Worst of all, they may retard their intellectual nimbleness. Conceptual laggards fare poorly in times of change.

Second, the term management is bound to grate on foreign sensibilities. Even benign management has a whiff of coercion about it, as anyone who’s worked in a bureaucratic institution knows. For the United States to claim the right to set the terms of a fellow sovereign nation’s ascent to great power sounds presumptuous. Similarly, Robert Kaplan has called attention to the U.S. military’s “Unified Command Plan,” which allocates responsibility for every region on the face of the earth to a U.S. combatant command. Does this mean Washington asserts universal dominion? Not at all. Still, such seemingly innocuous command arrangements may rankle with important audiences overseas. Words have unintended consequences.

While humility remains a virtue, finally, it’s worth noting that many foreign policy scholars and wonks have a reciprocal tendency to define all forms of persuasion, beyond simple talk, as coercive. Thinkers of such leanings deplore the routine give-and-take of international negotiation – for example, offering an interlocutor inducements in exchange for certain concessions – as strong-arm tactics. As the world’s preponderant diplomatic, economic, and military power, the United States has a special responsibility to avoid appearing haughty toward other sovereign states. That’s a different thing entirely from abandoning the time-honored practice of horse-trading. Whether this is “management” or simple negotiation, carrots and the occasional stick remain the tools of the trade.

James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College and co-editor of Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age, forthcoming from Georgetown University Press. The views voiced here are his alone.

Vietnam to Target Social Media | ASEAN Beat - The Diplomat

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For popular Western internet companies with large user bases in Vietnam, new online regulations could seriously test business practices and corporate consciences. Driven by worries of an Arab spring, the communist government in Hanoi is planning to introduce rules in June requiring Google, Facebook and other companies providing “online social networking platforms” to locate their Vietnam-related operations entirely inside the country and follow local censorship laws.

Vietnamese authorities have for years been wary of the increased political space available online, where netizens can essentially access and publish information as they wish. Dozens of prominent bloggers are currently in jail for so-called anti-state propaganda and other national security charges. Beyond these most vocal critics are an estimated 30 million internet users in Vietnam – a full third of the population – engaging in various forms of online expression and association.

By operating “offshore,” Google, for example, has been relatively immune from pressure to restrict search results queried by users in Vietnam. Similarly, Facebook, with over 3 million Vietnamese users, doesn’t limit the interactions of these users to everyone else on the massive social network.

To be sure, the Vietnamese authorities have tried to block access to outside websites, most notably Facebook. But with a little knowledge of circumvention and a taste for civil disobedience, many Vietnamese netizens have quickly bypassed the firewalls and actively participated in social networking, creating a virtual civil society online.

The draft policy, which was obtained by Viet Tan, is titled “Decree on the Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online.” Like many government directives in Vietnam, much of the language in this document is vague and ill-defined, offering multiple interpretations and possible arbitrary implementation by authorities.

What’s clear is the Internet management policy forbids a wide range of activities online such as “abusing the Internet” to oppose the socialist government, “exposing government secrets” and “spreading slanderous information” harmful to organizations and individuals. The draconian language essentially makes it illegal to post anything online critical of the Vietnamese communist party and state, its policies or leaders.

While previous internet regulations in Vietnam contained similar prohibitions, the new policy goes further on implementation by specifically requiring foreign companies to assist authorities police the internet. Western firms would be directly responsible to Hanoi's Information and Communications Ministry, which oversees censorship and the Public Security Ministry, which routinely arrests bloggers and other activists.

To ensure companies such as Google and Facebook fall under Vietnamese law, the new decree requires these companies to open a local office and furnish the names and contacts details of their corporate officials.

Most worrying, the soon-to-be-issued decree appears to require foreign internet companies to house their data centers in Vietnam. Operating as censors and not technologists, the drafters of the regulation have probably not thought through the ramifications.

Companies spend a lot of resources to decide where to locate their data centers. Mandating foreign enterprises to relocate data centers or even individual servers to Vietnam harms businesses by causing logistical and technical challenges. At worst, it would discourage companies from operating in Vietnam to begin with, leaving end users with less choice.

Speaking on similar restrictions in China in 2010, Google public policy director Robert Boorstin summed up the problem: “censorship is a trade barrier.” 

By entering into negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with the United States and other countries, Vietnam is ostensibly committed to trade liberalization and commercial best practices. Politically driven regulations would set the country backward and not be consistent with free trade.

Aiding censorship also poses thorny moral dilemmas for companies. Yahoo has had to apologize and financially compensate Chinese dissidents who were arrested partly due to the private user information that the company turned over to Chinese security police.

To its credit, Yahoo has made amends by enacting a global business and human rights program. Probably because of its reluctance to again compromise the safety and privacy of its users, Yahoo was recently criticized by Vietnamese state media for sticking to international norms even though it maintains an in-country office, the only major Western internet company to do so.

Speaking to a government newspaper on April 9, an official from the Information and Communications Ministry highlighted Yahoo’s perceived noncompliance to argue why stricter internet management policies are required. This follows threats from authorities to tax Western internet companies that attract Vietnam-based users.

When it comes to online censorship, the interests of the human rights community and companies in the information and communications technology sector are clearly aligned. These key stakeholders should continue to impress on the Vietnam authorities the political and economic consequences of internet censorship.

As stated by Google’s Boorstin: “The premise is simple. In addition to infringing human rights, governments that block the free flow of information on the Internet are also blocking trade and economic growth.”

Duy Hoang is a U.S.-based leader of Viet Tan, an unsanctioned pro-democracy political party in Vietnam.

The Trouble With India's Military | The Diplomat

The letter by India’s Army chief last month blasting the state of the armed forces reflected a troubling reality – India’s regional military power aspirations are in danger.

Last month, India’s Parliament was up in arms over the leak of a supposedly top secret letter written by Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In typical Indian fashion, the uproar – partly spontaneous, partly orchestrated – was at first more about the leak of a highly confidential letter than the critical shortages of weapons and equipment that were pointed to.

Among the problems Singh pointed to were the claim that the Army’s entire fleet of tanks is “devoid of critical ammunition to defeat enemy tanks,”the suggestion that the country’s air defense were “97 percent obsolete,” and criticism that the Elite Special Forces was “woefully short” of “essential weapons.”

After the initial din died down, however, the import of the Army Chief’s letter gradually dawned on lawmakers asked the government and the Army to explain why the shortages haven’t been addressed. Indeed, the shortages are all the more baffling because India’s Defense Ministry reported it had spent its full quota of funds in each of the last three financial years, while the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said recently that between 2006 and 2010, India ranked first in terms of arms imports.

So why all these shortfalls?

The answer lies in the convoluted and often excruciatingly slow acquisition process that exists within the Defense Ministry. By even some conservative estimates, it can take anywhere between three and five years for a proposal mooted by a service headquarters to come to fruition. This snail’s pace has been noted by lawmakers in the past.

The Standing Committee on Defense (2008-09), a cross-party body of lawmakers, said in its report: “In the opinion of the Committee, the present state of affairs in the Ministry is clearly indicative of lack of seriousness towards timely finalization of plans, which ultimately leads to adverse bearing on modernization process in the armed forces.”

In his first interview on assuming office on April 1, 2010, Singh told me bluntly: “Our biggest challenge is how to remove our hollowness in terms of deficiencies in various fields, and the second one is modernization. Both need to be addressed (as a) priority so that whatever the Army requires that makes it battle worthy is there.

“When I talk of ‘hollowness,’ it is when you authorize something, but it may not be there because over a period of time, the procurement (process has) delayed acquisition,” he said, adding that such delays inevitably mean that some of the equipment is obsolete by the time it is available for combat units. 

Two years on, and it’s clear that despite the voicing of such concerns, even the day-to-day requirements of many combat units are at dangerously low levels. Singh wrote first to Defense Minister A.K. Antony and then to the prime minister to highlight this fact.

But it shouldn’t have taken a letter from Singh to make clear shortcomings that were already obvious to many. Numerous commentators and analysts had already pointed out the sorry state of India’s air defenses and artillery. Gurmeet Kanwal, until recently director of the Army’s think tank, the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, has written:

“Sadly, the Indian Army has almost completely missed the ongoing Revolution in Military Affairs…The Corps of Army Air Defense is also faced with serious problems of obsolescence. The vintage L-70 40 mm AD gun system, the four-barreled ZSU-23-4 Schilka AD gun system, the SAM-6 (Kvadrat) and the SAM-8 OSA-AK have all seen better days and need to be urgently replaced by more responsive modern AD systems that are capable of defeating current and future threats.”

One of the key reasons for the military shortfalls has simply been the duplication of effort in processing a procurement proposal at both the Service Headquarters and the Defense Ministry, since the two aren’t integrated at the functional level.  As a result, files are typically initiated and processed at the service headquarters before undergoing the same process at the ministry. 

What Did China Know? | Flashpoints - The Diplomat

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China has good reasons for supporting North Korea: Pyongyang’s implosion would be an almighty headache, with potentially millions of half-starved refugees pouring across the border looking for Beijing to solve their problems. China’s policy, understandably, is to keep the North’s humanitarian horrors on the far side of the Yalu River.

Beijing therefore turns a blind eye to the cross-border black-market activities that keep the North Korean economy on life support, despite their drain on China’s own resources. It plays its tired part in boosting the North Korean leader’s status, doing what it can to help stave off regime collapse by hosting the Kims in Beijing and offering quotable assurances of solidarity. It also jumps, with impressive patience, through the diplomatic hoops of having constantly to fight North Korea’s losing corner at the United Nations and other international forums.

But when it comes to last week’s revelation that China may be supplying North Korea with technology in contravention of U.N. sanctions, the rationale is much less obvious. It was reported by Jane’s Defence Weekly that a new transporter erector launcher (TEL) system debuted by North Korea at a recent military parade looked suspiciously like a known Chinese system. Following the report, the U.S. government, among others, admitted that they, too, had noticed the similarity. The U.N. Security Council committee whose job it is to monitor these sanctions – a job, some have noted, that it doesn’t seem terribly good at – is reportedly investigating.

China denies busting the sanctions, but analysts sound convinced that North Korea’s new TEL is Chinese, or at least of Chinese design. Supplying North Korea with road-mobile missile technology isn’t about to make the country less prone to collapse. So why would China do it?

First, let’s consider the costs. China’s relations with South Korea are already strained, with maritime disputes having already placed the two countries at loggerheads. Proof that China was helping Pyongyang with military systems that could really hurt the South would be disastrous for Beijing’s relations with Seoul.

Secondly, giving TELs to North Korea is the kind of act that feeds into the caricature of a crafty China that openly preaches harmony while quietly sowing mischief. Whatever the truth behind the TEL story, China has an image problem when it comes to this sort of thing (the arms shipment to Robert Mugabe in the midst of Zimbabwe’s bloody political crisis in 2008 also springs to mind).

So, there are several possible explanations. Perhaps China’s leaders had no idea that it was happening. Mid-level officials and companies can’t always be trusted to stick to the Party line, and often that’s tolerated as a fact of life in a vast country. In this case, the firm believed to have sold a chassis for the launcher – perhaps to a front company – denies that it has trade links with North Korea. Still, it becomes a problem when the miscalculations of arms company executives or local military commanders become a source of very public embarrassment to the central government.

Alternatively, Pyongyang’s TEL with Chinese characteristics might not be Chinese at all.

Confirmation of the weapon system’s origin may emerge once the United Nations has had time to pore over the pictures and make its inquiries. But the episode will at the very least have reminded China’s leaders that it’s all too easy to be guilty by association when you have associates of North Korea’s calibre.