Karnad, Bharat

Roy-Chaudhury, Rahul

Winner, Andrew C.

English

U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons

Naval War College ReviewVolume 57Number 2 Spring Article 162004Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security; India’sMaritime SecurityAndrew C. WinnerBharat KarnadRahul Roy-ChaudhuryFollow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-reviewThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contactrepository.inquiries@usnwc.edu.Recommended CitationWinner, Andrew C.; Karnad, Bharat; and Roy-Chaudhury, Rahul (2004) "Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security; India’s MaritimeSecurity," Naval War College Review: Vol. 57 : No. 2 , Article 16.Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol57/iss2/16Throughout this work, Macgregor pro-vides specific and concrete examples ofproblems and solutions. He explains,for instance, how the Army shouldalign itself in a joint architecture basedon combat maneuver groups composedof light reconnaissance, airborne as-sault, aviation combat, and early de-ploying support. The purpose of suchgroups is to integrate lean fighting unitswith powerful strike assets that are notonly lethal in combat but have the nec-essary strategic agility to achieve rapiddecisive results. Lest the reader thinkthat Macgregor is a proponent ofsmaller and lighter forces, he alsomakes clear there can be no substitutefor superior firepower in any fight. Inexamining the most recent U.S. combatexperiences in Afghanistan and Iraq,Macgregor notes that the real challengeof the close fight is that “the advantageof information dominance diminishesconsiderably”; “old-fashioned fire-power delivered in mass” remainsessential.The conclusion reminds us that the na-ture of warfare will continue to changeand that the need for transformationwill only grow in importance as our en-emies adapt to our past successes. Theprocess of transformation, he pointsout, however, is not the sole responsi-bility or purview of the Army—it re-quires the best civilian and militaryminds. Macgregor’s effort goes a longway toward furthering that thinkingand is a must read for those who wishto enter the military transformationdebate.RONALD RATCLIFFNaval War CollegeKarnad, Bharat. Nuclear Weapons and Indian Se-curity. New Delhi: Macmillan India, 2002. 724pp.Rs795Roy-Chaudhury, Rahul. India’s Maritime Security.New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2000. 208pp.$42.64Analysts and observers interested inglobal security issues would do well topay closer attention to the always richdebate in Indian security circles aboutthat country’s future national policies,supporting budgets, and force struc-tures. India is a rising power with a rap-idly growing economy, an increasingmilitary budget, and in some key areas,a newly enhanced national will to trans-late its potential into broader influenceon the world stage. These two books areexcellent examples of the national de-bate on how India should use its powerto protect and advance its growing na-tional interests. Each covers specificelements of India’s national security—nuclear weapons and maritime security.Bharat Karnad is an unabashed advo-cate of a robust Indian nuclear weaponsstructure, doctrine, and policy. Karnad,a national security policy analyst at anIndian think tank, the Centre for PolicyResearch in New Delhi, was a memberof the First National Security AdvisorBoard to the National Security Councilof India. In that capacity, he was amember of the Nuclear DoctrineDrafting Group. In the wake of India’sMay 1998 nuclear weapons tests, thegroup produced a draft nuclear doc-trine that was submitted to the NationalSecurity Council in August 1999. (Aftersignificant delay, the essence of the doc-trine was adopted formally in JanuaryB O O K R E V I E W S 1 7 7C:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2004.vpMonday, March 29, 2004 8:30:01 AMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen1Winner et al.: Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security; India’s Maritime SecurityPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 20042003.) The author is squarely andproudly in the realist school of politicalscience, basing his arguments and as-sessments on the proposition that theworld is an anarchic place, that statesare the primary international actors,and that power—with military power atits core—is all that matters.The book is sweeping in scope. Karnadis prescriptive and uses his interpreta-tion of history to create a strong casefor his prescribed end state for Indiaand its nuclear forces. This end stateconsists of a nuclear force for Indiacontaining 350–400 nuclear warheads/weapons, some with megaton yields,and a set of delivery systems that in-cludes “sizable numbers” of interconti-nental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) andlong-range cruise missiles. Given whatthe author assumes will be the ICBMforce’s problems with accuracy, he rec-ommends a countervalue strategy thathe deems sufficient to deter U.S. inter-vention in Indian affairs. He also notesthat a force of this size and structurewould be sufficient to achieve notionalparity with China.While it is easy to focus on the headline-making conclusions that arise fromKarnad’s tome, a reader would do wellto take the time to read the entire piececarefully. The first half of the book is acomprehensive history and analysis ofIndia’s evolution as a nuclear power. Inthis section, the author convincinglychallenges conventional wisdom aboutthe teachings and actions of India’s re-vered “father of the nation,” MahatmaGandhi. Karnad argues that the nation’smisinterpretations of Gandhi’s teach-ings gave rise to a mistaken, and strate-gically misguided, “moralpolitik” thatlimited India’s ability to act decisivelyto advance and protect its own nationalinterests in a Hobbesian world. In fact,the author seeks to debunk the oft-citedlink between this moralpolitik andtraditional Indian culture and values asexpressed in the texts of ancient India.The result of this political philosophy,which championed morality in pursuitof interests and led to “doctrinaire posi-tions on the exercise of force” was thatIndia as a collective lacked the will toachieve power in the decades followingits independence.In the second thematic half of the book,a 250-page chapter 5, Karnad uses morerecent historical examples and analysesof real and potential great-power sce-narios to make the case that India mustfashion a set of nuclear doctrines, poli-cies, and capabilities to advance its re-gional and global interests. Specifically,he warns against deterrence by “half-measures,” noting that India cannotrely on other powers to protect it. Spe-cifically, he argues that U.S. and Indianinterests, even currently, are likely toconverge only in the short term andthat India must have the militarywherewithal, specifically in the nuclearrealm, to ensure that it does not be-come a vassal of Washington.Roy-Chaudhury’s book also delves intoan element of India’s national securityand the appropriate policy to address it,but his area of focus is one less fraughtwith potential controversy—maritimesecurity. His recommended course ofaction, that India adopt a new maritimesecurity policy to update and expandthe outdated and inadequate OceanPolicy Statement of 1982, is also lessalarming. Roy-Chaudhury’s study is anatural follow-up to his Sea Power andIndian Security (Brassey’s, 1995), whichwas favorably reviewed in the Summer1996 issue of this journal. While his1 7 8 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E WC:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2004.vpMonday, March 29, 2004 8:30:01 AMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen2Naval War College Review, Vol. 57 [2004], No. 2, Art. 16https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol57/iss2/16previous book chronicled Indian navaldevelopments, this work deftly outlinesthe maritime dimensions of India’s se-curity—economic, political, and mili-tary—and suggests the development ofan overall policy framework to tie themtogether.Roy-Chaudhury is currently a Fellowfor South Asia at the International In-stitute for Strategic Studies (IISS) inLondon. This book was written whilehe was a research fellow at the Institutefor Defense Studies and Analysis(IDSA), a think tank funded by India’sMinistry of Defense. While at IDSA,Roy-Chaudhury specialized in navaland maritime security affairs, and thecombination of his time in this envi-ronment and his previous studiesmakes him eminently qualified to pro-duce a volume on such a subject.The author outlines India’s impressiveeconomic growth in the last decadeand the international, particularlymaritime, implications of that trend.In essence, India has become more de-pendent on trade for its prosperity,and, in turn, it has become more relianton such imported resources as crudeoil, with consumption of petroleumproducts rising during the 1990s moreor less at the same rate as India’s grossdomestic product—about 7 percent perannum. Roy-Chaudhury picks up theconcerns of his first book about the im-portance of a viable national merchantfleet in addition to a navy for a coun-try’s security, noting that India’s rap-idly growing trade is not being met by asimilar growth in either India’s mer-chant fleet or port handling capacity.The author describes a range of interna-tional economic groupings to whichIndia became a member in the 1990sand how those may bolster even furtherIndia’s trade ties.He goes on to discuss India’s rights andinterests in its exclusive economic zone,the maritime portions of India’s long-standing rivalry with Pakistan, and therise of such new, nonstate security is-sues in the Indian Ocean as piracy andarms and narcotics trafficking. He high-lights the changing capabilities of fourcountries with naval presence in theIndian Ocean, making the case thatmore traditional security issues remainsalient and indeed may grow in theirmaritime dimensions. He then essen-tially picks up from his earlier book anddescribes the Indian Navy’s moderniza-tion over the decade of the 1990s. Herehe notes that despite increasing mari-time security issues and increased atten-tion paid to the navy, the recommendedforce structure outlined in 1964, consist-ing of fifty-four principal combatants,has yet to be reached. Where Karnadattributes shortfalls in India’s nuclearforces primarily to a lack of political will,Roy-Chaudhury makes a more mixedcase for the navy’s shortfall. He notes thelack of funding over the years, the col-lapse of India’s primary supplier (theSoviet Union) in the early 1990s, andthe slow transition of India from a buyerof combatants to a builder.Roy-Chaudhury concludes, after a dis-cussion of naval cooperation, that thevarious dimensions of India’s securitythat rely on the sea are growing moreimportant, not less. Therefore, he rec-ommends that the Indian governmentas a whole, not just the navy or theMinistry of Defense, adopt a national-level maritime security policy, essentiallyan updated and expanded ocean policystatement. He was brought into theNational Security Council Secretariat toB O O K R E V I E W S 1 7 9C:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2004.vpMonday, March 29, 2004 8:30:01 AMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen3Winner et al.: Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security; India’s Maritime SecurityPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2004implement such a recommendation.While a draft policy was drawn up in2001, it has yet to be promulgated,pending the formation of greater insti-tutional links among various Indianministries with responsibilities in thisarea. The Ministry of Defense wastasked to initiate such aninterministerial coordinating body, butso far the policy has not been formal-ized. Even without such a public policy,India is moving ahead with enhancingits maritime security in all its spheres.ANDREW C. WINNERNaval War CollegeSmith, Edward A., Jr. Effects Based Operations:Applying Network-centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis,and War. Washington, D.C.: Department of De-fense Command and Control Research Program,2002. 545pp. $20“Effects-based operations [EBO] are co-ordinated sets of actions directed atshaping the behavior of friends, foes,and neutrals in peace, crisis, and war.”This definition is offered in EdwardSmith’s long, tortuous study, EffectsBased Operations. Substitute the terms“speeches by the president,” “negotia-tions by diplomats,” or “economicsanctions” for “effects-based opera-tions,” and the emptiness of this defini-tion becomes all too evident.The major difficulty with this work,however, lies in the following passage:“The very nature of military competi-tion should make it clear that would-befoes will attempt to exploit any warfareniche in which they believe the UnitedStates and its allies cannot successfullyengage. Logically, these would-be foeswill see exploitable niches wherevernetwork-centric and effects-based oper-ations are least applicable. Urban andguerrilla warfare, counter-terrorism op-erations, peacekeeping efforts, and hos-tage rescues are just a few examples.”With this statement, Smith has gratu-itously undermined the importance andvalue of effects-based operations (drag-ging network-centric operations alongin the process), for those “niches” con-stitute the shortlist of operations U.S.military forces will be undertaking forthe foreseeable future.This is a complex and ambitious book,which progresses from a general dis-cussion of EBO through chapters thatillustrate the relationship with network-centric operations, discuss operationsin the cognitive domain, and describehow complexity factors into the pic-ture. Toward the end of the book anoperational example is offered beforesome general conclusions are reached.Effects-based operations, we are repeat-edly reminded, focus on the mind ofman. The “effects-based strategy is con-ceived and executed as a direct assaulton the opponent’s will and not a by-product of destroying his capability towage war.” Just what the “opponent’swill” constitutes is not clearly ad-dressed. Is it the will of the soldiers inthe field, the will of the civilians sup-porting the effort, or the will of theleadership? The differences in Opera-tion IRAQI FREEDOM are noteworthy.The will of the Iraqi armed forces wasquickly broken, as they threw downtheir arms and fled. But was the will ofSaddam, of the brothers Hussein, or ofthe Iraqi resistance broken? How canone confidently determine a change inwill, and how can one be totally surethat the change is permanent? No1 8 0 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E WC:\WIP\NWCR\NWC Review Spring 2004.vpMonday, March 29, 2004 8:30:02 AMColor profile: DisabledComposite  Default screen4Naval War College Review, Vol. 57 [2004], No. 2, Art. 16https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol57/iss2/16

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