By

Vice Admiral (retd.) Vijay Shankar

(Published in the author’s column “The Strategist” on the IPCS website on 12 March 2018 and available at http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/quad-the-making-of-a-robust-entente )

The force planner’s primary task is to ensure that the military element of national power, alongside economic and political elements, can support national strategy. In 1950, India had defined national goals in the Preamble and Directive Principles to its Constitution. It then became a part of each political dispensation to contribute towards nation building. Is this happening?

The history of the National Defence Academy (Bal, Adarsh) provides intriguing perspective that underscores the general apathy that the Indian Military was subjected to by the post-independence administration. Two issues separated in time by seven decades warrant attention. Firstly, how was it that Indian political leadership of that era, “statesmen” such as they were, failed to understand the fundamental imperative of nation building: Security? Secondly, contemporary geo-politics has prompted the emergence of a security entente, “the Quad,” that could assure stability in a region at the substratum of global security. Disdain towards the first, led within a decade to the ’62 debacle in the Himalayas; while the latter, if not understood for its primary security connotations through indifference and sloth, may well lead to a fiasco at sea.

The Government of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan awarded a sum of Pound Sterling 100,000 in 1941, for sacrifices made by Indian Troops. Two Indian Divisions confronted Mussolini’s Armies that threatened the Suez and, indeed, the British Indian Empire. By the end of the campaign Italian forces from Eritrea and Abyssinia were routed. Quarter of a million prisoners taken and the Axis threat to India from the West quashed. A grateful Imperial Office made the grant. However, at War’s end, impending independence of India left the British Government in a quandary; how best was the quick dissipating empire to capitalize on these equally depleting monies? It was at Field Marshall Auckinleck’s (then C-in-C India) intervention that temptation to appropriate for any other cause was evaded and a decision made to establish a National War Academy.

What remained after allocation to Pakistan proved just adequate to acquire land and commence to build. By 1955, the imposing Sudan Block that housed the humanities and administrative departments dominated the Khadakvasla valley. Insouciance of the establishment was apparent when no further budgetary allocation was made. Admittedly those were hard times, yet to deliberately oversee the stillbirth of a primary security building block is perplexing. It is to the credit of military leadership that the remaining infrastructure was constructed using ‘internal resources’.  No help came from the Government which barefacedly had deemed the military superfluous. One is, then, at a loss to explain the foolhardy ‘forward deployment strategy’ at a time when preparedness for war was so parsimonious. The 1959 Chinese incursions at Longju and Kongka La and the 1962 drubbing were consequent.

The profound influence of sea-commerce on the wealth and energy of nations is well known. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) has evolved in response to increased Chinese revisionist trends and the need for a strategic security architecture that could lend stability in the Indo-Pacific. The founding nations: United States, Japan, India and Australia driven by the concept of co-operative security, launched the idea in 2007. The strategy however appeared a non-starter with early withdrawal of Australia. It has been recently revived to counter China’s intrusive military power and its unrelenting thrust for an exceptionable proprietary mercantile empire stretching across the region- the Belt and Road Initiative.

The only historical parallel to the Quad is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). World War II had left a devastated Europe sans security that it could neither afford nor envisage. While a militaristic Soviet Union was threatening elected governments with its lure of a Utopian fair-to-middling for all. To contain Soviet expansionism, counter the revival of nationalist militarism and advocacy of European integration; the Treaty was signed in 1949.Three remarkable articles were at the core of its Charter:  Article 5, the new Allies agreed “an armed attack against one or more of them be considered an attack against all”. Article 3 provided for cooperation in military preparedness while Article 2 lay the under structure for non-military cooperation. Global events of the 1950s and 60s had a dramatic effect upon NATO, for it rapidly adopted an integrated command structure, a permanent secretariat and doctrines to wage conventional or nuclear war. In time political stability was restored and there was growing recognition of the new Order.

The Charter of the Quad is yet to be fleshed out; but conceivably, it will have three objectives. The first, to reinforce a rule-based regional Order that rejects nationalistic militarism of the kind that has emerged in China. Second, to promote a liberal trading regime and freedom of navigation, essential to secure passage of close to 60% of global trade through the Indo-Pacific. Third, to provide security assurances. However, just as behind the scenes machinations from Beijing splintered the Quad at inception, the entente faces similar fragmenting stresses that threaten the whole. India is locked into a long standing border dispute with China. Similarly, Japan has maritime disputes in the South and East China Seas while China’s new Air Defence Identification Zone provides the recipe for mutual interference in the air. Australia on the other hand depends on China for approximately 22 % of trade. And there is China’s assignee, the maverick nuclear armed North Korea whose influence cannot be set aside.

As the Quad  push to get their initiative to fly, success will likely hinge on how they hold their ground against pressure from China, nature of the security architecture and an understanding of ‘peril-to-the-whole.’ Key to the structure will be constitution of Charter in terms of identifying the geographic entity within which it would operate, investments in cooperative security and apportioning responsibilities. The question is, does leadership recognize that Chinese realpolitik is at play and that only a system based on pragmatic rather than ideological considerations can confront it?