Author Archives: strategicdialogues

The Gwadar-Karakoram-Xinjiang Corridor

Posted on by
1

The Crowning piece of  China’s Strategic Mosaic to its Africa and Middle East Undertaking

by

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

Keywords: Gwadar-Karakoram-Xinjiang Corridor, Chinese commercial and military engagement of Africa and West Asia

Download full article here: Shankar, The Karakoram Corridor

Excerpts:

A Historical Fable Morphs into Actuality

The North and Northwest Passages were fabled sea routes conjured by adventurers, merchants and money chandlers over the last six centuries to link the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean. The Route lay through the Arctic archipelago of what became Canada and the treacherous ice flows that frustrate passage across the Arctic Ocean. To discover, establish and control a commercial all weather sea line of communication that would have world wide economic significance was the quest of early explorers. Some of these voyages ended in disaster while others in failure in the search for a viable deep sea channel amidst drifting icebergs and trapping ice flows.   Not till 1906 when Amundsen made the transit over an arduous three year voyage was the feat achieved; and a feat it remained till Nature through global warming made the passage a distinct commercial and strategic verity. Today the route is a reality and in 2011 alone more than 18 commercial ships had made the now ice free crossing. To put matters in perspective, as a trade corridor the distance from China to markets in Europe has been cut down to less than 8000 miles from 14,700 miles. Significantly the route avoids two sensitive ‘choke points’ the Malacca Strait and the Suez Canal.

While a combination of strategic security considerations, geopolitical circumstances, commercial power rivalry, imperatives of economy in a globalised world and Nature made actuality of a fable; a very similar array of forces have set in motion another global quest. Only on this historical occasion it is China that  leads the charge to secure a strategic corridor serviced by a maritime terminal that would quench not just its thirst for energy but also provide a secure alternative conduit for the ‘fruits’ of its Africa and Middle East ventures to feed its resource guzzling growth programme.

 […]

Given the stakes that China has in her own development and her justified security concerns, there are adequate signals to suggest that India needs to pull out of the state of paranoia that she transits through every time that China collaborates with Pakistan, particularly so in the case of the Gwadar-Karakoram-Xinjiang energy cum raw materials corridor. It is true that there are very serious unresolved territorial disputes that plague Sino-Indian relations and the proposed corridor runs through some of this territory; but what is of greater significance is the burgeoning trade between the two which is expected to reach $100 billion by 2015. In this deepening of commercial relations lies the germ of friction resolution.

Download full article here: Shankar, The Karakoram Corridor

Strategic Posture in the Eastern Ocean

Posted on by
2

by

VAdm (retd.) Vijay Shankar 

Download full article here: Shankar, Strategic Posture in the Eastern Ocean

Keywords: India Maritime Strategy, Strategic Approach, Eastern Ocean,  China Comprehensive National Power, ASEAN, Look East Policy

Excerpts:

[…]

It was Clausewitz who first noted an area of darkness when it came to characterizing the complex relationship between national strategy and the military resources that were needed to muscle and enable that strategy. He perceived this region of obscurity as one caused by a lack of an understanding of the nature of power and the need to sculpt it in a manner that it promoted national strategy. Specifically within the framework of the military as a tool he identified this as a failure to distinguish between the maintenance of armed forces and their use in pursuit of larger objectives.[i] In Book II of Clausewitz’s On War, while discussing ‘The Theory of War,’ he notes,

“Even if we break down war into its various activities, we will find that the difficulties are not uniform throughout. The more physical the activity, the less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes intellectual and turns into motives which exercise a determining influence on the commander’s will, the more the difficulties will increase. Thus it is easier to use theory to organize, plan and conduct an engagement than it is to use it in determining the engagement’s purpose.”[ii]

This quandary was not unique to Clausewitz’s period as the dilemma continues to contemporary times when the momentum that propels the development of armed forces builds logic of growth that defies purpose and is often self fulfilling.

The absence of a cogent theory, which integrates the promotion, nurturing and maintenance of force with a convincing contract for use, is one of the first imperatives that the State must seek to reconcile. From this resolution emerges the concept of ‘Strategic Poise.’

[…]

A Hundred Battles: Chinese Security Perceptions[iii]

China published its sixth Defense White Paper in January 2008. Its contours were that of a self-confident China recognizing its own growing economic and military prowess. Unwritten was Beijing’s intention to improve her image the first step of which was to provide some clarity by the issuance of the White Paper. At the same time, the paramountcy of containment of the various social fissures that their development has precipitated was top of their agenda. Their appreciation of the security situation underscored the belief that the risk of world wide all-out war was relatively low in the foreseeable future, yet, the absence of such risk did not automatically imply a conviction that stability and peace pervades international relations. The paper critically points out that struggles for cornering strategic resources, dominating geographically vital areas and tenanting strategic locations have, in fact, intensified. Power as a natural currency for politics remains the preferred instrument. Under these circumstances the portents for friction are ever present and would therefore demand preparedness, modernization and orientation of a nature that would serve to neutralize the fall out of such friction.[iv]

[…]
Contemporary challenges in the Eastern Ocean in context of the Look East policy are dominated by three currents. What direction China’s rise will take is a matter of conjecture, of significance is that the potential for a collision is a reality and the only consideration that could deter it, is the ability of India to attain a strategic posture in the Eastern Ocean that serves to stabilize. On the ‘globalization-nationalism’ non state actor conundrum, clearly plural societies with decentralized control are more likely to transform, adjust, adapt and tweak their systems than monolithic centrally controlled States such as China which are intrinsically brittle in form, the fallout on the region caused by a transformation inconsistency can only be traumatic. The third current is India’s relationship with the USA; it is here that some control exists in the hands of our policy makers. India has shown itself; through restraint, pluralistic and popular form of governance to be a responsible State that upholds the status quo yet invites change through democratic forces and its rise, in the main, is not only welcomed in South East Asia but is seen as a harmonizing happening that could counterpoise China.  The next step would logically be to establish an Indo-US strategic framework in the maritime domain, if we are to resourcefully contend with the challenges that the Eastern Ocean presents.

End Notes

[i] Howard, Michael, Causes of War, Harvard University Press 1980, p.102.

[ii] Clausewitz Carl Von, On War, Howard and Paret (Eds.), Princeton University Press: New Jersey, 1989, p. 140

[iii] In Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Knowing the enemy and knowing oneself is the key to victory in a hundred battles. Sun Tzu, Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith (trans.) Oxford University Press, 1963.

[iv] Ma Cheng-Kun,  PLA News Analysis, “Significance of 2008 China’s National Defense White Paper” no. 15, pp. 49-60

Strategic Stability: The See Saw Margery Daw of Nuclear Politics

Posted on by
1

by

VAdm (retd.) Vijay Shankar 

Keywords: Nuclear Doctrinal Co-relation, Deterrence Stability, Strategic Equilibrium, Conventionalizing the Deterrent, “How much is enough?”

This paper draws from a presentation made by the author to members of the Ottawa Dialogue, a Track II initiative, on 12 December 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand.

All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. Author’s email: snigir@gmail.com

Read full article here: Shankar, Strategic Stabilty

Excerpt:

Preamble

Ours is an enigmatic, deficient, at times unfair, and for the most, an incompetent world. Its dynamics often engender paranoia and deep distrust between states particularly when amorphous national interests and intentions come into question. Unfortunately the alternative to this system is anarchy.

Marshall Ferdinand Foch, one of the lesser of the meat grinding generals of the First World War when faced with the bewildering nature of the larger strategic situation is said to have countered with a fundamental question, “De quoi s’agit-il”?[i] “What is it all about?” Indeed this poser, if understood and answered in the context of nuclear stability, would bring us to the complexities that face nations with the coming of a weapon that can obliterate the very purpose of warfare. Rarely in history have we seen the advent of a weapon that could in one flash achieve the grisly Clauswitzian goal of absolute war.

Against the reality of conventional war with its limited goals and moderated ends and the unlikelihood of it being outlawed in the foreseeable future, the separation of the conventional from the nuclear is a logical severance. Nuclear weapons are to deter and not for use. Given the politics of the South Asian region, the historical animosities and the emasculated nature of civilian leadership in Pakistan, the dangers of adding nuclear violence to military perfidy, as recent proliferatory history has shown, is more than just a reality. The collusive nature of the Sino-Pak nuclear weapons programme and the duality that it presents queers the field to an extent when nuclear doctrinal co-relation is suggested. Stability in this context would suggest stability of the deterrent relationship with avoidance of conflict provocation being the leitmotif.

The essence of stability is therefore to agree on certain foundational rules of conduct based on an understanding of realities. In defining these rules the intrusion of technology is unfortunately double edged for while it provides for modernization it invites covertness, which promotes, what I have termed as, a speculative bulge in the arsenal. The recent plutonium rush and the burgeoning of nuclear arsenals in the sub-continent is a manifestation of this bulge. Secondly, that the army in Pakistan is the true power centre, is that nation’s most open secret and therefore for India to engage an enfeebled and impotent civilian leadership is self defeating. Unless the army is brought into the dialogue, either directly or indirectly through an interlocutor, deliberations on deterrent stability will be destined for failure.

[i]Marshall Ferdinand Foch as quoted in the book ‘The Guns of August’ by Tuchman, Barbara published in 1962.

Read full article here: Shankar, Strategic Stabilty