Oxford International Relations in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015. xi, 264 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$79.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-945162-3.
In the aftermath of the disastrous Sino-Indian border war of 1962, India’s policy makers embarked on a massive program of military modernization. It entailed the creation of ten new mountain divisions prepared for high altitude warfare, the expansion of the air force to forty-five squadrons equipped with supersonic aircraft and an enlargement of the army to a million men under arms. There was also a modest program of naval modernization.
Over the next six decades, several, though not all, of these goals have been realized. In 2014, a parliamentary panel revealed that the Indian Air Force, despite having a sanctioned strength of forty-five squadrons, could only field twenty-five operational squadrons. This abject shortfall can be attributed in considerable part to an extremely dilatory approach to weapons acquisition and one that has been marked with bureaucratic sloth, allegations of widespread corruption, and the failure of the indigenous weapons industry to meet stated targets.
The most egregious of these failures, of course, has been the attempt to build an indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). The project was formally commissioned in 1983. Multiple attempts at building an engine resulted in failure. Eventually the designers acquired a General Electric engine to power the aircraft. In 2015, over three decades after the decision to build the aircraft, the Indian Air Force is scheduled to receive two squadrons in 2017.
Several chapters in Basrur and Gopalaswamy’s edited volume touch upon some of these endemic problems that have dogged India’s attempts to build a domestic defense industrial base and to modernize its armed forces. The overall quality of the book, however, is quite uneven. Most importantly, it does not deal with perhaps the two most compelling failures of India’s efforts toward defense indigenization: the efforts to manufacture a main battle tank and field a light combat aircraft.
One of the better chapters in this volume is that of Bibhu Prasad Routray, who shows that the behemoth public-sector firms, which have dominated India’s defense industry, have abjectly failed to meet deadlines, global standards, and production targets. He correctly argues that the technical personnel who have dominated these entities have been able to successfully defend their turf. In considerable part their ability to maintain such autonomy has stemmed from early political decisions which privileged technocrats over the uniformed military. Furthermore, he also underscores how defense research and development organizations’ putative success in the realm of missile technology has enabled it to ward off compelling criticism of its myriad failures.
Another chapter that also merits mention is Gaurav Kampani’s analysis of the dysfunctional features of India’s operational nuclear policy. Kampani, who has written extensively on this subject elsewhere, makes a deft argument that organizational pathologies, more than any other factor, have hobbled India from adopting a viable operational policy for its nuclear weapons. In this chapter he also carefully outlines some of the doctrinal tensions that have undermined the quest for a successful operational strategy.
Other chapters in this volume, such as that of one of the two editors, Bharat Gopalaswamy, on India’s space policy, demonstrate a firm grasp of technical issues and questions. However, the principal drawback of his contribution is that it is mostly descriptive. Furthermore, instead of tracing the evolution of India’s space policy and the acquisition of various assets, it focuses disproportionately on the role of space technologies of other states and the role they played in various recent conflicts.
Other chapters further underscore the unevenness of this volume. For example, Probal Ghosh’s discussion of India’s quest for ballistic missile defense makes some theoretical as well as practical claims that are questionable if not untenable. At a theoretical level he argues that India’s acquisition and deployment of a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system would strengthen deterrence against Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under ideal circumstances an Indian BMD system could contribute to a strategy of deterrence by denial. However, from Pakistan’s standpoint, India’s pursuit of a BMD system, combined with some of the more expansive claims that a number of Indian technocrats have made in the public domain, it appears that India is seeking a strategy of escalation dominance. Not surprisingly, Pakistan is now seeking to dramatically expand its nuclear arsenal and is resorting to strategies of concealment to thwart any advantage that India might derive from the successful deployment of a BMD system.
Ghosh’s chapter alone is not the sole problematic contribution to this volume. Despite much apparent theoretical sound and fury, Kartik Bommakanti’s chapter on innovation in strategic technologies lacks empirical substance. It fails to home in on specific technologies and cases and instead proceeds to discuss various technological developments and choices in a scattershot fashion. As a consequence, it makes no significant contribution to either theoretical development or policy analysis.
Two final comments about this volume are in order. As with many edited books this one suffers from a familiar problem. There are individual chapters that are thoughtful, well argued, and cogently written. Others, obviously, are not. Additionally, another drawback of this volume is the lack of a clear organizing framework that would have made these contributions dovetail into one another. The absence thereof leaves the reader wondering about the analytical basis for the selection of the topics included and the exclusion of others.
Sumit Ganguly
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
pp. 174-176