India’s national security in the Liberal Lens - Ali Ahmed.pdf

Research Paper, 2020

Historically, the sub-continent was a world in itself where empires were raised by the invaders of Hindustan for a millennium. The last was the British Indian Empire. The Hindu consciousness outlived these empires through an impersonal dissociation to preserve its consciousness, culture, value system and worldview. Nevertheless, the legacies of the invaders remain. The Indian foreign policy is the strategic demonstration of the British imperial foreign policy legacy to establish hegemony in South Asia. In its operational expression, India within and without has gone through occupations, annexations, wars and the fomenting of ethnic and sectarian troubles along with the secessionist insurgencies in the neighbouring countries. America is India's strategic partner in its pursuit of South Asian hegemony. The post 9/11 Indo-US nuclear agreement was the beginning of this formal global partnership. It has since expanded into an Indo-US Entente over the last two decades. Meanwhile, the world has transitioned to the Great Power competition with China squared-off against America and India. Pakistan has opened the strategic door for Russia by initiating a New Frontier Policy. Russia in the perception of Pakistan is a strategic partner across the Amu River. The New Frontier Policy is to the unease of Anglo-Saxons. China, Pakistan and Russia are upgrading ties, as the New Great Game continues unfolding with the twists added by the annexation of Kashmir, the Citizenship Act and Reorganization Order, the Sino-Indian clashes and Covid-19.

Margalla Papers

Strategic culture involves diplomatic ties, geopolitical orientation and political ideology involving the military. India’s strategic culture orientates pro-nationalist policies, emphasizing the business progression of a specific class, discriminating in exercising minority rights, and imbalancing diplomatic ties with neighbouring states for regional hegemony. Indian leadership, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi, has kept regional dominance as a primary Indian strategic objective. More importantly, the Indian strategic community has carefully maintained narrative linking insurgencies with its neighbours, especially Pakistan. A cross-sectional analysis of Indian political doctrines explains how internal security challenges of India are shaping its strategic culture and stance towards Pakistan. It includes contextualizing the concept of strategic culture and modelling Indian strategic culture to the scope of research. The impact of Indian strategic culture on Pakistan is multi-di...

The persistence of restraint, stability and minimalism in India's nuclear policy is best explained with reference to its strategic culture. This constitutes an intermediate structure between the power-acquisition imperative of the structure of the international system and domestic choices on how power is actually constituted. Disaggregation of strategic culture into three analytically distinct componentsthe level of assumptions and beliefs, the operational level and the structural frame -facilitates identification of the precise areas of continuity and change in a dynamic structure. The disjunctures observed, whether at one level or between levels, can then be subjected to social action in the pursuit of peace and stability. An examination of Indian strategic culture with respect to nuclear weapons on the basis of official and non-official preference structures reveals (a) high levels of continuity in the form of restrained responses to external and domestic pressures for change, and in a positive disposition toward arms control; and (b) a significant shift from high to low tolerance of ambiguity resulting from the steady growth of an operational, as opposed to a political, conception of nuclear weapons. The last creates space for nuclear instability. The anomaly can be corrected by exposing the deficiencies in the operational conception of deterrence, thereby reinforcing strategic stability.

The persistence of restraint, stability and minimalism in India's nuclear policy is best explained with reference to its strategic culture. This constitutes an intermediate structure between the power-acquisition imperative of the structure of the international system and domestic choices on how power is actually constituted. Disaggregation of strategic culture into three analytically distinct componentsthe level of assumptions and beliefs, the operational level and the structural frame -facilitates identification of the precise areas of continuity and change in a dynamic structure. The disjunctures observed, whether at one level or between levels, can then be subjected to social action in the pursuit of peace and stability. An examination of Indian strategic culture with respect to nuclear weapons on the basis of official and non-official preference structures reveals (a) high levels of continuity in the form of restrained responses to external and domestic pressures for change, and in a positive disposition toward arms control; and (b) a significant shift from high to low tolerance of ambiguity resulting from the steady growth of an operational, as opposed to a political, conception of nuclear weapons. The last creates space for nuclear instability. The anomaly can be corrected by exposing the deficiencies in the operational conception of deterrence, thereby reinforcing strategic stability.

India Review, 2018

[Co-authored with Devesh Kapur]. As India assumes an increasingly salient role in world politics, questions of strategy have come to the fore in the study of Indian security. There is growing scholarly interest in Indian strategic thought and practice across a range of areas including conventional military power, nuclear weapons, maritime security, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and international regimes. This collection of articles expands the horizon of inquiry in some of these areas by situating Indian strategy in its historical context, by challenging conventional wisdom, and by opening new lines of research. In the following sections, we lay out the contours of what the contributors to this special issue collectively take to mean by strategy and then situate the issue in the literature on Indian strategy. We subsequently provide some over-arching observations on Indian strategy that emerge from the articles collected here and conclude by raising some questions regarding the intellectual and practical primacy of strategy in statecraft today.

The security environment of India is a complex and rough terrain; and a daunting task to our security machinery to deal with.Naturally the question is do we have a well-oiled strategy to manage, if not eliminate, these security issues? If the answer is yes, then comes the second question about the efficiency of the proclaimed and not openly stated strategies. Thirdly, the question is do we have a strategic Doctrine? It has been noticed that India does not have officially pronounced any strategic doctrine, despite the fact that the government of India has appointed the Naresh Chandra Task Force on national security in 2012 and the task force has reportedly submitted its recommendations. Scholars have identified certain policy options having a doctrinal import from the various decisions of the cabinet committee on security. According to Joshy and Mitra (2014), India’s doctrine in relation to Pakistan is “strategic restraint and engagement” and the policy vis-a- vis China is “dissuasive defence”. Of late the discussion is that a Modi Doctrine is in the making. This is based on an erroneous reading of his foreign policy overtures like inviting the Tibetan Prime Minister-in- exile for his swearing –in along with the SAARC leaders and his attempts to have strategic partnership with the US ,Japan, Australia etc. However from a close look at what Prime Minister Modi aims to achieve, we could see strikingly similar policiy objectives pursued by his immediate predecessors Mahmohan Singh and A B Vajepaee. Neither of them constructed a doctrine of their own, but pursued a swing policy between Indira Doctrine and Gujral Doctrine, both aimed at strategic autonomy.It could be gleaned that ‘strategic autonomy’, the quintessence of nonalignment, is a fairly constant element in the foreign and strategic policy of India right from the days of Nehru, the architect of India’s foreign and strategic policy.

UPIASI Knowledge Series, 2025

Even after India's overt nuclearization in 1998, the precise fit of nuclear weapons in India's comprehensive power, security, and interests has remained unclear. The paper investigates the role played by nuclear weapons in India's grand strategy; analyses the military-political mix of tools that India deploys as a consequence of nuclearization; asks if nuclearization has presented new challenges to Indian grand strategy and if so, how they have been handled; and seeks to draw out broader lessons about nuclearization and grand strategy from the Indian case. The paper differentiates grand strategy from security algorithm, a newly coined concept about the specific procedures that states adopt to ensure their security. India's nuclear deterrent, driven into existence by a symbolic desire for 'strategic autonomy', has definitely bolstered India's security vis-à-vis China, had an ambiguous and perhaps adverse security impact vis-à-vis Pakistan but, paradoxically, not significantly enhanced India's position in the interstate system. India's emergence as a future great power rests on other factors and capabilities, not overt nuclearization. Thus, states that go nuclear for reasons of prestige seem less able to fit their capability into their grand strategy, unlike states that have acquired nuclear weapons for purely existential survival reasons.

India Review, 2018

[Co-authored with Rahul Sagar]. Although contemporary Indian strategic thought is described in terms of various schools, most scholars agree that prior to the end of the Cold War there prevailed a so-called Nehruvian consensus on India’s strategic objectives. This consensus was allegedly idealist, emphasizing autonomy, peaceful coexistence, and Third World anti-imperialist leadership. We argue that this characterization ignores numerous alternative views on Indian strategy that thrived in elite debates outside the uppermost echelons of power. Many of these views were grounded in pragmatism, or a flexible approach to considerations of power and material interest that eschewed dogmatic thinking, be it high moralism or offensive bluster. Through a case study of India’s response to China’s emerging nuclear program following the latter’s first nuclear test in 1964, we highlight the role that pragmatism played in the national debate and the way it shaped the strategic options considered by the elite at the time.