Warmongering and the Civil-Military “Schismogenesis”

How much war and how much militarization our society can accept must be decided by the people and not through sinister games orchestrated by a few

Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it. 

                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                        -Gregory Bateson

Since the beginning of this year, Rajouri, Mendhar, Poonch and Uri sectors have been witness to repeated incidents of senseless violence, accompanied by equally vociferous debates on news networks. Each incident has left the government more embarrassed. On the other hand, the army, despite inept border management, has ended gaining greater autonomy for local commanders to manage border incidents, including the right to retaliate with maximum force. 

The media has been constantly accusing the government of timidity in its policy towards China and Pakistan. The government on the other hand is trapped in a “double bind”. It cannot openly chide the military for its incompetence nor can it afford to grant the military greater independence in border management, which impacts significantly on foreign policy. The result is that the government’s choices have reduced and it gets the blame for whatever the option is chosen. 

Defence Minister Antony’s flip flop on the issue of who killed the five Indian soldiers in the Poonch sector in the August 6 incident, actually conforms with the “double bind” theory where the “victim” gets embroiled in a communicational matrix, where every message contradicts the first and all utterances only generate negativity.

A persistent fusillade of accusations, communication chaos and “black propaganda” is being used to push the government deeper into a situation where it will have no other option but to plunge the nation into war either with Pakistan or China. An environment is being created where the Indian state will either relinquish democratic control over the conduct of the military arm and hand it over to hawkish uniformed officers and their allies within civil society – notably, the retired generals who have nothing to lose and much to gain from arms dealerships and contracts -- or develop schizophrenic tendencies that eventually manifest in the form of panic or rage.

It is hard to imagine that five young Indians boys had to sacrifice their lives just to prevent the two prime ministers from having a convivial meeting, perhaps over pomegranate juice, at New York. The senseless killings in Poonch were not the work of some uneducated non-state actors. It was ordered by Pakistani generals, graduates of American War College and military academies. 

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s insanity was matched by the naïveté of forty former Indian soldiers, spies and babus, who have signed a joint statement asking the Indian government to adopt a tough military stance against Pakistan. The situation has reached such a pass that even outside powers have started hinting at a possible war. In a recent interview, Marie Harf, the US State Department spokesperson said that it would be “getting ahead” of events on the ground to suggest that South Asia was moving towards yet another war between nuclear-armed neighbours.” To use Arthur Sibler’s words, for these so-called nationalists, “war dead are props used to purify and sanctify the ongoing and future campaigns of slaughter, in an endless procession of slaughters throughout history. The war dead are especially useful since they have been rendered forever mute; they are unable to tell us the truth of what they endured, or about the lies for which they died.”

Mutilated young men and wailing war-widows is what warmongers seek to satiate the machinery of war. They refuse to use their minds to create conditions for a reduction of violence. They demand memorials not to honour the brave-hearts but to further militarise society. For them, poverty and unemployment are healthy because it ensures uninterrupted supplies to military manpower markets. They demand valorous men not for national security but to protect a notion of nationhood that is entirely about territory, not people. The retired Indian hawks who are now demanding more war had given similar policy prescriptions while they were in service. Despite the endless list of war-widows and war wounded, they refuse to introspect on the ultimate futility of the five wars that India has fought since independence. But how does one expect these warriors of primetime television to value human lives when their minds are programmed to think property and profits? 

The shameless use of dead-soldiers for political purposes is abominable. However, more shocking is the use of beheaded and mutilated-soldiers to alter the civil-military relations in the country. The border incidents are being used to vilify and embarrass the government more than targeting the enemy. It is intriguing - this year’s three major incidents on the northern borders have exacerbated the existing acrimony between the army and the government. And all three occasions have displayed the emerging fissures in the Indian polity. 

There are only two players that wish to see the national military stand apart from the Indian state. The first is the frustrated right-wing conservatives who don’t see power flowing into their hands through the democratic route. For them, a disenchanted military is a must to catapult them to power. In addition, the talk of masculinity and manhood also helps them reinforce notions of patriarchy that their social and political identity is built on. 

An Indian military estranged from the state is also an outcome that the besieged superpower, the U.S., would greatly appreciate. It has been very cumbersome for the U.S. to take Indian military personnel out on expeditionary assignments and junkets in support of its imperial agenda since the rules of civilian supremacy in force require that permission be granted by the elected government. The Pentagon has to follow procedures in its home turf, but intensely dislikes the procedures it encounters elsewhere, which it dismissively describes as “red tape”. It would prefer to deal with the Indian military in about the same way that it deals with the Pakistan military. Through the military-media games recently launched in India, it seems that there is a clear agenda from an as yet unidentified quarter of the global power matrix, to produce an Indian version of a Musharraf or a Mubarak.

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The Fog and Friction of Civil-Military War in India

 The way things stand today, India cannot afford to postpone thinking about the civil-military relations. Much more than frivolous issues like FDI in retail,  financial reforms or strategic tie up to be a great power, it is the civil-military conundrum that should occupy the strategic debate in the country. Any neglect of the concerns that the armed forces are raising will only accentuate the feeling of alienation that many sections of the national militray are harbouring.  There is an urgent need of adroit management of the inevitable militarization of the polity and politicization of the military rather than being passive bystanders at the cusp of changing times

Pandit Nehru's funeral and large army presence to control crowds and to avoid the chaos that happened at Mahatma Gandhi's funeral  

In 1964, at Nehru’s funeral, Indian army troops had quietly moved into Delhi, raising fears that the army was planning to take over the reins of power. The civilian authorities were not convinced that the sudden surge of troops into the capital was to control crowds at the funeral. They went to the extent of tapping the phone of Gen JN Chaudhuri, then Army Chief. Incidentally,  the memories of 62 war defeat were fresh at this time and  the American influence on our military that had begun during the mid 1940s became more pronounced. However, after Nehru's death India refused to join up with the Americans without rocking the civil-military boat any further. 

Five decades later, the Indian media has once again reported a similar story - on the night of 16 January (the day on which the army chief Gen VK Singh decided to go to court against the government to resolve his age issue), an unusual converging of the Indian army units (mechanised infantry and 50 Parachute Brigade) took place around the national capital that already has two brigades stationed in Delhi cantonment. According to the Indian army all this was a part of a routine exercise to make the soldiers march through the formidable Delhi fog.

Much like in 1964, the alleged coup of 2012 also happened only in the minds of certain people. However, this sudden flux, the search for a new equilibrium in the civil-military relations in India is certainly not a figment of a reporter’s imagination. The Indian armed forces community is no longer at its submissive best. It is feeling marginalized as the civilian administration is cussedly clinging on to archaic definitions of politico-military equations and making the military feel almost like a civil society group. For years the government and the military were one - equally Indian – then why has the military suddenly started appearing as a separate entity distanced from the state?

The tumultuous trend started in 2008, during the 6th Pay Commission deliberations when ex-servicemen movements sprang up. Aping American veterans, the Indian retired community returned their medals to the President of India, and even sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister signed in blood. The issue was given a burial with a generous pay package by the government. However, these questions have resurfaced after the current Indian chief of army staff decided to drag the government to the apex court to settle his date of birth.

The General belongs to the generation that grew up with a sense of defeat and humiliation at the hands of China. His generation had come to revere Field Marshal Sam Mankeshaw who had not only won India a military victory in Bangladesh but had also dared to address Indira Gandhi as ‘Sweetie’ – an ultimate achievement for a generation of military officers brought up to play second fiddle to the politicians.

After Sam Mankeshaw the Indian armed forces have failed to produce a General, who could be a match for the guts of the two Field Marshals, KM Cariappa and Sam Manekshaw or General KS Thimayya when it came to dealing firmly with politicians. The closest a general came to occupy the vacant spot was General K Sundarji, however, he failed to seal his place because of the Indian military’s failure in Sri Lanka in late 1980s. The others who followed were generally considered to be nine-to-five variety of generals who were more bothered about their post retirement jobs in the government than in making any serious attempts to halt the downward slide of the armed forces in the national protocol list. Perhaps it is this vacuum that General VK Singh has attempted to fill through his strident stand against the government.

Towards the fag end of the 1990s Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat brought to fore the misdemeanors of the political class in hobnobbing with illegal and legal arms dealers. He had defied the then defence minister, George Fernandes and gave orders to his men not to pay undue respect to bureaucrats in the MoD like addressing them as ‘sir’ nor to offer any rum bottles (from officer’s personal quota) to clerks in the ministry to get files cleared on a fast track.

But unfortunately, very few in the defence community could appreciate what the Admiral was doing. The Admiral was ahead of the times. His campaign against the foreign military industrial complex was launched at a time when majority of the Indian elite were intoxicated by the neo-liberal reforms and the ensuing strategic relationship with the United States and Israel. The Admiral’s liberal secular views also did not cut much ice with the then BJP government. The result was that Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat was sacked without causing much reshuffle on the civil-military front.

Today, the same veterans who had once opposed Admiral Bhagwat are now standing up to support General VK Singh in his tirade against only one particular arms deal. Their political compulsions of embarrassing the government are understandable but their ideological commitment to the idea of a corruption free arms trade is suspect. There is every possibility that much of this support is only to see the defence minister replaced by a more pliable man favoring the arms lobby. While there is clarity about what Admiral Bhagwat stood for, one is not clear about the intellectual depth in General VK Singh’s stand on India’s defence preparedness and civil-military linkages.

It is naively believed by some that the protracted civil-military tussle can be sorted out simply with the increased presence of men in uniform at key decision making positions in the ministry of defence. It is suggested that bureaucracy be removed as a via media between the government and the military. At a theoretical level, accepting a modicum of militarization of the polity is a sound suggestion but in practice the removal of bureaucracy will bring the military in direct touch with politicians. The military would then be expected to not only manage organized violence but also cash flows associated with arms deals on behalf of politicians. This may lead military officers to seek bank accounts in tax havens – subjecting the men-in-uniform to political and criminal pressures. In nutshell, militarization of the polity will concomitantly lead to greater corruption but also politicization of the military.

The conservative politicians may accept the enhanced role for military within political structures. But can military afford to tamper with its apolitical character? The regular interactions of the Indian army with civilian populations in counter insurgency operations has already made the army’s command structure vulnerable to corrupt practices and allegations of human rights violations, any further penetration into civilian realms is likely to have deleterious impact on our democracy.

If a minimalist politicization of the army to restore the civil-military equilibrium appears unhealthy, then equally dangerous is the proposition of leaving the army wrapped in a Nehruvian jacket - dangling away from mainstream national decision making bodies. It is scary because times have changed and so has the Indian foreign policy that is tilting towards the USA. The Indian military is being urged to rethink its mission and feel emboldened to play a more proactive role on the international stage. As expected, the Indian military’s direct contact with the American empire is aggravating the civil military complexities. Under such circumstances if the political class was to fail to bridge the gap between the Indian state and its armed forces, the men-in-uniform may be tempted to seek solace in American arms as many militaries from third world countries have done earlier. As Morris Janowitz had identified in his book, The Professional Soldier: a Social and Political Portrait (1960) - "The transformation of the military to one which ‘seeks viable international relations, rather than victory…leads to an inevitable politicization of the military. And with this comes an implicit challenge to civilian supremacy."

Gen VK Singh’s melodramatic media strategy must not be allowed to go in vain. It should lead the authorities to put on their thinking caps. The biggest challenge for Indian leadership is to curtail the imperial army from courting our military. There is an urgent need of adroit management of the inevitable militarization of the polity and politicization of the military rather than being passive bystanders at the cusp of changing times.