Daily Times

As a supplement to the Joint Doctrine of Indian Armed Forces-2017, Indian army has proclaimed its Land Warfare doctrine (LWD) on 14th December 2018. It outlines broader contours of Indian military strategy and draws on different sets of tactics to accomplish the strategy. The document is essentially important to understand India’s perception of the regional and extra-regional environment and how it is likely to affect the political and strategic developments in the region.

The stated doctrine explicitly refers to the Sino-Pak economic cooperation as a collusive threat to the Indian security. The doctrine explicates “collusive threat from adversaries” as one of the major external challenge faced by India. The enunciated assumption follows India’s long held resistance to any effort towards regional integration that doesn’t allow India to implement its dominating agenda and respects the norm of state sovereignty. The latest iteration is a follow up to the Indian policy of deriding China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. India, obsessed with its strategic alignment with U.S. and its agenda of regional domination, continues to see CPEC with suspicion and is ready to lose the unprecedented opportunity of regional connectivity. Indian attempts to fabricate the military dimension of the project by means of propaganda are in line with the objectives mentioned in LWD.

Given the fact that India has already embarked on its project of military modernization by means of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics, this doctrine further emphasizes the integration of AI and Robotics into war fighting and allocation of resources towards this end. LWD touches upon some of the disruptive technologies that include; Directed Energy weapons, hypersonic weapons, Lethal Autonomous weapons, and Micro satellites. This kind of military modernization unveils India’s increasing assertiveness, its bid to achieve “escalation dominance”, and to secure advantageous position in terms of Limited conventional warfare. Considering the nature of bilateral relations between India and Pakistan, it would definitely compel Pakistan to take necessary countermeasures. Given the context, Pakistan will be pushed to allocate resources for the acquisition of such disruptive technologies to balance the negative effect of India’s actions. Consequently, it would lead to a new facet of arms race in the region at the expense of social and economic welfare of the people of the region. Besides this, the doctrine primarily focuses on the logic of limited conventional warfare against the adversaries. But, it is forgotten that the solution is not limited war between the nuclear weapon states, instead it would lead to catastrophic consequences for peace in the region and beyond.

These statements reinforce Pakistan’s long standing claim of India as driver of the fifth generation warfare initiated against the country to destabilize it from within and poses a threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty

To the surprise of many, Indian military declaration has explicitly mentioned the centrality of Information and psychological warfare as India’s response to adversaries. The referred document says, “Psychological Warfare will be used to promote own objectives and the Indian Army shall graduate to a state where mass media becomes an organic part of future operations”. While stating the objective of Indian Army regarding the subject of information warfare, it adds, “Indian Army will develop capabilities to prosecute Information Warfare Operations over the entire spectrum of conflict as well as in ‘No War No Peace’ scenario, with the aim to achieve full spectrum information dominance over the adversary”. These statements reinforce Pakistan’s long standing claim of India as driver of the fifth generation warfare initiated against the country to destabilize it from within and poses a threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

India’s offensive doctrinal ambitions and its posture, as a disrupter of peace, in a recent past go unnoticed at the comity of nations. International community, despite being committed, in rhetoric, to the goal of promotion of global peace and prosperity, continues to appease India for short term economic benefits, in practice. This policy of appeasement, although seems worth pursuing germane to power politics, but in the longer run, it would have some serious setbacks for regional and global peace.

In sum, the doctrine and stated objectives are counterproductive to the goals of regional integration and promotion of peace in the region. The doctrine reflects the typical mindset in the Indian strategic circles that impedes progress on the regional connectivity and sees such benign ventures through suspicion and doubt. Furthermore, it is expected to engender a relatively new facet of arms race and warfare i.e. psychological and information warfare, in the region. Therefore, to ensure regional stability and to forge peace, unbridled Indian ambitions should be muzzled and rule based order should be made to work indiscriminately.

The writer is a Research Affiliate at Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad

Published in Daily Times, January 10^th 2019.