TITLE: Defence Outlays in South Asia

AUTHOR: Tanvir Ahmad Khan

PUB: DAWN

DATE: March 10, 2001

India has raised its defence budget substantially for the seventh successive year. The estimates for 2001-2002 stand at Rs. 620,000 million, an increase of 13.8% over last year's revised estimates of Rs. 544,610 million. Last year's defence outlay had posted an unprecedented 28.3% increase. In current rupees, the latest defence budget is more than thirteen times what India spent on its defence in 1981-82. The steep rise in India's defence expenditure during this period offered a sharp contrast to the noticeable decrease in defence expenditure in most areas of the world. Between 1987 and 1997, global defence expenditure came down from $1,360 billion to $714 billion. A recent CIA study noted that non-U.S. defence spending dropped 50% since the 1980s and the global arms market decreased by the same percentage in the same period. Despite considerable expansion and consolidation of its indigenous defence production in the 1980s and 1990s, India has continued to purchase heavily from abroad. Its plans for a rapid induction of sophisticated imports into its armed forces, including Mig-29 and Sukhoi SU-30 series of combat aircraft, T-90 tanks, missiles and missile launchers, Type 877 EKM 'Kilo' submarines, the recent orders for acquisition of more assets from Russia that would give its navy a serious blue water, ocean-going capability and the huge fund allocations to ordnance factories in successive budgets suggest a relentless drive towards force modernization within the shortest period of time. Even if India is not contemplating an aggressive war against any of its neighbours, it is certainly relying heavily on a quick widening of the already large gap between its conventional superiority and that of other regional powers (other than China from which it is comfortably separated by the Himalayas ) to establish regional supremacy and use military power as a currency of international influence and prestige. Indeed, the CIA report (Global Trends 2015) observes that by 2015 "India will be the unrivalled regional power with a large military - including naval and nuclear capabilities - and a dynamic growing economy." The report also notes that "the widening India-Pakistan gap - destabilizing in its own right - will be accompanied by deep political, economic and social disparities within both states." India's ambitious defence spending coincides with a remarkable period of economic growth; it enables India to keep pegging large defence outlays at a relatively low percentage of its GDP. India has clearly decided to link effectively with global markets in the shortest period of time and also stake a claim to the top militarily strong nations in the world even if it imposes continued sacrifices on the part of India's teeming millions still below the absolute poverty line. India's current pursuit of the status of a major military power is taking place against another shift in the global trends. As noted on earlier occasions in this column, the world may well be heading for a new phase of international anarchy. There is the continued weakening of the United Nations, and more ominously in the attenuation of arms control initiatives. On March 6, the Chinese finance minister, Xiang Huaicheng, justified a 17.7% increase in his country's defence budget by citing the need "to meet the drastic changes in the military situation of the world and prepare for defence and combat given the condition of modern technology, especially high technology." The enhanced Chinese defence budget of $17 billion is still much below the current Japanese spending of $45 billion. Without any doubt, China is absorbing the lessons learnt during the Gulf war, the more recent NATO's war against Serbia and the possibility of further arms transfers to Taiwan by the United States. The Chinese are side-stepping their traditional conservatism in defence expenditure now partly because of the perception that the world may once again be entering a new period of high defence spending after years of a downward slide. A study of Indian defence budgets in recent years indicates strong preoccupation with the cutting edge of technology to achieve a new mix between traditional weapon systems and the latest hi-tech innovations that come under the general rubric of Revolution in Military Affairs. For quite some time to come, India would not be able to mount anything resembling the Gulf War operations but already one can identify new Pakistan-specific features. Amongst them must be mentioned the quest for capability to launch formidable preemptive strikes with missiles and precision guided munitions, blitzkrieg attacks at more than one point in an otherwise large battle space and the threat of a naval blockade. Pakistan's defence expenditure rose from Rs. 18 billion in 1981-82 to Rs 142 billion in 1999-2000. During this entire period, it has represented a higher percentage of the GDP than in the Indian case. Since the correlation between our economic growth and defence expenditure has been steadily becoming unfavourable, the option of any dramatic increase in defence outlays does not exist. The military assistance that had been revived on a substantial scale following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was cut off on October 1, 1990, over the nuclear question. The partial resumption of weapons sale allowed by the United States in 1995 specifically excluded the F-16 aircraft that Pakistan had already paid for. Pakistan's efforts to diversify its sources of arms acquisition since then have only been partially successful. Very often rhetorical references to nuclear deterrence, dramatized by Pakistan's declared policy of rejecting non-first use of nuclear weapons, take the place of a comprehensive debate on national security. Meanwhile, an extended economic downturn marked by falling growth rates has combined with a noticeable degradation of social conditions to erode our comprehensive national power. The Pakistani defence planners are confronted with the challenge of working in a seriously constrained environment. Pakistan can transcend the current plateau of defence spending only at the price of further degradation of its social conditions. Indeed, there is a school of thought in New Delhi that argues that Pakistan's decline can be accelerated by luring it into an open-ended arms race. In the crises of 1986-87 and 1990, Pakistan relied less on numbers and parity and more on innovation and tactical audacity. While it is not difficult to compile a register of Pakistan's arms acquisitions in the 1990s, information is lacking about the degree to which the defence establishment has been able to achieve synergy amongst force levels, doctrine, organization, mobility and technology. It is, therefore, difficult to assess the country's conventional deterrence. Countless Pakistanis are genuinely concerned that at a time when the armed forces should concentrate hard on the operational, tactical and strategic imperatives of a smaller army called upon to successfully deter, and if necessary, ward off an attack by a much larger force, their professionalism is under a threat of erosion from too excessive an engagement with civilian and political life of the nation. A viable security policy for Pakistan depends on finding the right balance among several factors, particularly conventional deterrence, minimum credible nuclear deterrence, and intensified diplomacy aimed at conflict resolution and the removal of the causes of war in the region. The gestalt in which it is located would place a high emphasis on the restoration of comprehensive national power through positive action in the economic, political and cultural fields. Given the constraints, conventional defence demands utmost ingenuity and creativity on the part of the general staff of our armed forces. Writing about the inherent unpredictability of war, Generals Paul Riper and Robert Scales of the United States wrote few years ago that " real war is an inherently uncertain enterprise in which chance, friction, and the limitations of the human mind under stress profoundly limit our ability to predict outcomes." If in the final analysis war is still a contest of human wills, even the most effective machines remain subordinate to superior strategic planning and operational implementation. Pakistan will have to constantly improvise and innovate to offset the numerical advantage of its potential enemies. Our history of the last 50 years indicates that our land-fighting capabilities stand in need of knowledge-based upgradation. Disproportionate reliance on nuclear weapons tempts the enemy to limited conflict in which considerable, and perhaps irreparable damage may be inflicted below the nuclear threshold. It is important to know the limitations of nuclear deterrence. As a responsible nation state that has computed the cost of conflict as well as the peace dividend, Pakistan should intensify its efforts to initiate a genuine peace process in the region despite India's indefensible stone-walling of all recent initiatives from Pakistan or the international community. The core issue that has locked India and Pakistan into perennial confrontation is Kashmir; its negotiated settlement is a prerequisite to their final reconciliation. But the pre-eminence of Kashmir should not reduce the importance of engaging India on conventional and nuclear arms control and strategic restraint. Several proposals made by Pakistan in the past decades have lost some relevance, as India would not accept the India-Pakistan equation as the main determinant of its military policy. It may thus be averse to arms limitation agreements with Pakistan. But what can still be undertaken is threat reduction through agreed steps such as low force zones, non-intimidatory deployment and a whole host of confidence-building measures - conventional and nuclear - that minimize the tensions generated by heavy armament programmes such as the one India is embarked upon at present. Future interaction between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan must factor the fears and apprehensions of either side to become a necessary element in the strategic calculations and decisions of the other side. END top