But as Indian power has outstripped Pakistani power, the real land threat to India is now over the mountains and not across the flatter terrain to the west. This Indian author thinks India needs to rethink their strategy:
I found during my recent interactions in New Delhi that our strategic thinking continues to be largely enchained to ground-based perceptions and that we are unable to reach for the skies and the seas.
The skies and the seas have realities of their own distinct from ground realities. Unless we are able to perceive them in due measure and make them an integral part of our strategic thinking and planning, any exercise to modernise the national security mechanism will remain unsatisfactory.
The author wants a new naval strategy for India. I agree, but I think even a naval reappraisal takes second place to an emphasis on air power. With the primary ground threat to India now over the mountains, India's ground defense needs are more localized and less likely to be a decisive fight. By default, Indian defense needs are shifting to the air (first) and the sea, as I wrote here:
The basic point is that the two most populous nations on the planet don't really have a front for a decisive land war despite their long common border. Ironically enough, despite their size and border, the main arena for a war would lie at sea and in the air.
And given that neither has a fleet ready to reach the usual patrol areas of the other, the main method of fighting in the near future is in the air--where India is badly outgunned.
India's path to rebalancing their defenses will be shorter with our pivot to Asia and the Pacific that will absorb more Chinese attention than otherwise. India needs to take advantage of our reorientation to redress defense imbalances that have built up over many decades to counter Pakistan and which no longer make sense for India's future defense needs.
And it is time for India to stop dwelling on our past support for Pakistan:
Yet while New Delhi has been open to increasing bilateral engagement with Washington – and does in fact undertake a number of joint exercises across the three defense services – the establishment in India is still wary of any military alliance, or even a formal partnership with the United States.
Why? It’s partly because India doesn’t want to upset China, its main competitor in Asia, by openly embracing the United States.However, more fundamentally, Indian lawmakers and politicians continue to have reservations over the United States itself, doubts born largely from India’s perception of the past half a century that Washington has tended to side with India’s arch rival, Pakistan.
A lot of pivots need to take place in the new world we face. We're willing to get past India's long friendship with our arch-foe the Soviet Union, after all.
UPDATE: Welcome Bharat Rakshak readers.
