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India’s External Security Challenges

Shivshankar Menon

Today, India is in the fortunate position of not facing any existential threat to her security. In that respect it is better placed today than in the past. She also has an increased capacity to deal with external challenges to her security now.

This cannot, however, obscure the fact that the international environment in which India makes her foreign policy and national security decisions has worsened recently. At the same time, her internal security challenges, many of which have strong external linkages, have also increased. Despite her improved capacity to deal with these challenges, it appears that India is entering a new era, which will require new responses from the country.

The Regional Context

A major determinant of India’s external security is the international context within which it operates and seeks to develop and transform itself.

Today’s world is less supportive and offers more difficult choices than the binary ones of the Cold War. Nor does it offer the economic opportunities of the years before the world economic crisis of 2008. Both world politics and the world economy are fragmenting and becoming increasingly regional. Protectionism has grown around the world. The rise of China, and her quest for primacy, first in Asia and then globally, along with a hierarchical view of an international order centred on herself, epitomized by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), pose a new set of questions and challenges to the established order and to Western supremacy. China now uses economic means, such as the BRI programme, to pursue geopolitical outcomes. In effect, economics and politics are no longer separate in today’s world. Indeed, politics may now be driving economics.

Pressing issues for India are the disequilibrium or accelerated imbalances of power in the Asia–Pacific, sub-regional vacuums created by the rise of China and other powers, and the Trump administration’s effective disengagement from the world. While these imbalances and vacuums will be corrected, recalibrated or filled over time, it is a slow process of adjustment that creates friction and tension. China seems to have decided that the time has come for her to reorder the broader region. The United States administration under Trump is yet to clarify its approach to China and the region. The initial signs are of a more transactional and less geopolitical US approach, driven by what it can get out of China and the Asia–Pacific rather than by the effect of its policies on other states, friends or allies, or on regional order. It remains in doubt whether these will amount to a long-term approach that other states can base their policies upon. These processes will, therefore, take time to work themselves through to a new equilibrium.

In the meantime, disequilibrium is liable to: ignite flash-points like the Korean Peninsula; invite overreach by one power or another in territorial and maritime disputes like the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the India–China boundary; or create space for insurgents, extremists and terrorists to exploit fragile societies and states like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and southern Philippines. Whether they admit it or not, states in the Asia–Pacific today face unparalleled uncertainty. They are responding by tightening internal controls and building up their own defences, in what amounts to the world’s greatest arms race, seeking partners who share their security concerns, and hedging their relationships with great powers like China and the US.

The commons in the Asia–Pacific are now increasingly contested, whether on the high seas, or in cyber and outer space. Since the commons are increasingly critical to the prosperity and security of the region, and for India, this poses a real problem for all the countries of the region. The traditional regional security architecture, of a hub-and-spokes arrangement centred on the US, or even a new G-2 of the US and China, is unable and unlikely to be able to address these issues. The Asia–Pacific is a crowded geopolitical space with several established, re-emerging and rising powers jostling in close proximity, all of whom have to be part of a solution, if that solution is to be lasting.

Secondly, domestic developments in many large countries have heightened the uncertainty and complexity created by the regional imbalance of power.

Since the 2008 financial crisis there has been a rise of authoritarian centralizers to power in several large countries, including China, Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, the UK and the US. They base their legitimacy on a heightened appeal to nationalism or nativism. In a slowing global economy, and in spite of the diminishing capacity of their governments to deliver domestic growth, they promise more and more and rely on nativist appeals (like ‘America first’ or ‘The Great Rejuvenation of China’). In southern Asia, this phenomenon takes local forms. India is no exception to the global trend; in Pakistan, the power, influence and role of the army has been considerably enhanced at the expense of civilian governments nominally in power.

One result of this phenomenon is to accentuate the fragmentation and regionalization of world politics. As the powers’ capacity to compromise and negotiate is lessened, relations between competitive powers become more fraught than in the past. Some of this dynamic is visible in India–Pakistan and India–China relations over the last year or so. Neither relationship is as smooth or predictable as it was a few years ago, and today pose new challenges to Indian security policy, separately and together.

The 2003 ceasefire along the LoC between India and Pakistan has broken down and political communication between the two states is minimal. As a consequence, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit has been postponed and cooperation in SAARC has been driven down to subregional levels, which excludes Pakistan. Even if there were to be a warming of India–Pakistan relations, the underlying causes of tension—cross-border terrorism from Pakistan and its quest for ‘strategic parity’ with India, and strategic depth in Afghanistan—are rooted in Pakistan’s internal condition. Therefore, they are likely to repeatedly assert themselves, and any warming is likely to be temporary. The prospect of difficult India–Pakistan relations is a geopolitical fact that affects and will affect the geopolitical choices of India and other Asian countries.

The last few years have also seen a considerable strengthening of China’s ties with Pakistan, her only ally apart from North Korea. As China steps out into the region, and as China–US strategic contention strengthens, it has hinged the BRI on the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Not all projects under the BRI seem viable economically, which suggests that they have been included for geopolitical or other reasons. CPEC, for instance, lacks economic justification, and its strategic portions like Gwadar Port that have been implemented first, give the Chinese navy, which is now building a base at Djibouti, access and presence in the northern Arabian Sea and the approaches to the Hormuz Strait. This changes India’s security calculus. The CPEC is to traverse some of the most lawless and insecure parts of the world. For India there is the added complication that it goes through the Indian territory under Pakistani occupation, and by making a long-term investment on that basis, seeks to solidify and legitimize that occupation. This is clearly unacceptable to the Indian government.

India–China relations have always had elements of both cooperation and competition, and are undergoing a shift, though the prospect is more positive than for India–Pakistan relations. The older modus vivendi from the eighties is no longer sufficient.1 Several signs of stress in the relationship have surfaced in the last two years such as China’s attitude to India’s National Security Guard (NSG) membership (in contrast to her attitude in 2008 to the special exemption by the NSG for India), the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist in the UN, India’s attitude to the BRI, and so on. As India and China have grown and their definitions of their own interests have expanded, they increasingly rub up against one another in the periphery that they share, whether on the southern Asian landmass, in archipelagic and mainland southeast Asia, in the Indian Ocean, or in the seas near China such as the South China Sea. However, a new strategic framework for this relationship will probably be worked out by the two countries. Since both countries have other domestic and international priorities, their core interests are not in fundamental conflict, and their differences can be managed.

Today, as a result of reform and rapid growth, both India and China need and see the world as essential for their domestic purposes—Chinese Dream and single-party rule, or New India and economic transformation. Therefore, expect more interventions, expeditionary and activist external politics playing to the nationalist gallery at home relatively soon, and backed by the military in China’s case. India and China will try and shape their world, China alone, and India working with coalitions.

The future does not hold only doom and gloom. One effect of the economic growth spurt in India in the last three decades is that it today has tools and abilities it never had before. It may face new problems but there are also new ways of dealing with them. And the new problems in themselves possess potential opportunities.

This becomes evident when considering security issues facing India, such as cross-border terrorism, maritime security, or cyber security, all of which need primarily domestic capabilities and responses. They have a significant external element and also bring opportunities in their wake.

Security Issues

Consider national security, internal security and personal security—three domains where Indians expect their government to deliver security.

National security: India’s real threats to national security today are internal, but with strong external linkages. Cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, and the corrosive effect that extremism and radicalism can have on a plural and diverse society like India’s, are major security concerns. The situation in West Asia, which has deteriorated over the last decade, is further fuelling terrorist, extremist and radical religious forces in the subcontinent.

Given transborder ethnicities, there is fertile ground in the region for separatist movements and insurgencies. Many of these insurgent groups operate in less governed spaces and across national boundaries. Fortunately, cooperation among southern Asian states in dealing with these movements has improved considerably in the last decade, and India is getting better at mastering the techniques to deal with such problems through a combination of political and other means. Deaths from terrorism and internal conflict in India have declined steadily over the last decade.

The risks of interstate conventional conflict in the Indian subcontinent have been managed successfully for over four decades now, and its costs and risks are better appreciated than in the fifties and sixties. The fact that there are two declared nuclear weapon states in southern Asia has actually stabilized the situation as far as conventional conflict is concerned. It has driven conflict to other sub-conventional levels—to terrorism, covert action and forms of asymmetric warfare.

Another aspect of national security that is increasingly relevant for India is maritime security in the Indian Ocean. When India began reforming in 1991, external merchandise trade accounted for less than 18 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2014 that proportion had risen to 49.3 per cent, and well over 80 per cent of that was carried by sea.2 This indicates the importance of the Indian Ocean to India’s security and well-being. Fortunately, the security situation in the Indian Ocean is not as acute as it is in the seas near China with their territorial and maritime disputes, or in the western Pacific where a real struggle for naval mastery and dominance is unfolding. The Indian Ocean’s issues arise mainly from troubles on land, particularly around its seven choke points, and the resulting piracy and instability that threaten the security and safety of critical sea lanes. Around 50 per cent of the world’s trade passes though crucial Indian Ocean choke points and its sea lanes carry a large proportion of the world’s energy flows. The open geography of the Indian Ocean means that no single power can or is likely to dominate it. But this does not prevent great powers from trying, and their contention is growing.

Internal security and ICT: The most significant security threats to India today are internal. They arise from a loss of social cohesion due to the very rapid growth and change that has been experienced in the last few decades, and external attempts to exploit those from Pakistan and West Asia. They also arise from the effects of new technologies, particularly Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which empower small groups and individuals, irrespective of whether they intend harm or benefit. ICT has breathed new life into older insurgencies, terrorist groups and rebellions (like the Naxalites in India or ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar). ICT also creates new opportunities for criminals. In 2012, for instance, threats and malicious rumours spread on the social media drove almost 80,000 people from northeast India to return to their homes from Bangalore and Mumbai. They were soon back at work and the government put in place systems to prevent such misuse of social media in the future, but that was an early example of the power of ICT to spread social panic.

Of course, ICT is a welfare enabler as well. ICT has helped to deliver benefits from the government directly to the most needy, through the unique biometric identity number, Aadhaar. ICT has also greatly enhanced the country’s ability to manage disasters and respond to extreme weather events, and accelerated financial inclusion. The list of benefits is long and far outweighs the dangers. And these economic benefits and platforms also have security advantages, vastly increasing the state’s reach and capacity. But the long list also makes it all the more important to treat cyber security with the seriousness that it deserves. Cyberspace is one domain that recognizes no national boundaries or man-made sovereignties. Cooperation across boundaries is essential if there is to be success in managing cyber security.

ICT also has a broader political effect. It helps to create and spread expectations and aspirations among the young, uprooted and mobile population of all our countries. History (and Alexis de Tocqueville) has shown that revolutions are produced by improved conditions and rising expectations, not by mass immiseration. This is exactly what globalization has given—a world where everything is amazing and nobody is happy; where life is better than ever before for most people but anger and dissatisfaction are high. This is especially true in case of India, which has just undergone its fastest economic growth spurt in history, thus accentuating inequalities just when ICT spread knowledge of what is possible and available elsewhere and thus raised expectations. Traditional elites and establishments are under attack everywhere. The resulting pressure on governments to deliver security and growth is, therefore, at unprecedented levels.

Personal security: It is also probably true in several countries that individuals no longer feel as secure in their persons as they used to. Statistics and polls, when available, bear this out. Crimes against the person and violence against women are increasing in all our societies. Some of this is the result of the uprooting that comes with massive urbanization and migration. As women join the workforce and social norms change, personal security and policing face new challenges. Traditional policing no longer suffices.

Fortunately today, India and the world have the means to tackle these problems, if there is political will to work together.

Next Steps

What should India and the region do about the security issues that have been mentioned above?

Conclusion

India is at a moment when the threats that she faces have evolved and changed. Most of these demand more, not less, engagement by India with her neighbours in southern and southeast Asia, and a new approach to managing her big power relationships. Fortunately, the international context, though complicated, also makes clear to several powers their common interest in working together to limit uncertainty and deal with security issues in the region. Besides, capabilities and awareness of these security issues have improved considerably throughout the region. It now remains for these countries to display the political will to tackle these security issues in order to continue the Asian march to prosperity that has already changed so many lives in the Asia–Pacific.