October 21, 2024 ☼ The Intersection ☼ defence ☼ information age
There could be a case for an immediate surge in defence expenditure
This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint.
Writing in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War, the flu pandemic and the outbreak of the Irish war of independence William Butler Yeats observed:
See Dorian Lynskey article about this intriguing poem over at The Guardian
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. — The Second Coming”
He could well have be describing the world in 2024.
The niceties of international relations, the guardrails of international norms and restraints placed by the United Nations system have dissolved into a reality where might is right. This will not change for the better anytime soon. The kind of leadership required to steer the world away from brutality is nowhere on the horizon. Nuclear weapons have deterred major powers from fighting big, direct wars, but there are numerous ongoing proxy wars and confrontations that are causing a shocking amount of destruction. Nuclear threats have been issued. There is dangerous talk of calling nuclear bluffs. The guns will continue to do the talking over the next decade.
India’s current military preparedness was for a different world, a pre-Gaza, pre-Ukraine, pre-Xi Jinping world, with different fundamental assumptions about the types of conflict and the international context in which they might take place. While our armed forces have acquired new capabilities and moved forward in the modernisation process, we have yet to implement some of the most significant recommendations made in the Kargil Committee Report nearly a quarter century ago. Both the integration of the three services and the formation of theatre commands remains a work in progress.
Circumstances have changed rapidly. India’s military capability must keep pace with that of the People’s Republic of China which, for its part, seeks to keep pace with that of the United States. As the fights in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown, generational superiority matters. Those who carry a knife to a gunfight find that they are defeated even before entering the battlefield. Of course, a combination of asymmetric strategies, ingenuity and alliances can foil more advanced military adversaries, but if one has a choice, it is prudent to invest in hard military superiority.
There are two broad ways India can build the military power it needs to secure itself: gradual and surge.
The gradual way would be to steadily increase defence expenditure — from the current sub-2% of GDP to around 4% of GDP — over a ten year period. This allows the government enough room to negotiate the budget constraints and shift fiscal resources towards defence. It also gives the defence leadership more time to implement structural changes like theatre commands and integrated planning. Service chiefs and combatant commanders will be able to define, induct and absorb new technologies, platforms and systems across the 1.4 million active military personnel and the related logistical and industrial eco-systems. India’s budding domestic private defence industry will enjoy longer developmental runway and a decade from now, indigenisation levels, even in critical combat platforms, could be significant.
The downside of the gradual approach is that it might be too late in bearing fruit. Can we be really confident that India will not be subject to major military coercion before 2034? Does our political system have the resolve to deliver on a ten-year commitment? Will the international environment remain favourable to India over the period?
That is why I think we should also consider a second approach — a surge in defence expenditure, starting with an immediate doubling the defence budget and holding it at the 4% level for five years, before dialing it back down. Such frontloading would take maximum advantage of India’s partnership with the United States and its allies while creating additional resources for the domestic industry. If the buy vs build decisions are made thoughtfully, the indigenisation outcomes over a ten year period might be comparable to that of a gradual approach. Meanwhile a massive increase in the availability of new equipment could galvanise the absorption processes across the services. More importantly, India will have the military strength at a time when it is necessary.
The problem with the surge is the fiscal adjustments required will abrupt and painful. The defence leadership will be required to accelerate its integrated planning. Transforming the three services in a short period will not be easy. There is also a risk that indigenous defence startups will get left out as the purchase orders go to foreign vendors for readymade products.
Gradual or surge, which way should we go? I cannot say at this time, except that the government and parliament must review whether India’s military strength is sufficient to tide through the dramatically different world that we are in. What is clear is that it is safer to be stronger.
PS. Yeat’s poem ends with the following lines.“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
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