The Egg Thinks It Is Smarter Than The Hen, Another Look at Military Education

" The reason for the title is because the Egg, our Indian authored articles, that come out of the Western Hen, are placed before Indian readership as the best solution for India and her Armed Forces".  - Gp Capt AG Bewoor

1.   One thing we Indian military guys have to accept is that making comparisons with European armies and copy pasting their philosophies is not correct. Europe till the beginning of the WW- 1 was a continent at war with itself. The number of treaties that each country had with every other country is complicated, convoluted and inexplicable. Kings, Courtiers, Cardinals, Bishops, Queens, Princes decided who is a friend or foe. Prime Ministers had to look after the interests of their constituencies and were forced to make treaties to suit the voters’ economic compulsions. They were after all capitalist entities were they not? Most Royalty of Europe were related in one way or another. The Catholics Vs Protestants was a major factor because the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury were on opposite sides of the same Cross.

2.   Because of this constant adversarial environment in Europe & Britain, the armies of each nation developed with different yet similar philosophies. Their adversary today became an ally tomorrow. Three or four countries joined forces to fight an expansionist national leader like Napoleon, Kaiser and Ottoman Khalif are examples. The Balkan imbroglio was amazing, and they kept making and breaking treaties with each other. Their military philosophies, training, weaponry, technology was wired to those inter-state agreements and disagreements. The Industrial Revolution which started in Western Europe created huge differences in the capability to wage war with Western Europe getting way ahead of Eastern Europe. But their shaking hands or fists at each other continued, because it was always personality, not national interest, driven.

3.   Israel is a strange phenomenon. They were born in a siege, supported by a guilty Christian Europe, and had more enemies than anyone could imagine. Their method of solving problems and making strategic / tactical changes is dictated by their instinct to survive and remains so today. The threats they get are scary. To try to imitate or borrow from their processes cannot be applied to us, because we are not a nation under siege. Nor can we look at Russia, USA, Britain, Germany, Australia, Canada etc for guidance. None of them suffer from state sponsored terrorist infiltrating constantly from all directions. None of them have the mountainous terrain that we have to defend. Not one of them has a big belligerent neighbour who is determined to keep teasing us.

There are innumerable such points, many are regularly articulated by Jaishankar. Sadly, military writers never pay attn to Home and Foreign ministers, their attn is fixed on western media.

4.   Which is why, if we borrow training doctrines from the West they have to be customised to serve our unique geographical realities and political inheritances? You cannot train a cadet or soldier as if his very existence and that of his family is under constant threat. That mind set cannot be created because it would be a false narrative. If we try to do it, there will be utter confusion because the cadets / recruits know it to be untrue. Our system may not be perfect, it never will be, but it must reflect the real ambience of the security environment that is prevalent, and perceived by the fauji as well as the civilian population. In today's open information atmosphere, where events, speeches, parliament are instantly broadcast into smart phones, you cannot create fake eco-systems to serve one's favourite ideas and passions. The western nations have been in incessant wars for more than two centuries till 1945. Thereafter, they lived in constant fear of the Soviet Invasion with thousands of tanks and aircraft. They trained for that war scenario.

Their War Colleges had to teach staff work, strategy and tactics to fight that war which never happened and then USSR shut down. With no enemy, what can the Military-Industrial Conglomerate of the western democracies do, except create new enemies and threats. Thus their War colleges started teaching their cadets and officers to fight this new enemy, if the new enemy disappears they look for and find new ones in other regions, but they must have an enemy to wage war against, look at Ukraine. Now war colleges will teach doctrines for such contained wars, and their journals and doctrines have to be written for this new found adversary. To be read and admired by persons who also believe that this is really what confronts USA and Europe. Sadly those writings attract us.

5.   Witness the writings and seminars of Indian small time as well as very prestigious Think Tanks and Centres of Strategic Thought. Copious amounts of output on these wars in faraway places with lessons for India. Do these deductions fit into our system? How many of these authors have been on ground or in the air where these conflicts are raging? Not one I suspect. Then from where are they getting the inputs to write their tomes? Only from those journals / websites/ webinars in Europe & USA. Recall the Armenia – Azerbaijan war of 2020 where an enormous number of drones were used. No one from India had any idea what happened, except from on-the-spot western war correspondents, and the Indian strategic thinkers’ deductions became the centre point in long articles declaring that Drones will decide the outcome of future wars in the Indian context. Suddenly there was a scurry of demands for military drones with MOD being overwhelmed. Not one Babu had any idea what it all meant, much less the Neta. We have created Drone Forces and with deep thought on their utility. I would like to believe that adequate testing and trials have been done to use drones in all terrain that our army & air force will do battle. But most surely India’s next war will not be won by drones.

6.   It is dangerous for us in India to take lessons and chapters from such doctrines that are alien to the Sub Continent. It is because we will come to wrong deductions and Courses of Actions, basically because our Factors are not same to what obtains in those lands. We in India have far too many glossy journals and On-Line sites that freely copy & paste articles, photos, opinions, editorials from western sources. The hard copies sell, huge numbers are sent gratis to offices / officers / libraries and they become basis for thesis written by junior offrs at war colleges and higher levels too. Presentations by Defence HQs to MOD / M Of Fin / External Affairs / Commerce / Def Prod etc are full of such inputs from outside India, which have nothing to do with our Ground Realities. The writers of these Western articles are not to blame, they write for their majority readership and their paymasters; our fellows copy and try to modify it for our frontiers, and we get it wrong. We have been doing this for years. To be very plain, our landscape is different. Have we done intense study and interpolations of terrain, numbers, adversary capability, financial burdens, dependence on foreign suppliers, technology transfers, local manufacturing and so on? Our articles do not write about such mundane things that are more important and critical than to have that weapon system.

7.Remember the grand doctrine of the late 80s where two Strike Corps, with two Armoured Divisions, having complete flexibility and manoeuvrability were to go deep into Pakistan; and then What? That question never could be answered could it? The doctrine was copied from Fort Leavenworth where US Army has its war college. So many Indian army offrs have attended Leavenworth. US Army has never fought in the mountains like the Himalayas, until they got into Afghanistan, and left in a hurry, defeated. Like they left Vietnam defeated. Like they left Korea defeated. Like they left Iraq defeated. Not one of their wars / battles is what India has fought or will fight. Imagine how USA would fight in Siachin, or Depsang, or Tawang? Not one of them can write an appreciation on these operations. Because their battle fields are elsewhere and thus their appreciations / service papers / presentations are not applicable to Indian Armed Forces. We have to accept that and then write our dissertations but ensure we are sanitised from Western War College dogmas. The paymasters of these Western erudite writers are a breed that encourage the creation of enemies with unimaginable powers and thus the need to make super power weaponry for USA. India does not need that kind of thinking. We do not yet have an uncontrolled Military – Industrial Complex (MIC) like USA has. Lakhs of men and women in USA subsist on that MIC and therefore the MIC must flourish, they cannot diversify and they know nothing else. Worse, they do not wish to know anything else. Their political masters thrive with the MIC. Curtailing any part of the MIC is not an option in USA.

Look at their reluctance to modify gun control laws in spite of the frequent violent use of guns that kill hundreds every year. Those who write articles in western journals, which we borrow, are reared in an atmosphere of perpetual violence and free possession of arms. Indians do not subscribe to such a life it abhors us, and is against our very culture and upbringing. The West’s arguments run counter to our breeding & culture. This Indian culture does not need to be changed to the violent kind, just because it looks attractive on paper, and earns huge money for the promoters. We ignore this reality while plagiarising their thoughts. It is an unsafe way of thinking.

8. Indian Armed Forces have a very clear well defined enemy whose philosophy and doctrine is well known to us. The DNA of the Indian soldier is also known to us, it is very far removed from European / American soldiers. The trg for our offrs has to be such that they lead this type of soldier to victory. This man is Bhim Bahadur / Gurjit Singh / Pillai / Ghorpade / Barua / Roshan Lal / Banerjee / Altaf Iqbal / Reddy / Kachwaha / Yadav and so on. Too many writers ignore this fact, which is evident from their writings because the art of copy pasting and agreeing with Western deductions has become the normal, and it sells.

If our authors write keeping in mind Indian psyche, Indian fears, Indian DNA, Indian hesitations, Indian aspirations, Indian heritage, Indian strengths and Indian limitations, they will get it absolutely correct. There is a need to study our history, our strategies, our failures, our victories, our losses, our frailties, our blunders both academic & military, and most of all, where are we heading over the next 30 yrs. How to deter and contain these two adversaries in the 2060s? We Indians will be fighting while standing in our own lands, the Europeans / Americans will never fight standing in their lands. Our civilians will suffer enemy action theirs will never have to bear that pain.

9. I cannot but make reference to the ill timed suggestion of Pitroda about Inheritance Tax. USA has a universal Social Security system where the State looks after you from womb to tomb, so taking 55% as inheritance tax does not bother the public. The descendants know the formula and cater for it. However, in India social security comes from family wealth and savings. Inheritance tax as suggested will destroy India’s family social security fabric.

The landscape of Indian social activity and the glue that binds grandparents to grandchildren is diametrically opposite to the social landscape in USA or Europe. The link between American inheritance tax, based on American Social Security and the American military training and philosophy cannot be ignored.The cadets and enlisted personnel in USA grow up in that assured Social Security bubble, as did their instructors and their senior commanders. There is a fatalistic flavour in all American writings, including military, they look at life very differently than we Indians do. We cannot copy-paste their stories without cleansing out their way of thinking. To not clean it up is perilous for the Indian military.

10. Indian strategic think tanks have to be wary of being sucked into the abyss of Western mindset that is governed and guided by their way of life and what their national aspirations are. Recall the unlimited protests in mainland USA against Americans dying in Vietnam for a cause that was no longer unacceptable. The cruelty demonstrated by American military thinkers, their officers and soldiers as also their leadership, appalled Americans young and old. There are protests today in America about Hamas, does that change what they write in glossy magazines? Our heritage disallows such thinking.

Their convoluted statements reminds us of that dictum; say not always what you know, but always know what you say. We have a military culture that dates back thousands of years. We have developed skills that have been honed for centuries, imperfect as they may be. But those skills are valuable to us for many reasons, one of them being that others do not have them. Every generation is limited by what it knows, the future remains unknown, and be it in America or India. Borrow what can be altered and made suitable for the Desi Fauj, Desi landscape, Desi values. Be satisfied with you have and can exploit; that is more important, than getting more of what you want.

You cannot build a sound security on borrowed money.