This article has been extracted from the Matin Zuberi memorial lecture delivered by the author at Jawaharlal Nehru University on December 7, 2023. The full lecture is available here.
In our daily lives, we all understand strategy broadly as getting things done. In the life of countries, matters of state, so to speak, strategy is more complex. National objectives differ; the means to achieve them are dissimilar and the international environment is often contested. There is the ever-present spectre of use or threat of use of force, which is the key characteristic that sets strategic studies apart from other disciplines.
While strategic instruments are impersonal, strategic decisions are not. These are made by individuals in positions of leadership that affect the fate of millions – for there is no human enterprise more consequential than the macabre dance of death and destruction on the highway of war. No war is good if it is avoidable. But lost wars are dreadful, for they inflict on the defeated not just the destruction wrought by battle but also the harsh penalties of peace arising from defeat. Good tactics enable good strategy, but successful strategy is one that fulfils the objectives of policy and remains bound by its limitations – both in terms of ambition and the means available for its accomplishment. In the pitiless world of strategy, high ambition backed by low capability is a sin without salvation.
Grand strategy, one of the pillars of statecraft – which readers of Kautilya would be familiar with – considers not just military but non-military means. Grand strategy is the key to keeping a balance between means and ends and of seeking objectives within capabilities. It determines not only how to fight but also when to fight – for there are times when it is more prudent to undertake peacetime competition rather than seek military conflict. When to end a war is often as critical as when to start one. The rise of great powers is often a function of the success of their grand strategy.
Forgotten dimensions.
In the summer of 1979, Michael Howard, Oxford University’s foremost war historian, wrote a seminal article in Foreign Affairs titled “Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy” in which, after a majestic survey of war in the preceding three centuries, he identified four dimensions along which all wars are conducted – the operational, the logistical, the social, and the technological. He pointed out that under different circumstances, one or another of these dimensions would dominate and determine war outcomes. Prof Howard was writing at the height of the Cold War, when a relatively stable geopolitical balance acted as a firm foundation for the operationalisation of nuclear deterrence and its associated ecosystem of arms control and non-proliferation. The purpose of that article was to warn against the dangers of excessive dependence on the technological dimensions of war – in particular, nuclear war, to the exclusion of the other three. Were Michael Howard to write the article today, I would expect that he would add a fifth dimension – geopolitics – the renewed geopolitical competition between the big powers and the consequent weakening and fragmentation of deterrence in relations amongst them, which has led to the current lawlessness in the international system. This is where we turn to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Also read: Why Is India Unable to Criticise the Country That Has Invaded Ukraine?
Lost opportunities
The Russia-Ukraine war represents a failure of big power deterrence on account of miscalculations on questions of capability, credibility, and communication on part of both Russia and the United States. The active phase of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is now well into its second year. Since 2014, when an insurrection in Kyiv unseated the incumbent president, relations between the two were tense but subsequent opportunities for a peaceful resolution receded as Ukraine swing decisively towards the West. War was not inevitable but opportunities for peace were lost by both sides – the 2015 Minsk accords, the first year of President Zelenskyy’s term, the Biden-Putin Geneva Summit of June 2021, the Russian proposals on European security of December 2021 and the abortive Russia-Ukraine peace talks of March/April 2022, which we now know from Ukrainian leaders were rejected on the advice of the UK and the US.
That Russia had to resort to use of force in its neighbourhood is not a measure of successful deterrence. That Ukraine miscalculated how its campaign to join NATO would not cross a red line that Russia had repeatedly articulated since 2007 is not a measure of successful counter-deterrence. Ukraine took the risk of seeking the protection of a distant power to address its proximate security needs. The deeply embedded perception of Russian weakness, evident since the 1990s, on part of the US and its NATO allies masked from view the turnaround in Russian military strength under President Putin and its will to act militarily to protect its interests in Ukraine. The stage was set for a prolonged military confrontation.
Doormats of history
I have written elsewhere about the Ukraine conflict –including, I am a bit embarrassed to say, on the first day of the war itself, with a subsequent piece a year later – laying out a broken future for Ukraine with partial but permanent loss of territory to Russia and with the rump Ukraine joining NATO. Let me explain myself, via the five dimensions of strategy enumerated above.
This is now a proxy war between Russia and the West. While the military conflict has been confined to Ukraine, southern Russia, and the Black Sea area, the economic, energy, informational and cyber dimensions have given it a global scale. Like all proxies, the fate of Ukraine is no longer in its own hands but at the mercy of wavering American strategic benevolence and uncertain European support. There have been proxies in the past and there will be more in the future, but they all meet the same fate. For in geopolitical conflict involving the big powers, proxies are the doormats of history.
In operational terms, Russia’s desire for a quick and decisive blow against Kyiv in the early months of the war was a stunning failure. The fighting ability of Ukrainian units trained to NATO standards since 2016 compelled Russian withdrawals in northern and north-eastern Ukraine. The societal dimension also held up – though over 10 million people fled as refuges to Russia and Europe. President Zelenskyy was able to rally his country together, undertake successive mobilisations and conduct successful operations until September 2022 when Ukrainian forces reached the peak of their fighting capacity, having made advances in Kherson, Kharkiv and Sumy areas. Military support from the US and NATO of advanced weaponry added a new technological dimension to its fighting capacity. By the winter of 2022 the war had settled into a stalemate as none of the five dimensions – operational, logistical, technological, societal, or geopolitical were able to provide a decisive outcome to either side. Russia was too weak to win, and Ukraine was too strong to lose.
But in war, as in life, time doesn’t stand still.
Coconut grater
In its second year, the stalemated war has turned gradually in Russia’s favour. US and EU sanctions against Russia were predicated on crippling Russia’s will and ability to conduct a prolonged war. Contrary to western expectations, the Russian defence industry has bounced back, with a huge hike in defence expenditure under conditions of better-than-expected but still modest economic growth. The Russian military, like in all wars, has been adept at learning from its past mistakes. Having blunted the fighting capacity of the virulently far right anti-Russian units in the Ukrainian armed forces, including the AZOV battalion in Mariupol, Russia has systematically reduced Ukrainian fighting power in battles around Bakhmut and now in Avdeevka. Like a coconut grater, strong Russian defences have decimated Ukrainian forces.
In operational terms, the war has moved from one of manoeuvre to that of attrition. This is due to the impact of the ISR revolution disrobing battlefields of stealth or cover and the proliferation of drones and standoff weapons which can hit at will forces out in the open, making offensive operations costly in term of equipment and manpower. Ukraine is also running short of fighting manpower- with its average officer age in the 40s. With an operational stalemate compounded by societal and logistical weakness, Ukraine is now desperately searching for a technological edge that could restore balance on the battlefield, which it can only get from the West, which in turn is related to the geopolitical dimensions of the war.
A protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Photo: pix-4-2-day/Flickr CC BY NC ND 2.0
Fickle affections
While President Putin’s nuclear warnings to the West not to supply advanced weaponry to Ukraine went largely unheeded, the West is now worried about the consequences of a major escalation with Russia. A Ukraine-fatigue has set in Europe. There is a fundamental churn in its political economy whose full implications are only beginning to become apparent, with two critical elements – a resentment against sacrificing more for Ukraine’s war and a resentment against American domination over European energy and security policies. In America, the political ground has shifted somewhat with a Republican pushback in an upcoming election year. US focus towards Israel following the crisis in Palestine since early October has struck a body blow to Ukraine as the top spot for American attention. Thus, with the logistical and geopolitical dimensions of the war shifting in its favour, perhaps irreversibly, Russia may be better placed by next year to dictate the terms of a peace settlement than it has been since the commencement of the war in 2022.
It will of course be a contested peace – as the US and EU will continue with a tight sanctions regime as well as the tight geopolitical encirclement of Russia on its periphery. Russia would seek a peace whose primary aim would be to ensure that Ukraine would not launch a war of revanchism to take back Donbass or become a forward base for American or NATO forces. Success would depend on the scale of its military victory or the scale of the collapse of the Ukrainian state. Ukraine is learning the hard way the risks of entrusting national security to the fickle affections of distant mentors.
Not an era of war
India’s diplomatic approach to the Russia-Ukraine war has been one of pragmatic prudence, even while recognising the unpredictable nature of war gains in an interconnected world, with Prime Minister Modi saying that it is not an era of war. Our diplomacy achieved the difficult task of bringing back over 20,000 Indian students from Ukraine, many of them from active war zones. While India has not condemned Russia for the invasion, it has highlighted its broader consequences – on energy, food and fertilisers and the global disequilibrium that the war has produced and of particular concern to the Global South. Russia, our long-standing strategic partner, may finally prevail in Ukraine, but the war has placed it on the back foot at least for the next decade. Another of our close strategic partners – the US – is now an overextended global power, attempting dual containment of Russia and China and succeeding in neither. This has provided a geopolitical sweet spot for China, which it is poised to exploit, despite the considerable downturn in its economic growth and instability in the ranks of its governing elite. In this triangular geopolitical equation, China has gained more than the other two.
What then are the takeaways for India? While Indian diplomacy has shown considerable skill in navigating a turbulent international system, including the remarkable success of the Delhi G20 summit, the underlying geopolitical trends are deeply troubling. A breakdown in deterrence equations – with nuclear deterrence no longer capable of deterring big power conflict in the conventional, cyber or space domains, and the weaponisation of global interdependence radiating instability and unpredictability into non-military sectors globally, are key trends. International law, public opinion or even public conscience are now weak filters against conflict. There is wilful disregard of the UN and of arms control agreements. In this age of growing lawlessness, old paradigms of interstate deterrence are breaking down under the weight of new actors, new technologies and new threats.
So, what specific lessons can India take from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the broader international situation?
Also read: Russia-Ukraine War: Sitting on the Fence Cannot Be a Sustainable Foreign Policy for India
Prolonged wars
Operationally, the Ukraine conflict portends the onset of prolonged wars, which count not on military defeat but national exhaustion of the enemy. While no two wars are alike, and India’s security environment with China and Pakistan is vastly different, the general paradigm shift in warfare will have a long-term impact. With the ascendency of defence as compared to offence, and the elimination of surprise due to the ISR revolution, semi-permanent war preparedness would become the norm. This would require longer deployments and quicker rotations than in the past, which will have an impact on the overall numbers of deployable armed forces. The possibility of a two-front war with both Pakistan and China is higher than in the past. India needs to prepare two different war fighting doctrines – for Chinese capabilities are vastly different from those of Pakistan – but also be prepared to execute them simultaneously. Prolonged wars also require logistics – stocks, reserves, and manufacturing potential of our domestic industry of a higher order as well as insulation against uncertain external supplies.
Societal changes would need to adapt to the new strategic requirements – higher educational standards for intake into our armed forces and an in-service retention pattern that would ensure sufficiently trained and experienced units that can maintain effective combat readiness for prolonged periods in a high-tech combat environment. This is not an easy task for countries moving from limitless peasantry to a middle-class aspiring youth in a fast-growing economy.
In terms of technology, we are witnessing the dawn of multidomain combat environments with unpredictable cross domain linkages – cyber, space and AI which are fundamentally transformative of future warfare. The fusion between the sensor and the striker in weapon systems will become tighter and faster than ever before. Technology is malleable thus making situational and doctrinal surprise likely, if we make the mistake of thinking that the opponent thinks like us. Prepare to be surprised but prepare to prevail.
Dosa batter with pizza dough
The geopolitical dimension is now a critical reference point to calculate accurately the ebb and flow of international power. The role of diplomacy is vital – as the eyes and ears on a fast-changing world. Developing our own concepts is necessary as part of the change that we are witnessing and wish to influence. Building multipolarity with legacy concepts from the unipolar world would be like making dosa batter with pizza dough. Fit for purpose is measured by utility not familiarity.
Diplomacy can also play the role of a facilitator of access to the sinews of our national development – to capital, markets, technology, and the protection of our nationals abroad. While we are focused on maritime connectivity, India’s continental access to mainland Eurasia is being challenged – by the extension of Chinese influence into Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Hence, the importance of the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the Eastern Maritime Corridor (EMC) and the India Middle East Corridor (IMEC). Balancing our continental interests with that of our maritime interests is thus vitally important. How can India become a great power if we are geopolitically marginalised with limited land access on own continent?
Geopolitical conflict feeds not just on territories but also on technology. Given the pervasive securitisation of global interdependence and the fact that global supply chains constitute more than 70% of global trade, it is vital we have the best of relations with the United States, and the top technology companies which are now formidable global players, in their own right. As a global power, the US would seek tradeoffs consistent with its own global interests. Its current strategic predicament – a failing dual containment strategy against Russia and China along with a highly volatile Middle East involving the security of Israel – is stretching US global influence to its limits. In the words of one of its former defence secretaries, the US is now a ‘dysfunctional superpower’. But it is regaining influence elsewhere, in Latin America, East Asia and in South Asia.
Notions of omnipotence
For India, it is important to deal with the US for what it is – the world’s largest economy, a pre-eminent technology and energy power but whose power projection capabilities are being increasingly constrained by a deeply divided domestic polity, which is reducing its ability to simultaneously pursue a welfare state at home and a warfare state abroad. This is driving in turn an unsustainable rise in national debt. The US of the coming decades will be different from the US we have known since the end of Cold War. Exaggerated notions of US omnipotence in global affairs that tend to sometimes colour our thinking, much like the notions that were unquestioningly held about Soviet omnipotence in the 1980s, would only set the stage for mutual disappointment.
Diplomacy can also play the role of a compensator or force multiplier, in situations of power asymmetry that we now face with respect to China. Last year, China’s total global exports were the same as India’s GDP. China will be a formidable power in the coming decades and is showing the same proclivities for domination as hegemonic powers of the past. We should see China through our own prism, not one borrowed from others. Restoring credible military deterrence against China will enhance our ability to break the girdle that it seeks to build in our immediate neighbourhood. While our neighbourhood policy should be one of maximum possible economic accommodation, our red lines of no foreign military presence or bases on their soil, should be clearly understood by our neighbours. The Ukraine case shows that such attempts only bring grief to all concerned. Similarly, we need the naval capability and the doctrinal framework to retain predominance in the IOR. While friendly navies are welcome, a ‘Free and Open’ Indo-Pacific doesn’t mean that the Indian Ocean region is a free-for-all ‘dharmshala’ for foreign powers.
Fallacy of external balancing
Our defence relations with the US and arrangements such as the Quad are useful and necessary balancing instruments to compensate for the regional power differential with China, but such mechanisms cannot wholly compensate for shortfalls in our economic or defence potentials. Those supporting the so-called external balancing strategy to fill these gaps only generate false hopes and expectations. There is no substitute for a robust buildup of our own economic and military capabilities. Here too, Ukraine is a tragic example of the fate that awaits those willing to become proxies in big power conflicts. Living on borrowed money is not the same as living on borrowed military strength – the latter erodes strategic autonomy far deeper than the former.
Our bilateral defence cooperation with the US should include robust technology cooperation, for which the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) offers a promising start, and coordination of our deterrence postures in the broader region provided the US embraces the objective of a strong and independent India as vital to its strategic interests. The US would naturally seek a tradeoff for such cooperation in terms of India committing to an alignment with its regional and global interests. On some issues these coincide and on some they don’t. Extracting sustained US support for India’s interests under conditions of fluctuating demands on US resources for its extensive interests elsewhere will be a vexing and perhaps exhausting pre-occupation of our diplomacy. But we must make every possible effort to keep open partnership possibilities.
Strong fences for strong partnerships
The sustainability of our long-term relations with the US is not only a matter of convergence of interests but equally of an understanding of limits that both sides agree to respect. Strong fences make good neighbours but also strong partnerships. A durable understanding on limits would be an invaluable investment in friction-reduction and the best guarantee of a long term and sustainable partnership. Ukraine is an example of the thin line between partner and proxy and a lesson for any country wanting to become the Ukraine of the Indo-Pacific.
To clarify matters, the US should embrace our strategic autonomy just as it accepted India’s independent nuclear deterrent as a positive factor for its own interests.
In practice, this would mean drawing a firm red line on the issue of integration of our defence forces with those of the US – either through interoperability or joint basing. Externally, it is important we engage but not get entangled in its global interests which are varied and liable to unilateral change. In short, for our relations with the US – coordination yes; integration no: engagement yes, entanglement no.
Within these parameters there exists a vast universe of cooperation possibilities which are vital and necessary for India’s security which may be pursued with full vigour, for there is no other relationship that it is more important for India to get right than that with the US.
Continental Eurasia
Russia will remain important for the coming decades for our defence inventory management, alternative energy sources and for maintaining balance on the Eurasian continent. The Russia of the future will be very different from the Russia of the past – geopolitically relevant but economically weak. Russia is for India a permanent partner on the Eurasian continent, even though its perceived weakness will continue to invite US pinpricks in the coming decade. If the US – the world’s most powerful maritime power – places a low premium on stability on the Eurasian continent, India cannot remain insulated from its destabilizing impact for long. If the net result of US policy on the Eurasian continent is the steady expansion of Chinese influence, even while India is expected to join the US in containing China in the maritime domain, the resulting incongruity at the heart of India’s grand strategy will be hard to ignore.
What India must do
The next decade will be more challenging than the last one. Diplomacy is important but there is no substitute for national strength. The next 25 years is vital for our economic growth, ensuring equity and innovation, doubling our GDP every decade – aiming for 30 trillion USD GDP by 2047 – is perhaps by itself the highest national security requirement. In the past few years, India has put in place transformative macroeconomic fundamentals – ranging from GST, infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, a world class digital public infrastructure, Start Ups to name a few. However, in the field of computing technology, which is the defining technology of this century, like nuclear technology was the yardstick of power last century, the US and China are the only two AI superpowers today. India is an insignificant computer power, even while considering our considerable talent in software design. While the Indian Government has initiated steps to catch up, we have a long way to go. India needs to be more than a data goldmine and software design sweatshop. We can and should be the front face of the front-end of the fourth Industrial revolution, not its back-end back office.
Overall, if we can maintain the tempo of reform and innovation under conditions of political and domestic stability, there is widespread expectation that ‘Incredible’ India will also be, as some have said ‘Inevitable’ India in terms of joining the ranks of the great powers. The road from aspiration to reality will have to be paved with unity, growth, innovation, and sacrifice over the coming decades.
India is undergoing a quiet military revolution. Much delayed defence reforms now underway are being taken forward by the government in a determined way. Changes in command and control, with emphasis on jointness, integration and theaterisation will greatly enhance the combat capabilities of our armed forces. The indigenisation of procurement and domestic manufacture of weapon systems and greater participation of the private sector and emphasis on defence exports will fundamentally transform our armed forces. However, the most important change will be doctrinal, considering not only changes in our immediate security environment but also global trends which have been referred to. To support these changes, it is necessary to increase defence spending to an average of 3% of GDP, enshrined in law, for the next decade. This will provide a predictable resource base to plan this buildup. It’s not that it has not been done in the past- between 1963 and 1988 – India’s defence expenditure averaged above 3% of GDP. Today’s the country’s economic possibilities, its military modernisation programme and the troubled international security situation make this both possible and necessary. While conflict with China is not inevitable, a continuing gap in military capabilities will enhance the possibilities of conflict.
Grammar of strategy
Before I conclude, let me reflect briefly on the status of strategic studies in India. As part of globalisation, it was understandable that our foreign policy and security communities readily absorbed strategic perspectives emanating from the West. Our expectations of a permanently benign global situation have been belied. This reversal, disappointing as it is, has also led to creeping self-doubt on whether we can afford to pursue a policy of strategic autonomy, when there is a growing power gap with China. The belief that some dilution of our strategic autonomy is a justifiable cost to be paid for its preservation is fundamentally flawed and can be a barrier to India’s rise. Our strategic autonomy is both a practical requirement and a civilisational necessity, for no country has ever risen by fighting wars for other countries.
Strategic thought is not alien to India. Kautilya’s Arthshastra is not just a political treatise. It is not just a textbook on statecraft. It is a magnum opus on grand strategy, more comprehensive than the works of Machiavelli, Jomini, Clausewitz or other thinkers. Though written millennia ago, its timeless quality is derived from the grammar and logic that Kautilya’s distilled wisdom provides for strategy’s permanent dilemmas – how to pursue long term goals with constantly shifting balance of power amongst competing states under material limitations and mental distractions. Kautilya’s prescriptions are not for the fainthearted. They are for those wanting to transition India from power to great power, not for those willing to let India slip from partner to proxy. In Kautilya’s world, strategic autonomy is non-negotiable, as it is the original purpose for which the state exists. Kautilya is not just for a sharpening of the mind but also for a strengthening of the soul.
The Arthshastra is a grammar of strategy for the ages with each age writing its own strategic literature relevant to its specific needs. With such a rich tradition to draw on, we should have no difficulty to construct our strategic thought and practice for India’s needs relevant to our times. This will entail restoring faith and confidence in ourselves and a clear vision of what we are and what we aspire to be – in other words to transition from an allotted identity given to us by others to an identity rooted in our land. In the world of strategy, what nations accomplish is determined by what they settle for as much as what they aspire to. For India, we owe to our sacred land the higher purpose, passion, and perseverance that is bequeathed by our civilisation – a vision of India’s greatness that is backed by a moral conviction that provides all our people a sense of belonging and hope which soothes the pain of sacrifice our country’s rise will invariably require. It is to that higher calling that we must all strive for.
D.B. Venkatesh Varma is a former Indian diplomat, who served as India’s ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, Spain and the Russian Federation.