April 6, 1998

Bureaucrats often see armed forces' tours abroad as junkets. But they are playing an important role in the architecture of peace in the post-Cold War era.

By Manoj Joshi

Not many people know that in the mid-1960s General David Shaltiel, chief of the Israeli Army, visited India and the two countries signed a secret pact for military intelligence exchanges and supply of military hardware to each other. The Indian Army reciprocated three decades later, in fact just a little over two weeks ago, when its chief Ved Prakash Malik went to Israel on an official visit. No secret pacts were signed since they are no longer needed after normalisation of Indo-Israeli relations.

General Malik told India Today: "The visit helped me understand the Israeli Army's strategy and tactics, its organisation and training and the environment that produces its first-rate defence industry." He underscored the point that no amount of reading or information could have substituted for the insights he got from his March 8-11 tour. Military diplomacy is something that does not come easily to India. For decades, the civilians in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) skimped on the armed forces' foreign tours (except to the Soviet Union) on grounds of security. But this excuse vanished with the end of the Cold War, and a slow trickle of uniformed personnel have begun going abroad to promote goodwill, generate military exports or, simply, learn about security problems and solutions of other countries.

The case in point is Israel. According to military analyst Prasun Sen Gupta, mutually beneficial ties go back a long way. In the wake of India's defeat in the war with China, Israel despatched the desperately needed 81 mm and 120 mm mortars and some pack howitzer artillery pieces. In 1967 when Israel was embroiled in a war, the Indians reciprocated by sending badly needed spares for Israeli Mystere and Ouragan fighter aircraft and AMX-13 tanks. In the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, Israel delayed sending back till the end of hostilities some 80 Pakistani F-86 Sabres that had been sent for maintenance, and also tipped off India about the transfer of 11 Jordanian F-104 Starfighters to Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries has since been mainly in the secretive realm of intelligence cooperation. For example, Israeli equipment has been fitted on to the RAW's two Boeing 707 aircraft for gathering signals intelligence.

Covert cooperation on nuclear and missile technology, too, has been there for at least two decades. In December 1996, India and Israel signed a cooperation agreement in several fields including technology. President Eizer Weizmann's visit in January 1997 led to the exchange of military attaches between the two countries and a sharp upgradation of military cooperation. During his visit, Malik was taken to the Israeli Northern Command, though not, as erroneously reported, to any of Israeli-occupied Lebanon or the Golan Heights. He was shown the hi-tech anti-infiltration systems and innovative tactics that have made Israeli borders safe from infiltrators. He also visited the armoured warfare school in southern Israel.

The Israelis, not surprisingly, had their own agenda. Their vibrant defence industry is in search of markets to remain viable. The Indian Army is buying some Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs) and Malik saw a special demonstration of the Searcher-2's abilities. Israel's real forte is electronics, something which the Chinese have used fruitfully to upgrade the accuracy of their missiles. Israeli communications systems and surveillance equipment are among the best in the world.

But what the cash-strapped Indian Army found most appealing was the Israeli defence industry's formidable ability, as Malik put it, "to upgrade anything." Upgraded Centurion and AMX-13 tanks were in Israel's armoury for more than a decade after India discarded them. In recent years, the Israelis have specialised on former Soviet-bloc systems they captured from the Arabs. This is of great interest to India whose army is equipped by such systems like the T-55 and T-72 tanks and 130 mm field guns.

Countries conduct military diplomacy not just to win friends, but to push their political agenda on other states. A seat in a US military college is a coveted mark of the world's lone superpower's favours. Offering berths to officers of third world countries provides the US unrivalled ability to influence the officer cadre of their armed forces. India does this in a limited way, according to naval Captain C. Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "Military officers of all South Asian countries ought to be in our training institutions," he says, "even if it means doubling the intake into some of them."

India, Bhaskar argues, has used its armed forces "for the lowest return -- safeguarding its territory, controlling insurgency and so on". It is simply unable or unwilling to use its armed forces "for achieving wider politico-military objectives", in the manner the US or the Chinese do. The US has been looking at India through the eyes of its Pacific Command headquartered in Japan. Its chiefs, the most recent being Admiral J.W. Prueher who met Navy Chief V. Bhagwat in Delhi last year, have been coming to India since 1989.

The hurdles here are daunting. Nehruvian India has been mistrustful of the armed forces and kept them out of the Defence Ministry. It also has an inordinate faith in the power of diplomacy and negotiation. "India's failure can be gauged from the incredible manner in which it won the war in 1971, only to blunder in Shimla in failing to extract any diplomatic mileage out of it," says an analyst. Chinese activity in Burma sent Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit and the then army chief to Rangoon in 1993, but New Delhi's lassitude has allowed things to drift. Part of the problem lies in the IAS-dominated Defence Ministry. It simply lacks military expertise or perspective in decision-making. "IAS and ifs officers don't understand the technical aspects of, say, military logistics, training programmes, leave alone tactics and strategy," says a retired general.

The result: some strange decisions. The mod has decreed that Dennis J. Reimer, US Army chief, who comes to India next month, cannot be taken to Kashmir. Considering that the government encourages every visiting US Congressmen and their staffers to visit the Valley, this objection seems perverse. Says an Army officer, "All it means is that we lose an opportunity of giving a US military leader a first-hand look at the low-intensity conflict launched against us by Pakistan and influencing US policy." Reimer now goes to Udhampur and then Leh, bypassing the Valley.

But the evolving world system is bringing change. In 1996 India became a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the first overtly security-oriented platform that non-aligned India has joined. The MEA currently leads Indian teams but at the ARF, whose members include all the major powers of the world matures, the expert discussions would have to be dealt with by the armed forces themselves. Hopefully by then India would have brought its military out of the closet and into the world.

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