COMMENTARIES MAY 08 2017

Comprehensive national power

MANOJ JOSHI
India needs a strategic e ort to understand that it is no longer competing with China, but seeking
to cope with an increasing asymmetry of power

PM Modi and Chinese President Xi in Ahmedabad Source: Wikipedia

MILITARY MODERNISATION

It is no secret that theres a delay in Indias current cycle of military modernisation. Ask the
services and they will vaguely claim that the cycle will be completed by 2022 or maybe 2027.
The e ort is to induct the contemporary range of armoured vehicles, artillery, ghter jets,
submarines, frigates and so on. Given the decades taken to achieve this, these systems will
almost immediately become obsolete and another delayed cycle will begin.

As long as an indigent Pakistan was the principal adversary, this caused no big worry. But we
now inc reasingly confront a risen China, whose plans work on schedule, and whose
modernisation is relen tlessly moving from copying western design and concepts towards
leapfrogging to become technology leaders.

In recent years, China has systematically built up its military, and also undertaken a deep
reorganisation of its structure. This is aimed at creating a force that, as Xi Jinping is never
tired of repeating, is loyal to the Communist Party of China and capable of ghting and
winning wars. The reorganisation has led to an integrated military divided into geographical
theatre commands mimicking in many ways the organisation of its principal adversary: the
United States.
 All this means for China a virtual assembly line of new generations of aircraft carriers, -
submarines, fighters, missiles etc.

The modernisation is top to bottomit begins with the nuclear forces, the bedrock of
Beijings status as a world power, and goes right down to the maritime militias that are used
to swamp shing grounds in the South China Sea. The Chinese are simultaneously aiming to
deny the US access to its mainland through the so-called A2/AD (anti-access area denial) syst-
ems, and at the same time organising their own forces for greater regional and even extra-
regional reach.

So, while Chinas navy moves from o shore defence to regional capability, its air force is
creating an integrated aerospace system for o ensive and defensive operations beyond its
borders. All this means a virtual assembly line of new generations of aircraft carriers,
destroyers, submarines, ghter aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles and associated systems. In
all this, space is a key element for C4ISRcommand, control, communications, computers,
intelligence, surveilla nce and reconnaissance. We are talking here not of individual satellites,
but constellations. So by 2020, the existing 30 Beidou navigation satellites will be replaced by
35 advanced versions. Already 40 Yaogan satellites move in a triplet formation providing ima -
gery and electronic intelligence. By 2020, China will be able to obtain 30-minute updates
from any part of the globe from 60 satellites including the Gaofen and Jilin series. The
Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is also working on counter-space systems aimed at knocking
out adversary satellites.

For years, the PLA used to talk about informationised warfare which was about digital
systems and networks. Now, they are on the threshold of what analyst Elsa Kania says is the
era of intelligentised warfare featuring arti cial intelligence (AI), big data and cloud
computing to enhance their C4ISR capabilities. The depth of the Chinese e ort is obvious:
many of the technologies now emerging are part of an e ort undertaken under Project 863,
begun in March 1986. Among these are boost glide vehicles, laser and high-power microwave
(HPM) weapons. Earlier this year, young scientist Huang Wenhua received a nati onal
technology award for developing an HPM system for defending warships from anti-ship
missiles.

Beyond the horizon is an array of even more drama tic AI-based technologies, where China has
emerged as a global leaderin quantum computing and communications and
electromagnetic and pulsar propulsion in space. These have great military consequences, and
in all of them, China has demonstrated a capacity, such as the launch last August of the
worlds rst quantum communications satellite Micius.

But in the past few years, the challenge we have faced from China has been somewhat
strange. There has been Pakistan, the iron brother that can always be counted on to keep
India o balance, but we have also seen a handful of Chinese soldiers pitching a tent in the
middle of nowhere in Aksai Chin in 2013, a disembodied voice warning INS Airavat in 2011
that it was in Chinese waters, when, in fact, it was in Vietnams EEZ, or, more recently, the
invocation of a non-binding UN Resolution 1172 of 1998 demanding that India end the
development of ballistic missiles, and the decision to rename six places in Arunachal Pradesh.
This is a new kind of warfare involving psychological, legal and media elements. With both
countries possessing nuclear weapons, it is unlikely that they will openly ght each other. But,
warfare has many dimensions and the best victory is one that is obtained without ghting at
all.
Indeed, as Wu Chunqiu of the Academy of Military Sciences argued in 2000, Victory without
war does not mean that there is no war at all. The wars one must ght are political wars,
economic wars, science and technology wars, diplomatic wars, etc. To sum up in a word, it is a
war of Comprehensive National Power (CNP). Although military power is an important factor,
in peacetime it usually acts as a backup force, and plays the role of invisible might. What
India must understand is that war is no longer about tanks and guns, but CNP. China has long
had a fascination with the concept pioneered by Ray Cline of the CIA, who came up with an
index based on the formula Pp = (C+E+M) x (S+W) in the 1960s. In the nuclear age, defeat and
victory were about CNP, as the erstwhile Soviet Union realised, not its military arsenal.

In Clines schema, Pp was perceived power, C was critical mass (population plus territory), E
was economic capability, M stood for military strength, S was strategic purpose and W the will
to pursue national strategy. Subsequently other indices came up, using even more re ned
variables.

India has always wanted to be seen as a Great Nation; the Chinese are clear they are
once again destined to be a, if not the, Great Power.

The Chinese have never hidden their will to power. Where India has always wanted to be seen
as a Great Nation, the Chinese are clear that they are once again destined to be a, if not the,
Great Power. To that end, they are deploying a range of elements relating to hard and soft
power, and the $1 trillion One Belt One Road scheme is its economic manifestation.

One of the key areas being pursued is STIscience, technology and innovation. In the next
ve years, the Chinese government alone will spend $250 billion in S&T and innovation. Its
tech giants, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and others will spend several times this sum. The
priority areas are quantum communications and computation, an arcane eld that is di cult
to even conceptualise, but whose implications are earth-shaking. In addition, focus remains
on cyber security, deep-space exploration, robotics, materials, genetics, big data and brain
research.

Hard power is used to control or coerce the behaviour of others, but equally vital are soft
power, persuasion, leading by example and a sense of legitimacy. Here authoritarian China
does not have it easy, but it isnt conceding anything. It is spending billions in winning friends
and in uencing people. Through institutions and schemes like the AIIB, NDB and the OBOR, it
is expanding its remit to include Asia, parts of Europe and the Indian Ocean Region. Its media
and culture outreach aims to present China in the best possible way to the international
community.

The Chinese challenge is not about guns and submarines, though the disputed border and the
Sino-Pak nexus signify the need to up our guard. It is about CNP, of which the military is an
important element, but not the only one. We need a compound national strategic e ort to
enhance all the CNP elements. In the rst stage, India needs to und erstand that it is no longer
competing with China, but seeking to cope with an increasing asymmetry of power. It should
turn the Chinese strategy inside out by ringing itself with A2/AD defences and make up our
military power de cit through e ective coalitions and alliances.

It means a society working at a much higher level of e ciency than the one we have now. It
means a di erent kind of a military, not the World War II kind of force we have today. But
more important, we need a socially cohesive India, led by people with a constructive and
forward-looking agenda. Most important, we need to understand that there are no shortcuts.
What you see in China is what began 30 years ago.
This commentary originally appeared in Outlook.