Paper No. 5889 Dated 09-Mar-2015
By Dr Subhash Kapila
China’s massive Defence Budget 2015 pegged over $144 billion should be worrisome for India’s defence planners as there is no commensurate or matching Indian strategy to reduce India’s military differentials with China.
India’s single digit increase in defence budget allocations of around $40 billion announced in the last Budget or so pale into insignificance in comparison to China’s $144 billion defence expenditure primarily targeted to enhance China’s war-waging capabilities. Notably, China has maintained a 10% increase over last year’s defence budget even though the Chinese economy growth, as per official figures, is not likely to exceed 7%.
China is indisputably a military adversary of India engaged in strategic diminution of India both directly and in joint collusion with India’s other military adversary, namely Pakistan.
India cannot afford to repeat the historical mistakes of its past political leaders’ pious readings of China’s underlying strategic intentions pertaining to India. India has to perforce take note of China’s military capabilities emerging from China’s double-digit increases in its annual military budgets and the ensuing accretions to its offensive might.
It is China’s double-digit annual increases in its military budgets over decades that contribute to its over-sized military machine that imparts it with offensive capabilities to embark on military brinkmanship and adventurism extending from India’s Himalayan borders with Tibet to the maritime expanses of the South China Sea and East China Sea.
A Chinese expert on military matters has asserted on China’s Defence Budget 2015 that “The defence budget is no longer tied to economic performance. There is a political decision across the board in China that defence spending is sacrosanct, untouchable.”
The above reveals a marked contrast to Indian political leadership approaches where perceptionaly India’s war preparedness stood ignored for more than a decade and where defence spending was never considered by the political leadership as “sacrosanct and untouchable”.
Media reports have indicated that every year around January-February India’s Defence Budget allocations were tinkered around to balance budgetary deficits. Should that be the pattern of commitment of India’s national security managers who not only have to complete glaring voids in India’s military inventories but also to attempt reducing India’s military differentials with China’s burgeoning military might?
Having made the notable point of the contrasting Chinese and Indian approaches to Defence Budget allocations, let us now revert our attention to China’s massive Defence Budget 2015 allocations of over $ 144 billion and the assessed major thrusts in Chinese military modernisation and upgradation.
Overall, the major thrust in China’s current military spending is on building-up China into a major maritime power. The Chinese Prime Minister is on record stating that China will “draw up and implement a strategic maritime plan to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests.” and “Build China into a maritime power.”
China is therefore likely to devote a major chunk of the Chinese Defence Budget towards expanding the PLA Navy in terms of aircraft carriers, naval destroyer ships, SLBMs and force projection capabilities in terms of amphibious warfare ships and logistics.
Chinese PLA Air Force will be the next biggest beneficiary in terms of bombers and stealth fighter aircraft besides the armoury of missile weaponry for such combat aircraft. A god indication was available at the November 2014 Zhuhai Air Show where China exhibited its latest combat aircraft with ‘stealth capabilities’, and associated armaments.
China will also devote major defence spending on its strategic missiles arsenal. A god indicator to this effect surfaced in China’s firm reluctance to discuss ‘Strategic Nuclear Systems’ with the United States on the side-lines of the APEC Summit in November 2014 where China and US made agreements to reduce maritime incidents at sea and advance notifications of military exercises.
The Chinese Prime Minister elsewhere spelt out China’s military priorities as follows: (1) Comprehensively strengthen modern logistics (2) Step-up R&D of new high-tech weapons and equipment, and (3) Develop defence-related science and technology industries.
In terms of implications for Indian security, the major implications that emerge need to be analysed In terms of China’s military postures in Tibet affecting India’s security on the Himalayan borders with Tibet and the second one as the emergence of China as a major maritime power intent on an intrusive Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
India’s defence postures on its borders with Tibet in face of existing massive Chinese Army and Air Force deployments and nuclear missiles are woefully inadequate. Advanced Chinese military infrastructure existing on the Tibetan Plateau in terms of strategic road and rail network and military airfields is an added force-multiplier.
With the assessed Chinese priority in Defence Budget 2015 on strategic missiles, fighter aircraft and improvement of military logistics, India can expect enhancement of missiles and combat aircraft deployments in Tibet.
Improvement of military logistics cannot be solely viewed by Indian military planners as upgradation and expansion of military infrastructure. India also needs importantly to view expansion of military logistics in terms China’s ability to pump-in increased military formations into Tibet and the Indian borders. India also would need to take into account that China would also aim as per the emphasis on improved military logistics to significantly enhance high level holdings of war-waging logistics in Tibet, across the board.
The worrying implication of major Indian military concern in terms of increased PLA Air Force deployments in Tibet would be the combat effectiveness of the Indian Air Force to defend Indian air-space and provide Air Force cover to Indian Army formations battling China in the event of war. With a glaring deficiency of 126 or more fighter aircraft on its inventories the Indian frontiers on the Himalayan Tibetan border can be said to be virtually ‘naked’ in terms of operational air-cover by the Indian Air Force.
In terms of China’s unimpeded naval build-up of a decade or so and the added emphasis on building China into a “maritime power” as spelt out in Defence Budget 2015 priorities, there is a “wake-up call” for India and the Indian Navy.
China’s maritime build-up is not confined only to emerge as the most powerful Navy in the Western Pacific but also to use its burgeoning naval power to establish a powerful naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
Towards this end, China’s naval build-up in terms of additional aircraft carriers, naval destroyer combatants, submarines, amphibious warfare ships and logistics ships when intertwined with China’s highly publicised, in benign economic terms, of ‘China’s Maritime Silk Route’, is all aimed at China’s “Grand Naval Strategy” of toppling the appellation “Indian” from the Indian Ocean.
India has a new Prime Minister, a new Defence Minister and a new Finance Minister but India does not have a new Ministry of Defence. These three political leaders reputed for dynamic performance need to “restructure” the Indian Defence Ministry with a set-up imbued with the sacrosanct mission of pushing through India’s war-preparedness required to withstand the collusive joint military threats to India by China and Pakistan.
In conclusion, one does not have to highlight the glaring voids in India’s military inventories spelt out in the Indian media, but emphasise and strongly stress that: “India’s national security priorities are not only to fill in the voids in India’s existing military inventories but also an additional and greater mission of reducing the gap in India’s military differentials with China’s continuing military build-up with decades of annual double-digit increases in defence expenditure and currently forecasted to continue for another decade.”
(Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com)
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