Maroof Raza’s book, ‘Essays on Military Affairs’, does a great public service by putting together some of his most important articles in a compact publication
Maroof Raza is one of India’s foremost commentators on strategic and military issues. Both on television and in print, he presents his views clearly and concisely, enabling general audiences to understand and discuss matters that define India’s complex security landscape.
As India is grappling with diverse challenges in its strategic space — in its neighbourhood, Eurasia and the Indian Ocean — Mr Raza has done a great public service by putting together some of his most important articles in a compact publication. This book discusses the country’s geo-strategic arena, examines its ties with China and Pakistan, and then analyses the various dimensions of the terrorist threat that India faces.
Mr Raza takes an unsentimental view of India’s capabilities. He describes the country’s soft power as “overrated” and notes the absence of a military-industrial complex that has made India a major importer of defence equipment. To address the country’s diverse strategic challenges, he strongly urges New Delhi “to design a geopolitical action plan at least within its strategic space” that runs from the coast of Africa to the Malacca Strait.
Mr Raza asserts that the Indian Ocean rather than “Af-Pak” (“AfghanistanPakistan”) should be India’s priority concern. This emerges from the crucial importance of this waterway for the movement of India’s energy needs and trade and the threats this maritime space faces from piracy, the Houthis and the prospects of wider regional conflicts between regional and extraregional naval powers.
In this context, Mr Raza advocates reshaping the maritime grouping, the Quad, as a security coalition to confront China, and even proposes India’s membership of the G-7 grouping of the world’s richest economies. The latter seems to be a farfetched notion given that India has neither the economic heft nor the strategic inclination to join an overtly western alliance.
In fact, Mr Raza later suggests that India needs “to balance antagonistic big power relations” — which would hardly sit well with a G-7 membership.
Mr Raza recognises China as India’s “biggest threat”, more so because of its close ties with Pakistan. He provides three reasons for China’s incursion into Ladakh in April 2020: To deflect a bad global press following the Covid-19 outbreak, while intimidating India for shifting close to the US in defence and security areas; to nibble away at Indian territory to obtain tactical advantages; and to assert its interest in controlling the Indus water system to serve its strategic and economic interests. He presciently notes that the Chinese troops “are there to stay”.
In an eight-page essay, he looks at the prospect of a SinoIndian War and concludes that, while there are shortcomings in some specific areas, overall, the Indian Army may be expected to give a good account of itself. Mr Raza also offers a specific proposal to settle the Sino-Indian border issue — giving Aksai Chin to China and accepting the McMahon Line. This would enable India to retain Arunachal Pradesh, effectively what China had offered India in November 1959.
Mr Raza’s essays on India-Pakistan relations are equally lucid, though he remains pessimistic about improving ties between the two neighbours. After providing an excellent summary of the Kashmir issue, Mr Raza discusses the wars of 1965, 1971, the Siachen issue and the Kargil conflict. On the prospects of engagement, his conclusion is forthright: “The real deliverables on Indo-Pak ties will only come when India’s leadership engages Pakistan’s generals publicly”, he says. And then points out that “hostility with India is important for the Pakistan army’s socioeconomic agenda”.
Mr Raza views Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terror as the instrument of choice after Pakistan’s failures in conventional conflicts with India, and applauds India’s counter-measures — the surgical strikes of September 2016 and the Balakot air attacks in February 2019. Still, he argues, the most effective weapon against Pakistan-sponsored terror is to put an economic squeeze on it through diplomatic effort to deny it financial bailouts from its friends and international organisations.
Mr Raza’s views are clearly articulated even though some of his observations may cause discomfiture. On the ongoing standoff in Ladakh, he asks: Why was the Chinese buildup at the border missed by Indian intelligence agencies? What were the circumstances in which an Indian Colonel personally confronted Chinese troops in June 2020? He also emphasises the need to include senior army officers in official discussions with Pakistan and China, rather than leave the dialogue to diplomats. He calls for a comprehensive attack on the ideology that supports terrorism rather than a piecemeal approach of responding to specific attacks. Above all, despite strong US blandishments, he supports India’s commitment to strategic autonomy.
These thoughts exemplify the author’s commitment to “intellectual pluralism” and are intended to encourage discussion and debate. Given the important and diverse themes Mr Raza examined, the book should have had an index and a concluding chapter where the author would have presented his ideas relating to India’s security interests in an integrated manner.
Our appetite whetted, we now seek more from Mr Raza — essays that would discuss the fresh challenges in our neighbourhood and to our triangular ties with China, Russia and the US. We also seek a detailed presentation of a medium-term strategic vision for India that would include precise action plans, the resources required and the time-frame within which our objectives should be achieved. Mr Raza’s pen should continue to enrich our lives for years to come.
