After the brief lull in geo-political tensions since the end of the nearly half a century-old Cold War era in 1991, the world is back into a new stage of military build-up. Defence spending by major nations are bound to see a step-up year after year, and the election of Donald Trump as the American president has only added to the somewhat tense global scenario.
A spark here, or there, would suffice to take the world to the brink of another major war, and the UN can only be trusted to throw its hands up as has happened with the US war on Saddam Hussein.
This heightened military build-up is reflected in a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute this week. While it shows the military spend by the US has not substantially increased of late — even as the US remains the world’s best battle-ready force — the overall global military expenditure rose for a second consecutive year, in 2016, to as high as $1686 billion.
India was at the fifth place in the list of top military spenders, dwarfed only by the US, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Even then, India’s military spend for last year was just about one-fourth of China’s. It grew by 8.5 per cent to 55.9 billion, against the US military spend of $611 billion, and China’s 5.4 per cent increase to $215 billion in 2016.
Notable is also the push that was made by India in this year’s budget — allocating Rs2.74 lakh crore for defence, which includes Rs86,488 crore for modernisation of the defence sector.
India’s military spend, under the present difficult situations, may seem quite heavy. In reality, however, it is still less than levels that should give the armed forces some comfort.
China is bent upon cocking a snook at India at every turn. With the red neighbour joining hands with Pakistan to give pin-pricks to this nation, India has no option other than to raise its defence levels.
The ten years of perceived drift and indecision under the two UPA rules had at one level kept the regional tensions in a state of “suspended animation”. But, this period of lull was also the period when China overtook India in military might five-fold. And so did Pakistan in substantial levels.
Thus, the build-up of the previous four decades after the 1962 India-China war, from virtual scratch to bring the Indian military might on par with that of the Chinese, lost its steam from the turn of the new century. The present scenario has not improved much. The past three years of the NDA government did little to bolster either the military hardware might or the morale of the human resource of the forces.
The recent happenings in the Kashmir valley project a dismal picture about our armed forces which belie the bravado and unreal talks of the political leadership. The military leadership has also shown to be far removed from the men in the field which has resulted in petty personnel demonstrating open defiance of senior commanders.
In the meanwhile, China raced ahead. So, too, Pakistan with generous ‘free gifts’ from the US in the name of fighting terror and Taliban. India’s hesitation or inability in strongly hitting back at Pakistan even in the face of grave provocations from the other side of the border has also to do with a likely realisation of the deficits in this nation’s defence preparedness. The Narendra Damodardas Modi government has not shown any classy cutting edge strategies in handling of India’s neighbours.
China’s economic prosperity helped it pump in money for massive defence build-up. India, with its less energetic economic push, is bound to fall further behind in the foreseeable future. With Arunachal Pradesh emerging as a focal point for possible military action from the Chinese side in the days ahead, a joint Chinese and Pakistani military offensive against India on two fronts — the northern and western borders — is a serious possibility. Sadly, the Indian government and its military do not seem to have any plans ready to face such eventualities.
Wars are no more a fight between land armies; wars are essentially fought from the skies. This is all the more reason why sophistication in military technologies and equipment is a matter of first priority.
With the Wild West having the monopoly for production and sale of much of the modern warfare technology and armaments, regional tensions like in the subcontinent are a godsend for them to make more money from Asia, Africa or the rest of the underdeveloped regions. Their interests are served well by more of regional tensions and war cries — to which nations like India and Pakistan get attracted like flies to the fire.
