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India just doesn’t want to go into the real reasons behind wars. It’s our blind spot

A peculiar feature of the Indian security state is the frequency with which failures to anticipate enemy action are explained away as 'intelligence gaps or failures'. 

Why do nations go to war? As Indians trace the origins and impacts of wars in Europe and West Asia, there has been a gradual evolution in our understanding of why wars are fought and what they leave behind. However, the same critical analysis is not extended as enthusiastically to India’s own wars and conflicts, leaving them shrouded in a sense of perpetual mystery.

Why do India’s adversaries initiate wars or conflicts against it?

In a recent interview, former Army Chief General Manoj Naravane was asked a reflective question: “Six years later, when you look back, do you think we could have done anything different?” He replied, “Perhaps we need to study China in more detail to understand what makes them tick. We were surprised because we don’t know their manner of working and thinking.”

He then recounted discussions on China’s motivations in Galwan, ranging from Covid-19 to the withdrawal of Article 370, but admitted that the search for a definitive explanation continues.

There are certain infirmities in India’s ability to reckon with past wars retrospectively as well as to anticipate future contingencies. For instance, China’s synchronised advance in 2020 was neither the first nor the only time that Indian decision-makers were caught by surprise in terms of the scale, timing and intent of adversary action. India was as surprised during Kargil in 1999, the India-China war of 1962, and the India-Pakistan wars of both 1948 and 1965.

There is something broader, more historical and perhaps more elusive at play here rather than merely the inscrutability of Chinese intent. After all, the Kargil Review Committee report (a laudable and unique act of reckoning in Indian history) was tellingly titled “From Surprise to Reckoning”—a descriptor that could apply to almost all of India’s analyses of war, with the possible exception of 1971.

There are three fundamental aspects of this problem that need to be better understood: war anticipation (before conflict), the determination of adversary motivations once a crisis/conflict has begun (during conflict), and India’s ability to interrogate the causes of previous wars or strategic surprises — in other words, deterrence failure — in order to draw lessons (after conflict). All three aspects are naturally interconnected and require broad analysis.

Also read: How India should prepare for a future war with Pakistan and China

More complicated than intelligence failure

A peculiar feature of the Indian security state is the frequency with which failures to anticipate enemy action are explained away as “intelligence gaps” or “intelligence failures”.

China’s offensive in 1962 was partially blamed on Intelligence Bureau chief BN Mullick and his alleged failure to anticipate Chinese military action. The lack of healthy coordination between the Army and the Intelligence agencies is cited as one of the reasons for the Kargil ingress, while the 2020 crisis is also at times seen as resulting from gaps in surveillance capabilities.

Although this line of analysis carries a kernel of truth in all three cases, it is too narrow, simplistic and puts a premium on the detection of troop movements or the acquisition of crude information about enemy preparations.

This is puzzling because, in all three crises and wars, there were enough indications of military movements, as well as warnings and intelligence inputs.

Dramatic and adverse surprise developments have raised overwhelming questions. Given the need to preserve political and military morale, as well as to avoid mutual finger-pointing, there has often been a temptation to locate and confine the problem at the level of “intelligence failure”. This is also illustrated in accounts that present the core lesson of Galwan as the need for better surveillance capabilities at the lower level—a problem that is easy to solve and unlikely to elicit deeper institutional inquiries.

Also read: Iran war has given India a blueprint for the next conflict

Conceptual failures and adversary motivation

The common thread in anticipation failure happens to be conception failure. This occurs when the state leadership adheres too strongly to fixed notions of an adversary’s strategic intent and behaviour pattern. When intelligence inputs pointing to a new development pile up, the state struggles to interpret it. This is because such inputs only point to anomalies and probable offensive intent, without explaining the larger politico-military intent.

In his study of the 1962 war, Professor Steven A Hoffmann explains the role of conception failure as a “failure to imagine or speculate about unorthodox courses of action which the opponent can adopt.”

Prior to 1962, Indian political leadership reached the fixed assessment that China was unlikely to enter into a significant conflict because of its own constraints. These constraints were assessed to be related to its intense competition against both the US and the Soviet Union as well as internal economic difficulties. The IB did deliver pointed reports in May 1962 (based on sources) that an attack aimed at removing forward-deployed Indian posts across Ladakh was imminent or likely. But such predictions........

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