By Stephen P. Cohen, Sunil Dasgupta
India's transforming into affluence has led specialists to foretell an immense rearmament attempt. The second-most populous country on the planet is starting to wield the commercial strength anticipated of the sort of behemoth. Its border with Pakistan is a tinderbox, the subcontinent is still susceptible to spiritual extremism, and an army contention among India and China may perhaps erupt sooner or later. India has lengthy had the inducement for modernizing its military—it now has the assets besides. What may still we think to determine sooner or later, and what is going to be the most probably ramifications? In Arming with no Aiming, Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta resolution these an important questions.
India's militia wish new guns worthy greater than $100 billion. yet every one of these guns needs to come from international providers a result of mess ups of India's indigenous learn and improvement. guns providers from different countries are queuing up in New Delhi. a protracted dating among India and Russian brands is going again to the chilly conflict. extra lately, India and Israel have constructed robust army alternate ties. Now, a brand new army dating with the USA has generated the best wish for army transformation in India.
Against this backdrop of recent affluence and newfound entry to overseas army know-how, Cohen and Dasgupta examine India's army modernization to discover haphazard army switch that lacks political path, suffers from balkanization of army association and doctrine, continues to be restricted via slim potential making plans, and is pushed through the pursuit of expertise loose from military-strategic ambitions. the nature of army switch in India, in particular the disorder within the political-military institution in regards to procurement, is finally the results of a old doctrine of strategic restraint in position considering the fact that Nehru. In that context, its strategy of arming with no strategic objective is still manageable as India seeks great-power lodging of its upward thrust and doesn't are looking to glance threatening. the chance lies in its modernization efforts precipitating a interval of strategic statement or contributing to misperception of India's intentions through Pakistan and China, its such a lot instant rivals.
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Extra resources for Arming Without Aiming: India's Military Modernization
Sample text
The assumption is that military spending should be a function of the size of the economy, a notion inconsistent with the realism of threat-driven military posture. While a bigger economy may mean more to defend, it is not necessarily so. Still, long-term co-occurrence of affluence and military strength is a central proposition in international relations theory. As Table 1-1 shows, the Indian Army received 54 percent of the total defense budget in 2009. The Indian Air Force received 24 percent, and the Indian Navy, 15 percent.
As technology becomes more complicated, costs have risen while quality remains problematic. In a country where import substitution has been the mantra for decades, the forced import of weapons was politically embarrassing. The Indian government overcame the resistance to importing weapons at huge cost by its generous funding of indigenous research and development, despite a continuous string of failures. But the inability—and unwillingness—of the political leadership to coordinate the demands of the armed forces with the supply from the military research agencies has meant that military modernizations in India have been disorganized and of limited strategic value.
The value of the market may be large, but unit volumes and the number of buyers and sellers are limited. In most countries, the national government is the only buyer and can set prices to its own advantage or proscribe sales. When weapons manufacturers wish to sell to other parties—mainly other governments—they require the approval of their own governments. Given the asymmetrical power of the government in the market, private investment in the manufacture of weapons occurs under very constrained conditions that ultimately subsidize the development process.