India’s strategic challenges in 2023

By Maj Gen Sudhakar Jee 

India with her $3.4 trillion GDP is the world’s fastest growing economy, and an engine that has the second largest contribution to the global growth in 2022. India’s market cap is expected to rise to $11 trillion by 2032.

Thus, the year 2023 will be critical and hence merit focus on major strategic challenges.

The problems for India are many and varied. On the social front it includes fighting poverty, corruption, illiteracy, unemployment to improve the poor Human Development Indices while on the security front it ranges from cross-border terrorism, to the ongoing proxy war in the Union Territory of J&K, the extended stand-off along the border in the north and east with China, Left Wing Extremism (LWE), and the strategic rivalry amongst the competing global powers in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).

The new forms of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’, the global recessionary trends and the Pandemic are other challenges to name a few.

Global Security Environment 

The current global strategic landscape is marked by a growing political and economic polarization between the US and the European Union on the one hand and Russia, China and North Korea on the other while the world continues to face economic hardships and global recessionary trends.

Russia may be on the forefront of the war but China is winning it without firing a single bullet. As dependence of the world power on China continues to grow, it has become more assertive, expansionist with unilateral policies at the peril of world peace.

Challenges for India are many but she will have to keep a close tab of few of these issues demanding immediate strategic focus.

Radicalization 

Polarized views are the order of the day in the democratic world but the cocktail of freedom of speech mixed with religious extremism is becoming a cause of concern for governments world over from the US to Europe to India. Digital tools like ‘Deep Fake’ have added another dimension to the problem.

In view of India’s multiculturalism, and multi-ethnicity, there is a crying need for self-discipline amongst the citizens. Those haywire in thought process must understand that it is the country which gives them the identity and the freedom and things are not the other way round.

Vulnerability of the Indian Economy 

With changing times and technology milieu, cyber and electromagnetic attacks on security establishments, strategic assets,  power transmission grids, aviation industry, cyber infrastructure, healthcare industry, banking system, railways, critical supply chains, space and research organizations, and on critical technologies by adversaries has potential to partly cripple the Indian Economy.

Thus, it calls for the need of an integrated structure of counter measures to include Influence Operation (IO), Information Warfare (IW), with offensive Cyber capability at the earliest.

De-coupling with China

Even the United States has not been able to achieve this but it does not share boundaries with China. India’s biggest geographical neighbor with a long undetermined international boundary poses a direct strategic threat. Despite the concentrated efforts in the recent past, the trade gap of India with China is close to $70 billion in favor of China.

Narco-Terrorism

Situated between ‘Golden Crescent’ in the west, and ‘Golden Triangle’ in the east, youthful India with its high unemployment rate, long borders and coastline is highly vulnerable to smuggling of drugs and narcotics. Narco-terrorism is a double edged menace which not only threatens the health and wellbeing of the youth but also finances the anti national element at its cost. Hence, a proactive approach is needed to tackle challenges on this front.

Af-Pak: The fountainhead of ‘Global Terrorism’

Pakistan has witnessed a 51 percent rise in terrorist attacks since Taliban has again come to power in Afghanistan in 2021, says a report by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, a leading Islamabad-based think tank .

The recent meeting of the national security advisors of India, and central Asian countries in New Delhi also pondered over the threat emanating from Afghanistan, which is again being used to fund, plan, and organize terrorist activities across the globe.

As the international community has been too distracted with the Ukraine war to notice, unless there is renewed focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, ugly surprises may be waiting to hit the world in 2023 and beyond.

China and third term of President Xi 

China has been applying Xi’s doctrine ‘Fan Fa You Wei’, an aggressive projection of Chinese power to exploit  adversaries’ weaknesses in the political, media and legal systems and attacking political vulnerabilities of the democracies world over. Moreover, Xi’s new strategy articulates a focus on “winning the local wars” in context of regional contingencies such as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the border dispute with India.

Indian Ocean Region

The Sea Lanes of the Indian Ocean extends from Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Malacca over a distance of 5325 Km. 60 percent of the global trade, and 70 percent of the world’s petroleum traffic flows from the IOR. Over 80 percent of China’s oil and gas imports pass through IOR.

With the world’s busiest sea lanes, IOR has become the center of global geopolitics. India, China, and the US are not the only players but it is strategic for countries like France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Australia, Brazil, etc. also.  Thus, the Indian Ocean is being pushed towards a much more multipolar and complex strategic environment, creating new flashpoints.

Indian Nuclear Doctrine

India and China swear by the policy of ‘No First Use’ and ‘No-use of Nuclear Weapons against Non Nuclear States’. But Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is centered fundamentally on first use, and it is also oriented primarily towards defeating India’s conventional superiority in the event of conflict.

At the 20th Congress, Xi used the phrase “powerful strong strategic deterrent capabilities system,” that was missing from his previous speeches and work reports. Fear is that China is, perhaps, striving to achieve a launch-on-warning (LOW) nuclear posture, meaning to launch at an adversary upon detecting an incoming missile.

The change in policy and building of at least 250 missile silos in three missile silo fields in Yumen, Gansu province, near Hami in Xinjiang province, and Haggin Banner, Ordos City, Inner Mongolia supports the policy shift. China is also increasing its nuclear warhead stockpile from 350 to 1000 by 2030.

Conclusion

There are forces inimical to India in the world trying to target the mother of democracy glowing as a bright spot. Hence, India would do well to take a look at its strategic challenges in a holistic manner and implement them proactively in 2023.

Maj Gen Sudhakar Jee, VSM, is a former colonel of the Mahar Regiment who superannuated in 2020 after more than 37 years of active service. He has commanded troops in varied terrain, climate, and conflict zones. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral thesis on the India-China border dispute.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times  

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