There can be little doubt that a substantial process of naval modernisation is taking place throughout the Asia-Pacific Region in general and in Southeast Asia in particular. Most analysis of this phenomenon, though, concentrates on its extent and nature and especially on its likely consequences for peace and stability in the area. There is, in particular, a focus on whether we are seeing the beginnings of a potentially de-stabilising naval arms race in the region. This is perfectly valid and indeed an important line of enquiry and will be discussed in the next and also subsequent chapters.
The focus of this chapter, though, is rather different. Instead it will look at the processes of naval modernisation—how, in effect, countries ‘grow,’ or maybe maintain a navy and the special problems and challenges that they often face in doing so.
Looking at the problem theoretically the task of becoming ‘a maritime power’ and growing a navy would appear to be fairly straight forwards—in principle at least. It would seem to be largely a matter of reconciling ends, ways and means at a series of cascading decision-making levels that range from the grand strategic policy-making at the top of the governmental hierarchy to the tactical details of implementation at the bottom. The devil, though, is in the practical details. It is these that make the task so difficult. For each country, the practical details are different, in consequence of their geography, political and strategic culture, economic state and general circumstances.
While their experience may therefore seem very different, there do, however, appear to be a number of common factors that determine the relative coherence, success or failure of a country’s naval development. Particular cases are useful in illustrating general points. To a degree, this chapter takes the process of modernisation in India as a point of reference, not because it is better or worse than anywhere else but simply because as a regional power India has been ‘growing its navy’ for several decades and its experience provides pointers to the challenges that other countries in the Indo-Pacific region will face as they follow suit, if they do. Perhaps, also, that experience will tell us something about the extent to which we should worry about the consequences of naval modernisation for the region’s stability.
In responding to the challenges of naval modernisation, four broad tiers of decision-making seem particularly important, namely the levels of
- Policy-making at the level of Grand Strategy
- Implementing and Resourcing Grand Strategy
- Military Policy and Strategy-Making
- Naval Policy and Strategy-Making
Of course the distinctions between these four tiers of decision are fuzzy, but their hierarchy represents a process of identifying national objectives at the top and implementing the naval means of helping secure them at the bottom. At every stage, though, the relevant decision-makers have to reconcile ends (objectives), ways (methods) and means (tools and procedures). Major problems at any level can cascade down causing further difficulties lower in the hierarchy—inevitably, a feedback system can work its way up the hierarchy too. After all, it’s a poor strategist who does not take at least some account of his likely means when deciding his operational objectives and course of action.
We must also be wary the danger of building apparently ‘western’ assumptions about both process and product into the analysis. 1 All the same, the following hierarchy of decision in the acquisition of defence capability is considered universal, even unavoidable, though the manner in which, and the instruments by which, it is conducted may vary widely from country to country.
Tier 1: Deciding Grand Strategy or National Security Policy
At this rarified level at the very top of the decision-making hierarchy, the task is to identify national objectives and to decide their relative importance and priority. This is a matter of policy, not strategy-making. This has to be done before those lower in the hierarchy can address the strategic issues of deciding how those objectives should be met.
One particularly important set of considerations at this level are related to what the Germans call Aussenpolitik, namely the view that the country’s top decision-makers take of the international context in which their country operates and what they deduce they should do about it. The international context, in short does much to shape the way in which a country’s policy-makers conceive their maritime vulnerabilities and needs. Inevitably such perceptions and their policy consequences will in turn shape the perceptions and policy responses of others—hence the narrative of action–reaction cycles and, potentially, destabilising arms races.
Even here, though, perceptions of the outer world are likely to be influenced if not shaped by factors internal to the state—which the Germans call by contrast Innenpolitik. In any case, the manner in which a country grows a navy, the process rather than the product will reflect its domestic circumstances as well as its international context. This may extend to a near independence of that context—a process of growing a navy that, to twist an analogy ‘marches to the sound of its own drum,’ that is supported by perceptions of the outside world rather than driven by them. In essence, naval policy is driven more by internal than external dynamics. Accordingly many of the incentives for naval development may have little to do with what is happening abroad, and logically, little impact on it.
Both the external and the internal challenges facing decision-makers are clearly comprehensive in that they include all aspects of a country’s activity and interests—the political, social, economic, legal and military. For this reason, decision-making in national security policy likewise requires a comprehensive approach in which all aspects of a country’s interests are represented and effectively integrated. One increasingly common way of doing this is the formation of some sort of National Security Council system which represents all stakeholders at this level. A sense of urgency can also be developed by the periodic issue of formal and public statements of National Security Policy which are intended to inform the public and to guide policy-makers lower down in the system.
Two problems that affect prospects for maritime development often characterise this level of policy decision-making. The first is the problem of sea-blindness as it is often called. Sea-blindness is a condition which leads sufferers either vastly to underrate the relative importance of the maritime domain or which leads them to acknowledge this in theory but to delay or postpone measures to protect their maritime interests to some later and sometimes unspecified date after more apparently urgent national requirements are met. For this reason, such ‘maritime interests’ are not handed down for further urgent consideration lower in the policy and strategy-making hierarchy. India has certainly suffered from this because of its focus on territorial disputes with its neighbours and on its internal security.
One way of seeking to correct sea-blindness has been recently exemplified by the recent policy statements of China’s President Xi Jinping and Indonesia’s President Jokowi, both of whom seek to elevate the development of their country’s maritime attributes to a very high national priority. Whether this delivers what they seek or not, will of course depend on consequential decisions about implementation to be made lower down the system and for that they, and we, will have to wait. The Indian equivalent of this would seem to be its ‘Maritime Agenda, 2010–2020’ which aims, particularly in creating the kind of maritime infrastructure (in shipping, ports and related industrial capacity) that historically has been associated with naval growth. 2
Another common problem in designing a national policy for the sea is that of having to ‘see through a glass darkly.’ It is uniformly and intrinsically difficult for foreign ministries or treasuries to predict the future or to gauge its requirements. Wide consultation with non-military sources of expertise may help articulate policy alternatives here but for that to happen there needs to be an informed ‘commentariat’ (derived essentially from the university sector and national think-tanks) and a willingness for policy-makers to engage with them openly. Perhaps because of a tendency to overclassify potentially sensitive issues in India there is arguably a lack of informed debate and ‘the security discourse is dominated by former military officers or bureaucrats who…base their arguments on opinions and claimed experience’. 3
Another way forwards is for the military and other policy stakeholders to base their own recommendations on rigorous and objective internal studies. The failure of the Indian military to conduct such a reappraisal of the operational lessons of the 1999 Kargil campaign has raised doubts about the extent to which this kind of analysis is regularly done or has much effect even if it is done. 4
Without such internal and external debate, policy statements will tend to be bland enough to cope with the variety of consequences of their being unable to predict what is likely to happen when and what their country will need to do about it in defence of national interests. Options are maintained rather than prioritised. There is talk of balanced approaches towards the future, which in practical terms offer very little real guidance to decision-makers lower down in the system. This being the case, they also either follow the same line and preserve options rather than decide priorities, or, more insidiously, they decide their own way forward in the light of decisions which they think the policy-makers should have made, but did not. Amongst the consequences of this are political, economic or military decisions made largely for narrow sectional reasons. Russian experience shows that a likely result of this is a sequence of unplanned shifts over time that makes it hard for a navy to chart a consistent course. 5 Paradoxically, smaller navies with fewer options, may be better placed in this regard.
India, like most countries, suffers from all of this to some extent. In the military dimension of its maritime aspirations it also has a residual problem in less than perfect Civil-Military Co-operation since critics allege that the Indian Administrative Service is generalist rather than specialist and to some extent sees its purpose to be more a question of controlling the military, rather than helping it take its proper position in national defence policy decision-making. While it is surely possible to argue that so firmly entrenched is India’s democracy after nearly 70 years that the relative importance of this implicit task has much declined, doubts remain.
Finally, in countries like India, deficiencies in the national maritime defence industrial base (DIB) limit the country’s economic development, restrict governmental revenue and act on a brake on its naval aspirations. Despite India’s high levels of reliance on sea-borne trade, only 11% of the total is carried in Indian ships, there is a lack of adequate port handling capacity and its commercial ship building industry if anything is declining, now producing barely 1% of total world ship building. 6 This limits what can be produced for the Navy and helps explains why India has become the world’s largest arms importer despite its emphasis on self-reliance.
There are questions about the relative priority of investing in the maritime DIB when compared to other sectors of the economy, and to the balance to be struck between the interests of the DIB and the navy, where these diverge. The government’s particular aspirations are crucial here. It may seek to produce a DIB that will allow the country to act as an independent national player on the global stage. Alternately its aspirations may be more modest—to support a national DIB that can act as a global value-added supplier of niche capabilities, working in conjunction with its equivalents in other countries. From this derive some obvious questions, such as: What are the key industrial capabilities the government wishes to foster? How successful will the maritime programme be? More specifically, to what extent will maritime development focus on and benefit the navy and the coastguard, as opposed to the civilian/commercial sectors? As we shall see, this is a question of particular relevance for Indonesia’s President Jokowi.
Tier 2: Implementing and Resourcing Grand Strategy
This decision-making tier is largely a matter of identifying the ways and means by which policy objectives are to be achieved and of providing the resources needed for their accomplishment. Here, general policy directions get translated into practical action across the whole front of government activity. In this, the maritime dimension takes its place alongside all the others (education, health, social care and so forth) in the consequent jostling for resources and budgetary priority. Here again the requirement is to identify the extent to which the various levers of national power can most effectively contribute to the general policy objectives identified earlier and to ensure that each ‘lever’ is provided with the resources necessary for the task, whether that be to build the infrastructure, support the development or surviv...