Tag: defence services

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13: DRAGON’S BRAIN: DIFFERENTLY WIRED (PART 3: DEALING WITH CHINA)

This is the last part of the series of articles on this subject.  This one analyses aspects related to China’s vulnerabilities, her policy and attitude towards India and present day behavior.

Dealing with China

China’s Achilles Heel. China has a few vulnerabilities and insecurities. Her reaction becomes aggressive when these red lines get threatened or crossed. Some of these are:

    • Hunger for Natural Resources and Energy. China is a growing country needing a large amount of natural resources. China also has a very high demand for energy, making it heavily dependent on oil imports.
    • Extended Supply and Communication lines. China’s extended supply and communication lines, both on land and sea could become vulnerable to interdiction, disrupting her supplies. China has been working towards creating redundancy by developing alternate supply routes.
    • Belt and Road Initiative. This project has been initiated by China to revive the old silk route. Her endeavor is to create alternate trade and supply routes connecting various countries. A lot is riding for China on this project, which is already running into some rough weather in a couple of places.
    • Three Ts & Hong Kong. China is very touchy about Trade, Taiwan and Tibet. Even Hong Kong can be added to this list now.
    • Food Security. Recent pandemic and floods in the country have revealed the fault line of food security of the country. The food production is inadequate to meet the demand. Fishing in waters of other countries and leasing of land from other countries for cultivation are efforts towards mitigation of this problem.
    • Age Demography. To control the growing population, China had adopted one child policy. This policy was implemented very forcefully and was successful, however it has created an adverse age demography. The median age of the country is high with a large number of aged population. Each young person has to support two to three aged relatives. As a result it tries to avoid contact warfare, where loss of life would be high. Investment in long range weapons and unmanned platforms corroborates this observation.

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12: DRAGON’S BRAIN: DIFFERENTLY WIRED (PART 2: STRATEGIC AND MILITARY THOUGHTS)

This is continuation of the previous article on the same subject. This part lists out the aspects related to strategies, tactics and means employed as a weapon for achievement of desired goals. These aspects are as follows:

Strategic and Military Thoughts

Rich Strategic Tradition. China has had a number of scholars and philosophers in her thousands of years of history. Chinese Confucian philosophy advocates peaceful political solutions and discourages use of military force. But the works of a number of well-known strategists have heavily influenced her military philosophy, warfare, and political discourse.

Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, writer and philosopher. He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, an influential work of military strategy. His works focus on alternatives to battle, such as stratagem, delay, the use of spies and alternatives to war itself, the making and keeping of alliances, the uses of deceit and a willingness to submit, at least temporarily, to more powerful foes. His writings have deeply influenced military thought in China. Major ones which are visible in China’s actions are as follows:

    • “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
    • “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
    • “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
    • “When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”
    • “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”
    • “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
    • “Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.”

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10: HEALTHY WORKING ENVIRONMENT & CULTURE

Any organization will do well if it has a healthy working environment. Responsibility of creating a good and productive environment rests with the senior leadership. Senior leadership not only has to insist and encourage but also lead by example to achieve this.

During four decades of working in the Air Force, few aspects related to good working environment appealed to me. I made these as my guiding principles. Some of these are as follows:-

  • Leadership: Everyone who has a subordinate working under him or her is a leader. All the leaders should follow what they advocate. Motto should be “DO AS I DO” rather than “DO AS I SAY”. Also there should be Fairness, Honesty and Transparency in all their dealings.
  • Sell or Tell Type of Leadership: Younger generations have ready access to information and are very aware. The leadership style has to change with times. Giving a task and explaining the rationale behind it generates better acceptability and involvement. Need is for more of SELL type approach rather than TELL type of leadership.

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