The Prime Minister's Office
By the time the captain landed his exhausted aircraft back at Adampur, in New Delhi, at the Defence Ministry, Minister Singh was preparing for an audience with his wartime Prime Minister. He carried two pieces of news: one good, one bad.
The bad news first. An hour earlier, Russia's state arms-export agency had abruptly suspended deliveries of weapons spares, citing domestic political pressure. Singh trusted the Foreign Ministry had already laid this before the Prime Minister with all due embellishment, and he now needed Kahan's help to reverse the situation. Kahan and the Russian president were on tolerable personal terms. Singh knew the Russian Federation Duma had never once stopped weapons exports because Indian aircraft had used Russian bombs to mistakenly hit civilian neighbourhoods. The Russians had no such tradition. The real point was simply to push the price up.
The good news: in two days of strikes, his air force had downed at least eight Pakistani fighters, two of which had been confirmed as Falcon Squadron F-16C/Ds shot down in air combat. Pakistan's celebrated American technology was no longer a myth. It was a major result. Singh believed not only would Kahan be heartened, the Indian public would be jubilant. Singh was unlike previous cabinet ministers; he had always understood the power of public opinion. His ministry was equipped not only with an official spokesman as a window dressing, but with a discreetly maintained Public Affairs Office under Rujadnahan, his most trusted official, whose job was managing newspapers and television. The opening of hostilities had thrown the country into high feeling. He needed front-line good news to keep stoking the fire.
Singh was thinking through his propaganda plan for state television when Rujadnahan entered the office to tell him that the Prime Minister's call with the American President had ended, and that Kahan was now free to receive him. Singh left the Defence Ministry on Dalhousie Road at once for the PM's Office in central New Delhi. The duty official announced him; Singh was admitted immediately. Inside, Kahan was sitting alone, lost in thought, looking dejected and exhausted. The American end had clearly stuck him with another nail.
"Prime Minister, the Defence Minister has arrived." A secretary stepped forward to bring Kahan back from his thoughts.
"All right, my old friend. Sit down." Kahan rose to gesture Singh into a chair. "Tell me about our losses these two days first." He spread his hands as he said it, as though more concerned about his own side's losses than anything else.
"Prime Minister, our losses have been very, very limited. Pakistan is incapable of striking back. They are still using suicide bombers against military installations. Such attacks accomplish nothing except to anger our people."
"Mm. I know all this. Their methods have always been low. By the way, Chaman told me this morning that his intelligence shows opinion inside China is sharply divided. Some sympathise with us. The intellectual class scoffs at traditional geopolitics. They are inclined to see us as victims of terrorism."
"That's exactly what I'd like to address. You should not put faith in such reports. The Chinese appear hesitant on the surface, but it may be a ruse, just as it was in 1962. By the final hour, Nehru still believed they would not take military action. In the first half of 1962, Zhou Enlai and Nehru were exchanging letter after letter on the colonial-borders question, in the most leisurely fashion. The government of the day thought the Chinese tedious and naive. They were quietly preparing for war.1"
"You have studied their strategy?"
"I have. I was four in 1962. My family fled from Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai. It felt like the end of the world. I have studied this country since I was young. China's decision-makers are not opportunists, even though they are now waiting for an opportunity. They proceed according to their own timetable. As Chaman puts it, so long as we have crushed Pakistan's main resistance by October and reinforced our northeast borders, nothing will happen."
"You are certain it is that simple?"
"I am. Everything turns on the speed of the ground war."
"Then go ahead with what you intend. You should know our international position is harder now than in 1998. I remember the Democrats were in the White House that year too. I'm confident that if we hold our ground, the Republicans will return and our traditional ties with India will be restored. Things will improve." Kahan said, waving a hand. He treated Singh as a confidant and was speaking his mind freely, as though pinning the entire premise of his political planning on the elections of other countries.2
Singh did not press the point on Indo-American relations. He was a perceptive man and had already gathered that the American President had given Kahan a hard time on the call, hard enough that Kahan was reaching back to the international sanctions that followed the 1998 nuclear tests.
"Prime Minister, the Russians are signalling that they will halt the MiG-29UPG programme, alongside the spares matter. The freighter at Saint Petersburg has been loaded but has not received clearance. So far it is only a written notice from Rosoboronexport, but it cited yesterday's misdrop incident."
"Don't worry too much about it. It's standard extortion. I know them too well. I will phone Petrov." Kahan gave a thin laugh. All of it had been within his expectations, only it had come slightly faster than expected. "In truth, I admire the Russian way of doing business. If every country judged matters purely by interest, the world would be a more orderly place."
"There is one more matter."
"Go on."
"The question I raised about the Army Chief of Staff."
"Lieutenant General Prasad3 playing his usual games?"
"Yes. I read his offensive plan today. Still too conservative. He has merely tinkered with the 1986 plan and submitted it again,4 a flat, frontal push with no point of effort. Run it as written and the army will lose its momentum in the desert heat very quickly. We will be drawn into a slugging match."
"Whom do you have in mind?" Kahan asked, casually. He knew perfectly well that the man Singh would consider most fit was Singh himself, despite Singh having retired only as a regimental commander. Singh had spent his time in office criticising the senior generals' professional standards.
"I have a number of candidates. Some younger, more enterprising lieutenant generals. Officers who understand modern warfare."
"Modern warfare? I'd like to hear your thinking."
"Pakistan has many armoured divisions. We always tie our armour to the infantry, which suits Punjab. If we can completely neutralise the Pakistan Air Force, the second phase of air strikes should focus on those armoured divisions. Then I want a large number of UAVs sent into their airspace for reconnaissance."
"And what does that have to do with replacing Prasad?"
"He has deployed most of our UAV squadrons to the northeastern frontier as a hedge against China, and on his own authority has reassigned the originally independent UAV detachments to several mountain divisions. He keeps a tight grip on these divisions, and I can hardly redirect any of those assets." Singh said. He stood on no ceremony with the Prime Minister; the words came out plainly. Kahan understood. What Singh wanted was simply to manoeuvre around an obstructive Army Chief of Staff, or, to put it more precisely, to put a compliant man in the post.
1. Nehru, Zhou, and the 1962 correspondence: Singh refers to the protracted diplomatic exchanges between Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai over the disputed Sino-Indian boundary, particularly through 1959–1962. Indian decision-makers of the period are widely recorded as having underestimated Chinese willingness to use force, and the Sino-Indian War of October–November 1962 began with Indian forces poorly disposed and ill-prepared. Singh's framing here is essentially the standard Indian strategic-establishment reading of that defeat. ↩
2. Kahan and the 1998 sanctions: A reference to the international sanctions that followed India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May 1998, during the first Vajpayee government and the Clinton administration. The Russian president Kahan plans to call here is the same Petrov noted in C17N2; that earlier note established Petrov as the Russian fighter pilot Sami had shot down over Afghanistan in 1988. The Indian Prime Minister is therefore intending to lean on a man with first-hand reasons to dislike the Pakistan Air Force. ↩
3. Lieutenant General Prasad: The Indian Chief of Army Staff, established as a full general (上将) in earlier chapters (e.g. C49, where he is referred to as 上将 within the same conversation). Here in C48 the author has him as 中将, lieutenant general. Treat as an authorial rank slip. The English follows the Chinese in each instance and flags the inconsistency once here. See also the Chinese-rendering note for this character in the translation glossary. ↩
4. The 1986 plan: Almost certainly a reference to Operation Brasstacks, the very large Indian Army exercise of late 1986 and early 1987 conceived under Chief of Army Staff General Krishnaswamy Sundarji. Brasstacks rehearsed a corps-level mechanised offensive across the Rajasthan border into Pakistan and brought the two countries to the brink of war. The "1986 plan" Singh derides is thus a Sundarji-era operational template; the implication is that Prasad has not moved beyond it. ↩