NEW DELHI: The threat to India from Pakistan has often been described as a subset of the China challenge. How prepared is India for a so-called two-front war? India needs to watch out for asymmetric moves from both China and Pakistan, says Lt Gen VG Khandare (Retd), former director general of Defence Intelligence Agency. He was in conversation with StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale on ‘The Gist’.
Given below is the transcript of a chunk from the interview:
Between the two, China and Pakistan being the identified adversaries, the kind of threat from both is different. The kind of conventional threat that we see from China requires a military response with the conventional capability. Simultaneously, asymmetric capabilities developed by China which include cyber, space that part also we have to work on. In addition, China has the capability of the three warfares—public opinion, psychological warfare and legal warfare. So again we have to match up with that. And this again requires whole of nation approach of which military capability is a subset. Now you go on to the western borders. Conventionally, we are much superior but Pakistan by the way it is made has perfected the asymmetric capabilities using the terrorist tenzins and the ISPR. Whatever fault lines we may have as a nation is also being capitalized by Pakistan. And when we talk of the two front war, let’s look at the collusivity where what China wants to use from Pakistan, still being deniable, non attributable, those things will come at us from Pakistan side. And there Pakistan will be a good shield for China to weaken us further. I think Sun Tzu is very well understood by China and they are practically using it to reduce the cohesion in Indian society, within the armed forces, within the army in particular that is where the info warfare is at its peak. And there both of them are doing their best to be collusive.
