New Delhi: Differentiating between how the West and the East see wars, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said while the former believes in ‘direct military action’, the Chinese construct follows ‘timely military action’.
Further, an ‘Oriental’ construct will be decisive military positioning unlike victory in the case of the West, he said Friday at a panel discussion on the last day of the Raisina Dialogue 2024.
The CDS also spoke about grey zone warfare and how it requires multiple approaches because the origins may lie in a historical dispute. “You have to be very correct so it will range from history, legal warfare, to preparation for all kinds of conditions.”
He added that whenever there is talk about the grey zone, “depending on what military action you take today, the dividends of those actions may be available many years later and may not be an immediate result”.
Broadly speaking, grey zone warfare involves the use of unconventional tactics and strategies that fall below the threshold of traditional warfare.
To launch grey zone warfare, the CDS said, “you will have to have some kind of historical dispute to this particular issue.” The entry of grey zone warfare is the latest in informal warfare, he added.
Without explicitly naming China, Gen. Chauhan attributed the current situation in the South China Sea and on India’s northern borders to the use of grey zone warfare.
According to United States Institute of Peace, China has increasingly employed grey zone warfare in the South China Sea.
Similarly, RAND Corporation states that “grey zone tactics — coercive actions that are shy of armed conflict but beyond normal diplomatic, economic, and other activities — are widely recognized as playing an increasingly important role in China’s efforts to advance its domestic, economic, foreign policy, and security objectives, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.”
China has employed nearly 80 different grey zone tactics against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines a little over the past decade, according to the American think tank.
As for informal wars, Gen. Chauhan said that the enemy has many more options than the defender. Conventional defence is finite in terms of time and space, whereas offence is not so finite, he added.
“When you enter the territory of informal warfare, the options available to the adversary are much more. The targets are legitimate which in formal wars are only very few,” he said, adding that defence has to be proactive and that a strong deterrence is required to dissuade adversaries.
It would require a good intelligence set up and faster reaction, he said.
When it comes to non-traditional threats, the CDS said, they cut across multiple domains and affect not only the military but also intelligence agencies as well people who are involved in national security architecture.
Multi-agency coordination within the government should be able to perceive these kinds of threats, he said.
Gen. Chauhan asserted that since informal warfare cut across national boundaries, it was imperative to coordinate between friends and partners to keep a track of what kind of threats are likely to emerge.
(Edited by Tony Rai)