AFFORDABLE LETHALITY THE INDIAN DILEMMA

India's defence dilemma is now being complicated by the lessons learnt in the Ukraine and Gaza wars because these conflicts are reshaping the way wars are fought in the modern world.

Much has been written about how these wars are revolutionising military affairs, but AMIT GUPTA argues that for a variety of reasons, India can only adopt some of these technological changes. Instead, the country should go for a policy of Affordable Lethality, i.e. where the Indian armed forces increase their deterrent capability-inflicting unacceptable damage on the aggressor-while not imposing unaffordable costs on the Indian government and taxpayer.

Only a few of the lessons of Gaza and Ukraine can be applied in the Indian context because both wars have characteristics that do not apply to this country. In the Ukrainian case, the U.S. and the European Union have paid $300 billion to the Ukrainians, in arms and financial assistance, to fight the war and there is no expectation in the West that this amount will be repaid. In a future war, the West will not subsidise India to even cover one percent ($3 billion) of what has been spent in Ukraine. Similarly, the Watson Institute's Cost of War project has shown that Israel has been given a $22.76 billion subsidy to wage war in Gaza and Lebanon. That does not include the dozens of deals that have been cut between the U.S. and Israel which do not require Congressional clearance. Again, India cannot avail of such financial largesse and will have to depend on its own financial resources to fight a future war.

Secondly, in both cases the West has given technologies like the Storm Shadow missile to Ukraine which will not be easily transferred to the Indian armed forces. One only has to see the trouble India has faced in signing agreements to obtain relatively older technologies from the United States (because of American concerns about the security of these technologies) to understand why India will not be able to avail of these systems.