Critiquing Two Indian Defense Analysts’ Lessons For Their Country From The Ukrainian Conflict

Outlook India’s article about the lessons that India can learn from the Ukrainian Conflict was thought-provoking and well worth the read. There’s no doubt that this South Asian state is watching that proxy war very closely and recalibrating its military strategy in response. Pravin Sawhney and Abhijit Iyer-Mitra each contributed substantively to this sensitive subject in their own way, though the first-mentioned’s assessment is arguably closer to objective reality than the second’s.

Outlook India published a piece on Sunday titled “Ukraine War Lessons For India: Big Wars Are Back, Terrorism Takes A Backseat”. It comprises insight from two Indian defense analysts, Pravin Sawhney and Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, about the lessons that their country should learn from the Ukrainian Conflict. The article is worth reading since it’s an interesting take on a topical issue. The present piece will briefly review the examined one’s contents prior to critiquing the insight that was shared.

Sawhney’s points can be summarized as thus:

1. Big wars are back;

2. The whole nation could become a battle zone once infrastructure begins to be targeted;

3. Starlink has been integral to maintaining Ukraine’s military communications;

4. Fights between equal powers, including proxy wars, will likely be protracted;

5. All sides must clearly understand each other’s red lines;

6. And new technologies like drones will increasingly be relied upon.

Iyer-Mitra, meanwhile, conveyed the following points:

1. Western weapons are superior to Soviet/Russian ones;

2. The latter are admittedly effective but take a lot of time to see results;

3. Russian intelligence is supposedly non-existent;

4. Western narratives dominate and have a powerful effect on shaping morale;

5. Energy and other infrastructure will indeed be targeted in forthcoming conflicts;

6. And military self-reliance is impossible for India since it can’t indigenize certain Western weapons.

From the above, it can be said that Sawhney has a more balanced assessment of the Ukrainian Conflict while Iyer-Mitra is much more critical of Russia. The second-mentioned also has a much more positive assessment of the Western warfighting doctrine and its related weapons systems that facilitate it. Nevertheless, Iyer-Mitra is unable to account for why the West has yet to defeat Russia in this proxy war, while Sawhney’s insight suggests that this is attributable to their status as military peers.

The preceding insight is important to reflect upon. It implies that only the US is Russia’s military peer in this conflict since the former’s Western allies would have been unable to match the latter’s capabilities by proxy had it not been for America leading their joint effort. With this in mind, the prior innuendo can actually be qualified to claim that the US-led West as a whole is Russia’s true military peer since that de facto New Cold War bloc still can’t defeat Moscow despite several dozen countries striving to that end.

This provocative conclusion naturally leads to the question of why Russia’s tangible achievements aren’t more impressive if this single Great Power’s military capabilities are equal to the combined potential of several dozen of its opponents led by its only state-level military peer. The answer is beyond the scope of the present piece but was addressed at length in my analysis from early November concerning “20 Constructive Critiques Of Russia’s Special Operation” that intrepid readers should review.

In brief, it’s argued that Russia could indeed have done some things better in hindsight despite doing the best that it could at the time in the face of the extremely difficult circumstances within which it was ultimately forced to militarily defend its national security red lines in Ukraine. The points contained in the prior hyperlinked piece aren’t as explicitly critical as Iyer-Mitra’s but nonetheless somewhat complement the spirit of what he said, albeit in what I humbly feel to be a more balanced manner.

In any case, it can be said that Sawhney and Iyer-Mitra both contribute some useful insight into the subject of what India can learn from the Ukrainian Conflict. The first is right in predicting that conflicts between equals will likely be protracted, the second makes a powerful point about the importance of Western narratives in strategically shaping perceptions, while they both agree that infrastructure will increasingly be targeted by state-level adversaries in the future.

That said, Sawhney can be constructively critiqued for overlooking some of Russia’s military-strategic shortcomings while Iyer-Mitra overexaggerates them. The unintended impression is therefore that the first gives Moscow a little too much credit while the second does the same with respect to the West. The reality is that both sides have had their fair share of successes and setbacks, but Sawhney’s take is closer to the truth since it accounts for the present stalemate that Iyer-Mitra can’t explain.

It should also be pointed out that while Iyer-Mitra has a point about India being unable to indigenize certain Western weapons, that de facto New Cold War bloc isn’t really all that interested in discussing this possibility anyhow, unlike Russia. Furthermore, it’s objectively the case that the indigenization of arms strengthens one’s overall autonomy, which is one of the guiding principles behind India’s grand strategy that’s responsible for its rapid rise as a globally significant Great Power across the past year.

That being the case, his innuendo that India should radically scale up its purchase of Western arms at the expense of indigenously developing its own with Russia isn’t aligned with his country’s official priorities. What will likely happen is that Delhi will implement a blend of both approaches whereby it buys more Western weapons simultaneously with developing more of its own together with Moscow. That would be the optimal way for India to maximize its strategic autonomy.

In closing, Outlook India’s article about the lessons that India can learn from the Ukrainian Conflict was thought-provoking and well worth the read. There’s no doubt that this South Asian state is watching that proxy war very closely and recalibrating its military strategy in response. Sawhney and Iyer-Mitra each contributed substantively to this sensitive subject in their own way, though the first-mentioned’s assessment is arguably closer to objective reality than the second’s.