Fallout of Hybrid Warfare Offensives on National Security Prospects –
BBC Documentary, Adani Group Crisis and George Soros tirade against Modi
Cumulatively viewed, the BBC documentary, the Hindenburg Research allegations creating the Adani Group crisis, Income tax scrutiny of the BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai and billionaire George Soros direct attack on Narendra Modi are, in retrospect, reflect the most devious coercive attempt to derail the transformation of India from the “Middle Power” status to the “Great Power Status by 2047” in the name of freedom of speech and India hater Soros initiative in the name of opening the “door for Democratic revival.”
First, the BBC's documentary, India: The Modi Question was broadcast on television only in the UK. But the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attempted to block people sharing it, describing it as "hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage" with a "colonial mindset". In retrospect, the BBC may lay claims to be a trusted, independent media organization and who journalists report without fear or favor, but its track record of incrementally continuous vitriolic against Indian events does not lend support to its claims.
The past track record of the BBC in India is recalled to lay bare its pretensions to be ‘fair and just’. On Aug 27, 1970, Indira Gandhi govt justified move to expel BBC over its documentaries’ ‘tendentious’ portrayal of India during the debate in the Parliament. And, the opposition party Jana Sangh backed it.
Recently in 2021, China banned BBC World News to continue airing inside China. It accused the BBC of failing to meet the requirement for news to be truthful and fair, and accused it of damaging China's national interests.
The issue that needs to be answered by the BBC Honchos is simple: Why did they fail to produce and release the Documentary immediately after the incident in 2002 or before 2014 elections? More importantly, why did they fail to cover the Mob torching a coach of Sabarmati Express near Godhra railway station resulting in 59 Karsevaks returning from Ayodhya charred to death on Feb. 26, 2002, that precipitated the Ahmadabad riots? It clearly reflects and exposes the biased and prejudiced BBC coverage to malign Modi, the Prime Minister, who was then the Chief Minister in Gujarat.
Next, the credentials of the Nathan Anderson, a former Ambulance drive in Israel and graduate of the Connecticut University, the founder of the Hindenburg Research LLC, in 2017, a investment research firm with a focus on activist short-selling. His reports exposing scams cannot be dismissed lightly that merit in depth analysis by financial experts for accuracy.
The Supreme Court wants "full transparency" in the matter of Adani crisis. The court had asked for suggestions on the formation of a panel of experts, including a judge, to examine the fallout of the fraud allegations against the Adani Group, which have wiped out crores in investor wealth and triggered fierce attacks on the government by the opposition. Quite apparently, the Supreme Court appears to favor an “Experts Committee” instead of the JPC as demanded by the opposition parties.
Next, George Soros, born in 1930 to a prosperous Jewish family in Hungary, a billionaire Hungarian-American investor, hedge-fund manager, short-seller and philanthropist, is in the news for his comments on the recent report by short seller Hindenburg Research on the Adani Group, and Gautam Adani’s connections with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A self-professed liberal, Soros has been a firm opponent of “repressive regimes” across the world and heading the Open Society Foundations supporting individuals and organizations for freedom of expression, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality. But, he has dismally failed to react to January 6, 2001 riots on the CAPITOL in his own backyard.
Less publicized are a few of his activities. For example, there are unsubstantiated stories making rounds of Soros supporting the racist BLM (Black Lives Matter) and the fascist ANTIFA, besides support to oppressive Islam against democratic countries. He is also integrated into the US intelligence system to conduct Hybrid Warfare.
Like Soros, his global vice president of Open Society Foundations in India is Salil Shetty, who is active anti-Modi and BJP hater. He joined Rahul Gandhi in Bharat Jodo Yatra in October 2022. Before that he was seen in Shaheen Bagh and other sites of anti-CAA protests, and at Singhu border during farmer protests. There are also reports that Soros has hired former PM Manmohan Singh's daughter to run his 'Open Society Foundation' in India.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Soros said “Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament.” “This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India,” the billionaire investor said ahead of the Munich Security Conference. But, who is Soros to criticize internal matters of India?
In 2020 also, George Soros criticized Prime Minister Modi: “The biggest and most frightening setback occurred in India where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.”
Remember always that power politics reflect the law of the jungle - principle that those who are strong and apply ruthless self-interest will be most successful. Politicians behave in ruthless pursuit if self-interest and their progeny. And, the idea comes from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book that the strongest or most merciless in a society or group will survive. The entire history of international politics may well be viewed as a continuing series of attempts by individual nation-states to meet their need for security and allay their institutional fears. The obvious device to accomplish this objective has been the formation of alliances which in turn produced counter alliances, and these eventually led to various balance-of- power systems. The strategic-realistic school relies on the pragmatic method. Politics and political doctrines come and go, but only peoples live forever.
Lack of understanding of the media editors and their field-level journalists concerning the dynamic transformations in the nature and character of warfare is phenomenal. Never too late for all of them, particularly senior editors like Rajdeep Sardesai, may like to attend short course on national security strategy program to refrain from playing to the tune of foreign patrons.
Remember always Sun Tzu’s dictum that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. And, war is an ever-evolving and interactive phenomenon as stated by the Prussian theorist of war, Carl von Clausewitz. Understanding the complexity and distinctions of various modes of warfare conducted across the continuum of conflict is critical, as understanding our adversaries, their methods, and conceptions of victory. Admittedly, nations are in competition to realize their self-interests. And, von Clausewitz’s dictum that, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.”
Let me briefly review the adverse fallout of the cumulative and incremental offensive build up against Modi and the BJP in the backdrop of “Unrestricted Warfare/Hybrid Warfare”. With almost all national channels suffering from “Breaking News Syndrome” and vying for the top TRP status, the “influence operations as part of Unrestricted Warfare/Hybrid Warfare” is a major threat faced by Modi and the BJP by anti-India or Hindu haters.
All alike must admit and accept that “Hybrid Warfare” is today’s reality. Its genesis is traced to the paper published by two PLA Air Force Colonels - Qiao and Wang - way back in 1999 titled “Unrestricted Warfare” to explore how technology innovation is setting off a revolution in military strategy, doctrines and organization. Qiao and Wang wrote: “All friendships are in flux; the only constant in international relations is self-interest”. The pair defined the future battlefield as an “extended domain”, not a battlefield where lethality took precedence, but one in which the goal of any nation-state (or sub-state actors) is to “paralyze and to undermine the enemy” by degrading the will of its people and the state to wage an armed conflict in the first place.
Most important, Qiao and Wang’s primary concern was how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent, such as the US, through a variety of means in late 1990s. Qiao and Wang posit a “new concept of weaponry,” one which places less emphasis on lethality and more on the means to “inflict material and psychological casualties on the enemy.” Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, these books instead examine a variety of other means such as political warfare using legal tools and economic means as leverage over one’s opponent and circumvent the need for direct military action.
The “extended domain” is what we today refer to as cyberspace, but which they referred to as the electromagnetic spectrum. The modern warriors are the banks, and anybody whom the state can enlist or coerce to use to advance the state’s self-interest (think of all Chinese companies, whatever their public declarations of independence.) Not to be overlooked is the media or as they write “The information-sharing world creates the media as an integral and immediate part of war”.
"Unrestricted Warfare" discusses new types of warfare which may be conducted by civilians as well as by soldiers including computer hacker attacks, trade wars and finance wars. The strategic shift is from the classical “communist-centric unconventional warfare” of sponsoring and extending support to communist inspired insurgents to “Unrestricted Warfare” or “Creeping Covert Warfare.”
Many years later after 2013, the Russians coined the term of “Hybrid Warfare” following the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine in an article. Later, only US thinkers categorized such shifts in warfare as “Hybrid” warfare, which is a military strategy that employs political warfare and blends nuclear warfare, information warfare, conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber warfare with other influencing methods such as fake news, diplomacy, law fare and foreign electoral intervention. By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution.
What more, besides China, Pakistan has been in the forefront of conducting “Proxy War” since the mid-1980s that has been transformed into “Hybrid War” by late 1990s.
The threat of hybrid warfare is prolific and persistent. Hybrid threats can be created by a state actor or non-state actors using a proxy force. A proxy force sponsored by a major power can generate hybrid threats readily using advanced military capabilities provided by the sponsor. Proxy wars, appealing to some as “warfare on the cheap” are historically ubiquitous but chronically understudied.
The main tools employed by malign actors operating in the gray zone include: Military, paramilitary, or other state-controlled forces; Proxy forces - Russia’s “little green men” and China’s “little blue men/wolf warriors”; Information warfare to sow doubt, dissent, and disinformation in foreign countries through social media and other outlets; Corruption of politicians; Economic tools; and Shaping civil society like. China employment of its Confucius Institutes and economic leverage in universities to limit anti-Chinese sentiment and grow support.
Today, cyberspace domain is in dynamic progression. Besides achieving military superiority in the air, land, sea, and space domains in no small part depends on superiority in cyberspace, cyber operations also employ simultaneously a number of tools to include: Disinformation and Misinformation Operations; Proxy wars; and, Political and Economic Coercion.
In sum, “Hybrid warfare” encompasses “the full spectrum of conflict including complex operations during peacetime and war.” It can be used to describe the flexible and complex dynamics of the battle space requiring highly adaptable and resilient responses. Most importantly, some view it as the contemporary form of guerrilla warfare that “employs both modern technology and modern mobilization methods.” It is the synchronized use of multiple instruments of power simultaneously and intentionally that exploits creativity, ambiguity, non-linearity and the cognitive elements of warfare tailored to specific vulnerabilities across the full spectrum of societal functions to achieve synergistic effects. It is also typically tailored to remain below obvious detection and response thresholds, and often rely on the speed, volume and ubiquity of digital technology that characterizes the present information age. It synergizes four threats: (1) traditional; (2) irregular; (3) catastrophic terrorism; and (4) disruptive, which exploit technology to gain/counteract military superiority. It focuses activity on three decisive battlegrounds: (1) within the conflict zone population; (2) home front population; and (3) international community. Hostile forces would use “Hybrid” warriors hidden in civilian populations.
What does it imply? It is, therefore, imperative that the national security community as a whole including media cutting across biases and prejudices must be ready and able to respond to numerous challenges across the full spectrum of conflict including complex operations during peacetime and war. It also implies a thorough understanding of the nature and character of Hybrid Warfare by all political, bureaucratic, judiciary, media and security forces. The complexity of threats is nerve-racking and brain-chilling. To wage offensive counter information war at local levels – Brain War – is an imperative.
Viewed in the above larger and holistic framework of “Hybrid Warfare”, the three critical events – one following the other in quick succession – may be viewed in the holistic analysis as posing threats to India’s national security. There are many internal beneficiaries – political parties, NGOs, religious institutions and media houses - who are ready to accept donations and funds to pursue their alien’s commands and directives. After all, there are many India-haters lurking in India and in external countries that are hell bent upon ensuring the downfall of modern India and the Hindu revival. To counter such coercive strategies, there is also a need for the government to constitute an experts committee to verify the authenticity of their disinformation offensives and expose their false narratives.
Brig (Retd) G B Reddy
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