The Wellington Experience: a Study of Attitudes and Values Within the Indian Army
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ASIA THE WELLINGTON EXPERIENCE A Study of Attitudes and Values Within the Indian Army BY DAVID O. SMITH COLONEL, UNITED STATES ARMY (RETIRED) South Asia Program THE WELLINGTON EXPERIENCE A Study of Attitudes and Values Within the Indian Army BY DAVID O. SMITH COLONEL, UNITED STATES ARMY (RETIRED) SEPTEMBER 2020 © Copyright 2020 by the Stimson Center. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020916965 ISBN: 978-0-9997659-1-3 The views and opinions expressed in this study are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Stimson Center or of our funders. Visit www.stimson.org for more information about Stimson. Cover photo: Bumble Dee / Alamy Stock Photo Contents Preface ...............................................................6 Author's Note..........................................................7 Author’s Biography .................................................... 12 Executive Summary ....................................................13 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY ............................................. 16 METHODOLOGY ..................................................... 21 BACKGROUND OF THE U.S.-INDIA RELATIONSHIP ...................... 25 THE DEFENCE SERVICES STAFF COLLEGE.............................. 33 History and Significance ........................................... 33 Mission and Objectives ............................................ 35 Organization, Senior Officers, Faculty, and Students...................36 Curriculum ......................................................38 Evaluation of Students .............................................40 STUDY OBSERVATIONS...............................................42 1. The Wellington Experience: Demographic, Social, Cultural, and Organizational Factors, and Curriculum .......................42 2. Perception of External Threats and Friendships.....................68 3. Perceptions of Internal Security Threats ...........................82 4. Attitudes Toward the State and Its Institutions .................... 103 5. Attitudes Toward Nuclear Issues ..................................112 KEY FINDINGS .......................................................121 IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF U.S.-INDIA RELATIONS ............151 COMPARISON BETWEEN WELLINGTON AND QUETTA ................. 162 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ........................................... 167 ANNEXES........................................................... 197 Annex A: Study Sample ............................................... 198 Annex B: Study Data Inputs (Omitted) .................................200 Annex C: Study Questionnaire.........................................201 Annex D: Indian Student Branch Origin ................................205 Annex E: DSSC Curriculum ...........................................207 Annex F: Guest Speaker Presentations..................................210 Annex G: Post-Graduation Assignments ................................ 218 Annex H: Minority Student Representation ............................. 219 For Ellen and Courtney, Who shared my adventures in South Asia And for Paul Wallace and Robin Remington, Professors (Emeritus) at the University of Missouri, partners in life and scholarship and both sadly deceased this year, who first kindled my interest in South Asia DAVID O. SMITH Preface I am pleased to present the Stimson Center South Asia Program’s latest book by Stimson Distinguished Fellow Col (Ret.) Dave Smith, The Wellington Experience: A Study f the Attitudes and Values Within the Indian Army. This work builds on Col. Smith’s many years of experience working on South Asia security issues inside and outside of the United States government and is the culmination of a multi- year research effort. In the Stimson tradition of pragmatic inquiry, this book relies on novel research methods and data to generate sharp analytical insights that will be useful for policy makers as well as for future scholarship. These insights on organizational culture, doctrine, and strategic worldview portend real value for policymakers seeking to understand, engage, and build cooperative defense relations with the Indian military. Indeed, even past and future Indian military leaders might gain fresh perspective on their own institution by considering it from the vantage point of an outside analyst. Sitting at the intersection of contemporary great power competition in the Indo- Pacific, nuclear instability, and environmental fragility, South Asia is a region of immense consequence for international security. It is also home to over twenty percent of the world’s population and harbors the potential to be a future engine of global prosperity. Owing to decades of thoughtful research and engagement, the Stimson Center’s South Asia program led ably by Dr. Sameer Lalwani, continues to play a critical role in shaping strategic thinking, confidence building, and crisis management efforts, particularly in Washington D.C., Islamabad, New Delhi, and Beijing. I commend to you this book, and the wider research findings and analyses of our South Asia program. As always, we are grateful to the institutions that continue to invest in our ambitious agenda. Our work would not be possible without the generous sup- port of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sincerely, Brian Finlay President and CEO, The Stimson Center 6 THE WELLINGTON EXPERIENCE: A STUDY OF ATTITUDES AND VALUES WITHIN THE INDIAN ARMY Author's Note The field research for this project originally began in early 2016 and ended in late 2017. The study manuscript was completed in the spring of 2018. As with The Quetta Experience, the companion study that preceded this one and explored attitudes and values in the Pakistan Army, there was at first no plan to have it published. Although the Quetta study contained no classified information, it was based on interviews with U.S. Army foreign area officers who attended the Pakistan Army Command and Staff College at Quetta between 1977 and 2014. The author and study spon- sor, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, deemed the sourcing of the study, rather than the content or judgments, to be sensitive. Thus a decision was taken not to publish the study and to restrict its circulation to U.S. government entities and a small number of South Asia specialists in the Washington-based think tank community who were enjoined not to disseminate the findings to outsiders. This was done solely from an abundance of caution that the findings and conclusions, many of them critical of practices at the Staff College—and by implication of the Pakistan Army—might make an already difficult and challenging year even more so for future U.S. students. After U.S. students were removed from Quetta in 2016, the study eventually was published in September 2018.* Not long after The Quetta Experience was published, I began to consider wheth- er the original decision not to publish the India study was made hastily—and wrongly—in a reflexive abundance of caution rather than on the basis of any objective analysis. This concern was further buttressed by the absence of ad- verse repercussions or feedback in Pakistan in response to the first study. To my knowledge, its publication did not provoke a single oppositional response from anyone in Pakistan, military or civilian. Secondly, during a tour of Indian think tanks in New Delhi and Mumbai in October 2018 to discuss The Quetta Experience, I discovered that many analysts in defense-oriented think tanks wanted me to conduct a similar study about the Indian Army using the same methodology. These requests were made mostly by retired senior military of- ficers who were well aware that the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) in Wellington and its Pakistani counterpart in Quetta are nearly identical in his- torical origin, pedagogy, curriculum, and institutional culture, and that a study of the DSSC might result in similar findings about the Indian Army. When these analysts asked if I had ever considered doing such a study, I demurred, remarking only that such a study would be “very interesting.” By September 2019, I had come to believe that the benefits of publishingThe Wellington Experience greatly outweighed the potential risks. The original con- cern that publication might have adverse repercussions on future U.S. students at * David O. Smith, The Quetta Experience: A Study of Attitudes and Values within the Pakistan Army (Washing- ton, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2018 7 DAVID O. SMITH Wellington seemed overblown. First, it can be assumed that U.S. students attending a year-long foreign military course file reports to their higher headquarters about the course’s quality and content; certainly we expect foreign students attending U.S. military schools and courses to do so. Second, considering my more than 30 years of personal experience in dealing with Indian Army officers and visiting Indian Army professional military education institutions, I was convinced that that the senior officers and directing staff at Wellington are much too professional to hold future U.S. students at the DSSC personally accountable for any criticism levied by their predecessors about the institution, however much they might personally disagree with them. It is a matter of historical record that even during periods of exception- ally poor U.S. bilateral