The military has always codified its practices and procedures for institutional memory. So why is the government shy of doing the same and using the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to justify it?
by Ashok K Mehta
It is official now. After a decade of speculation over whether and when a National Security Strategy (NSS) would be prepared and released, we were told that a written NSS is not needed. India’s second CDS, Gen Anil Chauhan, recently said at the India International Centre in New Delhi, while releasing the book “Indian Craft of War,” that a National Security Policy, using the term as an alternative to NSS, was not needed in writing. He added: “we have practices and processes in place… otherwise, how did we do Article 370; handle COVID; Balakot airstrikes…” A cerebral retired General noted, “it is in the head.”
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| Agniveer Notification 2022 under Agnipath scheme has been released by the Indian Army. [ Photo: Special Arrangement] |
That we have gone on for 75 years without an NSS does not mean we don’t need one. The strategic ambiguity over not naming adversaries, missions, risks, and opportunities is not worth a naya paisa in the contemporary geopolitical context. The contradiction is this: in the cradle of strategic thinking, the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, its Commandant, Lt Gen Verinder Vats, regularly underlines the virtues of an NSS to his tri-service students. There is no merit in explaining why a written document is necessary, indeed essential.
All democracies, even authoritarian regimes, have an NSS or White Paper on defence and security. For starters, you can open former Chief of Army Staff Gen MM Naravane’s latest unreleased book, “Four Stars of Destiny,” to learn of his unenviable predicament in waiting for orders during a grave and critical operational situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) post-Galwan. Tragically, the Indian military has shied away from demanding a White Paper, Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), or any political guidance from the ruling political class. At a recent seminar on national security at New Delhi’s IIC, former National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon disclosed categorically that during the UPA regime, a draft NSS was prepared thrice but never saw the light of day. For Menon’s presentation, the discussant was former Defence Secretary NN Vohra, former Governor of J&K, and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister.
He endorsed Menon’s claim, and if further confirmation was needed, it came from former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who was chairing the event. All three stated that the absence of political will let the NSS drafts collect dust. This raises the issue of the role and responsibility of not only civil servants but also, more importantly, Service Chiefs who fail to persuade or even gently coerce the PM/RM on the issuance of written directives.
In their single-service operational mission papers, they guesstimate their likely missions from the speeches of the Prime Minister during the Combined Commanders’ Conferences or elsewhere. The BJP/NDA government has fared no better than the UPA in providing political guidance to the armed forces. Its stellar achievement, though, was the creation of the CDS, which, for lack of consensus both among the armed forces and the political class, remained missing for decades.
Then, in a burst of zeal, the BJP announced the appointment of the CDS in December 2019 without consulting anyone. It is now stuck in the old groove of securing consensus among the military over theorisation. It has taken a full five and a half years for RM Rajnath Singh to state, that too, in response to a question during an interview with PTI in May, that consensus is growing among the services. Also in May, Gen Chauhan stated during a lecture at USI New Delhi that theorisation was “imminent” though “there were differences over reforms”. As CDS has become synonymous with theatrisation, the government needs to be as decisive in setting a deadline for its blueprint and implementation as it was in appointing the CDS.
But the Indian Air Force, especially, has been saying that an NSS is a prerequisite to theatrisation. In 2018, when the Defence Planning Committee was created under NSA Ajit Doval, it was widely expected that an NSS would be prepared by it. It is no secret that two drafts of the NSS are lying with Doval – one prepared by the Integrated Defence Staff and another by the National Security Council Secretariat in 2021-22. But Gen Chauhan has closed the door to a scripted NSS, though he did release last month a written tri-service cyber-space doctrine. Earlier, a tri-service Training Doctrine was also released, which attracted severe criticism for its loopholes. One can ask how these documents can be written when there is no NSS or National Defence Strategy. India is the only emerging power with the fifth-largest economy and fourth-largest armed forces that does not have an NSS/NSP, though it has fought four short wars – lost one, won one, with the remaining two ending in stalemate – and one casualty-ridden successful border skirmish.
There is hardly any mention or recognition of India’s first out-of-area 32-month IPKF CIS mission in Sri Lanka where coercive diplomacy failed even as 1,171 Bravehearts sacrificed their lives. The CDS recently called IPKF a minor operation. High time an NSS was written after a strategic defence review. I can vouch for it as a member of the Defence Planning Staff, the forerunner of IDS, which produced the country’s first Defence Plan 2000 in 1988 after conducting a Security and Technology Environment Review that was lauded in Parliament. It was possible due to the political guidance from RRM Arun Singh and three dynamic service chiefs. The military has always codified its practices, processes, and procedures to be good for institutional memory. So why is the government shy of doing it and using the CDS to justify it?
Ashok K. Mehta is a radio and television commentator, and a columnist on defence and security issues. He is a former Major General of Indian Army. After joining the Indian Army in 1957, he was commissioned in the 5th Gorkha Rifles infantry regiment in the same year. He had fought in all major wars India went into, except the Sino-Indian War of 1962. And he was also on a peacekeeping mission in Zaire in the year 1962 and in the Indian Peace Keeping Force, Sri Lanka (1988-90) and it was his last assignment in the Indian Army. He is also a writer of several books and a founder-member of the Defense Planning Staff in the Ministry of Defence, India.
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