Anil Chait | Mail Today | New Delhi
September 11, 2014
As the NDA government completes a hundred days in office, it has set an affirmative pace and tone in several areas of policy formulation and actions. Significantly, these include peeling off many layers of ambiguity and complexity to bring clarity to our national security perspective.
Some of the responses of the government to security related developments provide a clear glimpse of how it seeks to secure India and Indians and the message it conveys to our nation's adversaries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to military personnel at Ladakh on August 12 was the occasion he used to spell out the first, notable policy shift. This was followed by the Government's support to the 'tough' posturing in dealing with ceasefire violations and later, the decision to put off the Foreign Secretary talks, after the Pakistan High Commissioner arranged meetings with Kashmiri separatist leaders, changed the status quo in quick time. While departing for Japan on Aug 31 he cautioned Islamabad, to keep the environment free of terrorism and violence and assured Japan, that there will be no change to India's nuclear doctrine, while he seeks to build security and trade pacts with them.
Finally recommending 'vichar' instead of 'vistar' to those possessing the 18th Century expansionist mindset, he decided to sit with Japan as he stands up to China's President Mr Xi Jinping.
Tolerance
Indian soldiers patrolling the LoC.The contours of the new approach towards national security should emerge from an examination of the measured words and actions in each case. Take first, the address to troops. Delivered at Kargil, a militarily significant location, the Prime Minister spelled out his assessment that Pakistan now had no strength to fight an open conventional war, which is why it has taken recourse to a proxy (terror) war against India. In strategic terms, this meant the 'conventional' warfare route by a belligerent neighbour has been abandoned in favour of the 'sub conventional', and 'asymmetrical' warfare route to deal with India. Coming from the Prime Minister, this is an observation of immense significance.
The lowering of the tolerance threshold for indiscriminate firing across the IB and LoC was another index of change. Message out to Pakistan is clear, that India is no more a soft state and that the costs of bleeding it, would have to be borne by blood. The Forces have also been asked to give a befitting reply. While Pakistan daily, Jung, reports heavy losses on the Pakistani side, cautionary messages in content are unambiguous - "escalating tension is not good; Pakistan should mend its ways because if it does not then it will not be good for them; environment is not conducive for talks", etc. The decision to call off Secretary level talks with Pakistan follows the caveat 'either talk to us or to separatists'. Reversing Pakistan's perception of India being defensive, soft and conceding, political parties in J&K such as National Conference and PDP stood isolated on the eve of state elections whatever be their stand for the political remedy of the Kashmir dispute.
Deterrence
It indicated to Pakistan the terms of negotiations have changed and what is needed to be done first, before moving further on the path to peace. What then are the implications for the Military? Is there a need for it to reset and how should it execute its functions, in conformity with the new thinking and philosophy?
The new policy accepts what the Armed Forces have contended - that Pakistan is increasingly adopting the hybrid route, by going beyond sub conventional approach and we need to rework our strategy towards the challenge it poses. The deterrence which so far had rested in the relative conventional superiority that India enjoyed needs to be looked beyond, to the evolving threat. For far too long, Indian defence planners have looked at Western fed systemised conventional wisdom to our security challenges, stove piping these into conventional and non-conventional and apportioning these as the responsibility of military and the rest notwithstanding the 'juggad' approach adopted by an adaptive adversary. If these threats in manifestation, show aggregate effect, then can the disaggregated response by different agencies ever provide a cost effective solution to the requirement of Comprehensive National Security.
Deployment
Admittedly, Pakistan is not the only adversary we face. A strong conventional posture against China will continue to remain the prime responsibility of the Armed Forces. Our conventional force structures and operational preparedness will need to be audited for optimisation in the backdrop of 'mission and objective review' for winning today's wars as much as the wars, that we may never fight but prepare, to ensure larger peace.
The larger issue is that we need to transcend much beyond what we see as threats today. While setting up Cyber, Aero Space and special forces capability is necessary, more important is to get the structure to think of the composite requirement which can holistically look at non-kinetic, non-traditional threats and examine its use and exploitation by our adversary in conjunction with other traditional threats, to enable holistic appreciation and calibrated application of comprehensive national power on the potential adversary through appropriate means. Realistic threat assessment demands this, from a credible leadership as an aggregated threat in application, cannot be defeated or repelled by a disaggregated response.
A cold and macabre indicator to the nature of future threats is the announcement by the Al Qaeda Chief Al Jawahiri to 'bring back Islamic rule and empower the Sharia of Allah across the Sub-continent'.
The time to put our systems and procedures onto a proactive action-oriented mode has clearly come and the costs of delay in ensuring their functional efficacy, would indeed be prohibitive.
The writer is former Chief of Integrated Defence Staff
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pm-gives-clarity-to-security-writes-anil-chait/1/382090.html
September 11, 2014
As the NDA government completes a hundred days in office, it has set an affirmative pace and tone in several areas of policy formulation and actions. Significantly, these include peeling off many layers of ambiguity and complexity to bring clarity to our national security perspective.Some of the responses of the government to security related developments provide a clear glimpse of how it seeks to secure India and Indians and the message it conveys to our nation's adversaries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to military personnel at Ladakh on August 12 was the occasion he used to spell out the first, notable policy shift. This was followed by the Government's support to the 'tough' posturing in dealing with ceasefire violations and later, the decision to put off the Foreign Secretary talks, after the Pakistan High Commissioner arranged meetings with Kashmiri separatist leaders, changed the status quo in quick time. While departing for Japan on Aug 31 he cautioned Islamabad, to keep the environment free of terrorism and violence and assured Japan, that there will be no change to India's nuclear doctrine, while he seeks to build security and trade pacts with them.
Finally recommending 'vichar' instead of 'vistar' to those possessing the 18th Century expansionist mindset, he decided to sit with Japan as he stands up to China's President Mr Xi Jinping.
Tolerance
Indian soldiers patrolling the LoC.The contours of the new approach towards national security should emerge from an examination of the measured words and actions in each case. Take first, the address to troops. Delivered at Kargil, a militarily significant location, the Prime Minister spelled out his assessment that Pakistan now had no strength to fight an open conventional war, which is why it has taken recourse to a proxy (terror) war against India. In strategic terms, this meant the 'conventional' warfare route by a belligerent neighbour has been abandoned in favour of the 'sub conventional', and 'asymmetrical' warfare route to deal with India. Coming from the Prime Minister, this is an observation of immense significance.
The lowering of the tolerance threshold for indiscriminate firing across the IB and LoC was another index of change. Message out to Pakistan is clear, that India is no more a soft state and that the costs of bleeding it, would have to be borne by blood. The Forces have also been asked to give a befitting reply. While Pakistan daily, Jung, reports heavy losses on the Pakistani side, cautionary messages in content are unambiguous - "escalating tension is not good; Pakistan should mend its ways because if it does not then it will not be good for them; environment is not conducive for talks", etc. The decision to call off Secretary level talks with Pakistan follows the caveat 'either talk to us or to separatists'. Reversing Pakistan's perception of India being defensive, soft and conceding, political parties in J&K such as National Conference and PDP stood isolated on the eve of state elections whatever be their stand for the political remedy of the Kashmir dispute.
Deterrence
It indicated to Pakistan the terms of negotiations have changed and what is needed to be done first, before moving further on the path to peace. What then are the implications for the Military? Is there a need for it to reset and how should it execute its functions, in conformity with the new thinking and philosophy?
The new policy accepts what the Armed Forces have contended - that Pakistan is increasingly adopting the hybrid route, by going beyond sub conventional approach and we need to rework our strategy towards the challenge it poses. The deterrence which so far had rested in the relative conventional superiority that India enjoyed needs to be looked beyond, to the evolving threat. For far too long, Indian defence planners have looked at Western fed systemised conventional wisdom to our security challenges, stove piping these into conventional and non-conventional and apportioning these as the responsibility of military and the rest notwithstanding the 'juggad' approach adopted by an adaptive adversary. If these threats in manifestation, show aggregate effect, then can the disaggregated response by different agencies ever provide a cost effective solution to the requirement of Comprehensive National Security.
Deployment
Admittedly, Pakistan is not the only adversary we face. A strong conventional posture against China will continue to remain the prime responsibility of the Armed Forces. Our conventional force structures and operational preparedness will need to be audited for optimisation in the backdrop of 'mission and objective review' for winning today's wars as much as the wars, that we may never fight but prepare, to ensure larger peace.
The larger issue is that we need to transcend much beyond what we see as threats today. While setting up Cyber, Aero Space and special forces capability is necessary, more important is to get the structure to think of the composite requirement which can holistically look at non-kinetic, non-traditional threats and examine its use and exploitation by our adversary in conjunction with other traditional threats, to enable holistic appreciation and calibrated application of comprehensive national power on the potential adversary through appropriate means. Realistic threat assessment demands this, from a credible leadership as an aggregated threat in application, cannot be defeated or repelled by a disaggregated response.
A cold and macabre indicator to the nature of future threats is the announcement by the Al Qaeda Chief Al Jawahiri to 'bring back Islamic rule and empower the Sharia of Allah across the Sub-continent'.
The time to put our systems and procedures onto a proactive action-oriented mode has clearly come and the costs of delay in ensuring their functional efficacy, would indeed be prohibitive.
The writer is former Chief of Integrated Defence Staff
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pm-gives-clarity-to-security-writes-anil-chait/1/382090.html
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