The military has always codified its practices and procedures for institutional memory. So why is the Government shy of it and using the CDS to justify it?

It is official now. After a decade of speculation over not whether and when a National Security Strategy (NSS) will be prepared and released, we were told that a written NSS is not needed.  India’s second CDS, Gen Anil Chauhan, recently said at India International Centre 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 air strikes…”. A cerebral retired  General noted, “it is in the head”. <

That we have gone on for 75 years without 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 geo-political context.The contradiction is this: in the cradle of strategic thinking, Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, its  Commandant, Lt Gen Verinder Vats, regularly underlines the virtues of 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 COAS 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 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 NSA Shiv Shankar Menon disclosed categorically that during the UPA regime, a draft NSS was prepared thrice but it never saw the light of day. For Menon’s presentation, the discussant was former defence security  NN Vohra, former Governor 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 of 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 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 CDS in December 2019 without consulting anyone. It is now stuck in the old groove of securing consensus among the military over theaterisation. 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 IAF, 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 NSS are lying with Doval – one prepared by Integrated Defence Staff and another by NSC Secretariate 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 and 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 1171 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 CDS to justify it

(The writer, a retired Major General, was Commander, IPKF South, Sri Lanka, and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the Integrated Defence Staff. The views are personal)