A matter of national security...says who?

The international 'rules-based order' is a euphemism for the jungle rule that defines global power politics. ’The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ is a line from a famous history text written some 2,400 years ago that is the foundation of international relations theory.

This is true even today despite our myriad institutions including the United Nations and its security council. For instance try telling Palestinians or Lebanese that there is an international order, while their children are being murdered in a one-sided war. Or for that matter, Ukrainians, Iranians, Cubans, Vietnamese and Afghans.

Given this reality, it is natural that states will operate only or mostly in self-interest when it comes to international affairs. This is how it is and that is understandable.

India is accused of violating the order by ordering attacks on individuals in foreign nations that it is supposedly friendly with. The reality is that if India feels a threat emanating from across its borders, and it senses it is strong enough to get away with an action, it will act. This is also understandable.

Several questions arise, but let us examine one in particular. What is the nature of the threat that we are alleged to have acted against and how grave a threat is it?

The data on fatalities will tell us something meaningful. The South Asia Terrorism Portal says violence in Punjab seriously began in 1984, when 456 people were killed. This was, of course, the year of 'Operation Blue Star' and the assassination of a prime minister. Fatalities peaked three decades ago, in 1991. In that year, over 5,000 people were killed. The next year, it dropped but was still almost 4,000. After that it collapsed.

From 1998 to 2014, the number of annual fatalities has most often been zero (in 12 years). In the past six years it has not gone above single digits and no security official has been killed.

If the government and the security establishment think it is still a serious enough threat to national security to merit the sort of actions that it has been accused of taking, this thinking must surely be reflected somewhere.

Disliking what someone says it not the same thing as feeling a national security threat from them. So where can we find what our government says regarding threats to our national security? The answer appears to be: nowhere.

In January 2021, a think-tank put out a paper by a retired general. He wrote that the changes introduced in the military gave an opportunity for the pioneering incumbent (it was then Gen. Bipin Rawat) to display his strategic and military acumen. Unfortunately, the report concluded that the chief of defence staff was ‘yet to articulate a defence strategy’.

One likely reason for this was that the government was yet to determine the nature of the problem. Six years ago in 2018 had come the creation of the Defence Planning Committee. This was to be chaired by national security advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval and include the foreign secretary, defence secretary, chief of defence staff, three service chiefs and secretaries of the finance ministry.

It had the enormous tasks, according to a piece by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, of looking after ‘national defence and security priorities, foreign policy imperatives, operational directives and associated requirements, relevant strategic and security-related doctrines, defence acquisition and infrastructure development plans, national security strategy, strategic defence review and doctrines, international defence engagement strategy’, and so on.

It met once, on 3 May 2018, and does not appear to have met after that. This is surprising for a government and a party that puts, or at least says it puts, a great deal of priority on national security.

In May this year, a newspaper published a report on this aspect under the headline: 'Absence of written National Security Strategy doesn’t mean India doesn’t have one: CDS’.

Former general Prakash Menon has noted that, for several decades, India’s political guidance to the military had been oriented towards Pakistan as the immediate threat. But now that the Chinese threat was at the doorstep, this would have to change. The political objectives expected to be achieved by the military resided in a document titled ‘Raksha Mantri’s Operational Directive’, written by the then defence minister A.K. Antony in 2009.

All it says is that the armed force 'should be prepared to fight on both fronts simultaneously a war at 30 days (intense) and 60 days (normal) rates.’ This is a reference to ammunition and spares and not really a doctrine.

Even this directive, Gen. Menon said, ‘continues to lack parentage for the lack of a coherent National Security Strategy. The Defence Planning Committee, headed by the NSA, was assigned this task two years ago. Nothing has emerged so far.’

This is what happens to complex enterprises that are run from the top but with no interest in detail. The national security strategy of an aspiring great power is unwritten because there is no ownership of the intellectual aspects of the work, little application, little enthusiasm for the hard but boring tasks and too much focus and emphasis on meaningless and marginal spectacle.

Our contrasting responses to the United States and to Canada on the same issue have been highlighted. However, that is the nature of the international order and the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

What must also be highlighted is the issue of rationale. Have we thought through the nature of our national security problems before we begin working on solutions? The answer to that is no.