SRINATH RAGHAVAN Can’t have your cake and eat it too
decide the Military Objective and then leave it to the military professionals to decide upon the best way of achieving the objective.” In other words, the military should have a say in deciding the aims and should be left free to pursue it.
The underlying premise about military professionalism is not as compelling as it sounds. As scholars of civil-military relations have pointed out, the military is quite unlike other professions. Few military officers have actual experience of fighting wars: our top military leadership, for instance, joined the services well after the 1971 war. Treating them as experts in the management of violence is a bit like entrusting a crucial surgery to a doctor who has prepared all his life to perform a surgery without ever having done one. To be sure, the military will always know more about military affairs but there is no reason to presume that they know best.
Equally dodgy is the subsequent claim about operational independence for the military. Earlier, the doctrine quotes Clausewitz’s famous dictum about war being a continuation of politics. But the demand for operational independence is inconsistent with the Clausewitzian view. If war is a continuation of politics, then politics will influence and intervene at levels of warfare down to the tactical. As the recent incident of using a human shield in Kashmir shows, even tactical actions can have political consequences. Hence, there can be no inviolable military sphere–either in theory or in practice. Acquiescing in such a demand will be deeply damaging. The history of our own wars underscores these problems.
It is curious that on one hand the military wants greater say in policy matters, but on the other it wants to keep the civilians out of its domain. The former demand is entirely understandable, but the latter is incompatible with any properly integrated system of civilmilitary relations. The military can’t have its cake and eat it too. If strategy is the bridge between political ends and military means, then it will have to be jointly constructed by the civilians and the military.