Needed: A renaissance in security studies for policymaking in India
Our think-tanks have to revolutionise their thinking and attitude to produce scholar warriors.
For every complex problem
there is a simple solution. And it’s always wrong.
INTRODUCTION
No other country in the world is more surrounded
by illiberal democracies as India’s neighbours and no other country can boast of
having an unwritten defence policy and its destiny guided by “guidelines” on security as stated by the
then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao in Parliament while holding the additional charge of Defence Minister of India. I hate to
take recourse to Western writers like Morgenthau, Jownawitz, Waltz etc. to discuss about the paradigm shift that has to occur in defining the national security policymaking architecture
in India. Hence if Indian national security policymaking has to be rejuvenated to take on the challenges of the 21st century, then there
has to be a renaissance of approach in India to study,
formulate, weed out the geriatric manpower who have got permanently embedded in the security policymaking establishments including government supported think-tanks.
THE WAY FORWARD
One does not have to be a Western bandwagon follower, but our think-tanks
have to revolutionise their thinking and attitude to produce scholar warriors, who are not merely trained
but also educated in the art of warfare, to understand the difference between nature of war and character of war in the changing global economic and socio-anthropological context. The apex institutions serving as think-tanks to articulate, formulate and critically think on national security affairs are incapable of thinking or acting beyond their comfort zones
There is still a basic misunderstanding that war conflict and all forms of violence can be contained by the use of force by the application of technology. They fail to
understand that all three are cultural phenomena and the problems that war, violence and conflict create
have no technical solutions. The days of weaponizing
military power, diplomatic, educational and political decision making is over. Think-tanks have to create
and produce critical thinkers, provide the strategy of developing resilience within the nation state to securitise the non-military dimensions to contribute towards national security perspectives, to find strategies to minimise and avoid the use of force.
The oft resorted arguments on political control on use of “combat force”
require to be further developed in terms of depth and
its span. Political control on use of “organised” military
force will have to be highly structured around international political economy, which entails the necessity to understand the economics of violence, the collateral damage to be calculated on econometric models and conflict analysis based on
behavioural study’s methodology—the Ukraine episode is a prime example of the same. Unfortunately, the articles that are being published do not have the
avenue to invite critical comments. Leading think-tanks
in India which have the ears of the political system have
not developed any procedure or culture of seeking critical comments from
the intellectual community. Their operations are somewhat akin to what the webinars of western institutions
have got involved with these days. They invite hundreds
of participants from around
the world on line, with no avenue for any discussions
by outside participants. So the organisers are the wise men, the moderators are the men of wisdom and international participants are the fence-sitters.
It is hoped that our thinktanks get out of this mind fix and attitude and move the centre of gravity to incorporate critical evaluators who are in the younger age group and educated to understand the relationship between political power, political intent and practitioners’ view of
the employment of military power/use of force.
Taken individually in India at a general global level the politicians, the military leadership, the military industrial complex, the think-tanks and the social scientists are like the five
blind men in the dark trying to figure out what the “elephant” looks like.
I firmly believe that in the 21st century the use of force
in any or at all levels is too serious a matter to be left only
in the hands of politicians to exercise political control over the use of what one can say “combat power”. Nearer
home a few instances have occurred of similar nature
from which we should be able to draw our lessons.
THE CHINA FACTOR
India has to consider China
as the largest illiberal state with a philosophy to convert
the Indo-china border into a “frontier” rather than resolve
it as an international border. The Chinese zeal to rationalise their long perceived notion to establish the “middle
kingdom” is not a figment of their imagination but a deep rooted cultural and strategic outlook. China embarked on the call by President Xi Jinping on 27 October
2014 to initiate the process of establishing six major
think-tanks with “Chinese characteristics” dealing with foreign policy, and economics, with the Chinese media to concentrate on domestic debate in which a new approach was encouraged to be cantered on the academics and policy analysts who were to analyse future trends and the likely approach to Chinese intents on the way to as to how the military think-tanks will act
to establish the revolving door to cross fertilise the effectiveness better than the American model. There is a
diverse array of think-tanks
that support the Chinese government and military’s
thinking and strategy on critical issues. Among the
most prominent are: the: 1. Academy of Military Sciences (AMS),
2. Chinese Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS),
3. Center for Peace and Development Studies (CPDS), 4. Foundation for International Strategic Studies (FISS),
5. Institute for National Security Studies-national Defense University (INSS/ NDU).
6. China Defense Science Technology Information
Center (CDSTIC)
CONCLUSION
Indian shortcomings on matters security stem from
the fact that the Indian decision making system is at
a nascent stage of development to usher in a renaissance in military thinking and appears to be far away even though a decent growth of GDP has been maintained. The bottomline is clear. The bureaucracy and the armed forces
are well trained and experienced, but hardly educated.
There is no revolving door
as yet for the corporate, the private sector and academia
to truly partner with each other and the government
in an interdependent mode and the politicians are
hardly educated enough to absorb the nuances of development. The key element for India for bringing
about a Renaissance in India’s strategic thinking is to
involve itself in the strategy to develop “Resilience” and
increase the vitality of the Indian nation state by securitizing the nonmilitary dimensions of security that is ecology, environment, pollution, energy, the rights of the unborn and the political economy.
Only a few months back the first round table discussion has taken place and the
first working paper deliberating on the “Essentiality of Resilience For National
Security For 21st Century India” has been published
by the Policy Perspective Foundation in Delhi.