The public debate on the politically mandated structural reform of the military to a theatre command system received a booster dose when former Army chief General M.M. Naravane described the prevailing implementation approach without a National Security Strategy as “putting the cart before the horse”. It is a smoking gun assertion for the tardy progress of the reform and indicates a military view that political guidance is lacking to fulfill the task assigned.
In April 2018, the Ministry of Defence announced the formation of the permanent Defence Planning Committee (DPC). It was to be chaired by the NSA and included the Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and the Expenditure Secretary of the Ministry of Finance. The Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) was to perform the task of Member Secretary. It had a vast mandate that included the task to ‘analyse and evaluate all relevant inputs to defence planning’ and was to prepare the draft of the National Security Strategy (NSS). Later, in December 2019, the government approved the creation of the post of CDS and mandated the theatre command system reform.
As of January 2023, all the intentions remain unrealised and are still a bridge too far.
What to do in the absence of NSS
The question of concern that needs immediate examination is, what should the military leadership do in the absence of the NSS? One has to start by exploring what it is that the NSS is expected to provide that will pave the way for decisions regarding the theatre commands.
The National Security Doctrine, National Security Strategy, Defence Strategy and Military Strategy are expected to provide guidance at various levels and help crystallise interests that have to be protected and promoted by various segments of the national security edifice. The military role is essentially about formulation of force application or threats in pursuit of the political objectives that are derived from the national interests.
For the military leadership, those interests/concerns essentially relate to establishing control over geographic spaces. The essential space where national sovereignty should prevail would relate to India’s boundaries that span land, sea and air. There are also areas in the maritime, air and space domains in the global commons where national assets have to be protected and in the main relate to trade and communications arteries that are expected to be kept free and open.
It should not be difficult for the political leaders to indicate the required spaces. However, the challenging exercise is to relate those spaces based on a politico-strategic imagination regarding the likely state of relationships with the countries that are considered to either pose potential threats or could remain neutral or provide support to either side in case of contestation. It has been clear for quite some time that China and Pakistan pose primary threats in the continental and maritime domains. This used to be the fundamental planning parameter for the military even when the political leadership harboured notions of China being non-threatening. But for over a decade, China’s assertive stances and aggressive moves should have left us in no doubt from the military planning point of view. The threat from Pakistan has never gone away, with terrorist activity taking the centre stage, off and on. In the absence of an NSS, there is nothing stopping the military leadership from seeking answers to questions they think have to be clarified by the political leadership to move forward on implementing the reform.
The creation of the theatre command system is an organisational reform that is expected to optimise India’s military resources much more efficiently and effectively. Its primary methodology is anchored in the belief that restructuring will provide enhanced cooperation through integrated functioning between the three Services and is the doctrinal underpinning of the political mandate. The military leaders have all signed on to the mandate. Going forward, the differences are about the structural framework of the theatre command system and are in essence about which Service controls what. The absence of a written and publicised NSS is a deficiency but should not be the causal excuse for the military leadership’s inability to establish the theatre command system and functionally move it forward in a spirit of give and take.
Also read: Who should call the shots in a theatre command—Air Force, Army, Navy? Let the context decide
Bring theatre command, first things first
Strategy connects the resources available with the objectives that are distilled from interests. It is an endless process that has to, when warranted, adjust to the changes in the strategic landscape and involves a continuous conversation between objectives and resources. It is a product of bilateral or multilateral engagements with different nations harbouring adversarial or friendly intentions. Normally, the test of a good strategy is its ability to endure. Important strategic vectors that impinge on the state of relations between nations are often outside the control of individual nation-states; strategy as practiced, therefore, has a contingent edge that cannot easily be transcended by long-term planning and belongs to the realm where people in the seats of power and the practitioners are perennially under test. For the military, what NSS can facilitate is long-term planning to identify and develop the military instruments that are optimally organised for carrying out their envisaged roles.
The theatre command system is expected to render the utilisation of available military instruments easier. It could also provide for better long-term integrated planning for the creation of military assets, but that is not the primary reason for its creation. So, to say that the theatre command system should await the evolution of the NSS would appear to suffer from an inclination to bring a second-order element to the forefront at the cost of the first-order purpose — efficient and effective utilisation of existing military resources. Let us get done, first things first.
It is time that the military leaders realise that their inability to implement an important political mandate is because of inter-Service and intra-Service disagreements. Since some of them have so far proved seemingly irreconcilable, it is time that the political leadership be told by the CDS that it would be better if the approach is changed and a body headed by a political leader with a military background and comprising relevant experts from outside the government be tasked to evolve a theatre command system. Since most in-house studies have been completed, the group task has been made simpler and is now mostly related to final decision-making.
Persisting with the present approach that expects the three Services to resolve differences, is to continue to be a helpless bystander, indifferent to the organisational undercurrents that animate the professional divide between the three Services. A divide that can be expected to be narrowed only through political will.
The Narendra Modi government has shown political will in announcing a laudable military reform. It is apparent that the time has come to demonstrate once again the same degree of political will to convert spoken and written words into done deeds.
Lt Gen (Dr) Prakash Menon (retd) is Director, Strategic Studies Programme, Takshashila Institution; former military adviser, National Security Council Secretariat. He tweets @prakashmenon51. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)