HVK Archives: Securing national interests, BJP style
Securing national interests, BJP style - Indian Express
Ashok K Mehta
()
April 4, 1998
Title: Securing national interests, BJP style
Author: Ashok K Mehta
Publication: Indian Express
Date: April 4, 1998
During a television debate in the run up to the elections, while
other parties were ambivalent about exercising their nuclear
option, Brajesh Mishra, the BJP's spokesman for foreign affairs,
was unequivocal: 'My party will make the bomb'. He derived the
authority to go nuclear from the BJP's election manifesto -
reevaluate the country's nuclear policy and exercise the option
to induct nuclear weapons. This has since been reiterated in the
National Agenda for Governance issued prior to the party taking
office.
The government will also expedite the development of the Agni
series of ballistic missiles with a view to increasing their
range and accuracy. In its manifesto for the 1996 elections, the
BJP was committed to etaining option to induct nuclear
weapons'. It has now graduated to 'exercising' that option,
ending the country's nuclear ambiguity. The question of nuclear
testing, despite India's rejection of the CTBT, is however, open.
This will clear the fog of uncertainty clouding strategic
doctrine and pave the way for a fusion of conventional deterrence
with a limited second strike nuclear capability. All this will
open up bigger issues of national command authority and a
national command post.
There could yet be many hiccups in exercising the nuclear option
given that the Congress and United Front want to retain the
softer option of ambiguity to have the cake and eat it too. The
BJP led government will no doubt seek national consensus on this
before facing the barrage of western sanction. Hence the last
minute caveat by the Prime Minister of 'if need be'.
But what will please the services most is the general tenor and
content of the BJP national security document. It clearly
highlights the concerns of the armed forces in letter and spirit.
The formulations sound too good to be all true because they
encapsulate the unfulfilled aspirations of the men and women in
uniform.
Early the BJP has recognised the mounting concerns of the three
services: about the absence of higher defence and national
security management, declining operational preparedness and
sagging morale of its personnel. The reference to successive weak
and irresolute governments having imperilled national security
could not have come a day too soon. It also debunks the myth that
national security and economic development are incompatible.
The loudest cheer for these long pending reforms will come for
the acknowledgment that the "armed forces have been ignored in
defence planning" and "of misguided bureaucratic interference
demoralising higher echelons of the armed forces". Since
independence, the armed forces which have been regarded as the
last bastion of democracy and national integrity have not figured
in the decision making loop.
Take this story in 1995 of a former naval chief and Chairman,
Chief of Staff Committee telling his counterparts in the army and
air force that he first learnt about India's naval cooperation
with another country from a newspaper report.
Together with a tribute to Jai Jawan is the BJP government's
resolve to make the armed forces more rewarding for young people,
restoring the honour and dignity of the services and securing for
soldiers greater respect from society. Services chiefs have been
saying that providing izzat to the soldier is the key to reviving
their morale.
The cornerstone of the BJP's national security agenda is the
establishment of a National Security Council which will provide
continuous advice to the government. The NSC will do well to
examine our military reverses, notably from the Henderson Brookes
report. Our failure to make political capital from our military
victory in 1971, the army being forced into Operation Blue Star,
Operation Pawan and encounters like in and around Haratbal and
Chrar-e-Sharief also require to be studied.
The greatest need of the hour is improving civil-military
relations and providing the armed forces with a level-playing
field. It will not be easy for the BJP government to implement
its national security agenda, given its dependence on its allies
for survival, but most of all because bureaucracy won't let them.
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