Every time we have arisen from hibernation to order a security review was only after a crisis. If we had the strategic culture, a Comprehensive Defence and Security Review should have been institutionalised every five years.

The government has constituted a task force under Naresh Chandra, with former RAW Chief K.C. Verma, Adm (Retd) Arun Prakash, ACM (Retd) S. Krishnaswamy and Lt General (Retd) V.R. Raghavan as members to do a holistic review of national security. This review has apparently been ordered with China’s aggressive attitude, continuing Pakistani policy to ‘balkanise India’, India being repeatedly subjected to terror and cyber attacks and inept administration in managing social change leading to proliferating insurgencies, with the Maoists even establishing front organisations in cities.

So far so good in setting up the present task force but in the total absence of strategic culture and a defeatist foreign policy that refuses to draw lessons from history, only time will tell what will be the outcome. Every time we have arisen from hibernation to order a security review was only after a crisis – Sino-Indian War (1962), Indo-Pakistan War (1965), Mizo uprising (1966), Kargil conflict (1999) and the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack. If we had the strategic culture, a Comprehensive Defence and Security Review should have been institutionalised every five years.

The recent 7/11 terrorist strike in Mumbai proved we have learnt nothing from 26/11. The impression created in respect of the Kargil Review Committee recommendations is that everything less than appointing a CDS has been accepted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The major implementation failings, mostly advertent, are: One, no CDS appointed; two, HQ Integrated Defence Staff created as a separate HQ, instead of merging it with MoD; three, Chairman COSC gradually eased out from the loop of control of Strategic Forces Command; four, Defence Intelligence Agency stopped from its authorised mandate of operating trans-border intelligence sources; five, Andaman & Nicobar Command remains toothless without requisite forces under its command; six, Directorate General of Armed Forces Medical Services and Director General Quality Assurance not permitted to be brought under HQ IDS.

The Parliamentary Committee on Defence is as toothless as any other committee whose recommendations get largely ignored. The recently retired Air Chief stated that he was not for a CDS in “present form” but was portrayed as saying he is not for a CDS. The fact remains that no matter what the façade of Services jointness and integration, it is simply not going to come through without a CDS. Former Army Chief, General V.P. Malik had gone on record to say, “It is not my case that the Service Chiefs do not cooperate in war. Were they not to do so, it would be churlish. But in war, cooperative synergies are simply not good enough”

There is a crying need to go in for Integrated Theatre Commands and Integrated Functional Commands, but this cannot come through sans a CDS. Former Army Chief, General Padmanabhan had said, “There is no escaping the military logic of creating suitably constituted Integrated Theatre Commands and Functional Commands for the armed forces as a whole”. In UK the debate over the CDS raged for 18 years, till the government forced a CDS on the Services. Plenty has come in the media on the state of our defence forces including the widening gap compared to the PLA. There have been suggestions that only an act of Parliament like the Goldwater Nichols Act, Berlin Decree, or political leadership can break the logjam. It is difficult to identify a political leader with the required mettle or a bureaucrat who could draft such an act of Parliament. The government-appointed task force has no active Services representation. Interacting is different from having full time members. Besides, interacting with Services is not the same as interacting with a CDS.

The views expressed herein are the personal views of the author.