Military Literature Festival: Experts call for strong civil-military ties

Chandigarh, December 2

Experts stressed the need to strengthen civil-military relations and greater integration of various instruments of the state to effectively deal with emerging security challenges, at the Military Literature Festival here today. The session was titled “Military, strategic and diplomatic lessons to be learnt by India from the conflict in Ukraine”.

“Today’s war is not just about the military, but involves many different organs of the government that have to be integrated for a common purpose. It is only the political leadership that can make it happen,” said Lt Gen Prakash Menon, former Commandant of the National Defence College.

He said Russian president Vladimir Putin seemed to have been misled by his military leaders into believing that the war would be a cakewalk for Russia. He said it was very important to have deep, continuous and institutionalised civil-military relations.

He said the military should be given clear training and operational objectives and in turn, it was the military’s responsibility to convey the correct risks and costs involved. The present lacuna in the Indian system, he said, was the lack of a national security strategy that shaped the military instrument.

Lt Gen Menon said India should try as much as possible not to use force to resolve disputes. He also stressed the importance of information warfare.

Brig Deepak Choube, a brigade commander posted in the western sector, said war was no longer limited to just one service or domain or the kinetic form of warfare. He said modern conflict called for a synergised and integrated approach by using all instruments of policy available to the country.

He said the multi-dimensional war which India may have to fight would be a complex web of all types of warfare involving not only the men in uniform but entire spectrum of population right down to the common man sitting at home.

Brig Choube said, “From the ongoing Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas conflicts, it can be been seen that we need to be prepared for very long and protracted wars, which would be a drain of national resources.”

Maj Gen Harvijay Singh, author and commentator, said Russia should have learnt lessons from India’s highly successful Bangladesh liberation campaign of 1971, where the Indian Army bypassed enemy concentrations and aimed for reaching Dhaka.

He said the war in Ukraine exposed Russia’s lack of training and over-confidence. They badly miscalculated on the vital aspect of field communication by thinking that they could use the Ukrainian cellular network to meet their own requirements.