Imperative Need for a Comprehensive National Security Strategy

A comprehensively formulated National Security Strategy reflects the national will to protect and promote national interests pertaining to security and dissuades adversaries from attempting to play mischief and also provides guidance to all stakeholders on policies related to national security, writes GURMEET KANWAL

- Gurmeet Kanwal

All national-level endeavours must be based on a clear sense of purpose. The idea is elemental, but one that is little appreciated and often ignored. Does India have a comprehensive, clearly enunciated national security strategy? Does India need such a strategy in its nuclear weapons-dominated, unstable external security environment, with its internal security vitiated by foreign-sponsored insurgencies? The answer to the first question is definitely 'no'; and, to the second, an unambiguous 'yes'.

Indian defence analysts have for long lamented the lack of strategic vision and national security strategy. With his characteristic frankness, K. Subrahmanyam minced no words in bluntly stating two decades ago: "It is now well recognised all over the world that India does not have a tradition of strategic thinking... mainly due to the incapacity of our political leaders and top civil servants to take a long-term view of national security. This is compounded by their consequent failure in giving a lead to the armed forces in preparing the country to face its long-term need for defence preparedness."