Ancient Indian wisdom on statecraft and application of force propounded many centuries of years ago remains timeless and relevant today, Army Chief Gen Manoj Naravane said on Thursday. The armed forces have taken up an exploratory project to examine their relevance to contemporary security challenges.
He said we are witnessing “trailers” of future conflicts being enacted “daily on the information battlefield, in the networks and cyber space”, also being played on “our yet unsettled and active borders”.
On Afghanistan, he said the developments have again brought to focus the use of “proxies and non-state actors” to decisive effects.
Speaking at a webinar by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, Gen. Naravane said in the zeal to look at the future, we forget the lessons that the past brings to us. “In a national seminar conducted on the subject last week at the College of Defence Management, it came out loud and clear that the basic tenets espoused in Chanakya’s Arthashastra and Tiruvalluvar’s Kural amongst others still hold great significance in our contemporary times,” he said.
Navy Chief Admiral R. Harikumar said the enduring nature of warfare offers avenues for a creative student of military history and statecraft to contextualise lessons from the past, so as to imagine contemporary and future scenarios. “Such endeavours will improve our ability to be agile in thinking, nimble-footed in approach, and thorough in preparing response mechanisms. The large volume of knowledge encapsulated in our ancient texts, epics, treatises etc would be educative in this regard.”
Stating that we are witnessing “trailers” of future conflicts and these are being enacted “daily on the information battlefield, in the networks and cyber space”, Gen. Naravane remarked, “They’re also being played along our yet unsettled and active borders. It is for us now to visualise the battlefield contours of tomorrow, based on these trailers.”
In our own present context, the ceasefire on the Line of control (LoC) continues to hold because we have negotiated from a position of strength, Gen. Naravane noted. The developments on Northern borders have also “adequately” underscored the requirement of ready and capable forces with an “optimal component of boots on ground backed by modern technology” to preserve our sovereignty and integrity.
Preeminence of air power
Speaking at the webinar, Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal (ACM) V.R. Chaudhari said the contours of recent conflicts and attacks show us that the military strategy of today cannot be based on erstwhile theories of “mass maneuver and holding ground” and we need to continuously evolve to stay contemporary. “In the past rise and fall of nations were dictated by the size and prowess of the fielded forces. However, conflicts in the last few decades have clearly established, without doubt, the preeminence of air power as the instrument of choice for almost all operational contingencies,” he stated.
In this regard, ACM Chaudhari said knowing that the budget will always remain a constraint, prioritisation of procurement at the national level for key combat elements and enablers becomes very critical. “We need training and equipment, not to fight the last war but to fight and win tomorrow’s wars.”
From an Indian perspective, Gen. Naravane said we face unique, substantial and multi domain challenges, and disputed borders with nuclear neighbors, coupled with state sponsored proxy war, “stretches our security apparatus and resources.” Our adversaries shall continue with their efforts to achieve their strategic aims, short of conflict, by use of grey zone activities in the political, military and economic domains and do so in a collusive manner, he said.
Taking of non-state actors in Afghanistan, Gen Naravane said they “thrive” on local conditions, “innovatively” exploit low cost options to devastating impact and create conditions that limit the full use of sophisticated capabilities which are available to the state. “The concept of victory itself has changed, as enduring success, especially against non-state actors, has remained elusive for most.”
“We have also observed some nations challenging the globally accepted norms and the rules-based order. This challenge has manifested in various forms of creeping aggression and opportunist actions to alter this status quo, keeping the threshold below all-out war.”
The Air Chief said the traditional domains of land, sea and air have further expanded to include cyber and space domains, which will be the battlegrounds of the future — a point also emphasised by the Army Chief and Navy Chief. In future, we could be attacked on all fronts, starting from “economic strangulation to diplomatic isolation and military standoffs to information blackout in the form of distributed denial of services,” he said.
Stating that deterrence would play a significant role in preserving “strategic autonomy”, ACM Chaudhari said logically four cardinal principles of sound intelligence, credibility of our full structures, perception management and timely application of combat power would be the key to successful deterrence.
Cyber domain
On similar lines, the Navy Chief outlined three factors influencing the contours of future wars, which are the contemporary geopolitical climate, technology and the evolution of cyber as a vital domain for warfare.
Noting that cyber domain interacts endlessly with all other domains of land, sea, air, and space, Adm. Harikumar said the lack of “international regulations on use of cyber-space, and plausible deniability complicates the situation even further.” This was one domain that merits our undivided attention.
Based on these, the Navy Chief said future wars would be multi-domain with a complicated escalation mechanism and catalysed by niche technology which would have a disruptive impact and may even alter the military balance.
“Given our security situation, the probability of a full blown conflict can never be ruled out… notwithstanding, to my mind, most future conflicts are likely to be predominantly limited,” he said. “Rather, we are involved in managing these conflicts even now on a day-to-day basis.”
