Security Research Review

The All Seeing Eye

(Volume 1(4) August 2005)

• The All Seeing Eye

The heinous terrorist act at the Ayodhya temple complex casts a dark shadow over the India-Pakistan peace process. If it were not for the presence of mind and courage shown by the security officers deployed at the site, an extremely dangerous and escalatory situation would have most certainly resulted. The editorial team would like to congratulate and thank the brave men and women of the Central Reserve Police Force and the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary for their efforts. Investigations by the police have uncovered leads that point to the involvement of the Pakistan based terrorist group, the Laskhar-e-Taiba in the attack.  (more).

• Strategy, Strategy, and Strategy

Capt. (r) Bharat Verma

By a turn of good fortune, geo-political factors today favor India. We are perhaps the only country in the world with unique access to opposing camps, consisting of major and minor powers or groups. Hence, it is time for New Delhi to convert this goodwill by adopting intelligent stratagems to register maximum gains. Instead of issuing contradictory policy statements without thinking things through, the new mantra in New Delhi, should be ‘strategy, strategy and strategy.’ It is imperative that each move is well thought out and takes into account all long-term implications, and that every counter-measure that impacts on our strategic environment is dealt with by a calibrated and studied response. (more)

 

• Integrating the Seven Sisters

Brig. Amrit Kapur VSM 

The ravishingly beautiful and picturesque landmass of our country, which adorns the mantle of the northeastern states, may distance wise be even less than Chennai or Trivandrum is from New Delhi , yet it remains emotionally detached from the rest of India . The reasons are more than intriguing. The perceived distance has more to do with the mindset of the average Indian rather than the actual physical distance.(more)

 

• Fifteen Years of Pakistan's Proxy War, Should the Kashmiris dare to hope?

Brig. (r) Gurmeet Kanwal

Since end-1989, Pakistan has been waging a ‘proxy war’ against India in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). It has done this by aiding and abetting disaffected and misguided youth to rise against the Indian state. Despite the one year old ceasefire on the LoC and the recent rapprochement, Pakistan continues to surreptitiously practice its peculiar brand of state-sponsored terrorism. This is borne out by the continuing attempts at infiltration and the number of incidents of violence in Kashmir during 2004. (more)


• There is a Reaction to Every Action

K Gajendra Singh

It was not a false cry of ‘wolf, wolf ' on 7 July .The wolf had reached London unlike 13 February, 2003 when an ‘alert’ exercise was organized in London and US cities to influence the UN Security Council vote on the report of Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix for war on Iraq. Next day, an Arab editorial remarked, “Has UK Prime Minister Tony Blair taken leave of his senses? The sight of tanks and armored patrol vehicles patrolling London’s Heathrow airport suggests so -- does Blair envisage — an Al-Qaeda panzer division –- -Washington appears equally paranoid. (more)


• The Nuclear Truth Triumphs

Narayanan Komerath

No honest student of current affairs or history can deny India’s need for a nuclear deterrent – or the world’s fears of loose nukes. This week, Washington and New Delhi showed that they had “got it” after seven years of “constructive engagement”.(more)

 

• Partnering the United States: India's Window of Opportunity

Amit Gupta

After years of fielding Indian complaints that the United States did not take New Delhi seriously and favored Pakistan, the Bush Administration has brought about a qualitative change in the relationship. The United States has taken the position that it should help India be a major power in the international system and that India will be a partner in the preservation of international stability and in the promotion of democracy. Central to the shift in policy has been the recognition of India as a de facto nuclear state and the willingness to transfer civilian nuclear technology to India. At the same time, Washington will not ask New Delhi to put its nuclear weapons program under safeguards. In India, however, the results of the Bush-Manmohan Singh summit have been met with mixed reactions. (more)

 

• The Chief of Defence Staff

Capt(r) Bharat Verma

The divisive Indian culture continues to act as the principal destroyer of consolidation of military power by dithering over the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). The ‘divide and rule’ concept not only costs the taxpayer a huge monetary loss through duplication of efforts by Army, Navy and the Air Force but also denies the government a well considered, single-point, professional military advice with integrated inputs from the three Defense Services depicting the big picture. Thus the sword of the state stands blunted by the state itself! (more)

• Jittery Allies Snap at Each Other

K Gajendra Singh

The author reviews the utterances of Pakistani and their Allied counterparts in the aftermath of the tragedies of London, Sharm-al Sheikh and Kusadasi. (more)

 

• Military Aviation and National Growth

Air Marshal (r) B. K. Pandey, PVSM, AVSM, VM

Adam Smith, the renowned proponent of economic thought has said, “The first duty of a sovereign, that of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of military forces.” Implicit in this plain statement is the principle that a nation must maintain a certain level of military strength to meet with its obligations. Also, the protective role is best performed through a capability to not only overwhelm the enemy in the event of a conflict, but more importantly, to be able to project an effective deterrent posture. Thus the acquisition of capability to deter and vanquish the enemy is the sacred responsibility of a sovereign state. Military strength is an important ingredient of national power and an expression or manifestation of its strength. Acquisition of military power is, therefore, synonymous with statehood and sovereignty. (more)

 

• Ensuring China's "Peaceful Rise"

Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Modern China has astonished the world with its rapid and steady ascent to economic prosperity. Already the second-largest economy in the world (in Purchasing Power Parity terms), the Peoples Republic of China is on course to become the biggest before 2050. This should come as no surprise, for China, with four millennia of recorded history and a civilization that has enriched the world, was the primary economic power on earth for most of the two millennia prior to the second half of the 1800s.It was only during that period that the Chinese economy ceased to be the world's largest (and India the second-largest). Since 1979 however, when "Paramount Leader" Deng Xiaoping first brought in comprehensive economic reforms, the Peoples Republic of China has emerged as the fastest-growing major economy .Chinese scholars have written of the inevitability of the rise of China, and have elaborated on their reasons for coming to such a conclusion. (more)

 

• The Match with Pakistan

 Lt. Gen. (r) Vinay Shankar, PVSM AVSM, VSM

We should not blame our cricketers or our hockey players for our dismal record against Pakistan. It is something to do with our national psyche. This hypothesis is validated if we look at the bigger game both our countries have been playing ever since independence. And since the people are of the same stock should we not look at our deeper religious, cultural and historical moorings for answers?  (more)

 

• The State of Terror Will Reveal Itself

Chitra Iyengar

Slowly, but surely, the world is getting more intimately acquainted with the thinking behind the Pakistani Brigadier’s statement. A few countries are already rather familiar with this mindset, having been the targets of Islamist bombers for some years now. Judging by this summer’s suicide bombing season, the wider world better get ready for a crash course.  (more) 

 

• Siachen: Prospects for a Mutually Agreeable Settlement

Aruni Mukherjee

Though the “line of control [in Jammu & Kashmir]…continues to witness spurt(s) in infiltration”, the feel-good factor has never been greater in the Indo-Pak relationship. Nothing could more exemplify this than a report in The Hindu on July 21, which reported how Indian jawans in Siachen had helped their Pakistani counterpart recover the body of a fallen comrade. The report also included a line about a Pakistani civilian who had strayed into Indian territory by mistake being returned to his homeland. Prospects for the peace process, we are told, seem irreversibly bright. (more) 

 

• Soft Borders

Prakash Nanda

Max Weber, one of the foremost intellectuals of the last century, had once argued that borders “are not simply lines on maps where one jurisdiction ends and another begins. … borders are political institutions: no rule-bound economic, social or political life can function without them.” Many admirers of Weber have even suggested that the whole history of human organization and the modern state can be summarized as a continuous effort to bring territorial borders to coincide with systemic functional boundaries so that the entire population is subject to the widest possible common social, economic and political functions. The idea is that borders do not pose legitimacy problems, both within and beyond, in relation to identity, security and governance. And, for borders to become legitimate, it is universally accepted that they must be clearly delineated and recognizable. Secondly, there should be international legal recognition of them, although in the cases of divided countries (India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, China-Taiwan), the strictest application of this criterion could be little tricky.(more)