If veterans only talk about geopolitics, who will talk about the military
Ghazala Wahab
Many years ago, I requested a retired three-star army officer to write an article for FORCE on challenges of inducting technology in the Indian infantry and the kind of training/ education the troops would require to fully embrace and exploit those technologies. Those were the days when networking till the last man, real-time information sharing, directive style of command, induction of unmanned ground systems, night-fighting capabilities etc., were all buzzwords.
After a few email exchanges, the officer declined to write the article. His reason was not that my suggestions were far-fetched and the Indian infantry had no use for such technologies for counter insurgency/ counter terror operations. He said that he doesn’t want to write on tactical issues; his interest was in strategic affairs. He’d rather write on Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the US-troops. Out of politeness, I ended the conversation there, resisting the urge to point out to him that his preferred subject had no relevance to the Indian Army. In fact, even the US war terror in Afghanistan and regime change in Iraq had no lessons or relevance for the Indian Army’s counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir. Worse, by drawing lessons from these campaigns, he risked equating Indian Army to an occupation force!
This has not been an isolated incident. Increasingly, retired military officers prefer not to talk about military matters. By military subjects, I do not imply operational matters, or service issues which have quasi-political/ bureaucratic dimensions because I know times are tough, despite Amritkaal. I am only referring to subjects pertaining to technology (modernisation/ procurements), human resource management (training/ education, jointness) and modern warfare. But these issues are rated lower on the imaginary intellectual bar that the retired officers aspiring to be writers want to score on. For many of them the favoured subjects are non-Indian, and non-military, laying waste to the knowledge acquired during their service years.
The root of this desire lies in the intellectual inferiority, which is instilled through their service years by sundry bureaucrats, often junior in age/ service, but senior in the official power structure. Hence, post-retirement, they want to be regarded as thinkers, analysts, often at par with retired bureaucrats, especially from the foreign service, hence phrases like ‘thinking general’, ‘scholar warrior,’ etc.
Another reason is intellectual laziness. Writing on global events for the Indian audience require neither deep understanding nor unique perspective. All it needs is rehashing of already published work, in most cases from articles in international publications, to which a concluding paragraph is usually added to give it an Indian context. But if one were to write on contemporary or futuristic issues pertaining to the Indian military, then rehashing would not be possible, given that so little work has been done in this area. At the minimum, it would entail focussed reading, a lot of thinking and several half-written drafts. Hard work aside, raising the ordinary to the level of extraordinary requires both courage and conviction. It is unfortunate that most take the easy way out.
However, for all their exertions, on the supposed high table of intellectuals, they remain country cousins, who are often humoured, but never taken seriously on any subject other than the military—a subject they don’t keep abreast of, hence have no unique perspective to offer, thereby further undermining their utility to the policymakers. As a consequence, a potential intellectual resource, the veteran community, which could combine its experience with education to provide both ideas and perspective to the serving officers, through articles, technical papers, monographs and books, as well as to the policymakers, is completely wasted.
This waste should be regarded as a serious concern, because all the three services finance their own think-tanks providing employment to veterans. Additionally, the ministry of defence runs military research institutes and think-tanks. Clearly, they are doing this because they expect these institutes to produce literature, organise events, run workshops, conduct courses, that would be of use to the services and the serving officers. These institutes should be able to do the spadework for reforms, writing of doctrines, conceptualising of training modules and syllabus for military education and so on. They should be able to project a future roadmap for modernisation of the armed forces based on realistic assessment of military threats. Even if they are constrained by the politics of the day and are required to spend some amount of their effort and resources on digging out non-existent military history from ancient India or hunting for enemies in the civil society, as individuals, they could write articles on contemporary challenges in private publications leading to cascading of critical thinking among young serving officers.
Because of the reluctance or inability to do so, most conversations about reforms in these think-tanks are still stuck at the 24-year-old Kargil Committee Report. And ideas which are past their expiry are hailed as evidence of moving forward. A quick look at the publications of these institutes or their events shows the collective drift towards non-military subjects. This begs a question: If military veterans spend all their intellectual capital on talking about geopolitics, who will talk about military matters? Diplomats?
Of course, literature alone cannot change mindsets or shape policies, but at least it can create a pool of useful knowledge. Perhaps, it can even start the culture of critical thinking—a direct consequence of which is professionalism.