NEW DELHI: The country’s top military officer, General (Gen) Anil Chauhan, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), has said that the absence of a written National Strategic Policy (NSP) does not imply that the country lacks such a policy.
The CDS highlighted that constituents of the NSP continue to exist and contested the insistence on having an NSP in a written format. He was speaking on Monday at the book release of ‘Crafting a New Indian Art of War’.
“When we talk about the national security strategy, I believe it consists of policy, processes, and practices to succeed. In our country, probably all three are addressed. The only thing missing is a written policy. I don’t know why people insist on that,” said Gen Chauhan.
Citing the past instances, Gen Chauhan said that “if we didn’t have a policy, we wouldn’t have succeeded as we did in revoking Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir.” “People were saying there would be a bloodbath in case of a revocation. But nothing like that happened,” he emphasized.
The top military commander also highlighted the successful combating of Covid-19 in a country of 1.4 billion people. “If there was no strategy behind it, how did we achieve our goal? Even the Balakot airstrike and the Uri airstrike — if there was no strategy -- how did we do it? So there is a strategy, but what is missing is probably a written document. And a written document actually doesn’t count,” the General said.
The CDS incorporated the example of Israel which, he said, doesn’t have a written policy, but they do have a national security policy. In a significant step to revamp the defence planning institutional mechanism, the government established Defence Planning Committee (DPC) under the chairmanship of the National Security Adviser (NSA) on April 18, 2018. It was to facilitate integrated planning at the apex level and its focused execution to promote defence diplomacy and indigenisation of the defence sector.