NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force Chief on Tuesday affirmed the sanctity of nuclear weapon’s deterrence value calling it “still effective”. This, as per the Chief, has been proven by the skirmishes which continue between Russia and Ukraine while NATO countries under the US leadership are assisting Ukraine to continue holding its ground against Russia.
Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari said that the Russia-Ukraine conflict has important lessons for us. “Nuclear deterrence is still effective. It is an important takeaway for us. Skirmishes have been going on for over six months under a nuclear overhang.” he said.
The IAF Chief was delivering the 20th Major General Samir Sinha Memorial Lecture on “Transformation of the Indian Air Force: Present Status and the Way Ahead” organized by the New Delhi based think tank United Service Institution (USI) of India.
Drawing further from the ongoing conflict the chief reflected that “More importantly, anything can be weaponised” and it includes the financial services, Social Media platforms and even the sporting bodies. “As we see today is the financial protocol, SWIFT transaction have prevented us from transferring money into Russian accounts, Civilian airspace being controlled, Social media based businesses - Twitter, Google - being controlled, even international sporting bodies are getting weaponised in some form or the other.”
What we need to understand from all this is that strong narratives can build influence globally. ACM said, “And narratives that we see emanating from the conflict have definitely changed the world order as we see it, as we saw it in the last two decades or more.”
Emphasising that “There is definitely less appetite for the rules based international order” ACM Chaudhari pointed out that “there can’t be adequate soft power without hard power.”
“To be able to project soft power, we need to concurrently develop our hard power capabilities. Irrespective of the International treaties be it NATO, Quad, ASEAN, CENTCOM, whatever friendship between countries will also come second to a nation's security and self interests amply evidenced by the way European countries have taken a stance in the ongoing conflict.” He added.
Talking about India’s self-sufficiency in arms manufacture he said it is an absolute necessity as “we cannot be dependent on any other nation forever to defend our country. We need to promote and support our indigenous industry and indigenous technologies.”
The IAF Chief also talked about the situation with Pakistan and said that the same situation will continue unless the Kashmir issue is resolved. “On the Western border with Pakistan, the no war, no peace is continuing and likely to continue until the resolution of the most important issue of Kashmir.”