CHENNAI: Former Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Luxembourg and Belgium, Manjeev Singh Puri, termed diplomacy a simple tool in the pursuit of national interest. “Nothing is more important than national interest and it trumps everything,” he said.
He was speaking at the 14th edition of the ThinkEdu Conclave on "Defence and Diplomacy: Dealing with the New World Order".
Puri went on to state that defence and diplomacy are two sides of the same coin. He referred to the South Block in Delhi, which houses both the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of External Affairs, to ground this truism to reality.
Further exploring the notion of national interest and military capabilities, Former Chief of the Air Staff of India (Retd.) Air Chief Marshal Rakesh Kumar Singh Bhadauria said that defence capability was always a very important pillar of “any world order”, but it was a silent pillar. “It was this capability that gave diplomacy its heft,” he said.
“With the kind of conflicts that are going on in the world over, having our own capability has become all the more important, all the more essential,” Bhadauria emphasised.
Adding to the point of the significance of diplomacy, Former Director General, Assam Rifles, (Retd.) Lt.Gen. Shokin Chauhan pointed out that all arms of the state—be it defense, diplomacy, economics, or the bureaucracy—are mere tools in the hands of the political masters.
“These institutions are what build the nation. Is the political master truly independent enough to think that he can push them around?” Chauhan questioned, adding that no politician in India has ever tried to influence the armed forces.
Talking about the current nature of war, Chauhan said that today’s frontlines are different from what they were a few decades ago, and that modern warfare is often a multi-domain endeavour. “Earlier, we had air, land and sea domains but now we have a few more—cyber, narrative and space domains,” he explained.
“You might find your energy grid cut off. Your banking systems might be gone. You might then find the entire media completely against you. You could be at war without knowing it," he said.
