A broad-spectrum antidote

The concept of national security recognises that most foreign and military affairs and some economic and domestic issues are interrelated. In the past, it was assumed that the country had to be either at peace or war, which called for a division of responsibility between civil and military affairs and domestic and foreign policy. Now, military force remains the legitimate instrument for national defence but political, economic and technological considerations are equally significant. The role of the NSC should be to evolve a national policy covering areas to enable all concerned departments and agencies to cooperate.

Recent experiences have demonstrated that our most pressing national security problems consist less of clear-cut choice between war and peace; more inmaking fine adjustments in the ambiguous area in between. We are today in a geostrategic environment where the stakes are high but not clear-cut, the objectives are something less than the classical military victory and the domestic situation is often a critical factor. The response to the new security environment will require a sustained national effort, a highly focussed national policy and an effective centralised decision-making process. In our political system, the Prime Minister will have to provide direction. He alone can mobilise the national will and awaken the country to the dilemmas and imperatives of the emerging situation in our region.

The initiation and evolution of policy, the shaping of a broader strategy and all subsequent coordination has to be done by a body directly associated with his office. The perspectives of the ministries involved diverge so often that coordinating them is a full-time job, and it can only be done if the organisation assigned the task can speak authoritatively onthe Prime Minister’s behalf. Most advanced nations have an NSC in some form or the other, according to their constitutional and specific requirements. We too need a tailor-made system to meet our needs.

The most transparent and widely discussed system is that of the United States. While it cannot be transplanted into our environment, its concept and fundamentals are unquestionably sound. The US NSC has the President as Chairman with the Vice-President, Secretaries of State, Defence, and Director O&M as members. These constituted the statutory members under the US Constitution. Subsequently, it was felt necessary to include the principal advisor to the government in the use of military force and in October 1983, the US Congress passed a Bill making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a statutory member. The President has an Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs (APNSA), commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor. Contrary to general belief, he is not a member of theNSC.

While the members are Cabinet ministers with political accountability, the advisors are professional heads accountable to their respective organisations. They provide expertise while the members of the NSC have the generalist perspective. Authority and accountability go hand in hand. The composition of our NSC is a critical issue and will need to be examined in detail by the government as it has constitutional implications. In our form of parliamentary democracy, the members will have to be drawn from the Cabinet. The ideal composition would be the PM as Chairman; Foreign, Defence, Home and Finance Ministers as members. The PM can nominate a Vice-Chairman, who could be a non-political person with Cabinet rank, as in the Planning Commission. He could be designated National Security Advisor.

Statutory advisors will attend all meetings and should include the Chiefs of Staff, the Director of RAW, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau and the ScientificAdvisor to the Prime Minister. The body must be small and role-oriented. The objective is to make the NSC an effective and quick-response body. Any proliferation will reduce it to a debating society. While extensive debate and discussion are essential, this would already have been carried out at the level of the Ministry concerned.

The NSC will need a dedicated staff totally independent of the bureaucracy. They may be drawn from the civil services, armed forces, police, academia or public life. However, they must be a permanent part of the NSC with no lien on parent service or organisation, and not subject to external loyalties and pressures.

The issues that the NSC will have to deal with are: foreign policy; defence policy, including force levels and strategy; domestic policy, involving national security; economic and technology issues (tariffs, international loans, oil prices, technology transfer, space, electronic); intelligence policy, especially approval of sensitive operations and the coordinationof intelligence collection efforts; crisis management, especially the mobilisation of national will in times of emergency.

National security is too important a matter to be tackled in a partisan manner. It is not known if the government has consulted the major Opposition party when it constituted the Task Force. This factor will be important if government proposes to legislate it through Parliament. We are putting into place an institution which must withstand the vagaries of party politics.

The author is a retired Lieutenant General