Knowing global power

When I read the report of the National Intelligence Council of CIA, ‘Mapping the global future’, which has assessed the rise of Ch...

When I read the report of the National Intelligence Council of CIA, ‘Mapping the global future’, which has assessed the rise of China and India as major global powers by year 2020, my mind went back 34 years to 1970 and the conversation I had with Dr Vikram Sarabhai who had just then released the ten-year nuclear profile, the space department’s plan and the science and technology plan. When he asked me what would be the international alignment in the 21st century, I had said that the US, USSR, China and India would be the major actors. He disagreed. He said that in the 21st century, knowledge would be power and China and India with their large populations, and civilisational traditions, becoming knowledge-based societies would overtake the US and USSR. The present US intelligence assessment would have us believe that the visionary in Vikram Sarabhai could anticipate the CIA assessment by more than three decades.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh appears to be yet another visionary who believes in knowledge empowering India. In his speech at the CII partnership summit at Kolkata he announced his intention to set up a Knowledge Commission to strengthen our capacity and capability building so that we are better prepared for the challenge of the 21st century. He added that building a knowledge economy and a knowledge society was the only way in which we can meet the challenges of globalisation. The CIA report also deals with meeting the challenges of 21st century and of globalisation.

Although the NDA government did not phrase it that way, its resolution of April 1999, implies that to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to tackle the problems of national security, a National Security Council (NSC) was needed for initiating integrated thinking and coordinated application of the political, military, diplomatic, scientific and technological resources of the state to protect and promote national security goals and objectives. Although Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra did not interpret it to mean so, this would amount to application of a knowledge-based approach to national security. Such an approach involves assessment of the long term future and likely future developments in various areas listed earlier and integrated and coordinated thinking to deal with these problems. As against this, the current decision-making approach is precedent based and reactive and often restricted to dealing with problems in specific areas limited to the jurisdiction of the ministry. While the US CIA is assessing the future of various major nations, including India and China, in this country the main assessment agency, the Joint Intelligence Committee, became part of the NSC secretariat and lost its autonomy for assessment.

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The ministries are manned by generalists who can attend to day-to-day problems. They do not have either the time or capability to develop long term knowledge-based assessments and long-term policies to meet future challenges. Such long term policy making necessitates senior cabinet ministers, who make policy, having to be educated to be in a position to direct future-oriented thinking. That in turn requires long-term assessments like the one the CIA has produced to be generated with reference to this country’s needs. Prime minister Manmohan Singh recognised in his Kolkata speech the need for such “knowledge institutions” in advancing and speeding up India’s economic development and manufacturing competitiveness.

National security management involves India having to act in the world arena and consequently matching its wits with other competing major powers. The present state of appreciation for knowledge-based decision making in India’s national security establishment is illustrated by the report on establishing a National Defence University, already cleared with the chiefs-of-staff, that is gathering dust in a ministerial shelf for over three years. The CIA’s National Intelligence Council report has listed, after detailed analysis, factors of relative certainties and key uncertainties from which US strategic policies are to be derived. If India were to benefit from this analysis and be prepared to deal with the US there is at present no institution to prepare papers on the subject and bring them to the notice of the ministers.

The CIA analysis refers to the impact of the aging of populations in the industrial world, its strategic consequences in terms of migration patterns, energy demands, growing power of non-state actors, political Islam as a force, the unlikelihood of great power conflicts escalating, US still retaining its status as the most powerful nation and several others. Each one of them has relevance for long-term Indian national security policy-making. But there are no institutions available for knowledge generation and knowledge sharing. The role of the National Security Council (NSC), as envisaged in the resolution of April 16, 1999, was to fill this void. The Pant Committee report on setting up the National Security Council had this concept as its basis but not the NDA prime minister and NSA. Nor, would it appear, the NSA of the UPA government. In these circumstances, Manmohan Singh has no precedent to go by. The idea of NSC will fit in better with his ideas of building up a knowledge economy and knowledge society than the ideas tried out during V.P. Singh’s or Vajpayee’s time. His NSC should aim at developing a knowledge-based national security needed to meet the challenges of globalisation in the 21st century.

If this approach is adopted there will be no clashes between day-to-day policy-making, which is the responsibility of the ministries and long-term knowledge-based assessments, and policy responses which will have to be focused on by the NSC. The National Security Advisor will have to be a knowledge-friendly person. Such a NSC should generate thinking out of the box which is beyond the capacity of the ministries. As a knowledge generating and sharing body, the NSC has to be a deliberative body. That is not the role of CCNS which gives its decisions within the framework of alternatives formulated by the ministry. The two functions of NSC and CCNS cannot be mixed up. Whether the rise of China or India would occur smoothly is an issue which is listed to be considered seriously by US policy-makers. Do we want to devote attention to such issues? That is the challenge before us and that is what the NSC debate is about.