Theatre commands: Clarity is the need of the hour

In the absence of clear political directions, armed forces are undertaking the biggest military restructuring in independent India as per their own interpretation

In the last week of 2022, former army chief, General M M Naravane, delivered a lecture at the fourth memorial held in honour of General K V Krishna Rao, hosted by the Mahar Regiment and the United Services Institution at New Delhi in the presence of his successor, General Manoj Pande. Naravane’s speech was on ‘theaterisation in the backdrop of the Malayan campaign and the fall of Singapore’. He pointed out that the British failed in Southeast Asia during World War II because their theatre command — the Southeast Asia Command, then headquartered in Singapore — was not given definite objectives. In what was to make headlines the next day, he said that the government was risking “putting the cart before the horse” by creating integrated theatre commands before issuing a national security strategy.

Coming from someone who was the army chief till eight months ago — whose tenure overlapped with the full stint of the late General Bipin Rawat as the first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) — Naravane’s indictment carries weight. Following the Ladakh border crisis, he also oversaw the reorientation of the army from the Pakistan border to the Line of Actual Control with China. Since Naravane demitted office, there has been no change in the political-bureaucratic leadership. The prime minister, the defence minister and the national security advisor (NSA) are the same — they remain in charge of India’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and security. Instead of maintaining a stony silence, the political establishment must answer the questions raised via the public debate initiated by Naravane.

The thrust of his argument is simple. In the absence of clear political directions, the armed forces are being compelled to undertake the biggest military restructuring in independent India according to their own interpretation and understanding. It also denies them the benefit of support from other arms of the government, when the country needs a “whole of government” approach to deal with security challenges.

In modern democracies, the political direction on strategic challenges comes in the form of a national security strategy. Japan recently issued one, announcing a dramatic shift by unequivocally stating that “China’s current external stance, military activities, and other activities have become a matter of serious concern for Japan.” Even China regularly issues white papers on defence, but the last such document issued by India was the Report of Group of Ministers on National Security in 2001.

When the government announced the creation of a Defence Planning Committee headed by NSA Ajit Doval in 2018, one of the major items on its agenda was the national security strategy. There were periodic rumours till late 2019 that the unclassified part of the document will be made public after it is approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security.

Going by Naravane’s lecture, no document, whether classified or open, has been issued till date. Officials have said that a draft national security strategy was put up by the defence ministry, but the government developed cold feet.

By its very nature, such a document would have to articulate where India stands on various issues. Even if the document was bland and full of bureaucratese, it would still reduce India’s strategic flexibility. This could cause major trouble with potential adversaries like China.

Lack of commitment

When PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote a secret letter to President Bill Clinton, justifying India’s nuclear tests in 1998 as a response to the Chinese threat, the White House promptly provided the text to the New York Times, causing the government great embarrassment with Beijing. The Modi government is unwilling to commit on major issues — a look at New Delhi’s voting record on global platforms since 2014 makes that clear — which holds the government back from issuing a national security strategy.

Not only has a national security strategy not been issued, what is even more worrying is that the Modi government has not updated the Defence Minister’s Operational Directive last issued by the then Defence Minister A K Antony in 2009. The document provides the basis of operational planning, stocking, manning and training for the armed forces and is supposed to be issued every five years. As per the former army chief, General N C Vij, the directive says, “We should be prepared to fight on both fronts simultaneously a war at 30 days (intense) and 60 days (normal) rates.” The same lackadaisical approach is evident in the way the Agnipath scheme for short-term recruitment of soldiers was finalised or how the idea of Atmanirbhar Bharat has severely hampered defence modernisation.

By keeping the post of the CDS vacant for 10 months, the government demonstrated its lack of commitment to a reform it had initiated. This is the reason why, three years after Rawat became the first CDS, there has been no progress on his primary task of creating integrated theatre commands. In fact, we may have gone backwards since.

The political rationale for theatre commands was never clear, except for being driven by a desire to ape major powers like the US and China. If these countries had such a structure, India should also have one, seemed to be the mantra.

For the armed forces, theaterisation is about more efficient application of military resources through better command and control. Rawat believed that such a process could be driven in a top-down manner, while others contend that it should be initiated by jointness at lower levels. In either case, 17 single-service commands would be replaced by four or five integrated theatre commands. This means that the military officers, fighting for promotions in an already steeply pyramidical organisational structure, will further lose avenues for promotion to higher ranks.

The debate

The objections of the Indian Air Force (IAF) to theaterisation are two-fold. It claims that India as a geographical entity, with no expeditionary military aims, is a single theatre for the IAF. Moreover, at 30 combat squadrons against the authorised 42, it is in no position to split the meagre resources. Such a design would need 80 combat squadrons, an absolute impossibility for India economically.

The military leadership has also declared that Kashmir and Ladakh will be permanently kept out of theatre commands. If theatre commands are a more effective and efficient way of fighting wars, it is logical that the two most likely areas of military conflict should be the first under integrated theatre commands.

Currently, the three service chiefs are both, the heads of their respective organisations, and control the operations through single-service commands. If theatre commanders are going to take over operational responsibilities, will the service chiefs only be responsible for recruitment, training, procurement and manpower planning? The service headquarters will not accept this diminished role for themselves so easily, an aspect which has not received serious consideration from political leadership.

Another lacuna is the lack of clarity among political leadership about the command-and-control structure of these theatre commands. In the US, the theatre commanders do not report to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but to the Defense Secretary, equivalent to our Defence Minister. In India, media reports suggest that theatre commanders would report to the CDS in wartime, which would make it an all-powerful appointment. This would disturb the balance of civil-military relations.

“War is merely the continuation of policy by other means,” said German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz. “We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means,” he noted. It is time the Modi government recognises that “war is too important to be left to the generals” and abandons its timid and confused approach towards India’s national security.