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Now over the last 10 years it has become an established pattern of behaviour on our part. Our strategy

of retaliation with surgical strikes or the new strategy of 'cold start' remains moribund and ineffective for

the enemy believes and rightly so, that we lack the will and wherewithal to implement it.

Our conventional retaliation strategy lacks 'credibility' and therefore is no deterrent. The issue is not

of mere 'will' either. India lacks the overwhelming technological/numerical superiority to implement

this. For instance, Israel has been successfully employing 'threat of retaliation' as a deterrent to proxyor terrorist threats. Israeli technical prowess makes it a credible threat and its past behaviour has

established its will to act.

In 1773, the small kingdom of Thanjavur was threatened by the combined forces of the Karnataka

nawab and the British. As enemy troops massed outside the city, the high priests of the famed

Thanjavur temple assured the king that their 'mantra' was powerful enough to defeat the invaders, and

went on to sprinkle the water sanctified by the 'mantra' to stop the invasion! Of course the 'mantra'

failed and the kingdom was annexed by the British.

Today we have the high priests of nuclear strategy in Delhi similarly chanting the 'mantra' of no first

use and minimum deterrence! Will the result be any different than at Thanjavur in the 18th century?

An analysis of why 'we are like that only' is necessary so that we can rectify this fatal flaw in our national

psyche.

The Diagnosis: What ails Indian thinking on defence?

We are a peculiar nation that is obsessed with the 'eternal truth' while we ignore the 'practical' or the

realistic world. Carl Jung, the Swedish psychologist visiting India about a century ago, had remarked

about this and felt (as a Westerner) as if the whole country lived in a trance ormaya or illusion.

Let me illustrate. It is a fundamental belief of Indians that there are no evil beings only evil deeds and

fundamentally theatman or the soul is universal and part of the divine in all of us.

While this is so, yet there are evil individuals, for instance the terrorists who mercilessly killed hundreds

in Mumbai or have been planting bombs in busy trains and markets. We have to deal with this evil

ruthlessly. But what do the Indians do? We question every action of the police/armed forces, we

have karuna or pity for the Mumbai terrorists.

The list of our foundational weaknesses is a long one. Here I would just mention it and leave the rest

to the reader's imagination.

We tend to think that security is the sole prerogative of the armed forces and police.

Divorce between theorists and practitioners -- it is politically incorrect to think of national

security in academia -- the British implanted a colonial mindset whereby Indians were kept

out of this vital area. Even 62 years after independence this persists.

The lack of strategic culture -- in case of nuclear strategy we have scientists as strategists --like asking chemist to prescribe medicines (as many Indians do).

Segmented approach to security -- armed forces kept away from decision making on the

nuclear issue.

Treating low intensity, conventional and nuclear conflicts in isolation and denying the

linkages between them.

Isolating defence industry/research from mainstream and colossal inefficiency of the

bureaucratic structure of the Defence Research and Development Organisation empire.

Read the second part: Why India needs nuclear weapons

Colonel Anil A Athale is the Chhattrapati Shivaji Fellow at the United Services Institution and

coordinator of the Pune-based think-tank Inpad.

Colonel Anil A Athale

http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/sep/25/why-india-needs-nuclear-weapons.htmhttp://news.rediff.com/column/2009/sep/25/why-india-needs-nuclear-weapons.htm