Does Manohar Parrikar Have A Grand Strategy?

If Manohar Parrikar can devise a Grand Strategy for India’s Armed Forces, he will be instrumental in the country’s ascent as a global power.

India has had few defence ministers who brought intellectual weight to their office. This is where Manohar Parrikar could make a difference. India needs to formulate a grand strategy. Parrikar with his acuity and intelligence and opportune and timely portfolio should apply himself with speed to the project.

Indian defence ministers have rarely dealt with challenging issues like grand strategy. India does not have one. All the Great Powers of history have had one. This is what made them Great Powers. Two island nations that should normally not have been in the front ranks, Britain and Japan, were Great Powers because of the incredible strategies they deployed. India will never be a great power unless it devices a grand strategy that factors its strengths and weaknesses.

The defence portfolio as it has been conceived till now has had limited intellectual content. In the era of Jawaharlal Nehru, the military sphere was scorned and neglected, not least because Nehru understood so little of it. His defence minister was the arrogant and unwise V. K. Krishna Menon. The 1962 debacle was no surprise. The only unforeseen part was that the Chinese turned back after smashing the Indian Army.

Defence ministers after Krishna Menon were mildly more competent but not intellectual high-flyers till P. V. Narasimha Rao held the office for a year in the mid-1980s. By then, the portfolio was depreciated. It was a place to park a senior politician on the verge of retirement. When defence deals were all the rage, and one of them brought down Rajiv Gandhi, the defence ministry became a desultory place of high corruption and low productivity. It attracted men like Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and A. K. Antony.

When Pranab Mukherjee became defence minister for a while, he brought an intellectuality to the post hitherto absent. For the first time, there was excitement that defence diplomacy would get a real push. In international conferences, he spoke a language which put him in the league of world-class defence ministers. But such are the ways of 10 Janpath, he was swiftly guillotined. A deadweight called A. K. Antony got the job.

Manohar Parrikar has had to clean up Antony’s mess. He has been provisioning the armed forces from rather poor levels left by the previous regime. He has straightened up procurement and things will fall in place soon. India is better prepared for war.

Preparedness for war, however, cannot substitute for strategizing. Without a strategy, preparedness has no meaning. And without a grand strategy, there is no chance that a median power could become a great one.

Adolf Hitler had no grand strategy beyond the conquest of Europe. Despite having the best military force for the time, he failed. The Americans learnt from the interwar years and the post-1945 decline of Britain how to rule the world without an empire. If it has to be an Indian century, the country needs a grand strategy. Parrikar must get down to the nuts and bolts.

Why Parrikar and not, say, Sushma Swaraj? Swaraj has a travelling job. She won’t have time. This writer is not sure she is inclined towards grand strategizing either. Parrikar has the necessary intellectual heft. He is a mass politician who understands politics and the political economy. He also has the fullest military picture of anyone in government except the prime minister who already has a loaded plate.

Keeping the armed forces well-equipped and enabling a suitable counterterrorism environment are standard duties. These will not bring Parrikar special appreciation. He will leave a mark when he designs a grand strategy so uniquely fitted for India as to make its rise unstoppable. When Britain became a genuine seapower after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and brilliantly joined to it balance of power strategies, it was unassailable for the better part of a century.

A great opportunity awaits Manohar Parrikar.

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