The defence forces have prided themselves in their consistent engagement with the frontiers of their profession. This is an index of their professionalism. India’s military, in particular, is rated highest on the key index of being apolitical against any peer military in the developing world. Owing to high economic growth, the military, through expanding defence budgets since the turn of the century, is also being ‘RMA enabled’. Defence cooperation with other professional militaries such as the US military and service in UN peacekeeping operations is expanding its repertoire of skills.
A fundamental principle of humanitarian law, non-combatant immunity, has been virtually consigned to history during the Bush years. To a large extent this can be considered a ‘success’ for terrorists. That terrorists do not respect the principle of non-combatant immunity is central to the definition of terrorism. The aim of terrorists is substantially achieved when states also adopt their language and grammar. This has been done to an extent by the US in its militarily aggressive response to 9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Shortage of officers, especially in junior ranks of the Indian Army, has been engaging the attention of policy planners, the public and the media. Armed forces reflect the society from which they are recruited and enrolled. With economic liberalisation and globalization, job opportunities for the educated youth have increased manifold. Traditional professions such as the civil service and the military do not seem to be very popular among the youth. Corporate India has now provided an environment for entrepreneurship.
Cases of soldiers serving in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) turning their weapons on themselves or their fellow soldiers have been reported recently. This is a cause of serious concern and the Army is taking necessary measures to check this disconcerting trend. Various terms have been associated with fratricidal killings like 'fragging' (after US soldiers in the Vietnam war rolled fragmentation grenades into the tents of unpopular officers) and 'running amok' ('amok' is a Malay word meaning 'out of control').
Since the middle of the 20th century, the Arab-Israeli wars have thrown up a number of military lessons. The most spectacular was a textbook pre-emptive counter air strike in 1967 by the Israeli Air Force (IAF), which destroyed or made non-operational the entire Egyptian Air Force. This demonstrated the need for gaining mastery of the air as a prelude to spectacular ground operations. At sea, a Styx missile fired by an Egyptian missile boat on the Israeli destroyer Eliat validated the idea of anti-ship missiles.
The release of India's first joint doctrine on May 17 marks a major step towards military integration and interoperability among the three services. Intended to complement existing individual service doctrines, the joint doctrine outlines the guiding principles for future joint operations by synergising their operational capabilities. It is common knowledge that in contemporary RMA-oriented warfare, joint operations constitute the key to battlefield dominance and military superiority.
Every war is waged to fashion a better and more acceptable peace. Peace, in the sense of a legitimate framework within which States can pursue their interests without recourse to arms. The fashioning of a better and legitimate peace is especially important in the wake of wars among Great Powers, which have an immense impact on the international system as a whole. In fact, some wars among Great Powers – like the Thirty Years’ War, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars – are expressly waged to determine a new framework for the conduct of international relations.
The US offer to sell F16s and F18s to India, announced on March 25, has to be seen in context. True, this initiative is linked to the White House decision to lift the ban on supplying F16s to Pakistan and the more cynical view is that the US manufacturers of these aircraft will now laugh all the way to the bank as the sub-continent gets sucked into an arms race.
The tsunami tragedy that struck large parts of Southern Asia abutting the Bay of Bengal and the South Eastern Indian Ocean littoral has been a tragic start for the New Year. It is feared that the total death toll in the affected areas may well cross the 200,000 mark. In many ways this is a multi-national disaster with the affected countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar amongst others and stretching all the away across the ocean to the East coast of Africa.
Initiatives to transform the Army Officer Corps
The defence forces have prided themselves in their consistent engagement with the frontiers of their profession. This is an index of their professionalism. India’s military, in particular, is rated highest on the key index of being apolitical against any peer military in the developing world. Owing to high economic growth, the military, through expanding defence budgets since the turn of the century, is also being ‘RMA enabled’. Defence cooperation with other professional militaries such as the US military and service in UN peacekeeping operations is expanding its repertoire of skills.