https://m.thewire.in/article/books/general-anil-chauhan-spills-the-beans-in-his-new-book
https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/in-his-new-book-general-chauhan-spills
In his new book, General Chauhan spills the beans
Discussing the ‘many lines of action through which one can enhance the capability of a state to defend itself,’ General Chauhan, in the subsection on ‘Civil-Military Fusion’ in his chapter ‘National Security: A Conceptual Framework’ says in his new book:
This (civil-military fusion) ensures the optimal utilization of civil and military resources to achieve national objectives. It fuses military professionalism with political ideologies (emphasis and parenthesis added) (p. 44).”
Given that military professionalism and political ideologies have historically and universally been taken as incompatible, the misbegotten insertion appears to have escaped the eye of avid copy editors.
Even so, since it explains a lot of what’s been going on in the military sphere over the past decade of the Modi regime’s tenure in power, it must be alternatively read. It should not be mistaken as a ‘slip of tongue’.
It is instead a bold assertion, meant to be read, absorbed and normalized; even if alongside it is – as here – scrutinized, critiqued and pilloried.
Since the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) himself puts it so bluntly, it does not require further explication. Even so, since it is so shocking it might require a helpful word or two to digest.
The good General lists civil-military fusion among the intangible factors, which together with military force application, help with ‘Defence of a Nation State.’ ‘National security remit being larger than the application of military force,’ its instruments include ‘civil-military fusion’.
To be fair, he elaborates on the sentence, arguing that the infusion of state-of-the-art technologies across multiple domains and advent of dual-use technologies and infrastructure lend credence to the concept of civil-military fusion for optimizing resources. Fusion is also ‘paramount’ for citizen-centric HADR (humanitarian and disaster management) operations.
The General appears to want to take the sting out of the sentence by sugar-coating it by highlighting the close interconnection between the civil-military spheres. However, it is not self-evident why the military needs to be imbued with ‘political ideologies’ for interconnectedness to be efficient and effective.
Whats clear is that the interconnection cannot be seamless, since the military is an institution of a democratic State that by definition sees alternation in power of political ideologies.
By no means must a military be at odds with the national spirit or the political master, but adoption of ‘political ideologies’ goes beyond the consensus thus far on military subordination of the political.
So, what could Chauhan possibly mean?
His view is perhaps unknowingly informed by a theory in civil-military relations (CMR) termed Concordance theory. The theory is important enough in CMR to have been reprised in the golden jubilee commemorative edition of Armed Forces and Society (AFS), an international inter-disciplinary journal on the subject.
Its academic proponent, Rebecca Schiff, claims that the theory, ‘sees a high level of integration between the military and other parts of society.’ She argues that ‘three partners - the military, the political elites, and the citizenry - should aim for a cooperative relationship that may or may not involve separation but does not require it.’
In her seminal essay in the frontier AFS - later expanded to book length - she had used India as an example of concordance, incidentally, alongside Israel in the other case study. Her book went on to include a case study on Pakistan, of discordance there resulting in military intervention.
Unpersuaded with the understanding on civil-military ‘separation’, attributable to the dominance of the Huntingtonian notion on CMR, she had sought out ‘integration’ as a more descriptive term on CMR in many, particularly, non-Western states, such as India.
The theory has it that concord between the three stakeholders – the political elite, the military and society – brings about domestic non-intervention by the military. This is probable when the three ‘partners’ agree on four factors: ‘the social composition of the officer corps, the political decision-making process, recruitment method, and military style.’
To her, ‘(c)ooperation and agreement on four specific indicators may result in a range or civil-military patterns, including separation, the removal of civil-military boundaries, and other variations.’
Such a consensus existed in India through the Congress raj with civilian preponderance and separation of the military. Schiff approaches her case-study in the tumultuous decade of the Nineties, when political consensus was showing cracks. She concludes that political dominance alone (recall the political disarray of the coalitions back then) cannot explain continuing Indian military reticence on domestic intervention. Institutional (the military’s non-political style) and cultural factors (continuing British legacy) need factoring in. Thus, ‘separation’ served India well.
Today, India faces a new reality: that of an ideological capture of the State. Requiring a quiescent military, an ideological state can have one, but only through cooption. Thus, separation is no longer necessary.
So, is India moving towards ‘removal of civil-military boundaries’ – one of Schiff’s models?
This could explain General Chauhan’s brief, and for now cryptic, advocacy.
With Hindutva now predominant in Indian political culture - opposition parties opting for ‘soft Hindutva’ – it’s the only political ideology in town. Is the CDS advocating the military bandwagon?
Given the change in political culture, a shift in strategic culture is but natural, with the verities of the former informing the latter. A preceding sub-section to the one on fusion discusses ‘Strategic Culture’.
He calls for creation of a strategic culture ‘in the nation to create an awareness among the people on the ‘whole of nation’ approach that is sine qua non with emerging challenges.’ This, to him, requires that ‘citizens and society in a nation must understand the importance of security in all its dimensions, be it external, internal, economic or social.’
In other words, a trickle-down must encompass society, strategic culture defined as a ‘set of beliefs, customs and traditions held by the strategic decision-makers about the political objectives of war and the most effective ways of achieving it.’
With the political elite and the military already politically concordant, the society must be brought in line through strategic cultural manipulation. Efforts as Project Udbhav must been seen in this context.
The author devotes a chapter to ‘Ancient Indian Wisdom and its relevance in modern strategy and statecraft.’ To his credit, he lists Moghuls alongside the Guptas in keeping up the Mauryan consolidation of the idea of India – Bharatvarsh’.
With Moghul history kicked out of pedagogy, strategic culture can only rummage in an ancient history attic. This shows the military has bought into the verities of the Hindutva project.
In short, the civil-military separation that facilitated Indian military professionalism is fast losing its sheen. Is professionalism itself next?
General Chauhan is appreciative of the civil-military integration that has taken place thus far (the creation of his appointment, the CDS), but is silent on the civil-military integration that the yet-pending theaterisation will wreak.
He states theaters will be ‘force employment’ mandated, while Service headquarters headed by the Chiefs will restrict themselves to ‘force generation’, with even the CDS continuing only in an advisory role.
This leaves unsaid where the command-and-control chain of theater commanders’ stops. It cannot be at the desk of a triple-hatted CDS, one hat of which is as a Secretary.
The recommendatory line - ‘the chain of command and the operational decision matrix will also need to be redefined’ - is hardly helpful.
His one-line mention - ‘There should be NO ambiguity in the command-and-control structures for the higher direction of war (emphasis in original, p 168)’ – suggests civil-military ‘integration’, with theater commanders answering to the defence minister, as is in the American system.
No harm in that, but a book from the CDS need not have avoided the subject, particularly if there is dissonance (what else explains the ‘NO’, in caps?).
Another subject missing is nuclear weapons. That these are significant is clear from the manner the regime went about limiting Op Sindoor. Clearly, ‘(A) Blueprint for the transformation of India’s Military’ – the book’s subtitle – cannot have elided this topic.
It is logical to expect the CDS as the military adviser to the Nuclear Command Authority on nuclear matters, to have touched on the matter. Besides, the General’s previous book, authored at a one-star level, was on nuclear war effects; indicating his being attuned to the dangers. Instead, nuclear weapons find a mention at three places only in generic terms.
This keeps this critical matter under wraps, particularly the command-and-control arrangements, given that the CDS does not have command authority over the Strategic Forces Command. This begs the question: Who does? If a civilian (the NSA?), then does it presage theater commanders answering to a civilian?
Finally, and importantly, here’s evidence of the populist dogma in the political sphere finding its way into the military’s innards. General Chauhan writes:
In terrorism, one finds the absence of a political goal. It is not a means to an end but an end in itself. In the Quranic concept of war, terror is not a means to impose a decision but a decision in itself. Such violence without any definite political end state is contributing to the changing nature of war (p. 57).’
This is of a piece with the longstanding misinterpretation of the book by a Pakistani brigadier titled ‘Quranic Concept of War’ written in Zia’s times. Some two decades back I had refuted the notion of a Quranic endorsement of terrorism in the Army War College journal, that had asynchronously carried its review, writing in the following edition,
Terror in the author’s (Brigadier Malik) perspective is taken as akin to ‘Shock and Awe’, rather than ‘Terror’ as is currently, fashionably defined, more for propaganda purposes than accuracy. Terror can be taken as the imposition of a decision paralysis on an enemy commander, a numbing fear in his army and popular disaffection in the cause of the war. To the author (Brig. Malik) it is not the spectacular killing of innocents and non-combatants that is Terror in the post 9/11 Age (p. 198).
Now, with the CDS endorsing nonsense, Islamophobic dogma appears to have gone mainstream.
Lastly, the book’s title is interesting in its inclusion of the term, ‘Resurgent’. Are we to believe that the Indian military was in stupor so far, a Rip Van Winkle (Kumbhkaran in Hindi-speak) to be stirred awake by regime using likeminded acolytes in uniform?
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*General Anil Chauhan, Ready, Relevant and Resurgent: A Blueprint for the transformation of India’s Military, New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2025, pp. 200, Rs. 895.
