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Eye on Indian, global security scenarios

Indranil Banerjie

In today’s fast-paced world, keeping track of events is an unending and taxing task. A book like Prof Satish Kumar’s India’s National Security: Annual Review 2008 does much to relieve the burden. The book meticulously records most of the important events in India’s security environment during 2007 and a part of 2008. What the book does best is to add the necessary perspective required to understand these events. And, of course, global and domestic events are seen from an Indian point of view. The result is a volume that cannot but be extremely useful for scholars both within and outside this country who wish to keep track of geopolitical and military events and trends that are of concern to India.

Prof. Satish Kumar has been churning out an annual security review since 2002. Since then, the volumes have got better and become something of a must-have for any Indian library. The volumes have acquired the status of an essential reference work. The continuity of the series and the attempt to cover as wide a spectrum of national security issues as possible has become the hallmark of Prof. Kumar’s compilations.

Moreover, Prof. Kumar is more than qualified for the task. A former distinguished professor at the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, he has been intimately involved with the country’s national security scenario. Not only has he lectured extensively on Indian foreign and military issues but has also been personally involved in the India-Pakistan Track-II dialogue. Thus he is both an observer and practitioner of Indian security matters.

Apart from selecting and ordering a set of diverse papers, Prof. Kumar’s contribution to the volumes is his own scrupulous writings on the global security and India’s internal and external security scenarios. This key section of the book has been written by Prof. Kumar himself.

Prof. Kumar masterfully reduces the irritating complexity of global and internal trends to a set of easy-to-understand summaries. For instance, his section on global security trends begins with a simple assertion: "Global security hinges on the behaviour of the major powers, their inter-se relations, and the functioning of global institutions and regimes. By this criterion, the security scenario of the world does not seem to be on a positive trajectory."

He goes on to detail the ongoing tensions between the United States and Russia, developments in the European Union, in Japan, China and the lack of progress in the war against terrorism.

As regards India’s external security environment, Prof. Kumar provides a section each on India’s relations with the United States, EU, Russia, China, Japan, Pakistan and the rest of South Asia. The idea of each section is to analyse how key events in relations with these entities influenced India’s overall external security environment.

On internal security, the main issues dealt with are Jammu and Kashmir, the Northeast, left-wing extremism as well as terrorism, communalism and economic unrest. This pretty much covers the field and all major developments are listed for the benefit of scholars who would undoubtedly use the volume for reference work.

Unlike in other similar works, Prof. Kumar introduces non-traditional themes such as the challenge posed by global warming, energy and economic security as well as the impact of nanotechnology on security.

The most interesting readings in the volume are the individual papers on various subjects. One paper of particular interest is on Pakistan by former journalist Wilson John. He details the downfall of former dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf and how the blunders committed by him destroyed Pakistan’s quest for internal stability. His paper provides a lucid picture of the Taliban in Pakistan and how it has grown from strength to strength. He quotes well-known analyst Ahmed Rashid to show how the Pakistani Army chief is facing an ideological dilemma: "He cannot tell his men that they are fighting for Islam, because that is what the jihadis themselves are saying." The paper goes on to detail the schism within the Pakistani Army and how this will inevitably lead to greater instability in that country.

An article on Bangladesh by former Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh Veena Sikri is well-informed and significant, as are articles on Afghanistan, Burma and Nepal. One problem with the volume is the uneven quality of the papers. The paper on China’s military modernisation, for instance, disappoints because it is composed of the kind of stuff easily found on the Internet. There is little India-specific about it. Like most analysts on China, the author of this paper writes in general terms on the modernisation without explaining or detailing how it will directly affect India. For the military challenges in China’s west is very different from those in its east. The militarisation of Tibet, for instance, is of direct interest to India but very little is covered by Indian military writers.

Equally disappointing are a host of other articles in the volume that deal with issues as diverse as economic security to China’s evolving military strategy. What becomes clear after a close reading of this fairly substantial book is that Indian authors continue to view the world in general terms and their analyses tends to mimic that of their Western counterparts. It is only in matters close to India, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Burma, that Indian analysts show a degree of independence in their worldview. Otherwise, many of the issues discussed in the book seem to be lifted from Western Internet sites, leaving the reader fatigued and bored.

Prof. Kumar would also do well if he could date the articles as they appear to cover different timeframes. In a volume that purports to look back on 2008, one would expect that most of the major events of the entire calendar year are covered. This, however, does not seem to be the case. It would be instructive for readers to know when the articles have been written.

In all, though, the book is extremely useful, comprehensive and has a definite place on the reference shelves