 Welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Mr. Praveen Sonny who retired from Indian Army and then worked with India's premier national dailies and has worked with internationally well-known Jains international defense review for many years and since 1993 he and Ghazala Wahab 2003 sorry they started this force magazine which is a leading journal on security related matters. Welcome to NewsClick. Thank you Sonny. I want to discuss with you raise some questions concerning chief of defense staff which is the first major reform that has taken place in India's military. This followed the group of ministers recommendation which was headed by Al-Qaid Wani then to bring in a chief of defense staff. How significant is this reform for the Indian military? You see the short answer to this would be that any reform that you make has to be relevant to a time. Now this reform was suggested 20 years back as you rightly pointed out it was the deputy prime minister at that time Al-Qaid Wani who released the group of ministers report in February 2002 and that is where it was suggested that we should have a CDS for this as a single point advisor and it was suggested various things then was spoken about that how he will bring the trial services the services together. Now my point is that it's in 20 years because of the technology because of the geopolitics so much has changed. So my point is that is the CDS relevant today that's an important point that perhaps has not been debated enough in this country. Why do you draw this distinction between CDS as envisaged around the turn of the millennium to CDS that has been brought in in 2020. So the long in short is that because of China's rise because of Belt and Road where the PLA is part of the Belt and Road and today they have encircled us it has implications because of the technology that today we are talking about the fourth industrial revolution fourth industrial war which is the artificial intelligence war which is software driven war and this is where today China and China is our industry we have a disputed border with China 3488 kilometers disputed border now they are basically in the lead today they are competing with America. So when you see all these things and then this the most important part the CDS which has come today is a highly truncated CDS than what you rightly pointed out was envisaged so it has been tailored today CDS for a particular requirement which is certainly not the military requirement. Let before we come to that there are a couple of questions that have nevertheless been raised about the way in which CDS and the problems that some people some of the commentators have pointed towards. One of the reservations that has been expressed is that creating CDS a fifth department in the Ministry of Defense is adding another layer of bureaucracy how do you respond to that okay so is it so my responses required or not my responses it wasn't required but it is not bad I say that for the simple reason that now all the military matters have come under one head so today you see earlier what used to happen is that everything would go to the Ministry of Defense and we had those five departments we had the department of research and development then we had the department of finance then x servicemen then production and then we had the main which is the ministry of defense so I would argue that by creating this department basically now the channels have been more streamlined in response to the critics who say that a layer of bureaucracy has been has been added no I don't agree no I don't agree with that what do you think about the other criticism that that CDS as it's now being brought in may be army centric and that there is this there is this apprehension that some people that it will continue to remain army centric and the second concern which they have is that this may actually counter the attempts of the of the armed forces and particularly army to cut flap so to say so you see because the first CDS first CDS will draw the roadmap he will lay down the basic rules for the office so because he is from the army and that is one area which he understands better then he understands the efforts and the navy you see especially in our dispensation where there is their all compartmentalized functioning so yes to some extent they are right that he will set the army agenda when you set an agenda for three years then your successor will has great difficulty in obtaining that so to that extent they are right now cutting the flap see this has been my constant argument that if the army was to do its primary job which is defense of the country get out of counterinsurgency operation I have written in my book Dragon on our doorstep that we can easily cut 300,000 troops because CIOPS counterinsurgency operation we the Indian army got in saying publicly that we are there for a limited period and they have stayed for 30 years now so that is the problem where the flap has come in you wrote in a recent piece okay after the CDS was the first CDS came into being and I am quoting you that the first chief is likely to prepare the military to fight the wrong enemy wrong war with wrong procurement training and mindset unquote now these are this is a very strong statement you have made yes would you would you like to explain what you mean by this yes you see now the national narrative is national narrative I am specifically saying the narrative which has clearance of the government of India is that the threat to India is terrorism and terrorism from Pakistan correct I have consistently argued this is not the threat that we face terrorism is a manifestation of the threat which comes from the line of control the military line that we have with Pakistan so the threat is the military line and not terrorism you see so similarly the threat is from the military line with China line of actual control absolutely you see so when you get the threats wrong if you if you say that all right the threat is terrorism then you are looking at only counter terror operations nothing more than that you are preparing your armed forces to do that precisely what we did in the 2016 surgical strike so-called surgical strikes and the February 2019 Balakot air attacks these were below they were tactical level operations so my apprehension is that given his expertise for which he was brought in and he superseded two officers general Robert will get all the three services to be doing CIOPS which is not our threat so we are fighting the wrong this would this I mean it it sounds very reasonable what you are saying but the problem is that the government is also placing more emphasis on fighting terrorism than anything else yes so you see the reason is very simple it helps politically politically yes of course it helps for example who would argue or who would disagree that 2017 2019 balakot didn't help politically you see who will but if we just if you ask me that question in very brief I'll tell you what damage balakot has done to us you see so similarly in 2016 surgical strike it damaged us you see militarily so what is happening is there are two things today in India under the present government there is a political threat and there is a military threat and we today have a military man who is trying to project the military thing the the template on to the political threat so the consequences to my mind in my assessment I it's my considered opinion in the long term and long term I say is 10 years we can be up at a facing a very difficult situation for us so what where do you place the importance of general rabbits take on hybrid warfare where do you place that because he has been emphasizing the importance of that the Indian army and the Indian armed forces have to face a new form of warfare which is he calls hybrid warfare which is conventional subconventional nuclear cyber it's everything right rolled into one right so you see it's like this first of all this term hybrid war it's a american term it's nothing that general rabbit has created and hybrid is a very generic word it includes anything and everything you can think of which basically means that you've already diffused the level but what you have done out of that hybrid is where is the intellect of the officers and where is the focus of the top military leaders that unfortunately is on terrorism and unfortunately pakistan and that's why we see this attempt at you know opening up deradicalization centers which reminiscent of more you know 1950s and the brainwashing attempts vis-a-vis the youth because you're emphasizing entire terrorism hybrid warfare then you're hyping up the threat of radicalization of children as young as 10 to 12 years old and asking that they be isolated and put in education centers this is part of the same so you see it's like this it's like this when any army professional army gets sucked into a war which is a war amongst the people it is not a war with the enemy when you are fighting amongst the people then all these ills happen all the things and the Indian army has you know they have done sattbhavna which never worked sattbhavna was basically hearts and mind strategy how do we get people close to us the truth is kashmir is a political problem which can see the task of the army is you can bring the situation security situation to a manageable level thereafter the political process must start and let's be very honest kashmir is a dispute which is there with the united nations so whatever you want to say unfortunately is not an internal agenda you see having said that all this talk of radicalization you see it's not general rabat all our senior officers have spent the bulk of their careers doing ciops and they've been through all these phases it's only that he publicly spoke at the rishayana dialogue but in some way this has been going on because instead of acknowledging that look the people are alienated the people are alienated more alienated you say they are radicalized then you start looking for all these things you know you start looking for 50s 60s and what sort of a treatment to be given so whether the camps are there or they are not there i have no idea but yes i can certainly say that most of the things that been trying is basically a treatment for the wrong problem tell me one thing how significant in this context of what the general rabat now who's the first cds chief of defense staff and the previous army chief his position on hybrid warfare or fighting terrorism as being the major main task of the indian armed forces to the the new army chief who took over and his very first press conference in his opening remarks he made something very significant i consider and i want to ask you pose this question to you he pointed out that the army is army is engaged in counter insurgency and counter operations only as a short stint and that its primary role is to be prepared for a conventional warfare now this is not the same you know understanding that gets reflected from in what general rabat had to say how significant is this so you see this and how does it how will it now that you have a cds system how will it be possible for an army chief who wants to bring about this transformation and pull the army out i mean it i seem to be reading correct me i read it as meaning that he desires the army to pull out gradually from getting involved in internal wars so that it can put it focus back on the its primary role right so first of all what general narav name the present army chief said the other day i was there at that press conference i think it is absolutely positive and that is precisely what needs to be done not only that he went a step further and defined that war also he said look the future of war is the network centric warfare now you can agree with that or not that's a different matter but he defined that sounds very good but the problem is if you see the rules of business they've just come out i think four days back it was reported widely in the media i have come to the conclusion after reading all that that the cds today actually is now a super chief and i see the three chiefs the army fos navy as his vice chiefs because in his area of responsibility they have clearly spent out the government of india he is responsible for countess agency he's responsible for jnk he's responsible for the composition of the army what the army will do so basically what will the the army chief do as you rightly pointed out and i said yeah administratively having a separate department is good but operationally operationally when we say the word use operationally we are talking about preparedness it has not been good you see and the whole idea was to give him a lot of operational paths and a lot of administrative paths which impinge on operations for example he will decide the promotion of all two-star officers and above now if you place those people who are experts in ci they'll obviously continue doing ci countess agency so i mean i actually feel that general narabneh will go down in history i mean i'm i hope i'm proved wrong as a chief which actually wanted to do a lot but was helpless if you were to take a look at the way in which cds has been constituted and the kind of rules of business now that have been introduced uh where do you place cds then so and this whole reform that one you know that was being espoused for so many years i mean where does it leave us so as i said in the beginning which is a debatable part that whether cds is relevant today or not that is one part you know considering it is a army centric considering the air force is against it and considering the navy it is not applicable to the navy because navy in any case operates on the high okay they they don't have a single data yeah and in any case their assets cannot be divided in the same so it is really army centric yeah okay now the key thing is that you have created cleverly you have basically when i say you i mean the government of india they have killed two birds with one stone a long-standing demand had been met it has been diluted to suit a political purpose this is the unfortunate part because if the indian army unfortunately continues doing ci ops look i'm not saying i'm certainly not saying that they will not focus on the conventional war what i am saying is that when they say we focus on indigilization now which is the responsibility of general rabad and considering our threats are increasing at such a pace and considering we do not have any worthwhile defense industrial complex you need to fill the critical operational gaps get the damn things going but now we'll wait for indigilization so the hope of the future war conventional war network centric war will stay alive so people will argue that look we are doing both we are doing hybrid war what you say yeah you see hybrid war a military like the us military with a budget today their budget you see their budgets they're talking of 790 billion dollars in a year our budget is 48 billion dollars by the way a year with that budget they realized that 18 years war in afghanistan was a total disaster same thing is happening with us rather worse why worse because we have a disputed border with china because we have a disputed border with pakistan and both are joined in the north you see today they the two forces are physically combining in north londak so this is something which worries me at night you see when you see how vulnerable we become and why can't we just leave terrorism i mean this terror is okay but terror is coming from pakistan you have to talk to pakistan either you have to create a conventional capability that they are scared of you i'll just tell you a very instance a very small instance on this i remember in 1990 91 sorry i was working with times of india that time what happened was that one large number of troops were inducted in the theater the army chief was general rotrix so the pakistan army chief got very worried that these guys will come they'll attack they immediately approached america that look these guys have come at large numbers today they're not worried why what has happened between 1990 and now what has happened is that they realized that we have developed a defensive mindset we are focused on the wrong war we do not have the war fighting the conventional capabilities which are credible for war so all this has happened i mean this is what should worry us you know if we were to focus on the right war we can also cut down the numbers of the army which need to be cut because we need the money to give to the other services we need to focus on the right threats so in the end i mean if you were to look take a look at the cds now that i mean it was a much needed reform but the way in which it has been brought out what would be your final word my final word is that unless general ravat which i know will not happen gives up this tactical gaming indian armies capabilities proportionate to our adversaries will keep declining and ten years now we may end up when general ravat will not be in service we may end up with an extremely serious situation which i don't want to quantify to you openly but i have in mind what we are looking at thank you thank you very much that's all for today if you have any feedback any comment do write to us or send us a word keep watching news click