The Government's announcement on the National Security
Council (NSC) architecture has evoked mixed reactions. The timely initiative in filling up
a long-felt lacuna has been welcomed. At the same time, there has been criticism of the
absence of a full-time National Security Adviser (NSA) and of the unwieldy nature of the
Strategic Policy Group, which is to function as the link between the political
decision-makers of the NSC and the permanent, professional nuts and bolts thinkers and
option projectors of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which is to act as the
permanent secretariat.
Past inadequacies in our national security management
arose from:
* The absence of long-term thinking and
planning due to preoccupation with day-to-day crisis management and short-term
compulsions.
* The inhibition of fresh thinking and a
co-ordinated approach to national security issues due to the undue influence of narrow
departmental mindsets.
* The absence of a watchdog set-up, uninfluenced
by departmental loyalties, to monitor the implementation of the national security
decisions and remove bottlenecks.
A Government's one-person nodal point on national
security issues, whether it is called the NSA as in the US, Russia and many other
countries, the Chairman, JIC, as in the UK or the Secretary-General, National Defence, as
in France, has to perform four roles:
* Co-ordinate crisis management.
* Identify and assess short, medium and long-term
threats to national security and facilitate a co-ordinated flow of intelligence,
assessments, intellectual and operational inputs to the political decision-makers of the
NSC and help them in formulating an adequate policy and/or action response.
* Have the decisions of the NSC translated into
action through appropriate directives and guidance to the departments concerned.
* Watch over the implementation process to
identify and remove bottlenecks and departmental foot-dragging.
In the US, Russia, France and other countries, the
importance of a full-time NSA to be able to pay adequate attention to all these roles has
been recognised right from the inception of the post. In the UK, the Lord Franks
Committee, appointed in 1982 by the then Prime Minister, Mrs.Margaret Thatcher, attributed
the failure of the Government to anticipate and forestall the Argentine occupation of the
Falklands to the absence of a full-time adviser on national security.
The Chairman, JIC, who used to perform this role, wore
two hats—as the Chairman and as a senior bureaucrat of the Foreign Office. The
Committee felt that his complacent approach was influenced by the view in the Foreign
Office that Argentina would shout, but not act. The contrary view that Argentinian
leadership might be forced by hysterical public opinion to act was ignored. Since then,
the UK too has instituted a full-time post of Chairman, JIC.
National security has many facets--- political,
military, economic, energy, science and technology, communications, information
technology, psychological and intelligence capability—but, when the chips are down,
in the ultimate analysis, it is the military ( which includes the other security forces
too such as the Police) and intelligence capabilities which would determine whether
national security is effectively maintained or not.
Thus, the armed forces and the civilian security
bureaucracy have an important role in the NSC architecture in any country, but, should it
be a predominant role? The trend the world over has been against such a predominant role
for two reasons:
* An important aspect of the NSC's work would
relate to determining the optimum strength of the military and the security bureaucracy in
the medium and long-terms. An NSC architecture, with a predominant role for the military
and security bureaucracy, might over-assess threats in order to justify more than an
optimum strength.
* The military and security bureaucracy are
trained to assess what is necessary and work for it. Considerations of feasibility and
acceptability to public and political opinion do not generally enter into their
calculations. But, in peace time, the political leadership cannot afford to ignore such
considerations and has to constantly harmonise the necessary with the feasible and the
acceptable to public opinion.
The effectiveness of any NSC architecture would depend
on the professionalism and open mind of its permanent staff, which, in our case, would be
the JIC. Past inadequacies of the JIC were due to its being viewed essentially as an
assessing agency and not as an action agency and its being denied a watchdog role. The
result: a surfeit of thinking on national security issues and a paucity of action to
translate the thinking into reality. The need to correct this lack of an action-oriented
approach was one of the reasons which influenced the 1983 decision to select the head of
the JIC from the civilian intelligence community. It remains to be seen whether the
reversal of this decision would prove wise.
The Government's announcement on the NSC architecture is
only the beginning of an as yet tentative exercise. Simultaneously with taking up the
strategic defence review, the nuts and bolts of the architecture relating to the
intellectual, executive and watchdog roles have to be defined with clarity and enforced.
