‘JAI Se Vijay’ seminar: Assumptions about permanent friends or adversaries are increasingly becoming unreliable, says CDS

“When I say wars have become obsolete, declared wars have become obsolete. And these are giving way to proxy wars and greyzone warfare. Competition today is more likely to manifest through proxies, but accompanied by high implications, sub-threshold operation, cyber activity. Alongside these trends, cognitive and information warfare has emerged as a central battlespace. Influence operation, disinformation, narrative manipulation are directly targeting societies rather than forces. The objective of all this is to fracture cohesion, paralyse decision-making. The security challenges are also expanding into non-traditional domains. Health pandemics, disruptions of critical infrastructure, and climate-related stresses have demonstrated the ability to create strategic-level effects. Strategic alignments, meanwhile, have become fluid and transactional. Assumptions about permanent friends or adversaries are increasingly becoming unreliable. And in today’s world, it’s difficult to define who are your friends, who are your allies, who are your enemies, and who are your adversaries. India must therefore be prepared mentally, structurally, and materially to act independently when required,” Gen Chauhan said.

“It’s appropriate when we talk about ‘JAI Se Vijay’ here in Pune, because it’s in this particular land, before these modern doctrines were written, this land produced a leader who instinctively understood strategy as a fusion of indigenous thought, structure, technology, and will. Chhatrapati Shivaji who originally promoted strategic thought in India. He was a warrior king. He was a strategist of transformation. And he sought, if I say, victory through adaptation to terrain, decentralised command structures, indigenous capability, speed, surprise, and precision. Most importantly, Shivaji Maharaj understood something timeless. Victory belongs to those who think originally and those who act independently. When we talk about this ‘JAI se Vijay’, it actually involves a kind of discard of your ideas, adaptation to new ones.”