Naval power gazing

It has taken nearly six decades for the Indian navy to come up with a written document outlining its doctrine for peace and war. Normally a naval doctrine is the one that should have been more easily finalised because of the greater transparency inherent in naval power and its extensive role — both in peace, in relation to the diplomatic arena, as well as for national defence in war. The coincidence of the return of the Indian naval sailing ship, ‘Tarangini’, after its sojourn around the globe on a goodwill mission as an instrument of our diplomacy, and the release of the Indian Maritime Doctrine by the naval chief at the naval commanders’ conference at Visakhapatnam, eloquently emphasises the dual diplomatic-military role of naval capabilities and power. The very fact that one has been finalised and issued speaks well of the naval leadership in providing a set of principles and precepts that should guide our thinking about the maritime environment and future challenges.

The Indian Air Force was the first to come out with a written and printed document — a decade ago — which outlined the concept of air operations and the employment of air power. The Indian army, which had set up its training command in the mid-1980s, with the major objective of formulating the doctrine for land warfare and training in accordance with it, took nearly a decade to finalise its doctrine. What is important is that the new naval doctrine has not been cloaked in secrecy and security classification as had happened in the case of the other two services. A doctrine, after all, only defines a set of principles which should provide a common ground for understanding the capabilities, roles and missions of an organisation and must be interpreted as such.

At the same time, it is necessary that everyone connected with the organisation fully understand those principles so that the foundation of the actual employment, or the policy for building future capabilities, are clearly understood by everyone. A doctrine should not be confused with the strategy for the employment of forces in war, or the policy for their development during peace. A doctrine document is not a training manual either. To that extent, there is simply no requirement to lock up such documents in secrecy; and one hopes that the other two services would declassify their doctrines at an early date. We should also be ready now to formulate and finalise an official doctrine for employment of strategic forces based on a nuclear doctrine for deterrence. This, in turn, should set the stage for the evolution of the doctrine for joint operations, so that we can maximise the synergy between different components of military power in peace and war.