The past is a dead end

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was formed as a purely military and security alliance of the western powers against external attack. It was not supposed to ensure that the trains ran on time, or that the grid was electrified. But the Bosnian crisis showed that the old fixation on the external aggressor was becoming a liability.

Aggression did not originate in faraway Moscow any more. Its causes werewithin the borders of a Europe that was trying to unify, less than a thousand miles from some of its major capitals. The time-honoured system of peacekeeping 8212; secure, clean up, salute smartly and move out 8212; would no longer work. To be of lasting effect, military action would have to be supplemented by what is best termed civic management solutions.

The process that began then came to a head last month, with Solana seeing the NATO of the future as a political force with the skills required to rebuild and run an administration. Some of its commanders will continue to wear their sidearms, but some of the most important of them will be more comfortable bearing briefcases. A sneak preview of the future: in what NATO sees as an important operation in Bosnia, its Stabilisation Force SFOR is handing out new licence plates to car-owners, just to impose some order on the roads.

Solana told the people of Sarajevo of the necessity of building democratic structures and ensuring political pluralism. quot;Break thelogjam created by political posturing and indifference,quot; he said. Of the need for building up a military force he spoke last of all, in what was almost an aside.

This change of direction 8212; which includes a proposal to reduce US involvement in initiating operations 8212; will begin to be tested by the end of this year and will be announced next spring, when NATO celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. In the year 2000, it will be implemented and NATO will enter the new century as a force that gets things done by the political route.

These events may be taking place on a different continent, but they are of relevance to India. For two decades now, our troops have found use principally in keeping the peace at home. This is seen as a misuse of military power which makes it subservient to political exigency and creates resentment among commanders. Rightly so, for in the end they are expected to salute smartly and get out, with no say in how their intervention is to be developed upon. Their reward is public anger,because the use of military force in civilian operations is seen as a hangover of the Raj.But what Indian forces are called upon to do on home shores is not very different from what NATO forces attempt across borders. Discount those borders and in terms of geographical scale, they are almost identical. The only difference is that in India, the forces are totally controlled by the political establishment. In Europe, they report to men in both olive drab and civvies.

In an age whose problems are wide-ranging and diffuse, the solutions too have to be correspondingly large. There is no reason, other than the old uneasiness about sharing turf, why military and civilian authorities cannot work together at the level of policy-making in the unusual situations in which the forces are called out.

This would give the forces a say in the process of stabilisation that ought to follow an intervention. If this is done through an institution accessible to the media, it would also make for true accountability. So far, themedia have given due attention to military excesses. The callousness of the civil administration is indifferently reported. But it is worth noting that if the Assam Police had been strengthened after Operation Rhino, and if the economy of the state had been given attention instead of largesse, the ULFA and Bodo problems would be history. Call it collective security at the domestic level.The basic logic of collective security has to be applied to concerns beyond our borders as well. In the case of the Status of Forces Agreement SOFA that Bangladesh has entered into with the US, for instance, we have been taken unawares. SOFA looks innocuous. It offers immunity from local criminal law to military forces of one nation operating 8212; usually on humanitarian projects 8212; in the territory of another. However, this is really a dual-use device. Apart from Bangladeshi courts, the US troops there will also be immune to local customs officials and police. They will be free to bring anything they want into the country,and right up to the Indian border.This situation would not have arisen if India, long stuck with the sobriquet of Big Brother, had actually behaved like one. If we had a security arrangement in the region that included political understandings and commitments to provide mutual aid in disasters, Bangladesh may not have been so insecure as to call for institutionalised US assistance.

India needs to evolve new thinking on a total security solution. One that does not totally repose its faith on a bomb that will, hopefully, never go off. One that includes political, developmental and economic initiatives in which our neighbours will be interested. In the North Atlantic Council meeting in Luxembourg, Madeleine Albright, predictably, fulminated about proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. In Berlin Bill Clinton revealed his dream of US and European influence extending to Central Asia.

In the near future, India will have to talk with major security interests on an equal footing. To do that, it will have torepresent wider interests than it does now, and will need a sufficiently mature security outlook. One that understands that safeguarding territory alone does not safeguard values. One that realises that real collective security 8212; including political and economic security 8212; is the only way to ensure a safe future.