THE march of civilisation has invariably been accompanied by division of the militarily weak countries by the less cultured monotheistic but militarily more powerful nations. With the growth of the Western civilisation, poverty of underdeveloped countries and militarisation of the rich has assumed menacing proportions without any indication of any let down. The writer of the book cites four basic, interdependent props – culture, politics economy and military which are essential for a nation to be strengthened effectively and that too only by sequential effort at these props. “Thus, if a culture is to be debilitated, politics must first be debilitated and for debilitating politics, economies must be debilitated before that and for debilitating economies, the military must be debilitated first of all.” Decline and fall of USSR started with the withdrawal of military power projections in Afghanistan and now “rump Russia has been reduced to a non-strategic, non-effective nuclear power with a crippled economy, without any power projection, willingness or capability. Modern economics and its complementary oligarchic democracy were used to debilitate USSR’s economy. Since a militarily strong nation cannot be kept poor, the three Armed Forces are kept marginalised in poor countries so that the people can be made to internalise the concept of a powerless nation without much freedom of action in national interest issues.
The author ironically points out that lack of strategic capability in national security and sovereignty issues in India “is so acute that a Prime Minister like Dr Manmohan Singh could openly say that what applies to India cannot be expected to be applied to America or vice versa or another Prime Minister like Atal Behari Vajpayee, after promising a decisive outcome, would keep the Army standing on the international border for one whole year and after posting two General-rank officers (once Corp Commander and one air officer Commanding-in-Chief of the major operational command), who inadvertently crossed the LoC, a line lying wholly within Indian territory, shamefacedly withdraw the Army to peace locations without achieving a single demand made to Pakistan.”
The author says that what has been given impetus to him to write this book is his belief that the Western nations despite brandishing arsenals of nuclear weapons, fear that India could one day convert the Indian Ocean into its lake where access and transit of all other sectors would be at the whims of India. He says currently they are resting comfortably in the knowledge that the current crop of leaders in India has no stomach for any decisive action in either economic or national security matters.
He says that though it will be claimed that poverty has been a way of life in India for centuries but then the Indians did not have the opportunity for exercising free options. The question why must India wallow in poverty in the midst abundance of economic resources needs to be thoroughly examined from analytical and rational perspectives. He wants India to be prepared to counter poverty by examining the country’s economic resource needs and adopt this book as a charter of renaissance particularly in economic, political and national security measures. He feels India can be made the principal super economic global power in ten years, “even surpassing China, Japan and the current Super Power by order of magnitudes provided these countries continue their pursuit of progress on the basis of current Western economic and business models and paradigms.”
(Manas Publications, 4402/5-A, Main Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002.)
