Brigadier (Retd.) Rahul K. Bhonsle is managing a strategic risk and knowledge management consultancy-security-risks.com focusing on strategic culture and security trends in South Asia, future warfare and human security.
The concept of national security has often been taken to merely connote the preservation of sovereignty, territorial integrity and internal stability with the focus on the coercive power of the state. In today’s complex and interdependent world faced with many non traditional threats like pandemics, climate change, etc it must, however, be seen in a more holistic manner.
The continuum of change in militaries is derived from a number of factors, in which application of history plays an important part. The process of Indian Army’s evolution in the plains of Western India could be charted from the lessons learnt from key episodes of the 1965 War.
This article addresses the declining standards of morality in the armed forces and suggests measures to address it by undertaking appropriate interventions at the grassroots, unit or battalion. It traces the importance of ethics in the military, particularly in the context of the post-modern state, which grants exclusive authority to the armed forces for the use of violence. Further, it examines the state of ethics today and the challenges in codification to arrive at the basic ethical norms that need to be fostered in the military.
The challenge of management of human resources may be the most profound in the security sector in the years ahead given transformations happening globally and enhancement of human potential and opportunities for individual growth. The national security sector extending from the military to private security guards denotes the plethora of skills sets required which vary from that of handling highly sophisticated and lethal missile arsenal, to commandeering large aircraft carriers and submarines to securing public space in metropolitan cities.
Integration of battlefield assets, be it man or machine, has been a time worn cliché in warfare. The orchestration of forces with dissimilar characteristics such as the infantry, charioteers, elephants and cavalry was considered as the spark of a military genius. A few like Alexander or Hannibal distinguished themselves in the art of the set-piece battles, replicated on the modern conventional battlefield.
