National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon has called for the broadening of debates on Indian national security, saying independent institutions outside the government had significant contributions to make to decision-making.

Mr. Menon made this remarks in a lecture delivered on Thursday to honour K Subrahmanyam, the eminent strategic thinker and administrator, who passed away in February last year.

4 key contributions

The NSA said Subrahmanyam had made four key contributions to Indian strategic thinking: building a consensus that nuclear weapons were the cheapest and most effective way of guaranteeing national survival in an uncertain world; creating an understanding that defence could not be sidelined in the pursuit of development; developing a modern national security structure; and emphasising the need for India to seek autonomy in its strategic decision-making.

For Subrahmanyam, Mr. Menon said, India's core constitutional values — secularism, democracy and the pursuit of the peoples' welfare — constituted a road map that provided overall shape to decision-making.

India's national security debates, Mr. Menon argued, drawing on the work of the scholar Kanti Bajpai, involve three kinds of voices: Nehruvians, who emphasise value-based relationships between states; neo-liberals, who see the pursuit of economic opportunity as a strategic priority; and hyper-realists, who have a more pessimistic view of the possibility for cooperation between states.

Subrahmanyam, the NSA said, approached these conflicting concerns with an open mind, proving willing to change his positions when confronted with new evidence.

Born in 1929, Subrahmanyam had served, among other capacities, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and head of the prestigious Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Share