Political Leadership and Indian Armed Forces in Diplomacy and War

摘要

Civil-Military relations, a vast interdisciplinary field, has its complexities and dichotomies. The major dilemma faced by any democratic society, as brought out succinctly in Samuel Huntington's Soldier and the State is: while democracies require a strong military to meet external security threats, the same military may become an internal threat to the democracy itself. While there is no plausible answer to this dilemma, the solution lies within a mature democratic system which has a well-established legal framework, protocols and a clear understanding of firstly, the limits of the powers vested in the military and secondly, the control exercised by the civil government over its military. It needs no elaboration that in any responsible democratic society, the military always remains under the control of the civil government and rightly so. But concurrently, the issue of civil control over its military raises certain pertinent questions; how much control over the military by civil authorities is good and at what point does it become detrimental to the military's growth, progress and war waging capabilities? Is the control over military, exercised through civil functionaries with limited or no knowledge of military matters, the right way of exercising this control?