New Delhi: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday said that the way to achieve military objectives is by breaking the will of the nation and defeating their Army breaks the nation's will.
Doval was present as the chief guest at the book launch of 'India's Strategic Culture- Mahabharata and Kautilya ways of wars' by Major General (Retired) Dr GD Bakshi.
Doval said, "Why do we fight the wars? Is it for some vicarious pleasure in killing the adversary's human resources? What are our military objectives and how do we achieve them? We achieve it by breaking the will of the nation and defeating their army breaks the nation's will".
"When you defeat them on the battleground, the nation is prepared to have peace with you on your terms. Whether it is Ukraine, Russia or any war. One of the major tasks that was neglected was creating and strengthening the national will. About 100 years ago, one person who rose to do that was Swami Vivekanand", he said.
On the impact and influence of social media, Doval said, "Social media needs to be countered using social media. The credibility of social media is slowly eroding now. You should focus on searching and exposing stories on social media which show total and blatant lies".
"This can be done by presenting some photos etc. Some posts on social media about the Indian Army could lower the morale of our defence forces. Sometimes they write things which shake the confidence of our jawans in their leadership. This needs to be strongly countered. If people from defence forces can do it, then it is good", he said.
"You should become the first respondents on social media when any incident happens. It has been seen that when any incident occurs, the trash that starts comes within four hours of the incident dominates the narrative...If a correct perspective comes on social media within a few hours then it is useful...There is no lack of patriots and nationalists in the country", added Doval.
In his book, Bakshi delves into the distinctive strategic culture and way of warfighting that evolves over time and tends to outlast the era of its inception. Bakshi has done a comparative analysis of the seminal texts of Kautilya, Machiavelli, and Sun Tzu.
During the launch, Bakshi said, "The Kautilyan way of war was premised upon waging a long covert campaign of destabilisation and psy-ops to break the balance of the enemy state. Then, a swift and sharp military campaign was launched in the wake of the extended de-stabilisation campaign."
"Massed war elephants were used to produce shock and awe and speed up the campaign. Amazingly, the same warfighting design emerged unconsciously in the Bangladesh War of 1971, when, in just 13 days, India broke Pakistan into two and liberated the whole country of Sonar Bangla," he added.
He noted that colonial thinking and history have severely distorted perceptions of India in its past and we still continue to face this problem.
