The IDSA work is devoid of addressing the competetion. Its about being all things to all stakeholders.Porter’s powerful insights into practice and to correct the most common misconceptions about them—for instance, that
competition is about being unique, not being the best;
that it is a contest over profits, not a battle between rivals;
that strategy is about choosing to make some customers unhappy, not being all things to all customers.
Clause f) would be at variance with the goal of preventing war usage of nukesIn Tribute: Recalling The ‘Sundarji Doctrine’
Colonel Ali Ahmed
Given the ‘flamboyance’ of his personality, any reference to General Sundarji arouses disparate responses. Happily the most widely subscribed to description of the late General is ‘cerebral’.1 To him must indeed be credited the yardstick for quality of engagement with doctrinal questions. This is irrefutably true in terms of the mechanisation of the Army and induction of manoeuvre warfare thinking. However, it can retrospectively be said that General Sundarji would have preferred to be known to history, and more than likely would be known to the future, more through his contribution to thinking on the issue of nuclear deterrence.
While mechanization of the Army was an inevitable evolutionary step, only mid wifed by Sundarji, it is his place in the pantheon of early nuclear theorists in India that is a true measure of his contribution to national security. An independent writer on strategy retired Vice Admiral Koithara credits him with the first serious study of a nuclear strategy for India; a view concurred with by Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal.2 His uniqueness lies in his input being made primarily in an era when political control of the nuclear agenda dictated a distancing of the Services from the nuclear question. However, the General’s untimely departure prevented his ideas from impacting the final shape of the nuclear doctrine that India has progressively arrived at. It can be said that his ideas on the nuclear issue were in character - trifle ahead of the times, which, curiously, they still remain as this article goes on to reveal. The article dwells on Sundarji’s place in history by dissecting his refreshingly original perspective on nuclear deterrence.
General Sundarji made an early mark in the nuclear field in publishing the proceedings of a seminar at the College of Combat, of which he was then the Commandant.3 This was perhaps the second articulation of a soldier-scholar on nuclear issues, with Major General Som Dutt having the distinction of being the pioneer in the mid-sixties with his Adelphi Paper at the distinguished London think tank, International Institute of Strategic Studies. General Som Dutt, in wake of the Chinese nuclear explosion of 1964, had made a cost estimate of the nuclear route, without ultimately advocating the capability for India. This is representative of the period, in that even Sam Bahadur was not then enamoured with the Bomb. Perhaps the first time the issue was broached officially by the Army was in General Krishna Rao recommending acquisition of nuclear weapons to the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Rao had earlier headed the committee on restructuring the Army formed in 1975, that had Lieutenant General Sundarji as member. It is also surmised that General Sundarji, as Chief in 1986, communicated the Army’s position to the government.4
Sundarji was a perspicacious graduate of the DSSC, Wellington and the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. In the US during the heady days of 1967, he was no doubt witness to the introspection within the American Army on its experience in Vietnam.5 This culminated in the formation of its TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) which had innovative, and influential, output on Air Land battle concepts under its first two heads, Don Starry and DePuy. However, Sundarji, aware of the differences in the nuclear dimension of the Cold War situation from the one in South Asia, prompted the first thinking on war in conditions of nuclear asymmetry. The postal seminar he organised as head of the College of Combat in 1980, referred to earlier, recorded the majority opinion that nuclear asymmetry compelled nuclearisation. Indian impetus to mechanisation under Sundarji can be said to have been influenced by these doctrinal outpourings. There is thus a link between Sundarji’s twin initiatives since manoeuvre warfare was the only answer in a situation of nuclear asymmetry.
With the US looking the other way,Pakistan had acquired the nuclear capability. The role of mechanised pincers in conventional war rehearsed in Exercise Brasstacks was mindful of the emerging situation.6 However, the threat of nuclear use posed problems for concentration of conventional forces of the disadvantaged side. This, inter alia, convinced him in favour of the nuclear option.? He recommended nuclearisation as head of a nuclear planning group constituted by Rajiv Gandhi in Nov 1985. In his view, a minimum credible deterrence was not cost-prohibitive, working out to an affordable Rs. 7000 crores over ten years. He went on to outline his perspective on a putative nuclear-doctrine for a Small Nuclear Power in his famous paper for Trishul, Journal of the Defence Services Staff College.8 His motivation was that professionals have an obligation to go ahead in evolving a doctrine of nuclear deterrence, even if the forces were not in the policy loop at the time.
Though kept out of the closed circle, the military position in favour of nuclearisation could be taken for granted. The reason advanced by Perkovich – noted for his magnum opus on the India’s nuclear endeavour - for this marginalisation of the military of the period is that the scientist-politician–bureaucrat combine preferred a minimal capability, being more sensitive to the political and psychological dimensions of a nuclear capability.9 They were unwilling to let the Armed Forces in on the decision-making, fearing that their preoccupation with war-fighting would queer the ‘minimal’ in the ‘minimum credible deterrent’ being fashioned for India.10
The Army’s contention, nevertheless, was that, being the eventual users, it needed to undertake the prior preparation to including doctrinal assimilation. Prominent Indian-origin India observer, Ashley Tellis, informs that the Army’s assimilation of the changed conditions was desultory at best.11 In this respect the Air Force has been more proactive, being in prior possession of delivery system in the form of aircraft. By the late-eighties, it had begun perfecting toss-bombing techniques. With the temporary acquisition of the INS Chakra, the Navy was also in the run for the ultimate in deterrence - survivable, submersible, delivery platforms.12 That the forces are now a part of the decision making and implementing process, in the form of a joint Strategic Forces Command, owes to a ‘one step at a time’ approach of the government that can be best appreciated only in retrospect.
During the period when developments were less visible, Sundarji was understandably a mild critic of the position of nuclear ambiguity adopted by India all through his intellectual engagement with the issue after his retirement.13 Sundarji memorably termed the seemingly oblivious approach of the Government as a ‘lotus eating approach’,14 though retrospectively it is known that work was ongoing on all facets of the deterrent. The Government was very much in a position to test as early as 1995, when it was dissuaded by the US, but, retrospectively justified, foregrounding of economic reforms in its grand strategic thinking had restrained its hand. Nevertheless, his output of the period was on par, and in sync, with K Subrahmanyam in its direction and influence.15 His affable accessibility and seminal interventions guided the debate through the Nineties - a period in which strategic studies became virtually a cottage industry; with discussions on the Islamic Bomb, India’s Option and CTBT driving the debate.
He was mindful of the impact of nuclear weapons as guarantors against coercion in the early post-cold war years of unipolarity. Most importantly, he understood the stalling impact of Pakistani nuclear capability on the method of war-fighting developed by him in the eighties; of the converging of armoured division-based pincers in Pakistani depth.16 In 1993, he wrote the epitaph on the conventional doctrine that was his own creation: “Even if India were foolish enough to create a large conventional edge, it would be unusable for undoing Pakistan, because of the near certainty that Pakistan would then use its nuclear weapons in extremis,”17 Koithara notes that this did not prevent Sundarji from foreclosing the military option in the form of a ‘limited war’;18 presaging the development of today of the Cold Start doctrine.
Tracing the relationship between the growing nuclear capabilities of the two states and the impact on India’s conventional and nuclear doctrine brings us to the Cold Start doctrine. Kanwal does so in his book Nuclear Defence noting that it would be to play into Pakistani hands were Indian conventional superiority to be restricted by the nuclear threat. In his perspective, after a decade of proxy war and provocations by Pakistan, the national mood changed to one in which Indian public opinion would accept nothing short of dismemberment of Pakistan in case of Pakistani nuclear use. This he maintains should be the response even if Pakistan has struck in face of Indian strike corps offensive operations for quick strategic gains-, a hark back to Sundarji’s days. He thinks calling ‘Pakistan’s bluff’ is militarily possible with a declaratory policy favouring a massive counter value and counter force strike even if Indian soldiers deep inside enemy territory invite a Pakistani first use.19 In the event, India’s conventional doctrine through Cold Start has apparently moved away from the Sundarji era and Kanwal’s advocacy of deep penetration towards the logic of ‘limited war’; while the nuclear doctrine, officially declared in Jan 2003, endorses Kanwal’s position in its adoption of ‘massive retaliation’ for ‘deterrence by punishment’. This brief recapitulation of developments is necessary to situate Sundarji’s version of the nuclear doctrine which is at variance with India’s declared nuclear doctrine on a crucial aspect we shall come to subsequently.
But first, a threading together of Sundarji’s thinking on the nuclear question scattered through his various works. The General was cognizant of the Chinese threat but considered it remote believing that counter value targeting was enough to deter it, as against an expansionist megatonnage-based approach. He coined the phrase ‘Nuclear Reaction Threshold’ - the tipping point triggering a nuclear reaction compelled by a conventional push. The NRT is the much debated phantom nuclear ‘redline’. His writings now constitute the baseline for thinking on de-mated and dispersed deployment profile; disfavour of strategic defences; a non-edgy command and control system; and communications backbone. That weapons of the Hiroshima category could be put to either tactical or strategic use, brought about his opinion that against a small nuclear power an arsenal of about 20 weapons was enough; while a bigger power would require about 50 to deter. He saw no necessity for diversifying the arsenal to include tritium or hydrogen bombs. There is much convergence in his views on No First Use and Minimal Nuclear Deterrence with the national nuclear doctrine.
However, according to this writer, the most consequential part of his legacy is his view on the response to nuclear use. Presently the declared nuclear doctrine in retaining the earlier formulation of the Draft Nuclear Doctrine has it that “nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage”.20 Since any quantum of retaliation would virtually result in unacceptable damage, there is no call to reflexively interpret this formulation as expansive and amounting to ‘massive retaliation’. Nevertheless, it precludes inclusion as one of ‘graduated response’. This has to be read in the context of professed utility India seeks from nuclear weapons. India, seeking political utility solely for deterrence of first use by the adversary, has resorted to punitive retaliation of a higher order than envisaged in other conceptualisations, such as that of Sundarji.
Sundarji had articulated his position in his article for Trishul thus:
“The resulting philosophy may therefore be one of minimum response, even if it stayed below the received level. It could be a quid pro quo response equated to the received strike. It could be a quid pro quo plus response, to incorporate the element of threat…Finally, it could be a spasmic reaction that aims at the drastic reduction in the adversary’s retaliatory capability and will. ... ,,21
His guidelines for operationalising this philosophy in relation to Pakistan as an example is encapsulated below:-22
(a) aim to avoid to the extent possible any action that might lead to hostilities;
(b) permit Pakistan the option of compromising without loss of face;
(c) modulate offensives in scope and depth of ingress to stop before Pakistani resort to nuclear weapons;
(d) avoid political rigidity through a policy of nuclear transparency in respect of keeping citizens informed of choices made and options avoided;
(e) no first use of nuclear weapons be made;
(f) finally, and most importantly, make every effort at war termination short of nuclear weapon use, failing which terminate hostilities at the lowest possible level of (nuclear) use, with honorable concessions offered to end the conflict.
His definition of minimum credible deterrence can be derived from his premise: ‘That there is neither need nor meaning in attempting to match any adversary in the number of weapons; nor of achieving superiority; as long as there is an assured capability of second strike that can inflict unacceptable damage, with unacceptable damage defined sensibly’.23 The contention here is that this phrase, in conjunction with ‘terminate hostilities at the lowest possible level of use’, quoted earlier, is his defining contribution to nuclear thinking. Unfortunately, it has not got the attention it deserves in strategic literature, and consequently its influence on nuclear targeting philosophy in practice can only be feared to be limited.
General Sundarji lived to see fulfillment to his dream of India as a nuclear power. However, his illness in the run up to his death did not permit him to actively engage with the doctrinal effervescence in India in the wake of Pokhran and Kargil.24 Thus his singular contribution, that could have lent a pronounced humane and politically sensitive turn to the doctrine, could not be ventured. However, any doctrine, if it is to stay viable, is a live concept in terms of growing through iterations of learning and revision. Therefore, there is scope yet for making the ‘Sundarji doctrine’ inspiration for an updating of the national nuclear doctrine.
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Colonel Ali Ahmed commanded 4 Maratha LI. Presently he is posted at Headquarters Army Training Command.
Journal of the United Service Institution of India, Vol. CXXXVIII, No. 571, January-March 2008.
Very apt article and very poignant.
India Today has Natwar Singh's thoughtsBrajesh Mishra (1928-2012)
Brajesh Mishra, India’s first National Security Adviser and the man who supervised the testing and incorporation of nuclear weapons as an integral part of the country’s security strategy, died here on Friday. He would have been 84 on Saturday.
From being closely involved in the planning for the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests to pushing for a deeper engagement with the United States and attempting to mend ties with both Pakistan and China, Mishra stepped out of the bureaucratic mould to implement in a finely detailed fashion the broad vision of foreign policy that Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister had sketched out for India.
Under constant attack from the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh, which laid the blame for many of the Vajpayee Government’s foreign policy initiatives at his door, Mishra’s path was made smoother by the presence of Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha at the helm in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who also subscribed to the notion of closer engagement with the US and building bridges with Pakistan.
But the true secret of his success lay in his ability to leverage his position as NSA and Principal Secretary to Mr. Vajpayee to emerge as a policy czar who always had the final word on diplomatic and security related questions.
Mishra had seen the trappings and play of power right from his father, Dwarka Prasad Mishra’s days in the Congress Party that culminated in him being named Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. He became a diplomatic practioner himself after joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1951. He served in various positions, including as Ambassador to Indonesia and India’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations.
In January 1980, he read out an official Indian brief on the situation in Afghanistan at a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly defending the Soviet Union’s invasion of that country. He would later tell friends how he had been conflicted over that speech, whose line he personally disagreed with.
Though he spent his days in the foreign service during the Cold War, Mishra was able to grasp early in his stint as Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Principal Secretary the need to get closer to the US. But before that could happen, there were several issues to be settled closer to home such as the aftermath of the Kandahar hijacking, the Kargil conflict and the holes it exposed in India’s defence planning. There was also the need to fix the one faux pas the Vajpayee government committed on his watch: blaming China – in a letter to US President Bill Clinton -- for having forced India to conduct Pokhran-II. Seizing the opportunity to play one Asian giant against another, the US promptly leaked the letter to the New York Times. Five years later, however, Mishra had undone the damage, taking India’s relations with China to a new level with the appointment of Special Representatives to expedite a solution to the boundary issue.
While Mishra piloted this multi-pronged policy, building new relations for India with powers like the US and China, he worked hard to keep old ally Russia reassured that closer engagement with others did not automatically mean estrangement with Moscow.
That Mishra was able to guide Indian foreign policy from the tight corner it found itself during the 1998-2002 period was partly attributable to the high growth rates the Indian economy registered, which made the country too attractive a market for the western world to shun.
Six years was too short a time for him to realize many of the moves initiated during his tenure as NSA but the Manmohan Singh Government did acknowledge his contribution, especially to the Indo-US nuclear deal, by bestowing him with the Padma Vibhushan.
Economic Times, Arun ShourieOne by one my IFS colleagues are departing. In my garden too, the leaves are turning. The call could come any day.
As an under-secretary in the ministry Brajesh Mishra had written a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, disagreeing with his foreign policy. There was all round consternation. The Prime Minister took a lenient view and Brajesh got away with it.
He was two years my senior in the IFS. We served together in the Permanent Mission of India at the UN in the sixties. He combined boldness with sound judgement.
Brajesh was clear headed, forceful, self- assured.
His father, Dwarka Nath Mishra, had played an active role in preventing Morarji Desai from becoming the Prime Minister in January 1966. Later, there was a falling out with Indira Gandhi and Brajesh had a short-lived lean period.
From time to time we disagreed, but that did not impair our friendship. He was in his political inclination right of centre. I, left of centre.
This made for lively discussions and animated discourse.
I admired his grit. He had poise and never played to the gallery.
During his 13 days of prime ministership, Atal Bihari ji had asked Bishen Tandon to be his principal secretary. On May 8, 1998, he invited Brajesh to hold the post. He did know Vajpayee, but not intimately.
{Wrong. See the other articles where they mention that ABV worked coleely with BM on the Foreign Policy Cell of BJP on the manifesto and nuemrous briefings on Kashmir.}
He made an immediate impact on the PMO and very soon the Prime Minister had total confidence in his principal secretary. He was among the very few who was in the know of Pokhran-II. In the debate on the nuclear explosions in the Lok Sabha, I was the first speaker. Brajesh was sitting in the official's lobby. Uncharacteristically, I made a reference to him (not usually done). After the debate we ran into each other. I was not prepared for what he said. "Natwar, don't make it personal." He was right. I was wrong.
He was always helpful. On one or two delicate security matters ( personal) he went out of his way to make sure that what was asked for was done.
He created the post of National Security Adviser.This was unprecedented. I was among those who had reservations about this innovation.
{Wrong. The KC Pant committee came up with the reforms and the NSA proposal. See below}
It was thought that in our system there was no place for a fifth wheel in fourwheeler foreign policy car.
{And pray what are the four wheels? PM, MEA, IFS and?}
Brajesh gave the new job stature and used it effectively when dealing with Pakistan, the US and China. Some in the NDA and the RSS did not take kindly to the increasing influence he wielded on vital national security issues. He almost always had his way. He genuinely held that India should have the closest relations with the United States. A view firmly held by Manmohan Singh.
My really high-powered interaction with Brajesh was before the presidential election in 2002. P. C. Alexander, in his autobiography, held Brajesh and me responsible for blocking his way to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Alexander was not even half right.
In retirement too, Brajesh spoke with authority and vigour on a multiplicity of foreign policy matters. His views carried weight and in several instances he succeeded in getting his point of view accepted.
Brajesh was admired, held in high esteem, looked up to. He certainly leaves a large void in our national life.
Business Standard, Jyoti MalhotraBrajesh Mishra, the man Atal Bihari Vajpayee trusted most
ET Bureau Sep 30, 2012,
By: Arun Shourie
(The writer, a former Union disinvestment and telecom minister, had worked closely with Mishra in the NDA government)
India's first national security adviser Brajesh Mishra, who passed away on Friday night aged 84, was certainly one of the most insightful and effective civil servants I have known.
He displayed many exemplary qualities: he is much revered for his intelligence and his commitment to national interests. He also had a great advantage: he enjoyed the complete trust of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
I had the fortune of working with him very closely when I was Union minister in the NDA government of 1999-2004. Though many of the decisions I took in disinvestment or telecommunications ministries would affect the fortunes of a very large number of big business houses by hundreds of thousands of crores, Mishra never interfered or made any suggestion about what many call "preferable decisions".
His Priorities
By force of habit, national interest was his top priority, and he was also very reasonable. The conversation he once had with me would surprise readers. This was in regard to the disinvestment of Air India. An ad inviting expressions of interest was to appear in one or two days.
Mishra called me and said, "You do what you think is right. But I want to make my point. Your generation cannot understand what we associate with Air India. You go ahead with disinvestment, but just delay the advertisement by a week because I want to talk to our entrepreneurs."
He wanted to talk to tech entrepreneurs — who were then awash in cash — to set up a consortium to acquire and run Air India. His idea was that the airline should remain in Indian hands.
"For a carrier which had flown the national flag I would be greatly disappointed if it goes into foreign hands," he told me. I told him that the process would take a long time and that he could talk to local entrepreneurs who can file their expressions of interest. I added that, however, we needn't delay the ad.
Then he said, "Well, I said what I wanted to say. You go ahead and do what you think is right." Like in that case, all his arguments stemmed from his unequivocal commitment to national interest — yet he was also accommodative and helpful.
Man of Solutions
Whenever a ministerial colleague or a civil servant put unnecessary hurdles just for the sake of delaying some work whether in telecom or in disinvestment ministries, I only had to go to him and he would immediately ring up either the minister or the concerned secretary to speed up things.
In fact, like Vajpayee (and unlike the current prime minister who says he doesn't know what many of his ministers were/are doing) Mishra knew everything that happened in every nook and corner of the NDA government. His intense concern for the country — came up whenever we discussed foreign policy and defence.
Over the past one and half years, we used to meet occasionally for dinner and he was very concerned about the disarray in governance in the country, especially at the Centre. He said a crisis as such this one was hurting our defence capabilities. He told us that he had spoken in private to some senior-most people in our government that India should be prepared for a "two-front war".
His contention was that the way things are going we are not going to be prepared to handle such an offensive. Mishra was also a person of enormous integrity. I do not know of any single instance when he used his proximity with Vajpayee for any purpose that would benefit him. He always remained in the shadows.
In fact, though he was very powerful, he complemented Vajpayee so well that he would be very hesitant to say a word that may appear to contradict the then PM. Mishra was indeed a cut above the rest.
There have been very effective principal secretaries to the prime minister before. For instance, LK Jha was a dexterous principal secretary. PN Haksar, too, was a very powerful figure.
But it was for the first time that the role of the principal secretary and that of the national security adviser was combined. Jha's focus was on domestic matters and that of Haksar foreign policy besides domestic affairs.
Mishra helped change the direction of our foreign policy and defence strategy. In that he and Vajpayee were very well-matched. Though he was very careful about what he spoke, within the government, he was forthright in airing his views.
He was a great listener but he was known for his no-nonsense arguments. He could shoot down ideas that he thought were unviable.
Forever Hungry for Information
Even after the government had changed, he continued to have excellent sources of information — which would be the envy of any editor in this country.
He kept himself abreast of everything that happened inside the government through his contacts. He also gorged on online websites to collect the latest information. He was always up-to-date. He had a great appetite for information. And he would fit those little pieces of information into a big jigsaw picture. It is true that there was great mutual regard between him and his successors.
He also continued to discuss matters relating to strategic considerations with top leaders of the country. In fact, he commanded respect like few civil servants in the country did.
(As told to Ullekh NP)
And lastly B Raman in Rediff:Brajesh Mishra combined guile with generosity as India's first NSA
'Forget about them (US), just listen to what I'm saying,' Mishra had said
Jyoti Malhotra / New Delhi Sep 29, 2012,
In March 1998, just before I K Gujral’s government finally caved into the world of realpolitik, I asked Brajesh Mishra, then head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s foreign affairs cell, what would be the top priorities of the BJP if it came to power.
“We will go nuclear,” Mishra said simply. Listening to me echo some of the protestations so common in the Indian press at the time, which really amounted to US warnings of what it would do to India if it mustered the political courage to split the atom, Mishra stopped me short. “Forget about them, just listen to what I’m saying.”
He was as good as his word. On May 11, barely two months later, “the Buddha smiled” for the second time in the Pokharan desert, a coded message that had been used by nuclear scientists Raja Ramanna and his team in May 1974 to tell then prime minister Indira Gandhi that their nuclear test had been successful. Then, Indira had backed down in the face of international fury, unwilling to let India face the full brunt of economic sanctions that she knew would follow. The first smiling would henceforth always be known as a “peaceful nuclear explosion.”
On May 11, when the earth shifted and Buddha smiled again, prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee hurriedly summoned the media and informed them that the world had changed. India was now the world’s sixth overt nuclear weapons power.
In the days, weeks and months that followed, the triumvirate of Vajpayee, Mishra and then deputy chairman of the planning commission Jaswant Singh (he would become foreign minister six months later) confronted, side-stepped, cajoled, bullied and simply ignored the international brickbats that kept pouring in.
These three men would write and rewrite India’s foreign affairs and security policies as well as its nuclear doctrine and bequeath to the country the idea that it was possible to make strategic choices that allowed it to engage more than one great power at a time.
{Not true about the nuclear doctrine. It is largely the same as the one developed by KS garu and his small team : Kalam, Sunderji, Johnny Green, KK Nayyar, R Chidambaram in the mid eighties. The only updates were to add deterrence against BCW use nd to add the clause about deterrence against nuke strikes by countries and their allies.}
With the second nuclear test on May 13, 1998, claimed by India as a thermo-nuclear test, all hell broke loose again. The US came down with the might of its sanctions – although this would last only two years, as Jaswant Singh engaged then US president Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott in a conversation that would result with the famous Clinton visit to India in 2000.
Soon after the nuclear tests, Brajesh Mishra did something only he could do. Showing a rare spunk not commonly found alongside the presence of a tough spine, Mishra had Vajpayee write a letter to Clinton, explaining why India had gone nuclear.
“...because of a bitter dispute with our neighbour in the north,” said Vajpayee’s letter, referring to India’s long-standing dichotomous relationship with China, at once fearful as well as envious, with which it had fought a border war in 1962.
Bill Clinton promptly had the letter leaked to the ‘New York Times.’
The letter exposed India’s insecurities as well as its prevailing sense of bravado and the ‘Times’ hoped it would embarrass India into making amends in some way. After all, in 1995, when then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao had ordered that the nuclear site in Pokharan be prepared for a possible test, US intelligence agencies had found out and leaked the news to the ‘Times.’ Rao’s foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, denied the story to the international press attending a SAARC summit being held in Delhi at the time, even as Rao gave orders to fill up the hole in the Pokharan desert.
But Mishra was canny enough to understand that you had to reach out to the world’s most powerful country, while at the same time holding your ground. So when Pramod Mahajan, Vajpayee’s key political aide at the time, began making disparaging noises about the Americans, Mishra had Vajpayee tell him to quieten down.
Similarly, when then home minister minister L K Advani beat his chest and pointed out that the tests had changed the “geo-strategic” picture of the region – referring to Pakistan – Mishra realised the remarks would go down badly both in Washington and in Islamabad. Soon, Vajpayee was telling Advani to hold his peace. (Of course, Pakistan would retaliate with tit-for-tat tests in the end of May 1998.)
At the same time, overtures to the Clinton administration were being made through Naresh Chandra, India’s ambassador to the US. Soon enough Jaswant Singh was winging his way to Washington DC to charm the younger man into understanding that India’s nuclear tests were hardly about Delhi flexing its muscle in the neighbourhood, but really an assertion that the world’s largest democracy could hardly be taken for granted for much longer.
Over the next six years, Brajesh Mishra would become the eyes and ears of his prime minister, at home and abroad. He had been a career diplomat, joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1951. He was the charge d’affairs in Beijing soon after the 1962 border conflict with China when, at a May Day parade, Mao Tse-Dong, ostensibly smiled at him and passed on the message that Asia’s great powers could not remain estranged. He was India’s permanent representative to the UN in New York in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Indira Gandhi famously refused to criticise the act; Mishra was forced to read out India’s statement at the UN, but he soon quit the service afterwards.
Not for nothing was he Dwarka Prasad Mishra, former Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh’s son. As principal secretary to Vajpayee, he was his eyes and ears, tempering the right-wing tendencies of several ministers in the government. He was at the centre of its most important decisions.
India’s relationships with its neighbourhood were its highest priority, said Mishra. When Khaleda Zia became prime minister of Bangladesh in 2001 and its Hindu citizens began to flee to India in fear, Mishra was sent with a message to Khaleda. The hand of friendship to Pakistan culminated in the bus journey to Lahore in February 1999, even as it transpired that Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Musharraf was plotting an invasion at Kargil.
Credit for persuading Clinton to force Nawaz Sharif to send Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry (NLI) back across the Line of Control must be given to Vajpayee, Mishra, Jaswant Singh and Naresh Chandra. Sharif was called to Washington and roundly scolded by Clinton. The Kargil invasion ended as it had begun, with a whimper. Vajpayee and his key aides had been able to convince the world that a nuclear face-off between the world’s newest nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, needed to be averted by Pakistan first respecting the Line of Control.
India won that particular bout. Two years later, in July 2001, Vajpayee was inviting Musharraf, the author of the Kargil invasion, to come to Delhi and Agra, showing it was willing to take the chance to make permanent peace with its enemies. The Agra summit failed because of Musharraf’s arrogance, but on April 15 2003, with Brajesh Mishra in Tokyo, Vajpayee undertook another visit to Kashmir, where, once again, he extended the “hand of friendship” with Pakistan.
Of course, the visit to Kashmir had been carefully plotted by Vajpayee’s key aides, including Mishra.
Brajesh Mishra was never able to persuade Vajpayee to side with the Americans in the invasion of Iraq, also in 2003, although he and Advani were said to have “promised” the Americans that India would support the US. But Vajpayee stood his ground : There was no way that Indians would hurt, injure or fire upon its old civilisational compatriots, the Iraqis, not even if Saddam Hussein was a dictator.
The BJP lost the elections in 2004, but Vajpayee’s government had succeeded in establishing several precedents that the Congress government happily took credit for. Amongst the most important was the travel permit for Kashmiris across the Line of Control that began in 2005, although successive bureaucracies have succeeded in almost killing that initiative.
The overture with the US – Vajpayee’s visit to the US in 2002 when he described the US as a “natural ally” of India – has of course been taken up with the most enthusiasm by Delhi. With Pakistan, Manmohan Singh has desired to make that trip to Islamabad (as Vajpayee and his team did in January 2004) since he became prime minister in 2004, which for a variety of reasons hasn’t materialised.
Brajesh Mishra’s combination of hard-headed realism and outspokenness ensured that he always spoke up for India – not necessarily for the BJP. So when Manmohan Singh staked his government in 2008 for the Indo-US nuclear deal, Mishra earned the ire of his partymen by openly coming out in support of the agreement.
He indicated that if the BJP had returned to power in 2004, it would have signed a similar pact with the US with the utmost alacrity – and with fewer conditions.
Mishra was awarded the Padma Vibhushan during the first Manmohan Singh government. He showed India how important it was to introduce steel in the spine, but equally important to bend like the Ashoka tree – a tree that bends, and therefore doesn’t break – both with friends as well as with those who have fallen off the path. If India wanted to become a power to reckon with, he said, it would need to show both strength and generosity.
Brajesh Mishra would have been 84 years old today. His old friend Atal Behari Vajpayee, ill at home with a stroke, cannot mourn him publicly, but in the passing of the old order one thing is certain : Brajesh Mishra was a true son of India.
Dilli billis have sharp knives even while paying tribute. In fact they have 'kris' type knives to save them the effort of twisting the knife!Senior analyst B Raman assesses Brajesh Mishra's role as India's first National Security Advisor, his part in the 1998 nuclear tests, the Kargil conflict and more.
Brajesh Mishra, who was the National Security Adviser to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee between November 1998 and May 2004, passed away on Friday night. He was 84 and belonged to the 1951 batch of the Indian Foreign Service.
He became famous in May 1970 when he was heading the Indian embassy in Beijing as the Charge d'Affaires. At the traditional May Day function at Beijing, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong shook hands with Mishra, conveyed his greetings to our PM and President in that order and said, "We cannot go on quarrelling like this. We must become friends again. We will become friends again."
Mishra sent a detailed report on it to the Ministry of External Affairs. A few days later, an account of Mao's friendly references to India, which came almost eight years after the Sino-Indian war of 1962, leaked out to the Indian media which added some masala to it while flashing it, saying that Mao smiled at Mishra when he made his observations. This was followed by feverish speculation regarding the significance of Mao's smile.
The truth was Mao never smiled at Mishra when he made his observations, but "Mao's famous smile" and its significance became an exciting narrative in the history of India's relations with China and the role of Mishra in it. An authentic account of what happened that day in Beijing was written on December 2, 2009, for the website of the Chennai Centre For China Studies by G S Iyer, who was then the only Chinese-knowing member of the staff of the Indian embassy in Beijing. He subsequently became India's ambassador to Morocco and Mexico before retiring from the Indian Foreign Service.
Mishra again hit the headlines in the beginning of 1980. But under a different context. He had been posted as India's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York by the Morarji Desai government. He was occupying that post when the Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.
There were reports that the Charan Singh government, which was then in office, had misgivings about the Soviet invasion and was disinclined to support the Soviet action.
Indira Gandhi, who returned to office as the PM in January 1980, had Narasimha Rao sent to New York to support the Soviet action. Mishra read out before the UN General Assembly a prepared text not disapproving of the Soviet invasion.
During in his retirement days, Mishra was reported to have told his close friends that he read out the statement on orders, but was not in agreement with its text.
Shortly thereafter, he took premature retirement from the Indian Foreign Service and joined the staff of the UN Secretary-General. He left the job and returned to India in 1987 and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1991 to help it establish a foreign affairs cell in its headquarters. In that capacity, he used to advise BJP leaders on foreign policy matters and assist them during their meetings with foreign dignitaries.
Mishra and Vajpayee came close to each other during this period and Vajpayee developed immense trust in Mishra's judgement and advice. When Vajpayee took over as the prime minister in March 1998, he appointed Mishra as the principal secretary. In that capacity, he headed the Prime Minister's Office and co-ordinated its functioning.
Mishra played an important role in the deliberations that preceded the decision of Vajpayee to authorise India's nuclear tests of May 1998. The credit for maintaining the secrecy of the decision and of the preparations for the tests should go to the political leaders of the BJP, who were involved in the decision, Mishra who supervised the execution of the decision and Dr Abdul Kalam and his scientists who carried it out.
The Central Intelligence Agency was totally taken by surprise by the tests, which led to considerable friction in India's relations with the United States and China.
Mishra committed a major faux pas while drafting a letter from Vajpayee to then US President Bill Clinton explaining why India carried out the tests. The letter referred to India's fears of a possible threat from China as a reason for the decision. The US State Department mischievously leaked that letter to the US media, thereby adding to the friction between India and China.
{But it was true that China had been doing its utmost to jeopardize Indian security by proliferating nuke weapons to TSP under the confidence that India a non-nuke power can't do anything about it. If ABV hadn't written that letter then it would have bolstered the US argument that India went nuclear for prestige and show and not for security reasons. So the leaked letter discredited the main US arguments and knocked the socks of the NPA preachings about India exploding nukes for prestige. And by leaking the letter US showed it was not be trusted with confidential matters. And PRC can hardly claim to be an innocent wolf(s)trolling in the neigborhood woods when it had done so much to hurt India.}
It spoke well of the diplomatic skills of Mishra and the pragmatism of Beijing that they did not allow this aggravation of friction to permanently damage the bilateral relations.
{Also the paraphrase Mao a loud f**t attracts more attention then a whimper! So the PRC figured not to rub India the worng way now that India is armed and might literally implement its nuke doctrine}
Shortly after the nuclear tests, Vajpayee, on the recommendation of a three-member committee on national security headed by K C Pant, decided to revamp the national security infrastructure. As part of this revamp, a post of the National Security Adviser was created. The National Security Council created by V P Singh, which had become dormant, was revived and a National Security Council Secretariat and a National Security Advisory Board of non-governmental advisers were set up.
{Note VP Singh govt was succeeded by an INC govt after a short spell under Chandrasekhar. So really blame the INC for the comatose NSC set up by VP Singh!}
Vajpayee asked Mishra to hold additional charge as the NSA. Thus, he wore two hats -- as the principal secretary to the PM and as his NSA.
K Subramanyam, the strategic affairs expert, was appointed the first convenor of the NSAB. Even at that time, questions were raised by some regarding the wisdom of one individual, however capable, wearing both these hats. It was reported that the Pant Committee was in favour of an independent NSA.
So was K Subramanyam, who, on two occasions, had publicly expressed his misgivings about combining the two posts of the principal secretary to the PM and NSA. He felt that as the principal secretary, Mishra would be so preoccupied with running the PMO that he would not be able to devote adequate attention to his job as the NSA.
Mishra strongly felt that if the same officer held both the posts, he could prevent conflicting advice on national security matters reaching the PM.
During this period, I had written a number of articles stressing the need for the revival of the covert action capability of the R&AW that had been downgraded by I K Gujral when he was the prime minister in 1997. Mishra, who had read these articles, sent word to me through his office that I should call on him during one of my visits to New Delhi.
I did so in 1999. He referred to what I had been writing on the need for the revival of the covert action capability and said, " You don't have to convince me. I was convinced long before you were, but the prime minister is not in favour of it. We have to go by his wishes."
Subsequently, I had occasion to meet him three times. The first occasion was alone in his office. On his own, he referred to criticisms being made about Vajpayee's decision to ask him to hold additional charge as the NSA and said, "I do not want any confusion in the advice reaching the PM on national security matters. It is better that all advice on national security goes to the PM from this office."
He was sitting in his office as the principal secretary to the PM.
{So does B Raman want him to go to his NSA office while making that statement?}
My next meeting with him was as a member of the special task force for the revamp of the intelligence apparatus headed by G C Saxena, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing and the then governor of Jammu and Kashmir. He was asked by one of the members about his views regarding the performance of the Intelligence Bureau and the R&AW.
He replied, "I do not see all the reports of the IB. Hence, I cannot comment on its performance. I see all the reports of the R&AW, which works directly under me. When I was in the IFS, I used to think negatively of the R&AW. Now I think positively of it. I am regularly seeing its work and capabilities. It has been doing very well."
His remarks were an indirect confirmation of the speculation then circulating in New Delhi that L K Advani, the then home minister, had kept him out of any active role in supervising the performance of the IB.
My fourth meeting with him was just before the elections of 2004. There was some criticism in sections of the media about his role as the NSA. It was alleged that he had not implemented many of the important recommendations made by the various task forces on national security set up by the Vajpayee government after the Kargil conflict of 1999.
He had invited some of us for a briefing on the recommendations that had already been implemented. The briefing was given by the National Security Council Secretariat. He wanted us in our individual capacities to explain to the media and others regarding the action already taken by the government.
Some of the recommendations of the G C Saxena Task Force had related to the state police and the coordination between the central intelligence agencies and the state police. Sections of the media were speculating regarding these recommendations. Some state police officers had contacted me and said that the Government of India had not kept the state governments in the picture regarding these recommendations. I mentioned this to Mishra at this meeting.
Mishra replied, " Raman, you don't know what problems I have been having sorting out the quarrels among the central agencies regarding the implementation. Let me sort them out first. I will then sort out the recommendations relating to the state police."
I consider the brilliant manner in which Mishra handled the diplomatic consequences of the nuclear tests as his greatest achievement as the NSA. The Clinton administration was very petulant. China was furious. The European Union was not very sympathetic. Only Russia was sympathetic. Many of us feared that India would be confined to the diplomatic doghouse.
The fact that India was not and that our relations with these countries again improved spoke very highly of the way Mishra handled the sequel. He also saw to it that a nuclear doctrine was drafted, approved and put in place within a year of the tests.
He travelled a lot in this connection as a secret emissary of Vajpayee and I was given to understand that the R&AW played an important role in assisting him through its web of liaison relations with the countries, which were angry with India over the nuclear tests.
I had personally heard Mishra pay high tributes to the assistance from the R&AW in this regard.
He handled very creditably the sequel to the Kargil conflict with Pakistan and the sequel to the attack on the Indian Parliament. However, there was some criticism -- not invalid in my view -- of what was seen by many as his mishandling of the Kandahar hijacking and the case of Major Rabinder Singh, the CIA's mole in the R&AW, who managed to escape to the US in 2004.
He was allegedly totally unaware of the details of the crisis management drill to deal with hijackings that had been laid down in the 1980s when Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were prime ministers. It was alleged by people in New Delhi, who were not ill disposed to Mishra, that he was confused and did not know how to handle the situation. As a result, the hijacked plane managed to take off from Amritsar airport, leave the Indian airspace and reach Kandahar.
We lost control of the situation and had no other option but to concede the demands of the hijackers.
There was an inexcusable delay on the part of the R&AW in alerting Mishra that Rabinder Singh was suspected of working as a CIA mole and was under surveillance. Initially, the R&AW kept not only Mishra, but also the IB in the dark.
In fact, the moment they developed suspicion about Rabinder Singh, the R&AW should have alerted the IB and asked it to mount a surveillance on him.
When the case was belatedly brought to the notice of Mishra, one would have expected him to lose his temper for not keeping him informed and order that the surveillance be handed over to the IB. He did not do anything of the sort. He seemed to have gone along with the R&AW's decision to keep the IB in the dark and advised the R&AW to be discreet in its surveillance since he was worried that any embarrassment could damage his efforts to develop a strategic partnership with the US.
There is no other way of explaining his silence on the R&AW keeping the IB in the dark except to believe that he did not want Advani to prematurely know about it lest he complicate matters. Those were the months before the 2004 elections when Mishra's style of national security management had started coming under criticism from some of his usual detractors as well as others. He apparently did not want any premature publicity to add to his difficulties.
To quote Amar Bhushan, the then head of counter-intelligence and security in the R&AW, who had written an account of the case under the cover of a fiction titled 'Escape To Nowhere', " Coming from a diplomatic background, he (NSA) is naturally apprehensive of the adverse impact of the investigation on bilateral relations. He may be wondering why we make such a fuss about the restrictive security when senior officers routinely talk and exchange ideas among themselves."
Amar Bhushan also quotes C D Sahay, the then head of the R&AW, as telling him after a meeting with Mishra, " He thinks that the case has been badly handled and its gravity blown out of proportion. He is of the view that we should have dealt with the case administratively as soon as we knew that he (Rabinder) was making conscious efforts to elicit unauthorised information from his colleagues."
Right from the beginning since Mishra took over as the NSA, there was an impression that he was feeling out of depth in internal security matters. He hardly had any influence over the state governments. His word and advice carried little weight in the state corridors of decision-making.
R N Kao, who shared this impression, had suggested to Vajpayee the creation of a post of a Deputy National Security Adviser under Mishra to be filled up by an IAS or IPS officer well-versed in internal security management.
According to Kao, Vajpayee appeared to be amenable to accepting the idea. By the time the post was created, Kao was dead. It was filled by another retired IFS officer.
There was another reason why Mishra was weak in internal security management. Advani, who looked upon himself as the internal security Czar, was disinclined to give Mishra any substantive role in it.
(The writer is the additional secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi, and, presently the director of the Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies.)
Above site has video of BMji talking about Kandahar decision.Brajesh Mishra steered national security in tempestuous times (Tribute)
New Delhi,Diplomacy,Defence/Security,
Sat, 29 Sep 2012 IANS
India's first National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, often referred to as India's modern day Chanakya (ancient India's master strategist and royal adviser), made a distinctive contribution in laying the foundation for the bold and proactive strategic and foreign policy initiatives undertaken by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He chose to break eggs and dish up an omelette in a culture where walking gingerly on egg-shells was the preferred option. Mishra, 84, died in New Delhi Sep 28.
Born into a political family, his father D.P. Mishra was a Congress leader and chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Brajesh Mishra joined the 1951 batch of the Indian Foreign Service and served as ambassador to Indonesia and later as India's permanent representative at the UN in New York - where his tenure ended in some controversy due to deep differences with prime minister Indira Gandhi over India's policy in relation to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Post retirement, Mishra joined the BJP in 1991 and shaped the strategic and foreign policy orientation that the NDA under Vajpayee (1998 - 2004) was to later adopt. Appointed as principal secretary (PS) to PM Vajpayee in March 1998, (when Mishra renounced his party membership), he later became the first National Security Adviser (NSA) - after the May 1998 nuclear teats. Wearing two hats, that of PS to the PM and the NSA, Brajesh Mishra became the de-facto security and foreign policy czar during the Vajpayee years.
Enjoying the full confidence of the prime minister who was happy to leave the fine-print of policy formulation and implementation to his NSA, Mishra quietly but firmly managed the Vajpayee initiatives. It was a mixed spectrum that included the May 1998 nuclear tests, the politico-diplomatic tsunami that followed, the subsequent rapprochement with the US, the historic Lahore Accord and Vajpayee's bus yatra followed by the 1999 Kargil War, the March 2000 Clinton visit, the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament leading to the tense Operation Parakram and the rewiring of the troubled relationship with China and Russia, the list of radical initiatives and macro events is remarkable.
While the economic liberalization of India is credited to then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao complemented by his then finance minister Manmohan Singh, it may be averred that India's security and foreign policy liberalization was initiated by Vajpayee ably supported by his PS and NSA Brajesh Mishra.
In a politico-bureaucratic culture where decision making is either delayed or indefinitely deferred, Mishra brought a certain boldness and resolve that is now recalled as legendary. Given the individual ministerial egos and departmental sensitivities, Mishra was able to bring critical senior officials together and translate the prime minister's approved policy into action. The quip at his meetings was that nobody could leave till a consensus was arrived at.
Working to a punishing schedule, he later revealed that he had evolved a routine wherein he met the PM over breakfast and then took the necessary decisions or offered guidance, as the case may have been, to steer the ship of national policy during tempestuous times.
His proximity to the prime minister and his brusque demeanour generated a fair share of envy and critics tried to paint him as arrogant and supercilious and he was accused of taking India too close to the US and Israel. To his credit, till the end of the NDA tenure, Mishra retained the dignity of the office that he held and the credibility of his 'boss'. His contribution as India's first NSA will be of lasting relevance and as J.N. Dixit, his successor as the NSA and close colleague, later added: "Combining the role of principal secretary to the prime minister and the NSA is like running the 100 metre dash and the marathon concurrently. Brajesh smoked his way through this challenge with aplomb."
In later years, after demitting office, Brajesh Mishra provided sage advice to the country - when consulted - and played a valuable role in supporting the India-US civilian nuclear when the UPA government was on the ropes over this contentious issue. The BJP, which had initiated the rapprochement with the US under Vajpayee, chose to play a spoiler's role for partisan political reasons and Mishra - who always pointed out that he was not a party member - provided the objective strategic rationale that was based on the abiding national interest.
Generous in sharing his experience of the years that he spent in high and lonely office with younger members of the strategic community, Mishra's last public statements related to the inadequacies in the national security framework and the implications of the China-Pakistan strategic cooperation.
(C. Uday Bhaskar is a well-known strategic analyst. He can be reached at cudayb@gmail.com)
and comment under that article:From-PM-s-hatchet-man-to-influential-insider-Mishra-played-them-all
Vir Singhvi
The passing of Brajesh Mishra has evoked memories of his role in organising the Pokhran II nuclear tests. But what we sometimes forget is how extraordinarily powerful he was when he served as Prime Minister AB Vajpayee's principal secretary and the country's first National Security Advisor (NSA).
His grip over the government was so absolute that it was bitterly resented by many in the BJP, who complained that the wrong old bald guy had become India's second-most powerful man – not LK Advani but Mishra.
A popular joke from that era captures the aura of power that surrounded Mishra. When it emerged that the terrorists who attacked Parliament in 2001 had intended to take the cabinet hostage, people wondered what would have happened. "Oh, nothing at all," went the punch-line. "Brajesh Mishra would have continued running the government as he already does."
Though he began as a diplomat, politics was in Mishra's blood. His father, DP Mishra, a powerful chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, was one of Indira Gandhi's chief strategists during the 1969 Congress split and was nicknamed Chanakya.
When Mishra retired from the IFS, he longed to follow his father into politics. But by then, his father had parted bitterly from Mrs Gandhi so Mishra joined the BJP, where he toiled away to no great distinction. This changed in 1998, when he was discovered by AB Vajpayee, who admired the Chanakya-like cunning that Mishra had inherited from his father.
When Vajpayee became Prime Minister, he put Mishra in charge of his PMO and asked him to organise the nuclear tests, a decision so sensitive that it was kept secret from most of the cabinet. As national security advisor, Mishra also revived and strengthened India's intelligence agencies and created a parallel power centre to the foreign office, effectively destabilising every foreign minister.
Mishra's power was derived from his closeness to Vajpayee. He was at the Prime Minister's residence most mornings and every single evening, becoming a charter member of the family. Such was his understanding of the famously uncommunicative PM that Vajpayee had only to gesture for Mishra to understand what needed to be done.
Vajpayee trusted Mishra implicitly and admired his ability to concentrate all the power in the PMO, a difficult feat to accomplish in a coalition and especially when LK Advani functioned as an alternative source of influence.
But Mishra was happy to take on Advani, did not mind being loathed by him, and often functioned as the PM's hatchet man, distancing Vajpayee from unpopular decisions — a manoeuvre that allowed the PM to feign bewildered ignorance when Advani came complaining.
The obituaries have focused on Mishra's considerable foreign policy achievements. But his greatest achievement was the manner in which he exercised power. Not since PN Haksar in the early days of Mrs Gandhi's reign had a civil servant made the entire government of India – including cabinet ministers – defer to his brilliance and authority.
When Manmohan Singh took over as PM, he asked Mishra to stay on as principal secretary. He, however, declined, saying, "My loyalty is to my boss (Vajpayee)!"
But he repaid Singh's kindness a few years later by coming out strongly in favour of the nuclear deal and making his final break with LK Advani and the BJP.
Sanjay
For anyone to understand the contribution of Mr Brajesh Mishra you should understand the period in which he helped shape policies for India. Pre-1998 India was a country which lacked self confidence and belief in itself. One of the biggest contributions of NDA government (although they too made some mistakes, but atleast they where brave to take decisions and learn from their mistakes) was to generate a self confidence and belief in people of this country with a serieus of actions on economy front and defense security front like Nuclear test and Kargil war (If congress was in govt during Pakistan's Kargil invasion we would have handed over Kargil also to Pakistan like Pak Occupied Kashmir). Even after Narsimha Rao's reforms our country was still lacked self belief and an assured direction. This is where NDA and Mr Brajesh Mishra played an invaluable role to built a confidence in a Generation. Today's generation (who dont even make an effort to understand our countries history of last two decades atleast) may not understand and might even make a mockery of the contribution of Mr Mishra, but for someone who have lived in those times he will be remembered as someone who helped chart a direction to a modern India. Country will miss him dearly.
Reading this op-ed I just realised why he was so effective as the NSA-PS. Its being the PS that made him an effective NSA.Brajesh Mishra was a master of all trades
It is said that former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra shared a special bonding.
It had little to do with the fact that both were Brahmins from Madhya Pradesh who had found their karmabhoomi in Delhi. It was more to do with their affinity to matters foreign and the country's standing in the comity of nations. It was during Mr Vajpayee’s frequent visits to United Nations that the foundations of a long-lasting and fruitful partnership with the young career diplomat was laid. Mishra was for several years India's permanent representative to the UN, a tenure which ended in some controversy due to differences he had with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi over India's policy vis-a-vis the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But this foreign service mandarin, with fire in his deep set eyes and a razor sharp, incisive mind and impeccable intellectual integrity was meant for greater things. The opportunities for him were endless. In him Mr Vajpayee saw the ideal strategist and master planner. A man after his own heart — bold, articulate, principled and wont to taking quick, decisions. As Mr Vajpayee's troubleshooter, Brajesh Mishra was one of the most powerful principal secretaries the PMO had ever seen. Not without reason was he referred to as India's modern day Chanakya. From the 1998 Pokhran nuclear test to Mr Vajpayee's historic bus visit to Pakistan to engaging the United States in a strategic dialogue, Mishra was at the helm of a never-ending series of foreign policy and security manoeuvres. It is a measure of his remarkable abilities that he was appointed to the post of the (newly created) National Security Adviser. It was a post which was created especially for him, and he fulfilled the role with great aplomb, enjoying the full confidence of Mr Vajpayee who was only too happy to leave the fine-print of policy matters and implementation to his NSA.
Wearing two hats, that of Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and the NSA, Mishra as the de facto security and foreign policy czar quietly fleshed out his boss's initiatives. The March 2000 Clinton visit and the rewiring of the troubled relationship with China and Russia are some of the radical initiatives he presided over. Along the way, envy and admiration came in equal measure. Some saw him as a bit unapproachable, a man who pulled no punches and rubbed people the wrong way. But there was not one person who disputed Mishra’s credentials to the high positions that he held. He was one of the finest minds to occupy the high office. Indeed, he brought to the job his strategic vision, diplomatic finesse and above all, a sense of India's destiny and place in global affairs. His bipartisan approach to national issues helped him reach out to politicians across the political spectrum. In his demise, the country has lost an incisive mind and an unwavering patriot.
It was afternoon by the time we landed at Hosea Kutako International Airport, weary and bedraggled after a particularly long trans-continental flight. Windhoek looked bleak, bathed in bright sunlight, as Air India 001 taxied along the tarmac. Everybody looked forward to checking into the hotel which would be our home for the next three days for a shower and a snooze before the official reception and dinner scheduled later that evening. So did I till the man in the lone first row seat, right in the nose of the aircraft, turned around and rasped his order at me, sitting three rows behind. “See me after checking in, there’s some work to be done.” With Brajesh Mishra around, there always was work to be done.
There was a large crowd of Namibians, with a large number of children, the latter in their Sunday best, which had turned up at the airport to greet us. It was rather unusual – a handful of officials representing the host Government and Indian mission staff usually receive a visiting Indian Prime Minister and his entourage. At Windhoek, we had Namibian men and women, boys and girls, greeting us – smiling and waving – as a band, clumsily but enthusiastically, played a Bollywood chart topper of 1970s vintage. As we walked up to the low airport building, an elderly person pointed at Brajesh Mishra, who was just ahead of me, and soon he was mobbed by dancing, singing, chanting Namibians. Brajesh Mishra beamed at them and patted the children who offered him drooping flowers. It was an amazing sight, not the least because he was averse to either smiling or displaying affection in public.
Later I learned that Brajesh Mishra was something of a folk hero for Namibians (memories of him may have faded by now, but this was less than a decade after Namibia’s independence from South Africa) for his sterling role as UN Commissioner from 1982 to 1987. Many of those Namibians who had heard and read about his contribution to fulfilling their aspiration for freedom had turned out at the airport and the Government had relented under popular pressure to set aside protocol. Even the Prime Minister, who stood momentarily ignored, was amazed by the raucously warm welcome for his Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser – Brajesh Mishra wore both the hats with stunning dexterity – and said, to nobody in particular, “Brajeshji ka kamaal dekhiye!”
There was a lot to be learned about and from Brajesh Mishra – or Brajeshji as he would allow those who he trusted and liked to call him – whom I had accidentally met on a winter day at IIC where I had gone for lunch along with my then editor Vinod Mehta. If I recall correctly, it was a Saturday and we were trying to negotiate our way through cane chairs on the lawn outside the bar. Brajeshji was sitting in one of them, legs crossed, reading the International Herald Tribune and oblivious to the chatter around him. He had just retired as Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and there was talk of his joining the BJP which had raised more than a few eyebrows: After all, he was the son of Dwarka Prasad Mishra, former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and the original ‘Chanakya’ in the Congress who was trusted by both Jawaharlal Nehru and Mrs Indira Gandhi; if at all he had to join politics, he should have opted for the Congress. That apart, in those days every new entrant to the BJP made news – General JFR ‘Jake’ Jacob, General KP Candeth (what were these men with clipped haw-haw accents doing in a Hindhi-bhaashi party?) and Brajeshji was no exception – in many ways, there was greater intrigue attached to his reported move.
Vinod, who could never tame his curiosity, dragged me along to where Brajeshji was sitting and introduced himself. Brajeshji looked up at him, praised The Pioneer (“I read your paper, it’s quite nice”) and then added, “I quite like this chap who writes for you… what’s his name… Kanchan… yes, Kanchan Gupta… with a name like that, Bengali, isn’t he?” Vinod grinned and said, “Here’s the chap,” and pointed at me. “Oh hello!” he said, and we shook hands. Conversation over, Brajeshji went back to reading The International Herald Tribune. We had our tipple and fodder and went back to work. Some days later we carried the story, as did other papers, about Brajeshji joining the BJP where he was made head of the Foreign Affairs Cell. Over the next six years I met him regularly, and got to know him well – actually, sufficiently well to be called his ‘pet’, including by those who thought both of us were interlopers. There’s no need to name them; nearly all of them are either dead or have rendered themselves utterly irrelevant to even bother about.
Brajeshji had a certain elan, a style all his own. He would drive down to the BJP headquarters every morning in his Zen, stride up to the library, order his cup of coffee, unfold his copy of The International Herald Tribune (nobody dared touch it till he was done with the paper) and, having read it, hold court till 1 pm when he would drive down to IIC for lunch. He was an excellent and patient teacher for those who cared to learn from him: He would hold forth on current issues in foreign and security affairs, meet foreign delegations and embassy officials, prepare strategy notes, brief LK Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Jammu & Kashmir (it was a happening thing those days with the US heavily involved via a busybody called Robin Raphel) and accompany both leaders for meetings with Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao. He was powerful in the party hierarchy although he was a recent entrant, and he wielded his power without showing off or throwing his weight around. At every National Executive meeting, he would steer a resolution on Foreign Affairs and brief the media on why the party felt it was important enough to take note of.
I recall how he went through the chapters on foreign affairs and security affairs in the draft of the 1996 election manifesto prepared by Jaswant Singh and me, striking out a word here, adding a phrase there. There was much dispute over the clause on whether the BJP would opt for a nuclear test if voted to power. Crafting the three sentences was proving to be impossible with each draft being rejected again and again. Finally, a meeting was organised to thrash out the issue. LK Advani, as party president, chaired the meeting which was attended by AB Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan. I was the note taker – the piano player, if you wish. The leaders went around in circles, and tea had been served twice without the animated discussion taking us towards a resolution. Finally, Brajeshji cracked the riddle and came up with a formulation that was acceptable to all; Jaswant Singh added a couple of words to make it suitably vague. As he put it: “We don’t want the world to know how soon we are going to test the Bomb.” After the leaders had left and the room was empty, fresh coffee was ordered and Brajeshji and I lit up our cigarettes, inhaling smoke and exhaling satisfaction over a job well done. “I hope you learned something today?” he asked me, tapping the ash off his cigarette, a smile hovering on his otherwise stern face.
As it happened, the BJP was in power for less than a fortnight in 1996 and it was too short a time to conduct nuclear tests. But that formulation in the manifesto had been noticed and alerted foreign Governments: The Americans were keen to know what were the BJP’s plans, so were the Chinese. Brajeshji kept everybody guessing. By the time Shakti happened and Buddha smiled on May 11, 1998, taking the world by surprise, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, heading the NDA Government, and Brajeshji was his Principal Secretary and National Security Adviser. Jaswant Singh was Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, LK Advani was Home Minister, Yashwant Sinha was Finance Minister and Pramod Mahajan was Political Adviser to the Prime Minister. The nuclear tests of May 11-13 marked a tectonic shift in India’s strategic policy.
The nuclear tests also heralded the diplomatic isolation of nuclear India by preachy Western Governments, especially the Clinton Administration, who couldn’t believe that they had been hoodwinked. The situation posed a huge challenge to the fledgling NDA Government. To AB Vajpayee’s credit, it was converted into an immense opportunity with Brajeshji helping craft the Resurgent India Policy with which we broke free of our Nehruvian past and got rid of our inherited bogus consensus, and forged a wider engagement with the world on, for the first time, our terms. Brajeshji initiated diplomatic moves with the US, Russia and China with amazing ease and finesse, drawing upon his vast network of friends built over decades as a career diplomat posted at the UN. Statecraft acquired an entirely new meaning. A year or so later Jaswant Singh, who had by then moved in as Minister for External Affairs, initiated a full-throttle thrust on building India-US relations in what has become a textbook example of diplomatic engagement leading to the end of decades of estrangement – his friend Strobe Talbott played a big role too, although that was much after praise came from Madeleine Albright, not known for praising anybody but herself.
Working out of his sparsely furnished office in the PMO, Brajeshji gave form and shape to India’s nuclear doctrine and posture, creating a startlingly new security architecture for India and helping forge an all-new foreign policy that was shorn of shibboleths that had made us captives of a worldview that had long ceased to exist. The Kandahar hijack, the Kargil war, the fidayeen attack on Parliament House and many such incidents would have left anybody else feeling defeated, but not Brajeshji. He seized upon each setback to re-energise his quest for securing India’s national interest, arguing the case with greater conviction and at times fury. In the PMO, he was referred to as ‘Princ Sec’ (pronounced ‘prince sek’). And indeed he was the prince of the office, running it with clockwork precision, harnessing the best of each person and setting a tough daily routine through example. He would march in every morning at 10.30 am, never a minute late, never a minute early, work till 1.15 pm when he would leave for lunch, and return again at 3 pm to work till 6.30 pm. He would walk past my room on the ground floor of South Block, his shoes smartly clicking on the flagstone-paved corridor. I could have set my watch to his arrivals and departures.
I had the privilege of not only knowing Brajeshji but receiving much more than my rightful share of his affection and trust. I was a diligent student, he was a stern and demanding teacher. He gave tough assignments and set impossible deadlines. He gave me extraordinary breaks by deputing me to the National Security Advisory Board as the PMO’s representative, co-opting me in the High Level Task Force on India-Nepal Relations, asking me to prepare executive summaries of classified documents, and including me in meetings where I would listen and absorb and learn and file away information that I gleaned in the crevices of my mind. “You have to be a good keeper of secrets. You must never tell. You should not be tempted to say what you shouldn’t say,” he once told me, “This is the mantra of a good strategist who places the national interest above all. Success will follow if you are resolute.”
Brajeshji and I shared a common birthday. For many years I would call him on September 29 and wish him a long, happy life. He would grunt, pause, and then say, “Tumko bhi… Have you stopped smoking?” No, Brajeshji, I’d say, what about you? “Pagal ho?” and much chortling would follow. This September 29, that conversation was not to be. On Friday night I lost a mentor, a teacher and a friend.
(This originally appeared in The Pioneer on Sunday, September 30, 2012)
Nice... My regards, bandhuvar....RamaY wrote:
1. The constitution of independent India is a major failure, for it was written based on very narrow (~100-200 years of observed/studied history under colonial guidance) foundations and didn't envision the evolution of Bharat for more than 10-20 years at the most. No wonder it started failing by 1970s with JLN becoming a leader larger than the nation and later the G/N Family rule.
2. The leadership of independent India is nothing but the extension of 500+ principalities which failed their nationalist duty of protecting Bharat from the very colonization they became part of. Sometimes I wonder if the 540MPs are nothing but the 540 British-Raj principalities.
Was BMji trying to be a disciplinarian in the strict 'civvies decide policy, uniform has to follow' mould?Lilo wrote: Then out of nowhere BMji comes onto the grinning peep Karan Thapar's show (who himself was the son of COAS PN Thapar - who resigned in disgrace after 1962 debacle) and labels a serving COAS as the "worst in history" - how can anyone justify this ?
If Congrez has its way corrupting and politicizing the Army, it will ultimately sap its fighting spirit and 1962 redux will occur - despite all our shiny toys.
VKS is well justified in standing up to the Congrez govt as this is ultimately a National Security issue - while congez considers it just a "disciplinary issue" . He struck to his values and currently this is required in the bureaucracy too - not the other way round. So BMji's public "advice" to VKS is quite wrong and out of turn.
abhishek_sharma wrote:From NSA to US, China, praise for Mishra as an old, respected friend
I guess the above makes up for the second hand complements from the Indian chatterati,\
At a prayer meeting for Brajesh Mishra, who died Friday, condolence messages for the man who helped shape India’s national security apparatus were filled with such descriptions as “mentor”, “illustrious and wise politician and diplomat”, “irreplaceable friend”, “shy person behind a tough exterior”, and “someone who did not suffer fools”.
The meeting at Chinmaya mission in New Delhi on Saturday, which was attended by the former National Security Advisor’s family, friends and former colleagues, left many teary-eyed.
National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon described Mishra as a kind man beneath a forbidding exterior, a realist and a legendary negotiator. Recounting an anecdote, he said he once asked Mishra about the secret of his negotiating skills. According to Menon, Mishra said: “Always give the other man something to take away from the table, however little, otherwise he will have no interest.” Menon also said he had asked Mishra to write his memoirs but he refused, saying he can’t write many things.
Journalist Kanchan Gupta, who once served in Vajpayee’s PMO, read out messages by several leaders praising Mishra.
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi recalled him as a “highly accomplished” civil servant with an un-diminished passion and concern for national interest.
Former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice described him as a “tremendous diplomat, charmingly urbane, unfailingly calm and eminently reasonable”.
China’s former State Councillor Dai Bingguo remembered him as a “practitioner of diplomacy who was well-known to the Chinese people” and an old friend whom he respected.
Former Russian deputy prime minister Sergey Ivanov said he was a “wise politician and diplomat who enjoyed well-deserved respect among foreign colleagues”.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai called him a “great patriot of India”.
Former US envoy Robert D Blackwill recalled him as a “man of impeccable integrity and an irreplaceable friend”.
BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, who attended the meeting, credited him for Vajpayee government’s success in security and foreign policy matters.
Vivek Tankha, former Additional solicitor general whose family has known Mishra’s for generations, recalled how Mishra got second rank in the written civil services exam but could not make it to the IFS due to low score in the interview. “He met Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and he was taken in the IFS. The rest is history,” Tankha said.