The War on Terror

The war on terror begins at home

Mohan Menon

Last Updated : 14 Jan 2012 06:22:28 PM IST
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The lack of convergence between US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s projections on American foreign policy and a new Pentagon document entitled “Sustaining US Global Leadership Priorities for 21st Century Defence” should engage Indian policymakers in unravelling the actual American security postulates in respect to India.

While bringing Russia and China in the discourse, Panetta made a frank admission in a recent interview that “we have got the challenges of dealing with rising powers of Asia like India and others”. On the other hand, the Pentagon document released on January 5 said: “The US is investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability as a regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.”

It is probable that Panetta, given his earlier CIA credentials, was making an intelligence-threat evaluation encompassing India, China and Russia in the same bracket even as the Pentagon document was laying out, more candidly, American options for future. But the question is whether there exists a centre point in the USA’s strategic partnership with India in the complex web of relations between the two largest democracies?

Within India’s security and intelligence frame, the intent of New Delhi’s security agencies has invariably been to convey to Washington, London, Moscow and other European capitals that democracies are potentially far more vulnerable to organised terrorist strikes by al-Qaeda and its fraternity than single-party governed nations, militarily dominated political orders or autocratic monarchies. This has been sufficiently proved by the 9/11 and 26/11 strikes.

What is dismaying is that despite real possibility of such strikes, neither the US nor the United Nations has made any concerted efforts to fight global terrorism. Each of the countries involved in military pursuits or a linked war against terror has its own set of values and a national narrative to defend and project in a global forum like the UN. Even the boundaries of international co-operation against global terror are blurred.

It is widely recognised that ‘organised terror’ largely secures its support and sustenance from non-democratic domains. The self-assuming mentoring angels of such ‘regimes’ tend to verily interpret their own safety as co-terminus with their own perceptions of security and safety of their unwary subjects. The illustrations of interpretational gaps between countries and even within the so-called US global alliance against terror are far too obvious to specify. In co-ordinated action against terror, perceptions about terrorism often thus differ and impact on the actual quality of delivery of the war against terror as well, which is not as positive as often contemplated in verbose documentations and international mandates against global terror, signed between countries.

A given strategic alliance creates scope for entailing counter-strategic alliances even as the concerned ‘dancing partners’ seek to ‘live with dignity’. However subjectively interpreted, the concept does not take you far. Grand strategies get nullified in the process and the security dilemma gets more vexed than ever. As a result, the terrorist discourse and their potential field of operation expand. They get a chance to recruit more and build more safe havens, while the clueless people for whose benefit the campaign against terror has been launched continue to be at the mercy of the proliferators of terror.

In this backdrop of ineffectiveness of global alliances against terrorism, it remains to be seen whether the United Nations Counter Terrorism Centre (UNCTC)— the recently contrived global mechanism floated on December 7 last year by the 66th session of the UN General Assembly—will serve any real purpose. Hopefully, the configuration will turn out to be more of an international resolve compositely addressed by all nation members, than a mere resolution with a numerical description, when subsequently reviewed at the 68th session of the general assembly.

Whether India, the world’s largest and most passionate democracy, truly benefits in its internal war against terrorism from the two respective instrumentalities, US Priorities for 21st Century Defence and the UNCTC, remains to be seen. Perhaps, the signals are now pretty clear that time has indeed come for our policymakers and executive arms to steadfastly address core issues at stake and without any more dithering, implement the government’s decision to execute into work and action mode, the already delayed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC).

This affirmative action to get the NCTC going will entail that the government of India will have a response point in place that necessarily serves as a useful complement to the New York-based UNCTC, besides fulfilling other more critical mandates ascribed to this much-hyped and awaited national instrument to monitor terror proclivities and systemically strive to counter these dynamics of immeasurable potential and actual danger to people at large.

(The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own. Mohan Menon is a former Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat)
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