Those who can make you think the way that’s in their interest enjoy the real power: Ajit Doval

Ahmedabad

Following is an excerpt of India’s National Security Advisor Shri Ajit Doval’s speech at Lalit Doshi Foundation in Mumbai in the first week of August, 2015. The speech was divided in different parts. This particular part in the video deals with Statecraft. Part of the speech has been reproduced in text below:

“Earlier the statecraft was more confined to the question of wars. The rules of wars were made, the Vienna convention was made, what are the permissible type of weapons which can be used, what is the type of the mines that can be laid and not can be laid, prisoners of war, all these things have been settled to the large extent.”

“But the days of statecraft through wars is coming almost to an end. War are no more an affective instrumentality of achieving your political and strategic objectives in a cost affective way. There’s no guarantee that a very powerful nation with a huge arsenal, with a huge economy with a huge intelligence capability, with a great scientific props would be able to subdue even a small group of the terrorists whether it’s a Federal states in Vietnam or Soviet in Afghanistan.”

“So people are increasingly thinking that probably it is not, the most effective way. You are not able to achieve your strategic objective through the mechanism of war. That has evolved into the statecraft, the other institutions, or the other props of the statecraft becoming quite important. in any case like verse’s theory about the morality of the war itself has brought into the focus, and even most of the countries which are engaging in war have found it that it is an unaffordable diplomatic cost for them to sustain that. So in this background, no instrumentality like diplomacy, intelligence, perception management, media, use of soft power, influencing the minds of the people, that have become new instruments of the statecraft. In a way have you ever wonder why the Americans decided to support the Islamic gun wielding irregulars against a regular Soviet Army? It had many options. When the Soviets made an entry to Afghanistan they could have taken them militarily, they could have done economic blockade, they could have done at UN security council, they could have passed any resolution against them. They could have tried all means which are available to greater powers in the world. But it resorted to the entirely different mechanism. That was the mechanism of the covert war. That is the proxy war you are fighting against someone using somebody else’s manpower, using somebody else’s weapon. You fly the weapons from Eygpt which are of the Russian origin, send it to Peshawar and then distribute it to Mujaheddins and then send it to Afghanistan, because they found that the other means of the statecraft were unaffordable against the country which has the great strategic weapons strength. Now that is the dilemma.”

“That this is statecraft, war is more transparent, but wars through other means is much more dicey and much more difficult to handle. This proxy war, this covert wars, espionage, sabotage, subversion, influencing the minds of the people seating in this hall. If I can make all of you think the way that I want to think and behave I wield a power over you. The real power in the coming times will not be invaded by those people who are going to have control over your labs, or over the technology, or over the means of production, or over the wealth. It will wielded by people who can make you think the way that is in their interest. If I want you to buy a product and you buy that, I control your minds. If I want you to hate everything that is Indian, I want you to be ashamed of your culture and civilization. And if I achieve that, I win the battle. If you resist it and you are not able to do this thing thing, you win the battle. This is the battle of civilization, battle of culture, basically the battle of minds. It is all by exercising through the soft powers. And statecraft has got thus a new instrumentality.”

– DeshGujarat