DrPrabhakaran Paleri shares 20 Point International Strategy for the Nation.
1. Penetrate the minds of Pakistani society with humanism by various prolonged strategies appropriate to the time and period. Simultaneously hit first, hit hard and continue hitting the unfriendly power centers on a 24×7 basis relentlessly by appropriate covert and overt means from now on.
2. Make Indian public aware of Kashmir and earn public support as part of the 24×7 Pakistan strategies.
3. Make Indian public understand Kashmir is not an issue; in fact there is no Kashmir problem but there are only problems in governing Kashmir which are natural to governance.
4. Declare internationally PoK is India under occupation; it will be retaken.
5. Either amend the Indus water treaty (IWT) under the provisions of international law or walk out of the treaty and dissolve it. IWT can be interpreted in many ways and there are many provisions and also precedence even in the recent past to amend or dissolve it.
6. Choose a long term strategy to be a geostrategic partner to the British and the US, if they still stay on, around the Chagos Archipelago exclusively for tuna fishing which will clear two issues: India’s blockade in tuna harvesting and the world wide problem of tuna adulteration with less value fishes. This is very important for Kerala and Tamil Nadu fishers and in the overall trilateral relations.
7. Simultaneously choose to be a geostrategic partner with the French in the Indian Ocean.
8. Prepare a white paper on Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries as accepted by India and focus on them strategically from the Indian Ocean point of View. This includes two aspects: defining IOR region and identifying IOR countries.
9. Appreciate and ingrain in the national security mindset that Indus is India and Indian Ocean is India’s Ocean, come what may and who may say what.
10. Welcome Chinese, understanding the deceptive techniques they follow in their national security strategy, in identified partnership areas with the overall objective of binding them with India.
11. Ensure water is not used as a weapon of destruction or conflict either by China or Pakistan.
12. Create aggressive friendship strategy for application in critical times with select neighbours (names withheld as it depends on time).
13. Influence to create an international regime to rehabilitate alien personnel displaced by sea level rise on a quid pro quo basis.
14. Influence international agencies for introducing corporate ocean social responsibility to maintain the good order and discipline of the oceans for the benefit of all.
15. Ensure every international engagement is at least quid-pro-quo if not more and the exchange or substitution is identified and well defined.
16. Ensure more national discourses in international strategic affairs (an example is LEMOA or LSA: Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement or Logistics Support Agreement) and others too (not listed) for more government-public-media transparency. National discourse is a tool of maximum governance.
17. Avoid deception as a strategy in international relations.
18. Define intelligence as intention, not mere information, and develop the intelligence machinery accordingly.
19. Treat the one-in-six Indians of the world population as diplomats for the geo-strategic security of the country.
20. Choose a long term self-cleaning geo-strategy that the successive governments may not be able to alter based on vested interests.
Dr. Prabhakaran Paleri served as the 16th Director General of Indian Coast Guard. Scholar in national security subjects, Dr Paleri has written various volumes on national security & strategy. His book ‘National Security: Imperatives and challenges’ is a must read for young scholars.
