Think Tanks Advantages And Disadvantages

tanks and universities abroad, with the Indian government and think-tanks finding no place for them. The prevalent situation, in some ways, is a throwback to the stifling environs of the licence - permit raj when much of India’s entrepreneurial, scientific and business talent was abroad until liberalisation got it back. We need a strategic liberalisation (opening up of strategic positions in government and in think tanks to cross–cultural talent), to attract such talent back. A good place to begin is the strategic think-tanks in India, which should open up apex positions to the strategic community and academia, and reverse the current trend of think tanks becoming sarkari (government) hotbeds. It is only if the think tanks show the way, can

Should not think-tanks in India also become persuasive drivers of change? After all amongst the more prominent actors in the push for integration in the USA were think tanks like the Hudson Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Since the Civil Military Relations (CMR) equations in India are not vibrant enough, especially in terms of the necessary cross - cultural interface, Indian academics are neither inspired, nor equipped to investigate core military issues with the necessary rigour and depth; on many critical issues, therefore, there is very often only, a superficial scraping of the surface, with little understanding of the deeper

The real issue is the integration of the military in the decision making dynamic at the top and then all the way to the bottom. The US, after all, has had a Permanent Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff (PCJCS) since the 1950s. The turning point in the integration story, however, was the ‘Barry Goldwater & Nichols Act’ of the 1980s, which was driven by two factors. One of course, was the April 1980 Desert One fiasco in Iran, where an attempted rescue operation went horribly wrong due to lack of institutional interface and other simple inadequacies like communication frequencies among the three services not matching. The other was the critical realisation that the benefits of integration would far exceed the utility of perpetuating inter–service rivalry as a fire alarm in the Civil Military Relations (CMR) process. Hence the Act was driven by both, civilian and military minds, secure in their Civil Military Relations (CMR) relationship, and imposed over the opposition of some of the most powerful voices - Secretary Defence Casper Weinberger, Secretary Navy John Lehman and some of the most powerful Admirals in the Pentagon who raised imaginary fears over the re-emergence of the Prussian General Staff. The Chief of Naval Staff (CNO), Admiral James Watkins, ran out of all agreements, simply flew into a rage and said “You know this legislation is so bad … it is simply un-American.” But once the act came about, it ensured