Cooperative security and India's strategy

Most non-traditional threats, such as disease, terrorism, poverty and climate change, cannot be fought with armies. They need cooperation.

Cooperative security can be:

• bilateral (between two countries), regional, or global;
• carried out by states and by others: the UN, the WHO, NGOs, businesses, churches and community groups, and famous people who raise money and awareness.

Force may still be needed as a last resort, for example to stop genocide. It is far more legitimate when the international community approves it together, through the UN, rather than one country acting alone.

India's security strategy has four parts:

• Military strength: India has fought wars with Pakistan (1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and China (1962). It tested a nuclear device in 1974 and nuclear weapons in 1998, saying they were needed to protect itself in a dangerous neighbourhood.
• International norms and institutions: India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, backed Asian solidarity, decolonisation, disarmament, and the UN. India helped lead non-alignment, joined the Kyoto Protocol (1997) on greenhouse gases, and has sent troops on many UN peacekeeping missions.
• Meeting internal challenges: separatist movements in places like Nagaland, Mizoram, Punjab and Kashmir have been met by keeping India united through democracy, giving groups a voice and a share of power.
• Development: lifting most citizens out of poverty, misery and huge inequality, because poor people are insecure people.

So for India, security is not only guns. Democracy and development are also ways of making people safe.