Let me repeat what I have said earlier. “War is too serious to trust it to generals”, said Winston Churchill. But then, Churchill had done a spell in the army, was a war correspondent and was the First Lord of the Admiralty and Minister of Munitions during the World War I before framing the policy and influencing the strategy of the World War II. In our case, it would be equally apt to say that national security is too serious a business to be driven by “post-truth politics” in which rhetoric, emotions, ignorance, domestic compulsions and impulsiveness are the main drivers – and rational military counsel is either absent or ignored. India does not have a formal long-term National Security Strategy. Consequently, there are no comprehensive, political directions ever given to the Armed Forces in peace or war. There is an ambiguous document called “Raksha Mantri’s Directive”, the contents of which are far from inspiring. The functioning of the National Security Council has not been streamlined and it functions according to the whims of the National Security Advisor.