By Brahma Chellaney
Contributing writer, The Japan Times

India created the post of Chief of Defense Staff in 2019 to achieve what its military had long lacked: genuine jointness among the Army, Navy and Air Force.

The CDS was intended to function as the principal military adviser to the government, improve interoperability among the services and push through long-delayed reforms such as integrated theater commands.

Yet less than a decade later, the institution is being weakened by the very government that created it.

The issue goes to the heart of civil-military relations, military effectiveness and India’s ambitions as a rising major power.

The latest appointment to the office illustrates the issue clearly. For the second consecutive time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has chosen a retired three-star lieutenant general to serve as CDS, immediately elevating him to four-star rank upon appointment. Lt. Gen. N.S. Raja Subramani will now coordinate among serving four-star service chiefs who continue to command troops, budgets and operational structures.

This is an unusual arrangement for a position that was originally conceived as primus inter pares — first among equals.

Only the first CDS, Gen. Bipin Rawat, assumed office while serving as Army chief. His appointment carried institutional weight because he entered the role directly from active command at the apex of the military hierarchy. By contrast, a retired officer re-entering service on a contractual basis inevitably derives authority less from institutional standing than from political selection.

Since Rawat’s death in a helicopter crash in late 2021, the government has moved toward appointing retired officers — a shift that reflects both a rethink of the CDS office and a broader instinct toward institutional “coup-proofing.”

India, unlike neighbors such as Myanmar, Bangladesh and Pakistan, has no history of military intervention in politics.

Indeed, much like Japan, India long remained reluctant to integrate military officers into a defense ministry dominated by civilian bureaucrats often lacking specialized military expertise. Over the past decade, however, Japan has moved further and faster than India in dismantling the bureaucratic walls separating its military from the defense ministry.

Yet, even as career bureaucrats still dominate Indian defense planning, New Delhi appears increasingly wary of concentrating too much institutional authority in a CDS drawn directly from the serving chiefs of staff. A sitting service chief elevated to CDS would carry operational authority, institutional networks and considerable standing within the armed forces.

A retired officer reappointed through executive discretion is inherently more dependent on the political leadership. That may reassure civilian authorities seeking tight control over the military hierarchy. But it also risks weakening the CDS’s credibility within the services themselves, undermining the very jointness and theaterization the office was meant to advance.

That distinction matters. A serving chief who has risen through the ranks and commands active forces possesses independent stature within the military system. Such an individual is better positioned to provide candid advice to political leaders, including advice they may not wish to hear.

A retired officer brought back through a government notification may instead be perceived — fairly or unfairly — as more beholden to the political executive that restored him to office.

Perceptions shape institutions. If serving chiefs begin to see the CDS primarily as a political appointee rather than an impartial coordinator among equals, the trust necessary for meaningful military integration erodes.

This comes at precisely the wrong time for India.

Modern warfare increasingly depends on cross-domain integration. Air power, naval reach, cyber capabilities, space assets and long-range precision systems are becoming as important as massed land forces. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated that military success now hinges less on the dominance of any single service than on the ability to synchronize all instruments of combat power.

India itself has recognized this reality. The push for theater commands — integrating Army, Navy and Air Force assets under unified operational structures — reflects an understanding that future wars cannot be fought through service silos.

Yet institutional culture matters as much as organizational charts. And here the government risks sending the wrong signal.

Every CDS so far has come from the Army. Given the Army’s size and political influence, that may not be surprising. But repetition creates institutional expectations. If the top military post appears effectively reserved for Army officers — including retired ones — the Navy and Air Force may reasonably conclude that “jointness” in practice means Army predominance.

That is a dangerous perception for a country seeking to become a major maritime and aerospace power.

India’s strategic challenges are increasingly maritime in nature, from the growing Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean to the security of sea lanes and energy routes. Likewise, air and missile power will be central to any future conflict involving China or Pakistan. A genuinely integrated military structure requires all three services to feel equally represented and invested in reform.

Instead, New Delhi appears to be moving in the opposite direction: centralizing authority politically while narrowing the institutional base of the CDS.

The irony is striking. With considerable fanfare, Modi announced the creation of the CDS position on Independence Day in 2019 as a transformational reform intended to streamline military advice and reduce bureaucratic barriers between the armed forces and the political leadership. Yet the government has increasingly transformed the CDS into a politically managed bureaucratic office within the Ministry of Defense.

The CDS also serves as secretary of the defense ministry’s Department of Military Affairs, effectively combining military leadership with bureaucratic responsibilities. That dual role risks turning what was envisioned as India’s senior-most military strategist into a highly placed defense administrator.

The country’s political leadership may prefer a CDS who remains firmly dependent on civilian authority and lacks an independent institutional power base. But there is a trade-off between political control and military effectiveness.

An overly constrained CDS may preserve tighter civilian oversight in the short term while weakening the office’s ability to drive difficult reforms, resolve interservice rivalries and provide independent strategic advice. Theaterization, long discussed but still unrealized, could continue to stagnate.

The CDS was created to strengthen India’s military integration. Instead, the office risks evolving into a politically managed coordinating post with diminishing institutional authority.

That would leave India with the appearance of reform, but not its substance.

Brahma Chellaney, a longstanding contributor to The Japan Times, is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battlefield,” which won the Bernard Schwartz Award.