Besides these rebuttals, there are three other points pertinent to this discussion. First, the authors ignore the ‘soft power’ that accrues to India by participating in these missions. Other than the local population of host nations, a number of international aid workers speak highly of their interaction with the Indian military in the bushes of Africa. Indeed the Indian army’s own extensive experience with counterinsurgency makes them uniquely qualified to undertake such missions, an expertise that most other armies lack. If there is a failure it is in the inability of the diplomats to take advantage of the goodwill and the inability of the military to build upon its regional expertise. Second, if the logic applied by the by authors is taken to its reasonable conclusion then India should pull its diplomats, police services and civil servants out of all UN assignments, and let that body atrophy! Finally, as the authors rightly contend, UN peacekeeping does suffer from the “apathy of great powers”, but if India is thinking of itself as a potential great power then perhaps not sinking into the same apathy would be one way to distinguish itself as a “different” type of power. On the whole, the authors deserve compliments for focussing attention on the participation and performance of Indian troops in peacekeeping operations. As some veterans have pointed out, Indian forces are ill-equipped to take on these sorts of missions and there is a need to perhaps create sector stores to augment units deployed on such missions. However, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is probably a bad idea.

... contd.