Strength of a nation is most impactful defence and deterrent: VP

New Delhi: While the world rightly acknowledges India as a land of great spiritual thinkers, it has also been the ‘Karm bhoomi’ of some of the finest strategic minds and hard-nosed realists. Vice President, Jagdeep Dhankhar said this on Friday during the Indian Army's 'Chanakya Defence Dialogue' in the national Capital.

He quoted Acharya Chanakya, and said, "If you don't take up arms, you will lose your nation. And if you don’t read the scriptures, you will lose your culture.”

The Vice President said, “Swami Vivekananda, observed that ‘the world was a gymnasium where nations come to make themselves strong,’ suggesting thereby that in the international system strength matters. What he meant was that strength does matter and you need to possess strength to be relevant and to secure a proper global order.

“The strength of a nation is the most impactful defence and deterrent. Leveraging of a nation’s soft power and economic prowess have become facets of strengthening the security environment.”

He added that peace is not an option, it is the only way. Its disruption leads to human misery and global challenges.

“There is need to seek peace at all costs - through ideation, advocacy, outreach, persuasion and dialogue - as also through strength, the latter being of extreme importance. In such a scenario the wisdom of such a worldview is reinforced by the worrying turn of global events in recent times – more specifically, the expanding arc of conflict and the failure of deterrence, first in Ukraine and now in West Asia. It is worrisome that globalisation and economic interdependencies are failing to preclude conflict,” he said.

He added that national security today is an aggregation of myriad attributes and capacities unlike the past.

“The military is just one part of the pie. Indeed a paradigm shift from the past. I would go to the extent of saying a massive paradigm shift where we have to give our total attention to find the solution that can fit in the present environment.

“Emerging deep technologies like Artificial Intelligence, robotics and quantum, India is focusing on that. Semiconductors, India is focusing on that. Biotech, drones and hypersonics are not only rewriting the very character of war, progress and mastery of these domains will determine the strategic haves and have nots of the future,” the VP added.