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Who's conducting India's wars?

Conventional wisdom suggests leaders must control army generals, but we seem to be doing opposite

Illustration by Binay Sinha
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Illustration by Binay Sinha

Aakar Patel
When he was assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin Roosevelt learned something important from his boss, the pacifist Josephus Daniels. “While the European nations allowed power to devolve on to the military when once (the First World) War began, leaving their politicians powerless either to overrule the generals or to make peace, Daniels taught FDR the greatest lesson of the twentieth century,” writes Nigel Hamilton in his book American Caesars profiling modern presidents. The lesson was: “Politicians must retain control of the generals, and must use that power wisely.”

French leader Georges Clémenceau said the same thing about war being too
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