On 29 December 2022, former Chief of the Army Staff General Manoj Mukund Naravane publicly lamented the absence of and the need for a National Security Strategy, or NSS. Delivering the 4th General KV Krishna Rao Memorial Lecture, he said “Theaterisation is not an end, it is only a means to an end. That end has to be specified first in the form of a national defence strategy. That defence strategy, in turn, has to flow out of a national security strategy. Unless there is a national security strategy in place, to just keep talking about theaterisation is actually putting...