Admitting that India neither had the capability nor the intention to match China’s military strength, the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and Navy Chief Admiral Suresh Mehta said that "common sense dictates that India needs to co-operate with China rather than confront it. In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China, force-for-force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and therefore our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities,” Mehta said, delivering an address on National Security Challenges organised by the National Maritime Foundation.

In what was probably his last public address as Navy chief — he retires at the end of the month — Mehta said: “Common sense dictates that co-operation with China would be preferable to competition or conflict, as it would be foolhardy to compare India and China as equals...whether in terms of GDP, defense spending or any other economic, social or development parameter, the gap between the two is just too wide to bridge and getting wider by the day.” Can you imagine how this statement would affect the moral of defense forces? How it would boost the morals of military strategists in China and Pakistan? Who needs enemies if the custodians themselves are so downcast and sunk in morbid thoughts? Does the Indian Constitution permit Army Chiefs to spill the beans like this even if there may be truth to the statement?