This essay argues that if Indian think tanks are to influence policy, they need to replicate the conditions under which policy allows itself to be shaped by expert advice. The essay uses the 19th century Prussian General Staff as a model to highlight these conditions. It focuses specifically on national security policy, since this is an area where Indian think tanks face severe challenges in advising the government. The essay suggests that such institutes should aspire to provide value-added knowledge to policymakers and thereby complement the work of existing government departments, not compete with them.

Failure to develop niche expertise has put think tanks at risk of financial anemia and intellectual mediocrity. Perennially short of funds, they degenerate into employment agencies for retired government officials and second-rate academics, recruited on the basis of nepotism and not talent. Many Indian institutes have already acquired a reputation for being gossip forums. One think tank, considered by some as the country’s finest, was derided in 2000 as a ‘subzi mandi’ (‘vegetable market’). ¹Although its profile has improved considerably in the decade since, it is still unknown outside the Asian security studies field.

Think tanks in India are presently focused on responding to propositions made by their Western counterparts, particularly those in the United States and United Kingdom. They are fighting defensively in the war of ideas and narratives, instead of taking the offense and throwing India’s critics into disarray. It is not clear why for instance, Indian analysts have to justify their government’s reluctance to talk with Pakistan, when Washington asks the Mexican government to take a similarly hardline posture against drug cartels. Nor is it clear why India should politically align with the West against China and thereby exacerbate Sino-Indian tensions, while many Western states continue to court Chinese businesses. Without asserting themselves on the international scene through high-quality policy analysis, Indian think tanks risk always being caught on the wrong side of a discourse imbalance.

There are three main obstacles to bridging the gap ‘between knowledge and power’ – the role which think tanks are supposedly meant to fulfill. ²These are: a lack of funding, autonomy and data. First, the essay shall describe how such handicaps have prevented the Indian think tanking industry from acquiring international prominence. The essay shall then outline how the experience of the Prussian General Staff can offer useful insights into the idea-policy relationship, as well as lessons in contemporary think tank management. It suggests that the key to acquiring policy relevance is to recruit highly talented analysts, who are fired by nationalistic zeal. They should be encouraged to develop specialized expertise and then be rotated in and out of advisory roles. That way, their ideas would not become stale and could be critically evaluated and improved upon by other analysts.

Before skeptics argue that the politico-military contexts of 19th century Prussia and 21st century India cannot be compared, this essay would hasten to point out that its argument is more illustrative than prescriptive. Undoubtedly, local and historical particularities limit the degree to which lessons can be extrapolated from one case and applied to another. However, erstwhile Prussia and today’s India share at least two common characteristics. Firstly, from an early stage of their existence they both faced existentialist threats from belligerent neighbours, and had to rely on a combination of diplomacy and military power to survive. In particular, being predominantly land-based powers, they needed to be ever-alert to the possibility of a two-front attack across their western and eastern borders.

Secondly, while aspiring for great power status, they were also saddled with the task of building a sense of Nationhood among diverse peoples. While Prussia was an extremely powerful kingdom in Europe, it had rivals among lesser Germanic fiefdoms. Overcoming these antagonisms to forge a sense of Pan-Germanic unity was a long and laborious process, helped mainly by the fact that the Prussian nobility allowed talented individuals from non-Prussian families to rise in the official hierarchy. This assimilatory quality needs to be emulated by the modern-day Indian policymaking apparatus, so that all Indians, whether Kashmiris, Punjabis, Nagas, Tamils, Assamese or otherwise, can feel that they have a stake in India’s rise to international prominence and lend their efforts towards this endeavour.

The Ideas Industry in India

According to the 2011 report of the Think Tanks and Global Societies Program, India has the third largest number of think tanks worldwide, after the United States and China. Out of a global total of 6480, the country has 292 such institutes, 65 of which focus on international and security affairs. None of the 292 was considered worthy enough to be nominated as one of the 75 top think tanks in the world. Only one, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), was included among the top 5 think tanks in Asia, coming in at third place.³

This sad state of affairs can be traced partly to a lack of interest in history. Unlike other great civilizations, Indian intellectual tradition has relied on cyclical rather than linear narratives, on philosophy rather than chronology. ⁴There is a fatalistic acceptance of misfortune, mixed with an innate belief in the irrepressible strength of personal resilience. Thus, despite having been invaded and occupied through centuries, Indians still perversely find it a matter of pride to proclaim that they have never themselves acted as aggressors. Ironically, Western civilization from ancient Rome onwards has built its claim to greatness on precisely the opposite principle – that the superiority of its culture and material strength compels others to submit to it.

Inability to develop an institutional memory has bred hubris among sections of the Indian elite. There is an ingrained resistance to advice from individuals outside the privileged circles of patronage. Added to this semi-feudal power structure is widespread poverty. Bankrolling a research center is viewed as a luxury, not an imperative. Since India is now a nuclear power, the country’s threat perception has also changed greatly. External actors like China and Pakistan are regarded as less of a concern. More attention is being paid in political debates to economic and social agendas than to matters of national defence and military strength.

Financial difficulties

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by Indian think tanks is lack of funding. Normally, there are three types of financial arrangements: academic, contract and advocacy. ⁵Academic think tanks are affiliated with university departments and are sustained by research grants. Contract think tanks function as consultancies, carrying out focused studies for several paying clients in the government and private sector. Advocacy think tanks are funded by interest groups, and tailor their research agenda according to the requirements of these sponsors. An interest group might be a business enterprise, a political party, or a government organization.

India has several dubious academic think tanks and a few very professional advocacy think tanks. It does not yet have a strong component of contract think tanks. This is a shortfall which ought to be remedied. With the expansion of Indian commercial interests overseas, there is growing scope for collaboration between think tanks and the private sector. ⁶For such potential to be actualized however, think tanks have to develop specialized expertise in geo-economics. The present research agenda of Indian analytical institutes, focused on political and military affairs, is only of marginal interest to the corporate sector.

Presently, the funding scene in India is so dismal that more money comes from overseas donors than domestic ones. This is only to be expected, since think tanks are caught domestically between government arrogance and corporate indifference. In security studies, a great deal of research on Pakistan and China is being financed by foreign interests. ⁷This provides grounds for concern, since analysis might get shaped by foreign biases and start conflating Indian strategic interests with foreign ones, distorting policy recommendations. Without a clearly nationalist agenda, Indian think tanks would lose direction and relevance to contemporary policymaking. At the same time, if they advertize an exclusivist posture, they are unlikely to receive foreign funding. A Catch-22 situation thus prevails.

Questionable degree of autonomy

Another problem arises from a perceived lack of autonomy. Each of the three armed forces has its own in-house think tank: the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS – Army), the National Maritime Foundation (NMF – Navy) and the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS – Air Force). All three institutes are headed by scholars with impeccable credentials. Their analyses would, under normal circumstances, be optimally geared towards advancing India’s national interests in a holistic manner. In particular, it would plug a glaring weakness in the Indian security studies scene; lack of civilian expertise in military affairs. ⁸With many of the researchers attached to CLAWS, NMF and CAPS having a non-military background, these think tanks are well suited to provide objective and policy-relevant advice.

Unfortunately, baseless aspersions can still be cast as to the full extent of their autonomy, purely on account of their institutional affiliations. An example is the Army’s Cold Start Doctrine. Intense lobbying by Pakistan has led some US analysts to conclude that the doctrine is destabilizing for South Asia. They have implied that the Indian Army is encroaching on civilian supremacy in strategic affairs – an unsubtle effort to play on the insecurities of civil-military relations in India.⁹Thus, even well-argued commentaries by civilian scholars in favour of Cold Start risk being denigrated as a façade for bureaucratic empire-building. This image problem is likely to grow worse for government-backed think tanks, as they acquire a larger media profile and become more relevant to public debates.

Furthermore, policymakers do not receive single-point advice and usually, have a range of ‘experts’ whose opinions they can seek. Often, their objective might be less to genuinely solicit advice than merely bring to prominence, opinions matching their own. If they do not like what they hear from one group of experts, they can always call upon another group to provide a contrary assessment. Especially with regard to national security, where there is perpetual tension between military and economic arguments for and against a confrontational posture, officials can rely on think tanks experts to spend more time opposing each other’s institutional positions than critically evaluating government policy.

Denial of data

Finally, Indian think tanks find it virtually impossible to access relevant data. As K. Subrahmanyam, a founding member of IDSA once noted, tight control over information allows career bureaucrats to remain central to policymaking. ¹⁰It also provides a screen for occasional acts of incompetence. Even if elected officials were inclined to seek advice from non-governmental experts, the lack of data facing such experts would ensure that they could not provide timely inputs to compete with the bureaucracy. All that academics and other professional researchers are intellectually equipped to do in this situation is re-frame the discourse around a given topic, in ways that might serve long-term policy objectives. ¹¹For dealing with short-term crisis scenarios, it is best not to look to think tankers for advice.

Some might argue that this is an overly pessimistic view. One example of a think tanker allegedly influencing policy comes from the 1971 East Pakistan crisis. On 8 April 1971, K. Subrahmanyam, then the Director of IDSA, commented that the crisis presented India with an opportunity ‘the like of which will never come again’. ¹²His words are often viewed by Pakistani scholars as having shifted the political mood in New Delhi in favour of war. In fact, they might have only strengthened an already powerful pro-war lobby within the government. At the time Subrahmanyam penned these words, the Indian government was still undecided about the merits of using force. His analysis was important in that it gave ballast to hardliners before the topmost political executive made a final decision. However, those who cite the 1971 case would do well to remember that expert advice is most likely to have an impact at the earliest stages of policymaking, before institutional positions become entrenched. ¹³

Since India currently faces an unstable military situation with China and Pakistan, including the possibility of a two-front attack, there are sound security reasons for restricting the dissemination of sensitive data. In its absence however, Indian think tanks have to fall back on inductive as opposed to deductive logic while analyzing security affairs. Lacking hard information on the latest military and terrorism-related activities in foreign countries, they need to use conceptual models derived from analogous situations elsewhere in the world. For this process of knowledge transfer to occur, Indian think tanks need systematic access to Western academic and policy journals. Subscription costs to these are often unaffordable.

b>A gridlock of problems

At the moment, much of the strategic analysis conducted by think tanks is based on material pulled off the internet. It is a safe bet that 90% of India’s 292 think tanks would have to shut down if their internet connections were cut off for six months. Lack of funding is partly responsible for lack of data, since researchers lack the resources to go on lengthy field trips and are not monetarily incentivized to do so. For its part, the problem of autonomy stems from the need to acquire a sponsor, if a think tank is to keep operating. With all three problems feeding off each other, it is not clear whether the Indian think tank industry can consolidate itself to the point where it becomes a serious player in the global ideas market.

The Case of the Prussian General Staff

Having outlined the rather dismal prospects facing Indian think tanking, this essay shall now describe how the Prussian General Staff might serve as a role model. The essay does not argue that all Indian think tanks should aspire to emulate the General Staff. Such an effort would in fact, contradict the very basis on which successful advisory institutes work: rather than competing with established power centers and knowledge brokers, create a monopoly over a specialized kind of policy-relevant expertise. Build up a small analytical cadre consisting of the finest talent that can be recruited and rotate its personnel to ensure that your institutional views are conveyed to the widest possible audience. These two management principles contributed to making the General Staff the Prussian Army’s finest weapon, and the envy of all modern armies over two centuries.

A fraternity of intellectual nationalists

The Prussian General Staff was divided into two branches, which can roughly be equated with headquarters and line postings. The headquarters branch, located in Berlin, was called the Great General Staff (Grosser Generalstab). It was a magnet for the best and brightest officers in the army. At the line level of corps and divisions, staff officers attached to local headquarters collectively constituted the Field Forces General Staff. These officers had formerly served with the Great General Staff in Berlin, and were charged with spreading its ideas throughout the army as well as ensuring their implementation.

The line staff officers would not have had an easy task, but for the unique circumstances under which the General Staff system was created. Faced with a military threat from Napoleonic France, in 1802 a senior Prussian officer submitted a memo to the Prussian king. It called for the establishment of a military committee that would advise the king on politico-strategic matters and conduct anticipatory planning for a future war. For four years, the memo gathered dust, until war broke out with France in October 1806. Two weeks later, French forces crushed the Prussian army at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt. In the aftermath of defeat, a reform movement began within the Prussian military.

The movement was led by a highly respected general and newly-appointed War Minister named Gerhard von Scharnhost. Among the first directives he issued was one for the creation of a General Staff along the parameters prescribed in 1802. For fifteen years, the new organization existed in a semi-official capacity, acting as a fraternity for like-minded officers concerned with redeeming Prussian military honour. In 1821, it was removed from the War Ministry’s control and formally made an independent organization. Thus, the task of ensuring autonomy from bureaucratic politics and turf wars was achieved. ¹³Next, the staff introduced a system of personnel management that was designed to ensure that only the best and most highly motivated officers could serve with it.

Recruitment and rotation

During the early 1800s, it was customary for the brightest officers in the Prussian Army to apply for studies at the War Academy in Berlin. Out of a typical intake of 120 applicants, only around 40 would pass the entrance test and gain admission. Upon completion of their three-year course, the 12 best among these 40 would be selected for work at the Great General Staff. After two years, they would be returned to their units. Those whose performance had been rated as exceptional would be called up once again, this time to serve with the Field Forces General Staff. They would receive a marked increase in seniority upon completion of a two year-stint there. If still regarded as high achievers, they would be called up for Staff service once again, with yet another major jump in seniority. ¹⁵

The extremely high standards of examination and personnel vetting ensured that the General Staff remained a small and exclusive club of military intellectuals. New recruits were indoctrinated to uphold Spartan values of self-sacrifice and developed an almost monastic obsession with fulfilling their duty in a professional milieu filled with distractions. Their work ethic was encompassed in the credo: ‘work hard, stay inconspicuous, be more than you seem’.¹⁶Even as this elite mindset was preserved, the Great General Staff expanded its contacts across the army by constantly rotating officers between field and headquarters postings. In doing so, it ensured that its personnel got into positions where they could directly supervise the implementation of ideas which they had themselves thought up. The gap between knowledge and power had started to become smaller. ¹⁷

Development of specialized knowledge

Officers with highly specialized expertise were exempt from the rotational process. They became a permanent part of the Great General Staff. This was a major source of the Staff’s power: it possessed knowledge which no other branch of the Prussian Army had. Its personnel in Berlin were divided into three regional sections, each dealing with Prussia’s neighbours to the west, south and east. There are also four thematic sections, dealing with intelligence, cartography, logistics and most important of all, military history. General Staff officers were expected to know the details of past campaigns so that they could clinically analyse mistakes as well as successful tactics. As these officers became specialists in their respective subjects, their influence vis-à-vis field commanders increased proportionately.

For many years, the senior ranks of the Prussian officer corps reluctantly tolerated the presence of General Staff officers in their midst, much as Indian officials today treat external researchers. Staff officers were viewed as arrogant usurpers, out to wrest for themselves the prerogatives which traditionally lay with formation commanders. Moreover, they were seen as a secretive, almost Mafia-like club of bookish anti-social types.¹⁸The level of anonymity at which they worked was such that during Prussia’s wars with Denmark and Austria in 1864 and 1866, most commanders did not know they were implementing a war plan originally prepared by the Great General Staff in Berlin. At one point in the Austrian-Prussian War, a puzzled division commander looked at a messenger from Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, and said ‘this is all very well, but who is General Moltke?’¹⁹

Victory against Denmark and Austria however, changed the General Staff’s image completely. Now viewed as the collective wisdom of a technocratic elite, its officers’ advice was received with deference by high ranking field commanders. Key to this transformation was the formidable personality of Moltke himself. Having joined the Great General Staff as a young officer in 1828, he remained associated with it in various capacities for an astonishing sixty years. During the latter half of this period, he served as its chief. Stern and possessed of an icy formality, according to a popular legend he is said to have smiled only twice in his adult life. The first occasion was when he was told that a certain enemy fortress was impregnable, and the second was when he heard that his mother in law had passed away.

Fostering change

Moltke studied the art of warfare with an intensity that was awe-inspiring. He is credited for introducing several doctrinal and procedural changes that gave a decisive advantage to Prussian forces on the battlefield. For instance, he pioneered the concept of mission-based command. The concept was based on a principle that instead of teaching commanders how to behave in a crisis, it was more important to teach them how to make independent decisions.¹⁹This simple innovation brought impressive victories: when Prussian commanders took to the field, they were mentally prepared to exploit any tactical opportunities that arose. In contrast, their opponents kept asking higher headquarters for advice. This led to one-sided battles, with the Prussians constantly seizing the initiative and surprising the enemy.

Another of Moltke’s innovations was the harnessing of civilian technology to military purposes. Even before a single railway line had been laid in Prussia, the General Staff understood that railways would revolutionize military logistics. Mobilization times would be reduced by a factor of six, thus allowing whichever country possessed the densest railway network to put more troops into the field than its opponents could. Accordingly, under Moltke’s supervision, the Prussian Army began drilling for massive railroad movements in 1859. Seven years later, these preparations paid off as Prussia rushed troops into combat against Austrian forces, using five railway lines to the Austrians’ one.²¹The resulting tactical superiority, combined with new doctrines for maneuver warfare, meant that the battle-hardened Austrian Army was routed in a blitzkrieg-type campaign.

During all this, the Great General Staff numbered just over a hundred men. On the eve of its finest hour, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the entire Staff in Berlin consisted of just 16 officers and 119 other ranks.²²Between them, they coordinated the movements of almost half a million troops in one of the most stunning military victories ever fought. France, which was bigger and richer than Prussia, lost the contested territories of Alsace and Lorraine.²³The Prussian Army fought its way to Paris and from the Palace of Versailles, Prussian diplomats declared the formation of a new German Empire.

An Institute…as well as an Institution

What lessons could the Prussian General Staff offer Indian think tank managers in the 21st century? First, that small is better. ²⁴The relatively tiny size of the Staff did not detract from its respectability, once it demonstrated that it possessed expertise which no field commander had, and none could do without. Specialized knowledge that complemented the efforts of established power structures, instead of competing with them, made it relevant to operational planning. Second, that multidisciplinary research is the key to innovation. Even as the Staff acquired in-depth expertise, it broadened its mandate to include topics that went beyond the purely military. General Staff officers for instance, were expected to know the intricacies of diplomatic procedures since war plans had to take into account formal protocols for declaring war. They also needed to consider public administration, since militarization of Prussian society made the army responsible in wartime for functions normally handled by civilian authorities. The General Staff was in effect, a small but multidisciplinary think tank.

Such a combination of compactness and diverse expertise has the potential to overcome, at least partially, the handicaps referred to earlier in this essay. Maintenance costs will be low in a think tank staffed with a few top-quality researchers. Although these researchers would have to be adequately compensated for their services, such compensation could take the form of actually including them in policy debates, rather than handing out fat paychecks. The closest that India ever got to creating a nationalistic-intellectual elite comparable to the Prussian General Staff was the Ear-Marking System of the Intelligence Bureau. Introduced in 1954, it stipulated that the best police officers in the country would have to work on strategic intelligence.²⁵They would handle both operations and analysis, thus monitoring developments on the ground while also developing a long-term perspective. All that they received by way of compensation was a salary increment of 200 rupees. Since the Ear-Marking System was discontinued in the late 1970s, India’s security establishment currently has no means of ‘concentrating the best brain power…where it would do the most good’.²⁶

Third, the experience of the Prussian General Staff suggests that policy advisors do their best work out of the public glare. Unlike most think tanks today, which measure policy impact based on webpage hits and media quotes, a genuinely influential research center will prepare reports for an elite audience of policymakers, not a rabble of curious onlookers. It would draft policy papers before the terms of debate have already been set, so as to stand the best chance of influencing policy discussions. Such anticipatory assessments would prevent it from being used as a pawn in bureaucratic turf battles, or as a rubber stamp for policy initiatives already decided upon. To ensure that its ideas are circulated widely, it would not depend on media sound bytes but would instead operate a revolving door recruitment policy. New analysts would replace old ones in a cyclical process, while fraternal links are constantly maintained with like-minded researchers outside the formal organizational structure. That way, a think tank would be not just an institute, it would gradually become an institution.

Lastly, the case of the Prussian General Staff goes to prove that mindset changes do not occur randomly, they are triggered by powerful reform movements that are personality-driven. Prussia was motivated to set up a professional Staff system due to the shock of its 1806 defeat and the strategic vision of high-ranking generals like Scharnhorst. Without his patronage and that of his fellow-reformers the General Staff would not have even survived long enough for Moltke to come along and mould it into a war-winning instrument. India needs a similar reform movement in security affairs, to be spearheaded by distinguished veterans of the policymaking establishment. The 2008 Mumbai attacks and growing threats from a China-Pakistan nexus could serve as a catalyst for change, provided a comparable sense of zealous activism pervades the Indian intellectual and security communities.

References :
1 : V. Sudarshan, ‘Mock Fights and Boy Scouts’, Outlook, 13 November 2000, accessed at http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?210385, on 11 March 2011.
2 : S. Samuel C. Rajiv, ‘An honours list for the ideas bazaar’, Business Standard, 6 February 2011, accessed at http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/s-samuel-c-rajiv-an-honours-list-forideas-bazaar/424161/, on 11 March 2011.
3 : James G. McGann, ‘The Global “Go-To Think Tanks”, 2010’, Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania, accessed at http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/18404_2010globalgotoreport-thinktankindex.pdf, on 11 March 2011.
4 : Mrinal Suman, ‘India needs independent defence think tanks’, Indian Defence Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2008), accessed at http://www.indiandefencereview.com/IDR-Updates/India-needs-independent-defence-think-tanks.html, on 11 March 2011.
5 : G.B. Kochetkov and V.B. Supyan, ‘Think Tanks in the USA: Science as an Instrument of Public Policy’, Studies on Russian Economic Development, Vol. 21, No. 5 (2010), p. 496.
6 : Sanjaya Baru, ‘Can Indian Think Tanks and research Institutions Cope with the Rising Demand for Foreign and Security Policy Research?’, ISAS Working Paper No. 67, dated 16 June 2009, p. 1.
7 : Sanjaya Baru, ‘Indian minds, foreign funds’, Business Standard, 9 August 2010, accessed at http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sanjaya-baru-indian-minds-foreign-funds/403915/, on 11 March 2011.
8 : Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization (Washington: Brookings, 2010), p. 144.
9 : For example, see Quinn J. Rhodes, ‘Limited War Under the Nuclear Umbrella: An Analysis of India’s Cold Start Doctrine and Its Implications for Stability on the Subcontinent’, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California (June 2010), accessed at http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholarly/theses/2010/Jun/10Jun_Rhodes.pdf, on 11 March 2011.
10 : Praveen Dass, ‘422 and counting…Think tanks boom in India’, Times of India, 17 October 2009, accessed at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-10-17/india/28109602_1_tanks-foreign-policy-uk, on 11 March 2011.
11 : Ajai Sahni, ‘Social Science and Contemporary Conflicts: The Challenge of Research on Terrorism’, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict and Resolution, Vol. 9 (2001), accessed at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume9/Article5.htm, on 11 March 2011.
12 : David Myard, ‘Sadruddin Aga Khan and the 1971 East Pakistan Crisis’, Global Migration Research Paper No. 1 (2010), The Graduate Institute, Geneva, accessed at http://graduateinstitute.ch/webdav/site/globalmigration/shared/WP_AgaKhan.pdf, on 11 March 2011.
13 : James G. McGann, ‘Think Tanks and Policy Advice in the US’, Foreign Policy Research Institute (August 2005), p. 17.
14 : Friedhelm Klein, ‘The Myth of the Prusso-German General Staff’, Baltic Defence Review, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 134-136.
15 : Dallas D. Irvine, ‘The French and Prussian Staff Systems Before 1870’, The Journal of the American Military History Foundation, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1938), p. 195.
16 : Klein, op cit., p. 135.
17 : John D. Stanley, ‘The General Staff: An Analysis of Its Effectiveness’, The Journal of the Academy of Management, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1959), pp. 58-59.
18 : Ralph N. Traxler, ‘A Model of Modern Administrative Organization: The German General Staff’, The Journal of the Academy of Management, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1961), p. 110.
19 : Hajo Holborn, ‘The Prusso-German School: Moltke and the Rise of the General Staff’, in Peter Paret ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 286.
20 : Dale O. Smith, ‘Observations on the German General Staff’, Military Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1963), p. 32.
21 : Hajo Holborn, ‘Moltke’s Strategical Concepts’, Military Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1942), p. 160 and p. 164.
22 : Smith, op cit., p. 33.
23 : David Kahn, ‘The Prehistory of the General Staff’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71, No. 2 (2007), p. 499.
24 : ‘Cost Effectiveness of 25 Most Cited Think Tanks’, Center for Economic and Policy Research (October 2006), accessed at http://www.cepr.net/documents/cost_effectiveness_think_tanks_2006.pdf, on 11 March 2011.
25 : A.K. Verma, ‘Intelligence Reform without A Cultural Shift in Approach will be a Non Starter’, South Asia Analysis Group Paper No. 4353, dated 28 February 2011, accessed at http://southasiaanalysis.org/papers44/paper4353.html, on 11 March 2011.
26 : Irvine, op cit.

---------------------------------------
Published date : 25^th March, 2011