In his third and final volume on India's wars since independence, Major General Sukhwant Singh has made a frank appraisal of the lessons that they teach and the questions that they raise in relation to the problem of building a credible and meaningful defence system for the country.

"The sole aim of higher direction for short wars is to develop concurrently the peacetime concepts and capabilities of the forces to serve our strategic interests and objectives in war," says General Sukhwant Singh. "There has been no development in this regard since the Second World War. We have just not been able to attune ourselves to the techniques of short wars."