Nations fight wars, but not the same war twice over. The war on terror is becoming Pakistan’s thirty years’ war, a thorn sprouting from the same bud during every campaigning season. A festering wound of Shakespearian magnitude. The Pakistani military, therefore doubly engaged to fight with longitudinal deployments. Professional excellence is praised by all and sundry. What is going on across, demands, a sort of engaged disengagement, not in the proverbial sense but in the professional one? Challenges are huge, both in Baluchistan and the erstwhile tribal belt. These sub-national incursions from across are being stoked by the enemies of Pakistan, who want to perpetrate political terrorism on one hand and also that the state remains engaged in this shadowy war of attrition, thereby missing another decade of comprehensive modernization.
If one misses the seat on an economic bandwagon, there is a chance to catch the same four-wheelers through an elaborate plan of modernization. China and India did the same. They fought poverty not through capital but by reforms of modernization imbibed in locale research and development. Now India is on its way to military reforms after gaining an economic pedestal from 33 billion dollars in reserves in 1988 to that around 600 billion dollars in 2023. How that is affecting the military which is cast in the traditions of its colonial masters.
This is happening on three tangents, all joining together to make the trigonometry of a new military machine. (They say the Kargil war and Pulwama are the latest trigger to this ensuing military posturing). First is the strategic sphere. Mr K Subrahmanyam was considered the Henry Kissinger of India. For around thirty-five years he tried to change the strategic culture of India by creating a new narrativity in strategic thought. He was also the architect of Indian nuclear doctrine and doctrinal changes in the strategic landscape. In the alley of USA think tanks, he was considered to be “India”.
If one misses the seat on the economic bandwagon, there is a chance to catch the same four-wheelers through an elaborate plan of modernization.
According to Subrahmanyum the strategic elite of India was indifferent to the aspirations of the nation. He believed that India should orient itself towards Kissinger’s balance of power concept, rather the Huntington’s clash of civilizations. India is now posthumously following the same advice from the tacit and now the open help of the USA. The concept of the triad and No First Use in the nuclear doctrine of India was Subrahmanyam’s idea of shrouding the nuclear programme in a benign-looking wrap and continuing weaponising beneath the veneer. However, credit goes to him for traversing the intelligence and policymakers from the intellectual moorings of Western think tanks,( mostly based in Washington) to that of Indian think tanks and a concept of Eastern theory of state engagement. Since 2014 the Indian strategic thought is taken over by the Gang of Nagpur, led by prime minister Modi.
The BJP, RSS and Bajrang Dal have taken over the strategic thought and are now the strategic elite of the largest democracy on earth. Recent events in Manipur (Though started as a tribal dispute), Dehli and elsewhere depicts India being taken over by the clash of civilization internally, while the state is busy balancing the power internationally. The second change is in doctrinal posture. From indra gandhi, and Sunderji to a cold start, all are Pakistan-centric doctrines. While stipulating a doctrine, four things are considered, the military technology, the national geography, the capability of the adversary and the own capability. India almost always misses out on the national geography and the capability of the adversary in terms of time, space and will fight.
Now converting the 17 commands of the Indian military into three theatres of war, each poised towards Pakistan, China and the Indian Ocean is a new experiment in the doctrinal sphere. The appointment of CDS, a four-star each for the theatre and an inbuilt jointness is yet to be tested, as, the biggest factor is almost always the geography. Pakistan has an advantage in that despite the question of depth, which is less pronounced in the nuclear overhang. The third sphere is technology.
India is fast acquiring military pieces of all sorts from every formidable manufacturer in the world. Even the concept of Agnipath and Agniveers tells the military ambitions of the Indians. This development is to be taken seriously. Pakistan is left with no choice but to ponder on its strategic thought, doctrines and the pacing up in military technology. First come first, to find Pakistan’s Kissinger and Subrahmanyum, who can develop the thought imbibed in our Eastern theory away from Western think tanks, whose research papers are followed here like gospel. The over-polarity of the political system and socio-economic disharmony is the biggest challenge. On a lighter note, (not that light) Perhaps to start with, a few almonds can bring a change to the frontal cortex and the amygdala, both the parts responsible for rational and irrational thought in the human brain. Lastly, the sectors yearning for modernization have to be addressed immediately to jump-start the economic engine, which is the actual scaffold to build the strategic, doctrinal and technological ascendency of a nation.
The writer is a freelance contributor on security related issues. He is also a Ph.D Scholar who can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @Abid_Latif55