Chanakya (350-275 BC) is among the few classic political thinkers of the world who are regarded as masters of the art of statecraft. We have the distinction of educating him in our ancient Taxilla University, where he stayed on as a teacher of political science and economics. At that time it was the Nanda Empire (323 BC onwards) that ruled over most of what is Pakistan now and the central Indian territories. The Nanda king was indiscreet enough to mistreat Chanakya, thus earning his lasting ire, which eventually resulted in the destruction of his empire at the hands of Chanakya’s power manipulations. Chandragupta Maurya became the new emperor with Chanakya’s help and set up a larger empire, founded the Maurya dynasty. Chanakya was a consummate scholar, philosopher, jurist, economist and royal political advisor.
Chanakya shares his vision more with Machiavelli by way of surgically separating day-to-day ethics and morality from diplomacy. That was a bold departure from the established state practice and a praiseworthy focus on serving national interest regardless of any other considerations. Very well, but for the practitioners of this particular school of political thought, just like any other practicing ideology, there is a price to pay.
Viewed in the context of the possibilities of immediate gains, the cost appears insignificant as it provides the practitioner state a geo-political ascendency over the target state, which is what seems to matter then. However, slowly but inexorably the illusion of success begins to unravel and with that the erosion of the moral authority of the parent state sets in, just as duplicity and falsehoods begin to unpack. It is this illusion that drives statesmen to mount a Chanakyan/Machiavellian maneuver. When strategic effects begin to appear they tend to construct a mosaic of strategic gains. This is where the trouble lies as few realise that those gains are like cotton candy: colourful and voluminous but hollow.
The US invasions of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are objective lessons of just such a flawed preference in modern history of which multiple invasions of Afghanistan are particularly salutary. All the three ill-fated maneuvers destabilised respective regions and seriously jeopardised world peace in more than one ways. They produced uncontrollable insurgencies whose mother roots were their own proxies to begin with. The Afghan Taliban and IS were US proxies that spun out of control and have become such a menace. Bordering state facilitators like Pakistan, which were inducted under a combination of need, greed and coercion, were pushed into a terrible socio-political quandary, abandoned and then castigated. Since all US interventions are queerly measured in dollars, the cost of these forays run into trillions of dollars and is mounting, untold human miseries not withstanding.
The architect of the US’ Afghanistan debacle was the ‘brilliant’ Zbigniew Brzezinski. It is educational to learn what he thought he was doing and why. His achievement could be a dream of any foreign affairs strategist and truly a matter of pride for Machiavelli. The lethal debris that venture has left in its wake have become a minefield for the US and the perennial loss of an honourable regard in the region. It may only be a matter of time before US bases in Afghanistan are viewed by Afghans in the unfortunate way the fortified US embassy was regarded by Iranians in Tehran just before the Khomenite revolution. Afghans are far more inscrutable than any in the region. Their sense of gratitude is aroused with the greatest of difficulties and is therefore an unsuitable premise for lasting relations.
Brzezinski’s matter of fact singularity of purpose is quite remarkable. When asked, this is what he had to say: “We did not push the Russians to intervene [in Afghanistan],” Brzezinski said in 1998, explaining his geopolitical masterstroke (Operation Cyclone) in this Cold War edition of the great game, “but we knowingly increased the probability that they would…that secret operation was an excellent idea. Its effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap.” Asked about the operation’s legacy when it came to creating a militant Islam hostile to the US, Brzezinski was coolly unapologetic, “What is most important to the history of the world?” he asked. “The Taliban (Afghans) or the collapse of the Soviet Union? Some stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War?” These lines have been taken from Geopolitics of American Global Decline by Alfred W McCoy.
Notice Brzezinski’s cold, clinical disregard for massive loss of life and property, and attendant hardships suffered by Afghans and Pakistanis. However, US interests were well served for the moment, regardless. His views are not only Machiavellian but astonishingly, like that of Chanakya, whose inheritor and latest practitioner in South Asia is Modi’s India.
India’s neighbourhood is constantly in awe of its aggressive posturing, military interventions and clandestine meddling into its state affairs. Pakistan is a particular object of India’s ire and intricate manipulations in conjunction with the US, which eggs it on to undertake obstructive external and destabilising internal maneuvers against this troubled country located at a sensitive geo-strategic juncture. The significant intermediate objective appears to be to create a state of regulated chaos in Pakistan, conditioning its political will to the level where the country becomes fully pliant and a client satellite entity.
Their chosen methodology is diplomatic arrogance, risqué attempts to choke off international support and repeated military provocations along the Line of Control (LoC) and Working Boundary to force a military-diplomatic error upon Pakistan. They have found sympathetic ears in the US whose latest flirtation with India has its own ‘China axe’ to grind. Modi’s rise to power seems to have let the dogs of war and demons of regional domination out in the open in India. Unfortunately, both these notions play directly into the latent reservations of countries on its periphery. Unlike the US, China and EU, India is one larger political entity that engenders apprehensions from its neighbours rather than harmony and cooperation. Coercion never produces peace; it breeds temporisation to live with the wolf. Just as arrogance begets abhorrence not respect.
(To be continued)
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at [email protected]