Is there any cure for our India obsession?

There we go again, that our nuke and missile programme is not to be capped because India continues to expand its nuclear inventory. Let’s forget for a moment where the advice to moderate our nuclear arsenal is coming from. So let’s take the United States and John Kerry out of the reckoning. Can’t we think for ourselves?

How much of a nuclear stockpile equals adequate deterrence? Or must we match India bomb for bomb, missile for missile? If this is not a definition of insanity, what other name do we give this exercise?

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that India has 100 atomic bombs and we have just 5. Aren’t five bombs, each larger than those that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki, enough deterrence? The arguments our nuclear bonzes use to justify our ongoing nuke programme are the same as the Americans and Soviets marshalled during the cold war. What they got was not increased security but a never-ending nuclear arms race. Do we want to go down the same path?

If we still think that deterrence is ensured only by ever-expanding quantity, try another hypothesis. Just imagine the Islamic State, Daesh, getting hold of just one nuclear weapon. Forget about the Middle East. They would be able to blackmail Europe and stop President Putin from continuing with his air strikes.

Or take Iran which has not a single nuclear weapon and which, as an outcome of the recent nuclear deal with the major powers, has virtually frozen its nuclear programme for the next 15 years. Yet when it had to, it stood up to the US and defied its will even though the hit-Iran-and-be-done-with-it lobby in the US is very strong. Iran is shoring up Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is helping the Iraqi government hold the line against the Islamic State. It is doing all this without being a nuclear power.

Have our nuclear weapons made us a more confident country? That’s not the impression conveyed by our Indian obsession. Despite our large and now battle-tested army, and despite our considerable nuke capability, in season and out we fret about the threat from India. Is it India we talk about thus or a resuscitated Mongol Empire? This is paranoia and for paranoia even the great Hakim Luqman had no remedy.

And we continue to decry the conventional imbalance between our two countries. Well, the imbalance now arises not from any Indian conspiracy but from a more prosaic circumstance. The Indian economy is much larger than ours and is growing at a rate faster than ours. This gives India the ability to spend more on defence…because it has more money to spare. Is this too difficult to understand?

Perhaps it would be a wiser bet if instead of stockpiling more fissile material and building more formidable and farther-reaching missiles we looked to ways to improve our economic performance. If we did so we may even come to the conclusion that investing in education, in real universities (as opposed to fake or sub-standard ones), and in research would be more useful than ploughing our limited resources into a never-ending nuclear programme?

I am not saying do away with the Ghauris and the Abdalis and the Shaheens. I am only saying our scientists and technicians have done a damned good job. We have enough missiles for deterrence and security, and some to spare. Having achieved this, it is time we expanded our mental horizons and applied our minds to the other problems which bedevil us.

We are not a progressive or forward-looking society. We are still trapped in old ways of thinking. There is more mental dynamism in tiny – in terms of area and population – Dubai than in the relatively vast spaces, and the variegated geography, of the Islamic Republic. Why don’t we try to change this equation?

Pakistani generals, foreign office mandarins and think-tank specialists should be made to commit to memory the facts about two conflicts: the Russo-Finnish war of Nov 1939-March 1940 and the Sino-Vietnamese conflict of Feb-March 1979.

Stalin attacked Finland with about a million men but the Finns under the leadership of the legendary Marshal Mannerheim put up a brave and skilful defence. Eventually the Finns, overwhelmed by numbers, had to give ground and cede territory to Stalin but not without inflicting heavy losses on the Red Army.

Deng Xiaoping wanted to teach the Vietnamese a lesson but it was China which earned a bloody nose in that short-lived but sharp encounter. Chinese troops advanced 40 kilometres into Vietnamese territory but the Vietnamese army, victors of Dien Bien Phu and of the war against the Americans, outmatched the Peoples Liberation Army. The Chinese eventually withdrew saying their aims were accomplished. But their strategic aim, the reason why they had gone to war – getting Vietnam to change course in Cambodia, which Vietnam had invaded in order to topple the Khmer Rouge regime – remained unfulfilled.

Or our generals could consider, and take to heart, the lessons of the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006. Hezbollah in terms of numbers and weapons was no match for the Israeli military. But Hezbollah fighters drew rings around the Israelis. This was the first war since the founding of Israel in which any Arab entity – in this instance an insurgent force and not a regular army – had stood its ground and held off the vaunted might of the Israeli armed forces.

So what do we take the Pakistan Army to be? Whatever the conventional imbalance – and there will always be an imbalance given India’s larger resource base – it is strong enough, and with its experience of fighting the Taliban insurgents now battle-hardened enough, to hold its own against anything that India can throw against it. But the way our strategic bonzes go on shouting about the Indian threat they give an impression as if Pakistan is a ready morsel waiting to be swallowed by India. When will we liberate ourselves from such nonsense?

Jingoism we can do without. But we must be more confident about ourselves. India can announce any number of cold-start doctrines it wants. Declarations of lofty intent should be no reason for Pakistan to panic. Cold-start doctrine in any case is a fancy name for an old concept: the German blitzkrieg and before that the lightning charges of the Mongol armies. Hitler struck without warning. The Mongol armies struck without warning. But Pakistan is Pakistan. It is no France waiting to be overrun.

So please can we mitigate our Indian obsession? A perpetual frown on a nation’s forehead is no sign of strength. Let us learn to wear, when the occasion arises, a sardonic smile. Against the odds we developed a nuke capability. Let us now learn to handle it comfortably without undue sabre-rattling. Israel doesn’t talk about its nuclear weapons. It is a subject ostracised from the arena of public discussion. This reticence in such a matter we also should learn to cultivate.

I’ve mentioned this before but I find it hard to resist mentioning it again. Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father, threatened Sparta: “If I enter Laconia (the old name for Sparta), you shall be exterminated.” The Spartans replied with just one word: “If”.

As a nation we are given to windy and unnecessary statements. Something of Spartan brevity – the word laconic comes from Laconia – should do us good.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com