What prevents India’s total domination over Pakistan? India is ahead of us in practically all indicators of national power potential – size, population, natural resources, economy and military.
It outperforms Pakistan in each of these. And, if you include the modern determinants of a nation’s power – a knowledge society based on education supported by a quality human resource; ideas, research and development, innovation and technology; a globally integrated economy and society; equitable opportunity for socio-economic growth and social mobility; and creation of wealth – India clearly performs significantly better than Pakistan in each of them.
And yet, come the time of a skirmish at the LoC or a perpetual rant about a neighbour that seems errant, it must still find it unable to neutralise what it sees as unruly. The manner in which the Indian government, with its media in tow, talked of war after the recent incidents of ceasefire violations from both sides, smacked of utter frustration in a nation. What ignominy that, despite such clear superiority on practically all competitive matrices, India just cannot dominate Pakistan. We need to appreciate Big Brother’s level of helplessness.
A nation will have leverages vis-à-vis another during their interaction. This is the basis of any international relationship: mutual interests, economic benefit, peace and security, to name a few. A nation will put to use the favourable differentials in each element of national power to extract benefit from the other towards ends it deems important.
If and when the other nation is reluctant to comply, military force and the fear of its application become the ultimate arbiter. But if a nation finds itself incapable of exercising each of those useful differentials in diplomacy, economy and societal superiority to find benefit, and instead resorts to war or the fear of war as its primary element of engagement, it clearly is a case of a nation out of depth.
When allegations were traded between the two countries on cross-border raids, followed by Indian rants over the mutilation of a soldier’s body, other than a bellicose Indian media, none other than India’s army chief had to issue warnings to Pakistan of retribution at a time and place of India’s choosing.
The air chief had already ratcheted jingoism a few notches up. This has most recently been followed by the Indian Disaster Management Authority’s open note to Kashmiris in their part of J&K about precautions and steps to follow in a nuclear war. Nowhere else, just to the Kashmiris! Talk of a more diabolic mindset that goes about injecting the ultimate fear and creates an air of ultimate retribution by an irrational neighbour, if indeed war is inevitable. This madness, though, is not without method.
India’s prime minister and the foreign minister were led by the nose by the Indian media when it led the charge of intense vituperation against Pakistan, while Pakistan was unaware, engrossed in the goings-on in ‘D’ Square. Both issued formal official statements suspending progress on any of the recent initiatives of relaxation in visa regimes and refused to allow sportspersons and artists from Pakistan to continue with their commitments in India. Business as usual was suspended.
That it also led to Pakistan further delaying the MFN recognition of India became an unfortunate consequence. This is not two steps, but many steps, back in the normalisation process. Talk of the tail wagging the dog when policy was literally dictated by the Indian media’s sabre rattling.
India’s leader of the opposition, Sushma Swaraj, asked her military to get “ten (heads) of theirs if unable to get one of ours back.” She was referring to the allegations of a severed head from one dead Indian soldier that could not be located when the body was recovered by the Indians.
Many more in the BJP and the RSS added to the din. The abuse and exhortation to war was dangerous and seriously destabilising in a strategic environment that was laden with uncertainty. If it also established the Congress government as being pusillanimous, that too was greatly welcome by the BJP as a dividend.
A prominent BJP MP lamented that the Congress government had lost the plot when it seemingly committed itself too deeply to the dialogue process with Pakistan. It may well have been a figure of speech, but what had been initiated by Atal Behari Vajpayee while he was prime minister as an honest attempt to address the changed realities in a nuclear South Asia, did mutate into an incremental diplomatic effort to squeeze most leverage for India, even when it has blatantly blocked progress on anything significant to Pakistan. What if there was a real plot, or one that may have evolved itself even as both nations engaged in a dialogue. There is a discernible method to this madness in the Indian media when it resorts to hysterical warmongering that can be roughly equated to a plot, though.
When both nations went overtly nuclear in 1998, South Asia saw the dawn of strategic nuclear parity. The reality was not lost to either side. Tactical waywardness became a dangerous occupation. Yet, Kargil happened, and left in its wake questions of space for a limited war. South Asia continues to grapple with this consequence while continuingly sailing in dangerous waters.
After all, Kargil did not lead to a nuclear war, so why would another. Hence started the talk, by the strategic and military community in India, of retributive strikes against Pakistan – especially after Mumbai 2008. The ‘cold start’ doctrine and retribution emerged almost in the same vein. South Asia was finding newer shores to enact war; that too in a nuclear environment! If the world doesn’t think of us as mentally challenged, what else explains this deranged line of thinking?
Kargil, and then the military takeover in 1999 in Pakistan, confirmed to the Indian mind Pakistan’s strange institutional disposition. We had till then happily partaken of the CIA-ISI sponsored 1980 jihad in Afghanistan and helped ourselves a little more when the 1989 troubles in Indian-occupied Kashmir manifested themselves in an armed insurgency there, establishing a reputation of sorts. Yet we are strangely put off by the image that the world has of us. We had, to the Indian mind, also been responsible for the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament by a Kashmiri militant group. Mumbai 2008 was still to follow.
Thus an unending tango between the two has been perpetuated, where every opportunity, every slip and each commission or omission is leveraged to reinforce a negative image of Pakistan in the larger global perception. Alleged irrationality and perversity, especially through the string of events that have sucked Pakistan into a whirlpool of adverse characterisation, including the recent LoC episodes, are thus shaped into convenient tools to lash Pakistan with. That it also contributes to the ultimate plot remains the most valued dividend for India.
(To be concluded)
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal of the Pakistan Air Force and served as its deputy chief of staff. Email: shhzdchdhry @yahoo.com
Shahzad Chaudhry, "The Indo-Pak tango," The News. 2013-02-01.Keywords: