Wars that benefit domestic politics

PM Modi’s past hawkish policies of aggression and non-engagement towards Pakistan are known to all. Yet the moment of truth has arrived and PM Modi after winning the Indian General Elections of 2019 is all set to begin his second term as the Prime Minister of India. What does this mean for Pakistan? But let’s first thin-slice Modi’s hawkish policy towards Pakistan.

Carl Von Clausewitz (1780 -1831) the Prussian general and famous military theorist described war ‘as an instrument of policy’, but can the war-like situation that Modi’s India created especially in the backdrop of the February 2019 Pulwama attack in Kashmir be described as a well thought-out policy? Clausewitz termed war ‘continuation of politics’ by other means, but in case of the post-Pulwama war-like conditions that Modi’s India had created, it looked more like the ‘continuation of party politics’ driven by ‘party objectives’ for winning the elections rather than the continuation of politics.

Every war needs a cause or a purpose, a political objective. Post-Pulwama, the Modi government’s ‘politicisation of warfare’ turned Clausewitz’s theory on its head, and the Indian military action seemed not a consequence of any ‘policy objective’ but a (power seeking) ‘politician’s political agenda’. Clausewitzan theory on war suggests that ‘every war that is started must also be concluded after it has been utilised to create ‘favourable political ends’. The big question now is: Would there now be any change in Modi’s political nature, ambitions, interests and vanity, now that the post-Pulwama war hysteria and military actions gifted Modi the end he desired i.e. a second term in office? Will we see a new political ‘something must be done for better’ ‘bread and butter approach’ or we will still keep looking down the barrel of the gun at the possibility of an ‘endless war’, an ‘unending war’ a ‘forever war’ and an ‘everywhere war’ between the two countries?

Tempering with the scope, methods, tempo and strategies of conducting wars, many politicians extracted personal political benefits in the past. The Vietnam War, the war in the Balkans and in Iraq have often been regarded as policy failures. Yet domestically they rewarded the power-seeking politicians. Lyndon Johnson (36th President of USA from 1963 to 1969) prolonged the Vietnam War but got re-elected as president. Tony Blair who committed Britain (to a disaster) in Iraq war remained longer in office than any other Labour leader in British history. And Bill Clinton – who wanted to be renowned as an American president who never took America to war and remained reluctant and oversaw due to his inaction not only the killings in the Balkans but a genocide in Rwanda – also managed to get elected as American president for a second term.

In today’s world not the Clausewitz’s policy objectives but ‘domestic politics’ (Modi’s elections) determines the purpose of war. In his book The Utility of Force, published in 2005, general sir Rupert Smith writes that in utilising force the political tendency is more about avoiding (at home) political risks than actually solving the very crisis for which war is fought. One can quote the example of France which did something similar to what PM Modi of India did in 2019. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, France increased its attacks on IS in Syria and Iraq which led many analysts to conclude that these attacks were not so much aimed for the degradation and destruction of IS but almost entirely for domestic consumption. Also in the modern warfare, there is this new trend of ‘committed politicians’ that show preferences to fight wars to an ‘uncommitted nation’. The commitment of the nation is a follow-up process which is managed, enabled through the media landscape (post-Pulwama Indian media is a classic example) that drumbeats the war hysteria to the ‘consumer citizens’ who are sold this concept of ‘distant fighting with little or no cost to us’ and the execution of ‘hit-and-run warfare’ (terrorists hideouts being attacked in sovereign states) to address consumer citizen’s domestic fears of terrorism. Besides the failed air raid by India this year in the Pakistani territory, war in Libya in 2011 is another example. In Libya, the US and Britain fired over 100 Tomahawk Cruise missiles and the US-led coalition forces carried out many drone and air strikes without any boots on ground. This enabled these powers to easily withdraw their forces. The domestic audience was very happy but what these powers did was to ruin the conditions on ground in Libya which even today continues to experience a state of civil war. What we witness in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria is not war, it is the attempt by the western politics to tame, mould and utilise war abroad in an effort to win wars at home. Let there be no doubt that this was the very method that PM Modi utilised in 2019 to his own and his party’s great political benefit.

PM Imran Khan had said that both India and Pakistan had a better chance of rapprochement under the right wing Modi administration than the Congress party. God has given him his wish. The recent informal meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) gathering in Kyrgyzstan seems also to be an initial icebreaker. PM Modi should not doubt PM Imran’s commitment to peace and the latter should also hope that the former can give up on his impulsive populist and aggressive narrative against Pakistan.

One man’s military campaign (Napoleon’s march on Russia 1812) is another man’s patriotic war (Emperor of Russia Alexander-I). Long supply lines and cold winters were the conditions Russia created to defeat the largest army ever assembled in the history of warfare up to that point. Fighting protracted war, fighting war on many fronts and subjecting us to international isolation are also the conditions that Modi’s first-term policy sought to create for us. That hasn’t paid and will not pay because opposing Modi’s policy objectives is not only a political government but a war-hardened military that will never cede to Indian hegemony and dictates.

The present politico-military homogeneity in Pakistan and Modi’s fresh start in Indian politics are the two most import factors that dictate the possibility of beginning of a renewed relationship between India and Pakistan. Time for PM Modi to rethink.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2019.

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