Defense Day & national security: Russia-Pakistan comparison

Some of the regular readers of my columns may feel that lately I am writing too much on the Ukraine war, on Russia and on Pakistan-Russia relations. But I would like to clarify that I am doing another PhD in Tomsk State University in Russia and my thesis is 'Trilateral Alliance between Russia, China and Pakistan under a Changing World Order.' So, given my circumstances and my research work I end up looking at most of the emerging geopolitical scenarios from the lens of this likely trilateral relationship. At a personal level I think this diversity of view is good and the students of international relations as well as the policymakers in Pakistan and elsewhere can draw some conclusions when they end up looking at the emerging geopolitical trends from the lens of this possible trilateral relationship.

September 6 is Pakistan's Defence Day. At the very outset, let me tell my readers that they will not find anything related to how the 1965 War. All I am offering here is a comparison of how Russia and Pakistan continued to perceive threats to their national security and how both have continued to respond - Russia under the leadership of President Putin for the last almost two decades and Pakistan under its military leadership since the time of its independence. In case of Pakistan, we are talking about the military rule under Generals Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf and now a democracy that is controlled and guided by the military.

Wars are generally fought for the purpose of national survival and the 1965 War was also fought for a similar reason. It doesn't matter whether you are an aggressor or the one being aggressed as long as your national security demands a military action which warrants national security leaders to opt to fight a war of survival. The Western world accuses President Putin of initiating an opportunistic war but for me and many other international relations scholars, including Professor Miershimer of Chicago University, the war that Russia fights against Ukraine is a preventive war and a war of survival. All our wars against India have also been wars of survival.

In power for over two decades, one can pass judgements on many aspects of Putin's personality but for the Russian president to not only survive but do well for such a long period means that he is a good strategist who values the security and survival of the great power that he heads over anything else. So the Western world despises him and is not happy dealing with such a robust and formidable adversary.

The closest that Pakistan comes in comparison with Russia is when we consider that both Russia and Pakistan are nuclear powers and there are just nine such powers in the world today. The tone, texture and nature of Pakistan's relationship with India is quite similar to Russia's relationship with the West. In Russia, President Putin has taken upon himself the onus of defending and safeguarding the national interests and national boundaries of Russian Federation. In Pakistan successive military rulers - and the subsequent military leaders as well - consider themselves as the primary leadership to undertake this responsibility. I will try to summarise six factors that I consider common between Russia and Pakistan when it comes to dealing with the Western or Indian threat respectively.

The first comparison is historical. The core of Russian relationship with the West and Pakistan's relationship with India is built around the concept of hostility and enmity. The Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus. The Indians and Pakistanis are also the descendants of Indus Valley Civilization. Batu Khan's invasion brought the northeast part of the Rus under the control of the Golden Horde of the Mongols, and the Mughal invaders from Afghanistan brought the greater India under their control under a similar pattern. India sees Pakistan as an extension of Mughal's dynasty while Russians look at the Western world as followers of many invasions into their territory, the trend for which was set by the Mongols.

The second comparison is in terms of tragedy. President Putin considers the 1991 dismemberment of the Soviet Union at the hands of the West as a great national tragedy. The Pakistani people and its leadership have a similar view about Pakistan's own dismemberment and loss of half the country at the hands of the Indians in the 1971 War.

The third comparison is about the strategy of war. West wants to impose severe costs on Russia to force Putin and Russia to change their mind. India too has long been working on this faulty assumption and trying to coerce and intimidate Pakistan to accept India as a regional hegemon. West tries to subjugate Russia through non-kinetic military actions. Supporting Alexei Navalny, before his death, as a substitute to Putin and facilitating the June 2023 mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner paramilitary group, to make Putin look weaker are some of the recent examples. India's support to the Baloch separatists and creating political instability in Pakistan is India's broader agenda that can be seen in the same light.

The fourth comparison is in terms of how both Russia and Pakistan have identified and responded to their national security threats. Russia's military action in Georgia in 2008 was both a response to the latter's attack on the separatist region of South Ossetia and also the former's effort to avoid losing control of a territory. Pakistan military's military response in Balochistan can also be viewed as a similar concern. When President Putin seized Crimea in 2014, he worried about the loss of Russia's naval base. Pakistan's joining CPEC as the flagship project of BRI is also a strategic importance that Pakistan attaches to the port of Gwadar but India is determined not to allow this to happen.

The fifth comparison is in externalisation. When Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, it was worried about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, a Russia-friendly leader. Pakistan's support to the US in fighting the war in Afghanistan alongside backing the Taliban regime may also be seen in the light of how Pakistan doesn't want Afghanistan to become an Indian satellite state.

All those people who accuse the military establishments of both Russia and Pakistan of fighting unnecessary wars need to consider the likely costs of inactions. This brings me to the sixth and the last comparison - the price that both Russia and Pakistan pay for taking actions for the sake of their national security. Without special military operations, Russia would have been unable to prevent the emergence of a Western-aligned Ukraine that could serve as a springboard for a "colour revolution" against Russia itself. And Pakistan's involvement in Afghanistan should be seen in the light of how Pakistan cannot allow its western frontier to become India-friendly and allow New Delhi to initiate wars in Pakistan through that border proxy.