War is not an option

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Events are unfolding quickly, and it is unclear what the situation will be when this piece is published. India has lived up to its reputation: within minutes of the attack at Pahalgam in Kashmir, it accused Pakistan of masterminding and undertaking the attack. The death of the innocent and unarmed people in Kashmir is a great tragedy, but the greater tragedy will be if the two nuclear-armed countries end up going to war over the issue.

The onus lies squarely on the shoulders of warmongers, led by PM Modi of India. Starting a war is easy; concluding it is the most difficult thing. What amazes me is when not one politician but all the advisors surrounding PM Modi level up and conclusively decide in matters of hours that fighting a war is the best response to the tragedy.

You can get together to start a war, but no getting together can bring it to an early conclusion. In any case, before starting any war, the political objective of the war should be sufficiently clear. Given the circumstances under which India wants to impose this war on Pakistan, the Indian political objective should be to degrade Pakistan's capability and capacity to undertake any terrorist act in India.

This isn't a political objective of the war that seems achievable. It took the US two decades to realise that, in Afghanistan. And Israel's war of genocide in the Gaza Strip continues even after 18 months.

All military powers start wars by imagining that wars will be of short duration, but wars tend to drag on. President Vladimir Putin was looking at weeks to finish the job in Ukraine, but the war has dragged into its third year. After the end of the Cold War, the world has seen no decisive victories in military engagements. The war in Gaza is not a war; it is genocide against helpless people who cannot strike back.

Yet the Israeli military action continues, and still, peace is nowhere in sight. Leaders with big armies and military capabilities imagine that they can execute a short war at a tolerable cost. However, history dictates otherwise: most wars end up as protracted wars, with political leaders finding it hard to culminate them.

PM Modi keeps referring to Pakistan as a hub of extremism and terrorism, yet what he and most of the world forget to appreciate is that Pakistan served as host to millions of Afghan refugees who withstood terror unleashed on them during the Soviet occupation. Pakistan was also a host and a partner to the US strategy of fighting a covert war in Afghanistan.

The US relied upon Pakistan to get to the top of the problem. In the decade from 1979 to 1989, Pakistan's societal outlook changed. The world was doubling down on Pakistan with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ensuring that both weapons and capital overflowed in Pakistan. For every dollar supplied by the US, another was added by Saudi Arabia.

Because the world relied on Pakistan to fight this threat on our borders, which was conceived as global, Pakistan was full of dollars as well as international goodwill. In 1981, when British PM Margaret Thatcher visited Pakistan, she commented, "Pakistan is an unsung story of heroism." Little did the Pakistanis know that in the coming years, the world would forget about its sacrifices and switch the title of the story from heroism to terrorism.

India abstained from the UN resolution that condemned the invasion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It also opened up another front for Pakistan by occupying parts of the Siachen Glacier in 1984. And on the eastern front, closer to our international borders, it started conducting a major military exercise, Brass Tracks, that lasted over four months. All these Indian actions promoted a realisation amongst the Pakistani political and military elite that India wants to create a two-front war scenario for Pakistan.

India's record of intervening politically in the internal affairs of other countries is also not without blemish. Pakistan may have nothing to do with the terrorists who killed innocent people in Pahalgam, but India used fighter aircraft to escort transport planes to drop supplies for Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. India sent in 50,000 troops to sort out the problem of terrorism in Sri Lanka, only to withdraw in 1990 with over 1,500 soldiers dead.

PM Modi must look inwards and ask his intelligence agency and generals why the presence of over 600,000 troops in Kashmir cannot stop acts of terrorism. That's the national narrative that the Indians must take forward, discuss and debate on social media and their TV channels. There will be no war, but if PM Modi decides to impose a war on Pakistan, then what will be its implications?

India and Pakistan can degrade each other's capabilities, and it would be up to the Indian warmongers to sit down and daily make an assessment of the losses on both sides. But to what end? No political objective will be achieved if the air forces of both countries fight the biggest air warfare since WWII. Tit-for-tat engagement and destruction of strategic targets would make headlines, but without contributing towards achieving New Delhi's political aim of the war.

Unlike Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria or Lebanon, Pakistan would hit back hard at the Indian strategic targets. Ironically, the big dams that India has constructed to limit the flow of Indus water would likely be the most sought-after targets of the Pakistan Air Force and missile attacks.

Floods may follow, but Pakistan has borne the brunt of floods many a time, and it would be the Indians to have to reconstruct their dams — with time and effort. Pakistan has little to lose; India, on the other hand, has much to lose that it has gained over the years.

If one sees the bigger picture, there is no likelihood of a war between India and Pakistan. Indian politics is miscalculating risks, and there is no way that the Indian military objectives can align with the political goal of the war if it is initiated. Wars don't bring an end to terrorism, wars breed terrorism. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are all symbolic stories of this assessment.

Lastly, when democracies go to war, unlike dictatorships, they have a small window to achieve the political objective of the war. Dictators can silence the opposition, suppress dissent and quash those in disagreement, and control the media and public opinion. But democracies cannot do that; they are more intolerant of pain, suffering, failures and defeats.