Political Warfare and the Statecraft

Red rover, red rover let tommy come over. This is the call to draw battle lines of new sports which is taking over the world. Kabbadi a game originated in areas now in Pakistan, is becoming a brand new icon of Indian identity all over the globe, like many things Indian, yoga, basmati rice and the Hindu Raj itself. The origin of kabbadi took place in the areas between the rivers of Ravi and Chenab. India is shinning but the gloss is borrowed. Mr Modi is trying to formulate a new historicism in which everything Indian is in saffron. It is said that nothing brings people together like the sun hiding behind the moon, which is eclipse by the way, if not the elliptical behavior of the so called emerging power. Many revolutions are taking place simultaneously, the information revolution, the revolution in ethics, the third industrial revolution, the bio-revolution, the scientific revolution of ideology and thought and the revolution of cyber space. Man is now diminished creature dependent upon machines, methods and their accumulative madness. Three things changed the world in last three hundred years more than anything else, the communication, energy and transportation. From apple carts to the silicon apples man has traversed quite a distance. One thing seems to be static in this ever changing world. The perennial enmity of India towards its umbilical twin, the Pakistan. 600 pages of Arthshastra are being applied against the half brother page by page and word by word. To call this the irregular war, the war of fifth columnists or the hybrid war is a misnomer. It is actually the unleashing of political warfare against Pakistan. The relations between these two neighbours can be accurately defined under constructivism theory of international relations or the value added theory of sociology, but who cares. Since last three centuries, world is governed by either the geo-politics or the geo-economics. Geo strategy is therefore the simultaneous application of these both. Trade follows the flag (medieval empires) or the flag follows the trade (British empire) is the governing principle to apply the geo-politics and the geo-economics. The post cold war unipolor power architecture depicts that USA leads the geo-politics of the word where as in terms of geo-economics the world is bi-multipolar with China converging towards Thucydides trap, where as other five economic powers are emerging as multi poles to this bi-polarity. This back drop defines the behaviour of India, the red rover of regional Kabbadi. In this bi-multipolar world the prevalent means of dominance is only though the political warfare and also through generating the political chaos. Political warfare simultaneously engage all the elements of national power, like, geography, location, population, ideology, economy, security, society, National character, size of the state, quality of government and diplomacy etc. In political warfare all the elements of national power can be mitigated by applying the limitations of balance of power, international treaties and law, international organizations and world public opinion. India’s buying of S400 missiles from Russia is actually an act of applying limitation on Pakistan’s element of national power by tilting the balance of military power on its side. Pakistan’s security paradigm revolves around the principle of maintaining this balance at all cost, which is achieved through potent deterrence and well poised defensive posture. George kennan after second world war, for the first time used the term of political warfare to define a war in totality. Political warfare of modern era is the use of military, economic, intelligence, diplomatic, financial, social, societal, psychological and ideological means through images and ideas. Images create perceptions and perceptions transcends into illusions, so real in outlooks that the targeted nation start chasing the mirages one after the other. Every man with a turban is taken us a leader, every bush as a banayan and every ledge as a water well of hope. Boundaries between war and peace are made blurred, where war sometimes is peace and apparent peace is a war. Such is the vagaries of political warfare. Nations aften loose the decades of progression while fighting the irregular wars at plastic frontiers against goliaths of sever hormonal imbalances. Chaos, mistrust, despondency, hopelessness, corruption and lawlessness is spread through the strange layers of governing mechanism, veneer after the veneer is layered with a false sense of objectivity. USA recently realizing the emergence of political warfare changed its national security and defence strategy from counter terrorism to interstate strategic competitions. Pakistan being a victim of political warfare by the neighbour across the wall has limited choices. Two natural endowments, land and water, if safe guarded and utilized properly, can unhinge the cobweb of controlled chaos and unrest. USA’s special favours to india in terms of enhancing its world public opinion on one hard and fostering its nuclear ambitions on the other is creating an imbalance of power not in terms of Pakistan equation only, rather the international power architecture is being challenged by the artificiality of creating a regional hegemony without the due process of evolution or scientific natural selection, if one may call it. Pakistan today is facing many dilemmas at all levels of its existential viability. Economy is being strangulated by rising dollar rates, quotas application on exports, burgeoning import bill, shrinking expatriates remittances from middle east and the demise of local cottage industry. To up start the economic engine one requires a hyperbole of conceding vectors based on indigenous resources of water, soil, minerals, metals, gem stones and value added agriculture products. Arthur Ashkin won the nobel prize of 2018 for his optical tweezers, the advanced manifestations of laser beams. These laser beams could have been generated from the gem stone, ruby, as a medium, extracted from the northern areas of Pakistan. The other dilemma is societal. Pakistani society is converging upon values and norms which do not qualify to the true definition of the word. Three threats facing the world, the climate change, the disruptive effect of advancing technology and the nuclear shenanigans require a global response. Pakistan’s soil has become the battle ground of global geo-political convergence on one hand and geo-economic digression on the other. The resilience is deep rooted in Pakistani society. The effect of political warfare will be mitigated, if the societal approach is applied, because for the first time we are fighting a people’s war in the realm of military, economy, ideological and every sense of the word. Along a leader, Pakistan might also need a reformer (not necessarily in religious sense) with an optical tweezers capable of withering away a mirage before it takes its toll in the shape of taming millions walking in a trance, the way mice follows the pied piper. The writer is a free lance who contributes regularly on security related issues. He is also a Ph.D Scholar who can be reached at sindhulatif@gmail.com Published in Daily Times, September 7th 2018.