Business Standard

The craft of war

India can defeat Pakistan in less than a week. But first it should define victory, know when to declare it, have decisive convention­al edge, and stop flying Mig-21s

- SHEKHAR GUPTA By special arrangemen­t with Theprint

Speaking at the founding day of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) on T uesday, Prime Minister Narendra M o di said all India’s armed forces needed to defeat Pakistan was seven to ten days.

Was he talking through his hat? Can the world’s four th-large st militar y p ower defeat the fifthlarge­st in just about a week or so? Particular­ly when they are both nuclear-armed?

If the answer to all three questions is what seems an obvious “yes” to the first and “no” to the next two, we could be done with it with a 140charact­er tweet. We wouldn’t be wasting your time, labouring over 1,200 words.

The answers, therefore, are: First that Mr Modi is no delusional nutcase. If he wasn’t phenomenal­ly smart, he wouldn’t have come this far. The second and third questions have one answer: Whether or not you can win a war in seven-ten days would also depend on how you define that “victory”.

The genuinely strategic issues do tend to be complex, and somewhat less fun than what prime time debates on some commando comic channels might want to make you believe. They can defeat Pakistan, and maybe with China thrown in, in half an hour, leaving time for commercial breaks. In real life, we might need to explore histor y, strategic and political, and some non-classical definition­s of victory and defeat. That’s why, this week’s argument begins with Mr Modi, will go back to the two Bhuttos, father and daughter; Indira Gandhi; V P Singh; and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and return to Mr Modi.

The central truth now is that a country or even a set of countries defeating another in the manner of World WAR-II is now an impossibil­ity. We don’t even have a significan­t instance of that happening since that war. Americans, the mightiest of all, failed in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanista­n, and Iraq. A mere regime change isn’t a victory.

The Soviet failure in Afghanista­n ended their ideology and military bloc. Saudi Arabia, enormously more powerful and richer, has failed to defeat a poor Yemen in almost five years. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, hoping to take advantage of chaos in the wake of the revolution there. Eight years later, all both countries had was corpses, cripples, prisoners of war, but no tangible gains.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. You might, for the sake of an argument, find an example here or there, such as Bosnia. But again, a regime change by a multinatio­nal force in such a small country wouldn’t really count for a victory in the sense of a nation defeating another.

Closer home, in 73 years, marked by four large wars against two adversarie­s, China and Pakistan, two have ended decisively. It is easy to remember the one we won, in 1971 against Pakistan, and imp o ssible to forget the one we lo st, in 1962 to China.

The war India won, 1971, lasted all of 13 days. The defeat against China, in 1962, also came over about two fortnights of intense operations with a recess of sorts in between. This tells you something counter-intuitive to what our immediate reaction to Mr Modi’s statement on the NCC Day would be. So, don’t laugh at the idea that one strong country can defeat another in seven to ten days. Because our generation has seen exactly that at home, twice.

This brings us to the nub of the issue. How do we define victory or defeat when modern nations fight? In 1971, the moment Dacca fell, Indira Gandhi offered Pakistan a ceasefire in the more evenly matched western sector. The moment Pakistan accepted, she could declare victory. Similarly, in 1962, China offered India a ceasefire unilateral­ly, and even announced they were returning to their prewar p ositions (except in s ome small parts of Ladakh). The moment India accepted it, vowing to fight another day, China could declare victory. The Chinese knew the risk of getting into an unwinnable war of attrition if they ventured into the plains, and Mrs Gandhi, sobered by Soviet allies, also understood the relative military parity in the western sector.

A war is won, therefore, not when a country is comprehens­ively defeated, brought down to its knees as with Nazi G ermany and imperialis­t Japan, or the norm in medieval era. It is won when one nation decides it has achieved its objective. To win a war now, you first have to set your objective clearly beforehand, and then have the foresight to seize the moment to declare victory. Earlier the better.

Apply this test to some other familiar situations. Kargil was a relatively tiny war and India won it only because Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his counsels defined victory narrowly and precisely as the mere withdrawal of Pakistan to the Line of Control. Pakistan had initiated that war with the objective of grabbing crucial territory and forcing India to negotiate Kashmir.

Vajpayee set defeating that objective as his target and declared victor y the moment it was achieved.

Both Pakistan and India claim 1965 a win. Here is the equation if we follow the parameters we’ve just set. Pakistan started that war, with the objective of grabbing Kashmir. It had the technologi­cal, tactical, diplomatic superiorit­y and the strategic space and cushion to do so.

If India still denied Pakistan that moment, you can conclude who won or lost, although militarily the war was a stalemate, the equivalent of a cricket Test petering out to a dull, pointless draw. Balakot is a more complicate­d case.

India bombed Balakot deep inside the mainland of Pakistan to deliver a strategic and political message. That objective achieved, it had nothing more to do except brace for a Pakistani counter. Whatever the score in the air skirmish on the following morning, the Pakistanis were left with an IAF pilot and the wreckage of his plane. This enabled both sides to declare victory.

A good example where no such thing happened was Op Parakram and “coercive diplomacy” after the terror attack on Parliament. No clear objectives were set, and the build-up continued for so long that it became unsustaina­ble. The moment to declare victory, however, had come very early in the day, on January 12, 2002, within a month of the Parliament attack, when Gen. Pervez Musharraf made his famous speech suing for peace. India missed it, and the entire venture was wasted.

The duration of a war is more a function of rhetoric than strategy. The clearest example of this is senior (Zulfiqar Ali) Bhutto vowing a 1,000year war on India while his troops were surrenderi­ng in Dacca. His daughter Benazir renewed this in the warlike summer of 1990 (her “Jagmohan ko jag-jag, mo-mo, han-han kar denge” days).

It even provoked a weak-kneed pacifist like V P Singh, then prime minister, i nto asking i n Parliament whether those who threatened 1,000year wars could last even a thousand hours. That, by the way, adds up to 41 days and about 15 hours, more than the two wars, 1965 and 1971, combined.

How long you say you’d fight for — 1,000 years, 1,000 hours, or seven-ten days — is all rhetoric. The reality is simpler: Do you know how you define victory and have the foresight to seize the moment to declare it? In the India-pakistan context, it could have come even after just an hour on the morning of February 26, 2019, or, latest by noon the following day. But for that, India had to have a decisive, deterrent convention­al edge over Pakistan. If that is built in years to come, it might even be possible to defeat Pakistan in less than a week. You could even win with deterrence, without fighting. Not, of course, if you are still flying MIG -21s.

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