Strategy is often thought of as a means of getting to a prior objective, the defined end. That presupposes a certain neatness about human affairs. But more than that, it considers, somewhat arbitrarily, that strategy is about control; that the strategist has everything neatly worked out, will proceed apace according to his plans for each phase, each plan — as part of the strategy — will work as planned, until the priorly-defined objective is reached.
Somewhere in this approach nestles the assumption that the strategy will unfold without any opposing force(s). That there will be no drag, no friction. Whether it’s a battlefield, a war with many battles, markets, societies, things will pan out according to the various steps (plans) envisaged in a strategy with no external forces impacting them. One just has to stick to the script, to put it figuratively.
Unfortunately, that almost never happens. As Lawrence Freedman cautioned in his behemoth of a book, Strategy: A History, “The world of strategy is full of disappointment and frustration, of means not working and ends not reached.”
Does that mean the huge corpus of literature on strategy is useless? Yes and no. Yes, if we think of strategy as a passepartout that can unlock everything and get us unhindered to the riches; no, if we understand that (a) it is difficult to define what strategy is, in terms of its scope and multiple levels; (b) that human mind needs some structure to understand the situation; (c) that understanding is important to cope with the situation; (d) it allows to develop responses in relation to the challenges.
None of the above, however, guarantees success because any strategy will of necessity be either responding to someone else’s initiative or contending with counter-veiling forces or strategies. There will thus be the disappointments and frustrations that Freedman explains in his tome.
In other words, one can either muddle through blindly or get down to working out a strategy and muddle through with some appreciation of a situation, knowing full well that the many plans, just like Clausewitz’ war with many battles, will continue to face contingencies and undergo changes as the situation unfolds.
The conduct of strategy — how to go about it — can vary over time and space and given the circumstances. In the end, however, it’s about reducing one’s own mistakes and leveraging the other’s.
In judo, the successful player is the one who uses the weight and strength of his opponent more effectively to his advantage. The art is not to respond blow to blow but to find one’s advantage by leveraging the weakness of the opponent. Three elements form the principle: speed, flexibility, leverage. Bigger companies can bludgeon smaller ones if the latter get into a direct competition with the former. The smaller players’ advantage lies in finding new markets and, as now happens, use disruptive technologies that change the game and its principles. In other words, you don’t defend that which you can’t defend when squarely attacked. You find a different battleground. That’s where it is difficult for the bigger companies to adapt. A speedboat can move and turn much faster than an aircraft carrier.
India’s August 5 decision to annex Occupied Kashmir is meant to change the rules of the game. Every dialogue framework between India and Pakistan has had baskets or pillars and, for whatever it was worth in substantive terms, the Kashmir dispute was always one of the baskets. That’s the Gordian’s knot India thinks it has cut.
The move is based on some assumptions: By saturating the Valley with security forces — army, paramilitaries, police — India can deal with any armed resistance effectively. Space to deployment ratio has a counterinsurgency logic to it. India has no dearth of manpower; short of an effective armed resistance, Kashmiris will not be able to sustain civil defiance for very long, especially if repression is increased; curbing freedom of movement and communications will not allow free reporting of what’s happening; using pliant Indian media will help in neutralising independent reporting; India will be able to ward off any international voices/pressure until things begin to calm down in the Valley; international voices, governmental and non-governmental cannot do much beyond making noise; there’s no danger of sanctions, given India’s market potential (though the economic indicators are sliding and global investors are falling out of love, to quote a Bloomberg report, with Modi); India has the diplomatic clout to build coalitions that will keep it out of trouble despite the noise.
The thinking: Israel has done it all through its existence; India can too.
It is in this situation that Pakistan has to formulate its responses or, going back to the idea of strategy, formulate its strategy.
As noted last week in this space, so far there’s not much of it in sight. And what we do have, is not Churchill’s KBO (keep buggering on), which would be something to write about if we were actually doing it, but groping in the dark. Let’s apply the judo example: India says there would be no problem in Kashmir if Pakistan weren’t interfering there. In other words, Kashmiris alienation is either no problem or one caused by Pakistan. Pakistan says Kashmir banay ga Pakistan. Really? Do we want to counter India’s fallacious argument or strengthen it?
A Kashmiri friend shared a message with me from one of his friends in New York. This is how it goes: “Stand with Kashmir was organising a major protest when [Indian prime minister Narendra] Modi comes to NYC for the UN General Assembly session. The protest included other groups like Dalits, Hindus and Leftwing [elements] from India, South Asians from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, some Jewish and African-American justice groups etc. The Pakistanis also came on board and brought their internal politics with them. They have now dominated it [protest plans] and want to make it into a pro-Pakistan, anti-India protest. Internally, the PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] supporters seem to have got an upper hand and are bringing PTI flags. The protest is no longer about Kashmir and Kashmiris. Kashmir will now be presented in and through an India-Pakistan lens.” (The quoted message has been edited for clarity.)
In his book, Freedman opens with observations penned by Frans de Waal in the latter’s book, Chimpanzee Politics. De Waal, studying power relations and social interaction among apes, noted, among other things, that “The apes appeared to know that they should limit violence among themselves, for they might have to unite against external rivals.” (as quoted by Freedman)
This is a crucial observation because it indicates a link between internal pack or group cohesion and strategies against external elements, threats and adversaries. Put another way, internal divisions would hamper even strategies that could otherwise be effective. Internal cohesion is also important because when X intends to target Y’s fault-lines, Y will necessarily and inevitably reciprocate by exploiting X’s divisions.
If one aspect of Pakistan’s strategy is to interest the world and get the world worried about India, then it should be obvious that Pakistan needs to reduce internal friction to reduce India’s options of targeting Pakistan’s fault-lines.
That’s not happening and as I said last week, I shan’t wager my money on that happening either.
To recap, strategy is not a neat, clean journey to an objective; it is muddling through in a “dignified way”; it is very often a coping mechanism; it faces drag and friction from external forces (and often internal divisions); it is, nonetheless, the only option to structure one’s response(s).
But as Cathal J Nolan writes in his brilliant book, The Allure of Battle, “Despite battle’s abiding allure, we must study war and not just battle…We seem to insist that battles are preferable to attrition, and think they must be more decisive.”
They are not. There will be many battles in a war and attrition is about how much ruin there is in a nation. It’s a drawn-out process and may have brief interregnums of peace. In the end, it’s the clash of wills, the greater ability to plod or bugger on than one’s adversary. Clausewitz said that “Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult.”
Corollary: if we want to get into a contest, let’s first get down to doing some hard thinking and lose our platitudes.
The writer is a former News Editor of The Friday Times. He reluctantly tweets @ejazhaider
Somewhere in this approach nestles the assumption that the strategy will unfold without any opposing force(s). That there will be no drag, no friction. Whether it’s a battlefield, a war with many battles, markets, societies, things will pan out according to the various steps (plans) envisaged in a strategy with no external forces impacting them. One just has to stick to the script, to put it figuratively.
Unfortunately, that almost never happens. As Lawrence Freedman cautioned in his behemoth of a book, Strategy: A History, “The world of strategy is full of disappointment and frustration, of means not working and ends not reached.”
Does that mean the huge corpus of literature on strategy is useless? Yes and no. Yes, if we think of strategy as a passepartout that can unlock everything and get us unhindered to the riches; no, if we understand that (a) it is difficult to define what strategy is, in terms of its scope and multiple levels; (b) that human mind needs some structure to understand the situation; (c) that understanding is important to cope with the situation; (d) it allows to develop responses in relation to the challenges.
None of the above, however, guarantees success because any strategy will of necessity be either responding to someone else’s initiative or contending with counter-veiling forces or strategies. There will thus be the disappointments and frustrations that Freedman explains in his tome.
In other words, one can either muddle through blindly or get down to working out a strategy and muddle through with some appreciation of a situation, knowing full well that the many plans, just like Clausewitz’ war with many battles, will continue to face contingencies and undergo changes as the situation unfolds.
The conduct of strategy — how to go about it — can vary over time and space and given the circumstances. In the end, however, it’s about reducing one’s own mistakes and leveraging the other’s.
In judo, the successful player is the one who uses the weight and strength of his opponent more effectively to his advantage. The art is not to respond blow to blow but to find one’s advantage by leveraging the weakness of the opponent. Three elements form the principle: speed, flexibility, leverage. Bigger companies can bludgeon smaller ones if the latter get into a direct competition with the former. The smaller players’ advantage lies in finding new markets and, as now happens, use disruptive technologies that change the game and its principles. In other words, you don’t defend that which you can’t defend when squarely attacked. You find a different battleground. That’s where it is difficult for the bigger companies to adapt. A speedboat can move and turn much faster than an aircraft carrier.
India’s August 5 decision to annex Occupied Kashmir is meant to change the rules of the game. Every dialogue framework between India and Pakistan has had baskets or pillars and, for whatever it was worth in substantive terms, the Kashmir dispute was always one of the baskets. That’s the Gordian’s knot India thinks it has cut.
The move is based on some assumptions: By saturating the Valley with security forces — army, paramilitaries, police — India can deal with any armed resistance effectively. Space to deployment ratio has a counterinsurgency logic to it. India has no dearth of manpower; short of an effective armed resistance, Kashmiris will not be able to sustain civil defiance for very long, especially if repression is increased; curbing freedom of movement and communications will not allow free reporting of what’s happening; using pliant Indian media will help in neutralising independent reporting; India will be able to ward off any international voices/pressure until things begin to calm down in the Valley; international voices, governmental and non-governmental cannot do much beyond making noise; there’s no danger of sanctions, given India’s market potential (though the economic indicators are sliding and global investors are falling out of love, to quote a Bloomberg report, with Modi); India has the diplomatic clout to build coalitions that will keep it out of trouble despite the noise.
The thinking: Israel has done it all through its existence; India can too.
It is in this situation that Pakistan has to formulate its responses or, going back to the idea of strategy, formulate its strategy.
As noted last week in this space, so far there’s not much of it in sight. And what we do have, is not Churchill’s KBO (keep buggering on), which would be something to write about if we were actually doing it, but groping in the dark. Let’s apply the judo example: India says there would be no problem in Kashmir if Pakistan weren’t interfering there. In other words, Kashmiris alienation is either no problem or one caused by Pakistan. Pakistan says Kashmir banay ga Pakistan. Really? Do we want to counter India’s fallacious argument or strengthen it?
A Kashmiri friend shared a message with me from one of his friends in New York. This is how it goes: “Stand with Kashmir was organising a major protest when [Indian prime minister Narendra] Modi comes to NYC for the UN General Assembly session. The protest included other groups like Dalits, Hindus and Leftwing [elements] from India, South Asians from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, some Jewish and African-American justice groups etc. The Pakistanis also came on board and brought their internal politics with them. They have now dominated it [protest plans] and want to make it into a pro-Pakistan, anti-India protest. Internally, the PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] supporters seem to have got an upper hand and are bringing PTI flags. The protest is no longer about Kashmir and Kashmiris. Kashmir will now be presented in and through an India-Pakistan lens.” (The quoted message has been edited for clarity.)
In his book, Freedman opens with observations penned by Frans de Waal in the latter’s book, Chimpanzee Politics. De Waal, studying power relations and social interaction among apes, noted, among other things, that “The apes appeared to know that they should limit violence among themselves, for they might have to unite against external rivals.” (as quoted by Freedman)
This is a crucial observation because it indicates a link between internal pack or group cohesion and strategies against external elements, threats and adversaries. Put another way, internal divisions would hamper even strategies that could otherwise be effective. Internal cohesion is also important because when X intends to target Y’s fault-lines, Y will necessarily and inevitably reciprocate by exploiting X’s divisions.
If one aspect of Pakistan’s strategy is to interest the world and get the world worried about India, then it should be obvious that Pakistan needs to reduce internal friction to reduce India’s options of targeting Pakistan’s fault-lines.
That’s not happening and as I said last week, I shan’t wager my money on that happening either.
To recap, strategy is not a neat, clean journey to an objective; it is muddling through in a “dignified way”; it is very often a coping mechanism; it faces drag and friction from external forces (and often internal divisions); it is, nonetheless, the only option to structure one’s response(s).
But as Cathal J Nolan writes in his brilliant book, The Allure of Battle, “Despite battle’s abiding allure, we must study war and not just battle…We seem to insist that battles are preferable to attrition, and think they must be more decisive.”
They are not. There will be many battles in a war and attrition is about how much ruin there is in a nation. It’s a drawn-out process and may have brief interregnums of peace. In the end, it’s the clash of wills, the greater ability to plod or bugger on than one’s adversary. Clausewitz said that “Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult.”
Corollary: if we want to get into a contest, let’s first get down to doing some hard thinking and lose our platitudes.
The writer is a former News Editor of The Friday Times. He reluctantly tweets @ejazhaider