History demonstrates that war is a norm in human history, not an aberration. Media, academics and liberal intellectuals around the world have been telling us otherwise - that war is history. Recent events in international politics have made younger generations believe that war is a phenomenon which belongs to the past of human history. The Long Peace started in 1945 after World War II and lasted till the early 1990s – when the Gulf War happened – and reinforced the liberal belief that war was an instrument in the hands of past tyrants. Of course, the Iran-Iraq war was fought in the 1980s, to say nothing of the countless proxy wars fought between the Soviets and Americans in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
But at least the world has not witnessed war between the great powers since World War II came to an end. We have not witnessed a world war in the post-1945 world. We haven’t witnessed war between nuclear armed states until Pakistan and India came to blows in Kargil in 1999. We have witnessed many low intensity conflicts like the one in Afghanistan and Kashmir. We have also witnessed nuclear armed super powers like the US attacking military dwarfs like Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were more policing operations than anything else, and can't be described as wars in the classical sense of the term. Experts, however, have long been pointing out that prevalence of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence that define international relations in the 21st century will make war between militarily equal states in the classical sense of the word nonexistent in the 21st century.
The US dominance of international politics after the end of the Cold War led to the creation of a unipolar world, in which the US had no military rivals. In the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, the wars the US conducted, including the Kosovo operations, the two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan were all unilateral military operations and could hardly be described as wars. Liberal internationalists and American foreign policy hawks were on the forefront of media and propaganda campaigns that sought to argue that the institution of war had been relegated to the dustbin of history.
Two types of conflicting intellectual currents have defined the academic approach towards war in the western academic world. Realism says that the international system of nation-states is inherently prone to war, since it is anarchic and there is no overarching governing body that provides security to a nation-state whose survival is threatened by another state. Liberalism, which has come to be seen as the dominant intellectual current since the end of the Cold War, suggests that economic interdependence has increased to a level where war has ceased to be an option for world powers, and they stand to gain more from economic interdependence and the network of institutions, laws and norms that have come to define international politics. A historian or a theorist may adhere to one or the other intellectual current, but they cannot deny the fact that not even a short period of human history has passed without conflicts and wars. It is not that the time since the conclusion of the Second World War has not seen wars and conflicts; it is only that full scale conventional wars between rival nation-states have been rare since 1945. The world is changing around us. Perhaps for the first time since 1945 however, war between major world powers appears possible.
One is astonished to see the proliferation of lengthy reports by international think tanks about possible war between China and the United States on the one hand, and United States and Russia on the other hand. In October 2021, RAND Corporation, a Washington based think-tank close to the American security establishment, produced a report in which it depicted three possible scenarios of full-scale conventional war between China and the United States in the light of emerging geopolitical trends in world politics. On the other hand, Russia-US or a world war between Russia and Europe has emerged as a real possibility in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Putin has been speaking in an extremely threatening tone, both in terms of conventional conflict with the west and its possible escalation into a nuclear catastrophe. He has taken some practical steps to implement his nuclear threat by shifting some of Russia’s tactical nukes into neighboring allied countries, which have geographical proximity to Western allied nations in Eastern Europe, and which are acting as a conduit for supply of American military hardware to Ukraine’s forces. Russian defeat is no more a remote possibility. The West fears that if Russia is defeated, the chances of Putin using tactical nukes in Ukraine will increase. This is one reason why the US led Western support effort has been slow on supplying state-of-the-art military hardware to Ukraine.
There was a time when liberal internationalists in Washington used to describe Kashmir as a flashpoint. They used to express the fear that the Kashmir situation could lead to nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Now Kashmir doesn’t seem as dangerous a flashpoint as the Korean peninsula. The economically advanced and highly industrialized nation of South Korea, which is displaying the same signs of pacification and liberal political ideology as the West, is demanding that Washington put its nuclear assets on display in the Korean peninsula to deter the chaotic North Koreans. Close by, Japanese society is witnessing a revival of interests in geopolitics and recent trends in Japanese politics indicate signs of an aggressive foreign policy. The Japanese are afraid of Chinese assertiveness in East Asia, and have been in talks with Washington over the geopolitical issues of the region. India and China have not yet resolved military tensions that manifest themselves in occasional military clashes on the international border. And yet, US strategists have started laying out plans for incorporating the Indian military’s potential into an integrated deterrence strategy that would involve the process of making India a regular member of Western military plans against China. This plan doesn’t simply mean that India would counter China as a military force on its international border, primarily because US strategists have started talking about the Indian role in the overall US military strategy over possible conflict in Taiwan Strait. The Indians were initially reluctant to become part of Western military strategy against China. Limited clashes on the international border however, changed Indian attitudes. Taiwan itself is a major flashpoint for military conflict between major world powers.
In the 1990s, an Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld wrote a book, “The Transformation of War” in which he predicted that direct conventional wars between nuclear armed nation-states and world powers was no more a phenomenon of the future. It seems his prediction applied only to the period between the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the Russian attack on Ukraine in March 2021. We now have a full-scale conventional war between two nation-states, one of which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, in the form of the Russia-Ukraine war. Arms sales have increased around the world as a result. Countries like Japan are now talking about adopting aggressive foreign and security policies. India, which has resisted power politics in its foreign policy since independence, is becoming greatly involved in great power politics. Chinese geopolitical ambitions are manifesting themselves in ambitious projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Geopolitics is back, with a vengeance. A war that can trigger a chain of events leading to a global conflagration appears just round the corner.
Pakistan cannot avoid entanglement in this international conflagration. Pakistan is too weak a state to withstand the repercussions of any conflict involving world powers or any conflict between any two nation states in its vicinity. For instance, if China and India go to war, it will prove disastrous for Pakistan, even if we don’t have to become part of the conflict. The economic impact of the conflict will be too horrendous for us to contemplate. Even if peace persists in the region, the sheer financial weight of the arms race that our military bureaucracy will push us into after taking into account India arms acquisition spree, as part of the American “integrated deterrence” strategy against China, will push us into an economic abyss. But we do have a viable option emerging before us. India is reversing its role, from an advocate of non-alignment and disarmament, it is turning into a frontline state for the West against China.
We should think about reversing our role as well, from a satellite state of the west during the Cold War and a frontline state in the War on Terror, Pakistan should start preparing for a role as a liberal democracy advocating peace, conflict resolutions and world disarmament. This is the only viable option for us. Our economy is not in a position to sustain an excessive defense budget in the foreseeable future.
We cannot afford an arms race with India. In such a situation, our diplomacy should undergo a major transformation. We should become advocates of peace and disarmament around the world. However, to make this possibility real, an unending program of domestic reforms must get underway on an immediate basis. Political consensus on domestic political and economic reforms is the first prerequisite of any program of transformation of our foreign policy. Old forms of politics, military conflicts and diplomacy will prove too costly for the Pakistani state in the changing geopolitical environment that is taking shape around us.
A big no to costly military build-ups should be our answer to the emerging geopolitical situation.
But at least the world has not witnessed war between the great powers since World War II came to an end. We have not witnessed a world war in the post-1945 world. We haven’t witnessed war between nuclear armed states until Pakistan and India came to blows in Kargil in 1999. We have witnessed many low intensity conflicts like the one in Afghanistan and Kashmir. We have also witnessed nuclear armed super powers like the US attacking military dwarfs like Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were more policing operations than anything else, and can't be described as wars in the classical sense of the term. Experts, however, have long been pointing out that prevalence of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence that define international relations in the 21st century will make war between militarily equal states in the classical sense of the word nonexistent in the 21st century.
It is not that the time since the conclusion of the Second World War has not seen wars and conflicts; it is only that full scale conventional wars between rival nation-states have been rare since 1945.
The US dominance of international politics after the end of the Cold War led to the creation of a unipolar world, in which the US had no military rivals. In the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, the wars the US conducted, including the Kosovo operations, the two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan were all unilateral military operations and could hardly be described as wars. Liberal internationalists and American foreign policy hawks were on the forefront of media and propaganda campaigns that sought to argue that the institution of war had been relegated to the dustbin of history.
Two types of conflicting intellectual currents have defined the academic approach towards war in the western academic world. Realism says that the international system of nation-states is inherently prone to war, since it is anarchic and there is no overarching governing body that provides security to a nation-state whose survival is threatened by another state. Liberalism, which has come to be seen as the dominant intellectual current since the end of the Cold War, suggests that economic interdependence has increased to a level where war has ceased to be an option for world powers, and they stand to gain more from economic interdependence and the network of institutions, laws and norms that have come to define international politics. A historian or a theorist may adhere to one or the other intellectual current, but they cannot deny the fact that not even a short period of human history has passed without conflicts and wars. It is not that the time since the conclusion of the Second World War has not seen wars and conflicts; it is only that full scale conventional wars between rival nation-states have been rare since 1945. The world is changing around us. Perhaps for the first time since 1945 however, war between major world powers appears possible.
One is astonished to see the proliferation of lengthy reports by international think tanks about possible war between China and the United States on the one hand, and United States and Russia on the other hand. In October 2021, RAND Corporation, a Washington based think-tank close to the American security establishment, produced a report in which it depicted three possible scenarios of full-scale conventional war between China and the United States in the light of emerging geopolitical trends in world politics. On the other hand, Russia-US or a world war between Russia and Europe has emerged as a real possibility in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Putin has been speaking in an extremely threatening tone, both in terms of conventional conflict with the west and its possible escalation into a nuclear catastrophe. He has taken some practical steps to implement his nuclear threat by shifting some of Russia’s tactical nukes into neighboring allied countries, which have geographical proximity to Western allied nations in Eastern Europe, and which are acting as a conduit for supply of American military hardware to Ukraine’s forces. Russian defeat is no more a remote possibility. The West fears that if Russia is defeated, the chances of Putin using tactical nukes in Ukraine will increase. This is one reason why the US led Western support effort has been slow on supplying state-of-the-art military hardware to Ukraine.
The Indians were initially reluctant to become part of Western military strategy against China. Limited clashes on the international border however, changed Indian attitudes.
There was a time when liberal internationalists in Washington used to describe Kashmir as a flashpoint. They used to express the fear that the Kashmir situation could lead to nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Now Kashmir doesn’t seem as dangerous a flashpoint as the Korean peninsula. The economically advanced and highly industrialized nation of South Korea, which is displaying the same signs of pacification and liberal political ideology as the West, is demanding that Washington put its nuclear assets on display in the Korean peninsula to deter the chaotic North Koreans. Close by, Japanese society is witnessing a revival of interests in geopolitics and recent trends in Japanese politics indicate signs of an aggressive foreign policy. The Japanese are afraid of Chinese assertiveness in East Asia, and have been in talks with Washington over the geopolitical issues of the region. India and China have not yet resolved military tensions that manifest themselves in occasional military clashes on the international border. And yet, US strategists have started laying out plans for incorporating the Indian military’s potential into an integrated deterrence strategy that would involve the process of making India a regular member of Western military plans against China. This plan doesn’t simply mean that India would counter China as a military force on its international border, primarily because US strategists have started talking about the Indian role in the overall US military strategy over possible conflict in Taiwan Strait. The Indians were initially reluctant to become part of Western military strategy against China. Limited clashes on the international border however, changed Indian attitudes. Taiwan itself is a major flashpoint for military conflict between major world powers.
In the 1990s, an Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld wrote a book, “The Transformation of War” in which he predicted that direct conventional wars between nuclear armed nation-states and world powers was no more a phenomenon of the future. It seems his prediction applied only to the period between the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the Russian attack on Ukraine in March 2021. We now have a full-scale conventional war between two nation-states, one of which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, in the form of the Russia-Ukraine war. Arms sales have increased around the world as a result. Countries like Japan are now talking about adopting aggressive foreign and security policies. India, which has resisted power politics in its foreign policy since independence, is becoming greatly involved in great power politics. Chinese geopolitical ambitions are manifesting themselves in ambitious projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Geopolitics is back, with a vengeance. A war that can trigger a chain of events leading to a global conflagration appears just round the corner.
We cannot afford an arms race with India. In such a situation, our diplomacy should undergo a major transformation.
Pakistan cannot avoid entanglement in this international conflagration. Pakistan is too weak a state to withstand the repercussions of any conflict involving world powers or any conflict between any two nation states in its vicinity. For instance, if China and India go to war, it will prove disastrous for Pakistan, even if we don’t have to become part of the conflict. The economic impact of the conflict will be too horrendous for us to contemplate. Even if peace persists in the region, the sheer financial weight of the arms race that our military bureaucracy will push us into after taking into account India arms acquisition spree, as part of the American “integrated deterrence” strategy against China, will push us into an economic abyss. But we do have a viable option emerging before us. India is reversing its role, from an advocate of non-alignment and disarmament, it is turning into a frontline state for the West against China.
We should think about reversing our role as well, from a satellite state of the west during the Cold War and a frontline state in the War on Terror, Pakistan should start preparing for a role as a liberal democracy advocating peace, conflict resolutions and world disarmament. This is the only viable option for us. Our economy is not in a position to sustain an excessive defense budget in the foreseeable future.
We cannot afford an arms race with India. In such a situation, our diplomacy should undergo a major transformation. We should become advocates of peace and disarmament around the world. However, to make this possibility real, an unending program of domestic reforms must get underway on an immediate basis. Political consensus on domestic political and economic reforms is the first prerequisite of any program of transformation of our foreign policy. Old forms of politics, military conflicts and diplomacy will prove too costly for the Pakistani state in the changing geopolitical environment that is taking shape around us.
A big no to costly military build-ups should be our answer to the emerging geopolitical situation.