The Politics of War

There needs to be a debate in Pakistan questioning the proper balance between the military and the civilian leadership and what should be the role of a civilian-military relationship during a war. There is a discussion underway questioning Pakistan’s role in the war against terrorism, but it does not seem to be asking the questions that need to be answered about the nature of this war. Far more important than ‘what are we fighting for?’ is to ask how to fight and win this war. There seems to be no clue, reason or an idea how the state of Pakistan will triumph over the challenges confronting it. The state of Pakistan appears to be adrift and rudderless and keeps oscillating between indecision and denial, as it appears to be incapable of understanding the existential questions facing it.

This war is being fought for the soul of Pakistan and it is being fought to decide what the final vision of Pakistan will be and how it will ultimately exist as a nation state. To understand the basic premise of this war, which is the attainment and exercise of political power within Pakistan, it must be remembered that the origins of all wars reside in the political reasons for which they are being fought. A war is basically an application of armed violence intended to achieve a political goal and it is the political reasons of a war that then influence the military strategy behind a particular war. Wars are the final arguments in politics and the objective of a war is to convince an adversary to stop resisting the political demands that are being forced upon it. Wars occur when diplomacy, which is the traditional avenue of a political discourse, proves incapable of resolving political issues. Therefore, wars have to be understood as endeavours of a political will designed to revive the diplomatic negotiations from a favourable position and this is the guiding principle behind all wars.

In this sense, the idea of a military victory is only, and must be limited to, how successfully a war can end the diplomatic impasse and revive the political process. Therefore, wars must be fought for clearly defined political reasons and those political reasons then determine the conditions under which the fighting will cease and peace will be restored. Once these reasons are articulated, the military strategy is framed in the context of identifying those points of military value that need to be attacked and defeated in order to end the war as quickly as possible. The rationale of a military strategy must always be in the aid of a political purpose and never in isolation from it. It is this overarching reason that makes for an imperative argument for civilian control of the Pakistani military and why military strategy in Pakistan must always be subservient to the ‘political necessity’. Wars that are fought without political considerations and as entities within their own right and are open-ended in their execution, become self-defeating propositions. Military strategy must be as flexible as the political realities under which it is implemented, and if the political reality changes in the middle of a war, the military strategy must also change and accept the new political realities.

The traditional problem in Pakistan has always been that its military strategy has been crafted in complete disregard of the political reasons and even worse, the idea of a ‘military necessity’ has been periodically imposed on politics. This is the reason that will prove to be the biggest obstacle in Pakistan’s attempts to defeat the Taliban and their al Qaeda patrons and its various militant sectarian supporters. The Pakistani military does not have the capacity to defeat the Taliban and their supporters. The Taliban and their followers, on the other hand, do not have the ability to take over the state of Pakistan. So unless there is a political policy behind this war that can end it, this war will be without an end if fought from a purely military perspective. The only problem, and a very crucial one, is that civilian control of the Pakistani military and its military strategy raises the question about the role of the Pakistani politicians as military strategists and whether they understand the limitations of military power in resolving political problems.

The Pakistani political leadership, if it is to assume the responsibility for this war, needs to take the direction of this war away from the military. The reason the military is dominating the politics of this war is because the civilian leadership of the country has distanced itself from this war and has left the conduct of this war to the generals. This is an unacceptable abdication of political responsibility, because all military plans and strategy have a political consequence to them and if left unattended, they can severely affect a nation’s ability to function as a sovereign power as the military, in pursuit of victory, can commit the nation to new and unwanted policies. Furthermore, a civilian military strategist must understand that the role of the military in this war and its counter-insurgency operations will not defeat the threat, but can only open the negotiating space available to the government to engage the Pakistani Taliban from a more advantageous position.

The manner in which that opportunity is exploited and the political promises extracted and committed, is dependent on upon the dexterity of the civilian leadership and how effectively it occupies the political vacuum created as a result of military operations in weakening the Pakistani Taliban and their resistance to the political demands being imposed on them. In other words, are the Pakistani politicians able to secure political peace following the military operations? The bitter reality of this war is that both the Pakistani military and its civilian leadership are not qualified to seek a lasting end to this war as neither of them really understands their proper role in this war and how to fight it to a successful conclusion. Civilian-military relations in Pakistan have been so distorted by the repeated forays of the military into the civilian realm that in order to effectively wage this war, the correct equilibrium between the military and civilian leadership will have to be created before an effective military strategy emerges in this war.

The challenge facing the state of Pakistan, and for it to emerge successful in this war, is not to defeat the insurgency per se but to create the proper mechanism of a civilian-military response to the threat while fighting a war and reversing the mistakes of the past. In the end, when the fighting finishes, this war will end in a political settlement and the state of Pakistan will be better served if its military rejects its policies of military-political schizophrenia and fights to give the politicians the options that will secure the long-term interests of Pakistan. It is the function of the Pakistani military to ensure that the final peace will benefit the interests of Pakistan as a country and not just the institutional interests of the Pakistani military. The best means of securing this reality is for the politicians in Pakistan to assume the command and direction of this war before it is too late and Pakistan actually ends up losing this war.

The above also appeared in The Daily Times (http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\12\15\story_15-12-2010_pg3_4) of December 15, 2010