As India and Pakistan went a notch up in the escalatory ladder, when the deadweight heaviness in the air became poignantly palpable, and when war seemed imminent, I was intrigued by the noticeable absence of mobilization and military movement in Kashmir. In the ‘miasma of war’ the inference I drew was that both India and Pakistan were merely interested in posturing up to a point. But in retrospect, this speculative assessment is just that: speculation.
In actual and real terms, India and Pakistan did go to war. Who ‘won’ or ‘lost’ in relative terms need not detain us here; what is relevant and important is that a war did happen, a war whose ultimate denouement lay in the nuclear option. Given the nature of the escalation ladder between India and Pakistan and the ‘escalatory binds, nuclear use by either of the two was no longer improbable. By asserting that war did happen between the two countries, I am making a ‘tall’ claim’. How do I conclude then that it indeed did happen?
The issue whittles down to definitions. If war may be defined as an ‘activity where armies of two states are in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, combat readiness and postures and mobilization’, then what occurred between India and Pakistan was ‘limited war’. But if war may be defined as, ‘a period of intense hostility and the attendant military operations between two states’, then India and Pakistan were veritably at war.
But, to stretch it further, if war did take between these two principal antagonists, then this was a peculiar and odd form of warfare. There was, to repeat, no egregious military mobilization, there was no real military combat (skirmishes that unfortunately led to deaths - given the scale and enormity of the conflict - may not count as combat equivalent to war), and so on. If then there was war between India and Pakistan, what was its nature?
The most accurate appellation that perhaps best describes the war between India and Pakistan is ‘contactless war’. (This phrase is not mine; it is attributed to military experts and specialists). But ‘contactless war’ seems like an oxymoron. How can it be war when it does not correspond to conventional definitions and ideas?
The answer is in the domain of technology. It would, in this particular context, be safe to postulate that technology and technological developments thereof have radically altered both ‘battlescapes’ and ‘warscapes’. War between India and Pakistan was emblematic of this. What the question is does this mean for the future of war?
Inferentially, it would appear that technology will become both the dependent and intervening variable in any future war. And that in these future wars, conventional armies and conventional military doctrines, force postures and actual fighting may, in extreme scenarios be rendered infructuous. (If not entirely passe but merely as an addendum or appendage to techno-war). Does the dominance of technology in war mean the end of strategy?
Will, for example, sometime in the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI determined algorithms be the determinants of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in war? Will ‘good’ generalship mean only nudging AI algorithms to determine the course of war?
No. Not at all.
Good generalship will be the determinant of the nature, course and trajectory of war. But good generalship will always be dependent on good strategy. From an academic perspective, strategy will not merely be an intervening variable but the constant that will determine the course of any given war. Again, the latest Indo-Pak war is an excellent case study for this.
Another layer to the nature of war that can be adduced from this war is that total war may be passe in its logistical sense; but semantically wars will be total in the sense that populations - because of various forms of media and ‘narrative war’ make war ubiquitous – will be ‘live streamed’ participants and audiences for and of war. While wars will be conceived in strategy and war rooms, fought in different formats (virtual and real), the referees will be the people. In this scheme future wars become extremely sensitive to public opinion.
But should wars be fought?
It is held by many that war is an age-old institution that is determinative of politics. To quote a prominent analyst, ‘war makes the state and the state makes war’, this assertion becomes almost axiomatic in defense of war and war making. In the era of Cold War 2.0, this ‘axiomatic truth’ becomes a dangerous truism. But then wars are also held to be the arbiter of conflicts.
Should, then, to repeat the question, should war and warmaking be normative - even when there is ‘contactless war’? The answer is a big no. While war making may have some utility, there is the attendant ‘pity of war’ - the depredations, the traumas, and the scarring - that can span generations - that war causes. If war is a nonstarter for an assorted set of reasons, what should replace it?
Not an easy question to answer, it would appear that while states should and must be ready for war, and have robust and deft war making capabilities, the real challenge is peace and instituting the same. In this schema, war should be subsidiary to politics. And if wars do happen, then this can only be attributable to bad politics. By way of a conclusion, while contactless war may be the new norm(al) in interstate relations, it still is bad.
However, if war is to happen after all other avenues – diplomacy, summitry, talks etc - have been exhausted, between Clausewitz’ dictum that,’ ‘all war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means’ and Sun Tzu’s pithy aphorism, ‘The supreme art of war is winning without fighting’. I would go for Sun Tzu. Broken down Sun Tzu’s aphorism boils down to strategy, good generalship, diplomacy and an organization of forces and force structure in a way that gives short shrift to brute force and undercuts the ‘pity of war’.
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