Devangshu Datta The cross-border strikes drama

A Saudi businessman, formerly domiciled in Afghanistan, and wanted by the US for crimes he instigated in Africa, and the US, was hiding in Pakistan. The Americans killed him in a cross-border raid by heli-borne special forces.

The life and death of Osama Bin Laden (OBL) is a good illustration of globalisation. By definition, globalisation means resources, information and human skill sets moving seamlessly across borders. Also, events in one place have strong ripple effects in others due to globalisation.

OBL’s story featured skills and resources switched between locales scattered across continents. It involved the use of globalised resources and technologies accessed as needed in the form of American stealth-helicopters, Chinese box-cutters, Afghan pack mules, Pakistani herbal viagra, Russian AK47s, etc.

His passing sparked off resonances everywhere, again a hallmark of globalisation. Among the more risible outcomes was the moustache-twirling as Indian and Pakistan military establishments boasted about the ability to execute cross border strikes. At least, this would be risible, if the folks in question didn’t command large quantities of weapons.

Why would the lead poisoning of a Saudi at American hands spark off such an absurd exchange? India knew nothing about OBL’s location. Pakistan insists it didn’t either. Neither nation gains by letting the other know about its cross-border strike capability. Or does it? Consider this as a game played by many actors with diverse interests all trying to maximise their respective utilities.

Pakistan’s establishment (civil and military) would like it believed they knew nothing of OBL. This is like Kamran Akmal countering match-fixing charges with the plea that he dropped catches out of sheer incompetence.

Pakistan would also like to discourage copycat Indian strikes. If India took such action, the Pakistanis would “have” to retaliate, sparking a potentially disastrous war. Any such conflict could also mean being cut off from the teat of massive US aid.

India’s military establishment knows the political will to hit cross-border targets is lacking. Absence of political will has meant a lack of the human intelligence resources (aka spy networks) required to identify and hit such targets.

Ideally, the Indian defence establishment would like to develop humint. Lacking much leverage with the Indian political establishment, it would, at the minimum, want the Pakistanis to believe it possesses the ability to do cross-border strikes. Such a belief may, perhaps, induce Pakistan to downscale its support of terrorism.

The Indian political establishment wants to leverage Pakistan’s embarrassment into tangible realpolitik gains. Its interests may diverge from the Indian military establishment in this regard.

The interests of the Pakistani military and civilian establishments converge in being reckoned ignorant of OBL’s location. But they diverge in other places, including in the small matter of how to engage with India.

Whatever happens to the Indo-Pak relationship will be a result of the interplay of these convergent, divergent and diametrically opposed interests. Mathematical models can help suggest possible strategies and outcomes.

Such models were a prime reason why the Cold War did not go “hot”. It was crucial that both US and USSR modelled potential areas of conflicts before committing to action. In a real sense, they were speaking the same language during some 40 years of bluff-counter-bluff and proxy wars.

Neither Pakistan nor India possesses those skills, or takes such analysis seriously. However, the politics of nuclear poker are far too important to be left to mathematically-unaware political agents.

The need of the hour is not for immediate cross-border strikes or “no first use” declarations. It is to develop a desi equivalent of the Rand Institute that can model the possible outcomes of cross-border strikes and no first use declarations. If India puts such an institution in place, that would automatically induce the Pakistanis to do the same. Then, despite umpteen wars and impressively waxed moustaches, we might end up speaking the same language.