Shekhar Gupta: The craft of war

India can defeat Pakistan in less than a week. But first it should define victory, know when to declare it, have decisive conventional edge and stop flying MiG-21s

Speaking at the founding day of the National Cadet Corps Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said all India’s armed forces need to defeat Pakistan is seven to ten days. 

Was he talking through his hat? Can the world’s fourth largest military power defeat the fifth largest in just about a week or so? Particularly when they are both nuclear armed?

If the answer to all three questions is what seems obvious, ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the next two, we could be done with it with a 140-character tweet. We wouldn’t be wasting your time, labouring over 1200