#Pakistan - why Paranoia is ETERNAL

(My apologies to the Roman author of the phrase "war is eternal")

Thread

The partition of India has been discussed ad infinitum. I've done a "philosophical" thread previously on Partition. This is geo-strategic - cold hard facts of geography no one can change. And to my mind it points to the peculiar combination of belligerence, bravado, paranoia....

And psychotic behaviour of the Pakistan's ruling military Junta (of which the pathetic puppet Imran Khan is merely the figurehead and public face).

Indian and Western observers have been keen to study the causes of this unique combination and ask, "why is Pakistan so paranoid?"

To understand this I'll use an imperfect analogy of WWII and Operation Barbarossa. By the time this is launched, the Wehrmacht had become the most formidable land army on earth. The Russians had just pathetically fought Finland to a draw. So, who would give Russia a chance?

The German assault capitalised on surprise and it was brutal. The Red Army was routed time after time as it was caught unprepared and off guard. But Russia had two advantages: STRATEGIC DEPTH and WINTER.

The first meant that Moscow was hundreds of miles away from...

The German-Russian frontier in Poland. It meant that the Wehrmacht, despite fighting superbly in the initial stages, took four months to reach the outskirts of Moscow. Like Napoleon a century earlier, this was too late - as the brutal Russian winter soon set in, invaders........

Started suffering massive casualties. The "Strategic Depth" of Russia was that its most vital strategically important cities were hundreds of miles from the frontline. It gave the Red Army time and room to recoup, recover and hit back hard later. Eventually, the vast........

Distances and winters of the Eurasian steppe swallowed the Wehrmacht and Germany lost - it was obliterated as a military power forever.

Now we get to Partition which happened just a couple of years later.

Jinnah wanted India divided but Punjab and Bengal undivided!

The British, by now getting fed up of Jinnah continuously moving the goal posts, countered him by saying "if you can use religious demographics to divide India, you can use religious demographics to divide Punjab and Bengal"

Jinnah was, to say the least, bitterly disappointed.

His response to this was "this will be a moth eaten Pakistan".

To understand the difference, consider this: if Jinnah had succeeded, the Pakistani border wouldn't be at Wagah but at Gurgaon. It would start at the edge of Delhi. What do you think would then happen strategically?

Instead, Radcliffe draws a line through the heart of Punjab. Sikhs till today have a justifiable grouse that all the major cities of Punjab ended up in Pakistan. India got none.

But, here's the Pakistani headache: all the strategically important cities of Punjab especially.....

Lahore, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and even Islamabad are very close or close to the Indian border.

India's biggest and most important cities are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

Delhi is the closest metro to Pakistan and it sits hundreds of kilometers from the Indo-Pak border.

So going back to the Wehrmacht problem, India has STRATEGIC DEPTH but Pakistan does not.

In a war, the Indian Army is never that far from Lahore. So, if Lahore falls, then what?

Punjab is the beating heart of Pakistan, the Army is basically a Punjabi army. The vast majority of troops are Punjabi as are the top generals. If Lahore and Rawalpindi fall to the numerically superior and better armed Indian Army, what happens to troop morale?

OK but then you say, "Pakistan has solved the problem of STRATEGIC DEPTH by trying to place a friendly regime in Afghanistan."

Not really because STRATEGIC DEPTH needs to be in front of you, not behind you. Your army can retreat to the Af-Pak border but you can't carry Lahore...

With you (or Rawalpindi/Sargodha/Gujranwala/Islamabad).

This problem has no geographic solution - Lahore is a historic city and cannot be relocated farther away from the frontier. The same applies to other cities.

So what is the solution?

The Pakistani near-neurotic pursuit of nuclear weapoms was to ensure that Lahore doesn't fall one day like Dhaka.

But why Jihadis?

Look at Afghanistan, Iraq and numerous other places. Superior military powers have been thwarted in their dreams of conquest by irregular........

Islamist militias/Jihadis. If these Punjabi cities fall one day, the Jihadis will continue the battle for years to come until Indians tire of their losses and pull out just as the US did in Iraq and apparently wants to do in Afghanistan.

There is of course another solution.....

Pakistan could simply choose peace with India as other neighbouring countries except China have done.

But the day this happens, the corrupt Army cannot monopolise 30% of the national wealth and suck the country dry. Then, Asim Bajwa and his type cannot accumulate billions.......

In a Pizza empire selling Pizzas to naive Americans who don't know that their Pizza consumption is sending US troops in Afghanistan to their coffins.

So what should India do?

Do what the US did in the Cold War. Grow the economy faster so that the economic gap between India and Pakistan (which is already a chasm) becomes something of a vast unbridgeabe gulf. Force them into ruinous military spending which ultimately cracks and destroys the state.

I'll put it succinctly: without a change of course, Pakistan is on the road to hell. So please help them along.

Do not interrupt your enemies when they are feverishly digging their graves.