A very perceptive piece from Maj Gen Amarjit Singh that should be required reading for all security pundits that talks about 6th generation warfare & how it has stretched warfare into a continuum from kinetic action to national politics.

1/n https://theprint.in/opinion/pakistan-fighting-war-in-indias-hinterland-without-weapons-sixth-generation-warfare/529243/

I would like to add a couple of points to both amplify what he says and to ask a couple of related questions.

Firstly, trying to manipulate the domestic politics of your adversary to trip him up or even score a win is nothing new. It was banned by the treaty of Westphalia …

But it never went away. It used to be called psychological warfare or propaganda warfare after Westphalia but is now back with a bang and a salience that it never had before.

Why has it gained so much importance of late?

Two big trends since the beginning of this century - both technology driven - the growth of social median the accumulated banks of big data on individual.

This has brought about the ability to target individuals with deeply manipulative information at very low cost.

Second, it had reduces the cost of acquisition of saboteurs, malcontents, subversives and rebels to fraction of what it was before.

Such interference in domestic politics is not limited to elections. It is 24/7 continuing activity.

In fact this kinda warfare so cheap and effective that it dwarfs & blanks out the advantages of high tech weaponry. A Russia can manipulate The US or a Pakistan can manipulate India notwithstanding the huge differences in the size of their economies; or

.. Traditional measures of national power.

Russians have perfected the deployment of what they call reflexive control strategies which is a well designed intervention in an adversary’s domestic politics to change the course of history.

To give you an idea of what that means I could argue that Pulwama/Balakot was such a deployment of a reflexive control strategy by Pakistan that ensured the election of RW Modi government that has successfully deepened the communal faultiness in India that ISI could never have ..

Dreamed of on its own.

I am not saying this was so. What I am saying this could be so.

Very very easily.

2 my 2 questions.

1. Given the current 6th war strategies is RSS/BJP playing into Pakistan and China’s hands by deepening the faultiness of Indian society be they communal, caste, ethnic or others?

2. How do you counter such warfare in the future. Is our politics adding 2 social cohesion?