One of my favourite sayings is: “The more you can look into the past, the further you will be able to see the future.”
Knowledge and information is power. Thus the history of the world can help us predict the future. And from what I know of the history I can predict at least a couple of things.
Any country that brings war to its borders suffers, even when they win the war, but if a country commits war on the borders and areas of other countries then their economies can benefit from the war. For example, the USA has been successfully campaigning wars around the world for decades and they have been prospering because the wars are not on their borders but on the borders of other nations. On the other hand, countries like Russia, India, Pakistan, Turkey and the EU are suffering for waging wars on their own territories. Such fighting hampers economic growth and trust for which their economies suffer for decades after a war ends.
Considering these details I can predict that in the future the governments around the world will try to focus on more cooperation and avoid any wars with their neighbours, which would mean that the biggest threat to a country’s sovereignty would be a long range attacks via planes, UAVs, missiles and other long range weapons.
Countries, especially the ones vying for the ‘superpower’ status, should therefore invest in countering such long range attacks and should therefore equip and train their forces accordingly. They should create their own long range attacks to take the war to the borders of their aggressors. Also every country should avoid wars with their neighbouring countries and instead push for more economic cooperation among neighbours who can become their closest customers and major income source for their economies. It would also reduce global inflation as the goods will come in cheaper due to low freight charges.
India and Pakistan should also use this strategy and stop the tit-for-tat war among themselves. Western countries have become rich because of this secret war between Pakistan and India. First, they woe Pakistan for weapons, then they go to India to sell more weapons to counter Pakistan’s increase in arms, then they come back to Pakistan and sell them more to counter the Indian increase in arms. This cycle is repeated a number of times to gain maximum profits from both countries.
When will our two countries learn from our own history?
SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar
