The Indians and us
No one wins an arms race, says one of the flurry of t-shirt-sized slogans that peaceniks across the world use. Not that they have helped us, or any of those countries that operate and arm huge armies. Militaries in the democratic western countries don’t bat their eyelids even when peace-loving tree-huggers tie themselves to nuclear facilities; those in more repressive regimes do worse than simply being indifferent to these gadflies.
No. Peace and a diversion from defence spending come from tangible changes in real factors that affect a region’s security calculus. That is what the deep state tells, condescendingly, to its doves. Pakistan wouldn’t have tested the recent Hatf missile, certain apologists say, if India hadn’t tested a missile of its own a week back. This is an admission, then, that the test wasn’t a test at all but a political statement. The same was the case when we tested our nuclear weapons back in 1998.
Real changes in a security calculus are brought about by increases in trade and commerce. Countries that have a huge volume of trade with each other are not likely to go to war with each other. But the hawks within the country want to throw a spanner in those works as well. The brouhaha over the incumbent government’s granting of the MFN status to India is a testament to that fact.
What constitutes as real changes can be subject of unending debate. Some of the definitions set by the hawks would be downright unreasonable. For better or for worse, we have to accept the fact that India is a much, much larger country and the way they view their place in the world is in respect with China which necessarily has to be different from what ours should be. Even if they are not adversarial, they are bound to rub the churlish amongst us the wrong way.
But some argue that that is what they want. There is a vibrant school of thought within the Indian defence establishment that makes a case for pushing Pakistan into entering an arms race it can barely afford. For the Indians, this would be a case of the operation being successful but the patient dying; to goad Pakistan into spending more and more, the Indians will have to spend more and more. For a country that has so much grinding poverty, it is a shame that the Indians choose guns over butter.
