By D. C. Pathak

 

 

WORLD War II ended with the first-ever use of a nuclear bomb by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945 respectively, resulting in the killing of nearly two hundred thousand civilians and the surrender of Japan a week thereafter. What set in later was appropriately called the period of ‘Cold War’, in which nuclear deterrence rooted in the theory of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’(MAD) kept the two superpowers from initiating a full-scale war. These were also the years of a tense ideological divide of the world between International Communism with state control of the economy and the Capitalist model of the Free Market. The Vietnam War in the meanwhile revealed that military armament could work against the government but not necessarily defeat a people whose minds had been turned by an ideology. The ‘asymmetry’ of the Vietnam battle was an indicator of the era of ‘proxy wars’ that would follow once the Cold War ended with the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan and the consequent dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the demise of International Communism in 1991. Post-Cold War, open warfare evidently gave way to ‘covert’ offensives by way of instigation of cross-border terror attacks, support to insurgencies and promotion of separatist movements.

 

The end of the Cold War coincided with the rise of faith-based terrorism because the anti-Soviet armed campaign was run on the war cry of Jehad and conducted in an asymmetric mode. The US gave all credit to Pakistan for the success of the ‘Afghan war’ clearly in ignorance of the fact that Pak ISI had also patronised Islamic radicals of Taliban and Al Qaeda and managed to install the Taliban Emirate in Kabul in 1996 knowing well that these outfits considered US-led West as their first enemy. The contradiction surfaced soon enough for the US to work for the ouster of the Emirate - which laid the turf for 9/11 - and realise the seriousness of the threat posed by Islamic radicals to its own security and the security of its allies. The ‘war on terror’ launched by the US-led coalition first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, saw radicalisation spreading in the Muslim world at the expense of the fundamentalist but pro-US regimes like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrein. The radical outfits used faith-based motivation as the instrument of terrorism. Pakistan has been riding two horses - trying to be in the good books of the US and collaborating at the same time with the radical forces of Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS. Further, Pakistan’s strategic alliance with China multiplied the security threats to India specifically but the US-led West did not always see it from the Indian perspective which added to the challenge for Indian diplomacy and the country’s security set-up. In the era of proxy wars, there is increasing reliance on the power of technology for combat.

 

The strategy of countering ‘covert’ offensives of the adversary required political will and in the Narendra Modi regime, this has been coming forth in adequate measure. Incidentally, there is a learning for Israeli security from the Hamas terror attack of October 7 - that technology should not be allowed to override the importance of human Intelligence. The surprise terrorist offensive launched by Hamas on Israel on the morning of October 7 from across the border killing over 1400 civilians including women and children - who were in the midst of celebrating the annual Sukkot musical festival - showed deep planning and secret mobilisation of resources. Even though the attack was accompanied by an open warfare element of thousands of rockets being fired on Israel, these were meant basically to provide ‘cover’ to the Hamas militants to infiltrate en masse into the Israeli territory to unleash violence on civilians and create an atmosphere of terror in the area. Hamas pursuing the radical agenda engineered this provocative attack knowing well that Israel would launch an all-out military retaliation which in ultimate analysis would lead to further radicalisation of the Arab world and draw the US-led West into a protracted military conflict. Israel-Hamas confrontation has opened a second front for the US after the Ukraine-Russia ‘war’- this time around it is even messier than the latter because it has makings of a ‘war of religions’ as against the ‘political’ character of the Russian military offensive on Ukraine.

 

The US backing of Israel has shades of another ‘war on terror’ that the US had led following 9/11 - Israel is leading that counter-offensive in this case. US President Joe Biden hit the nail on the head when he stated at a press conference in Washington on October 25 - occasioned by the visit of the Australian Prime Minister - that he instinctively believed one reason behind the Hamas attack on Israel was the recent announcement of India-Middle East- Europe Economic Corridor designed to integrate the entire region with a network of rail, road and ports to the great benefit of Israel as well. It was during the G20 summit at New Delhi that India, the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union signed a Memorandum of Understanding for establishing this economic corridor. According to President Biden, this was a major effort to build a more sustainable and integrated Middle East by creating opportunities for investment across two continents.

 

What the US President should have added is that the forces of radical Islam have been on the rise in West Asia and elsewhere - led by Arab states like Qatar, Yemen and Syria - and were even confronting countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE which had struck strategic friendship with the US and accepted the idea of an accord with Israel. India has done well to denounce outright the terror attack of Hamas on Israel coming on the same page as the US, welcoming the Abraham Accord being worked out between Israel on one hand and Saudi Arabia and UAE on the other and supporting the idea of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a Palestinian state. Whatever happened in the past, the Arab world today should find a way of recognising the state of Israel while demanding an honourable and equitable solution to the Palestinian issue.(IANS) (The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal) n