WAR CLOUDS ARE BEING MANUFACTURED
T.G. Jacob
War hysteria is being built up in South Asia. This hysteria being built up concerns two nuclear powered countries, India and Pakistan. Both are hostile countries from the day they were born and now there is a history of several wars and the dismemberment of one country as the background. This time the tension is snowballing over a truncated Kashmir. While there is nothing radically new about this, the specificities vary.
On the face of it the accusations and counter-accusations can be called routine. At the same time the dynamics of a step like war always happens in specific historical conjunctures which makes it mandatory that we must understand this conjuncture if we have to contribute towards minimizing totally unnecessary human misery. What is happening in India is the creation of consensus about going to war with Pakistan and the rulers seems to be succeeding in some sort of a way on this count.
Kashmir is a tragedy with a history. Once there was a Kashmir that was eulogized by Asians and others. Naturalistic platitudes like “paradise on earth” were heaped on this land even by global marauders of an earlier period. Now it is divided into three under three different and hostile ruling dispensations. Presently, part of Kashmir is under New Delhi, another part with Pakistan and the third part with China. Moreover, major economic activities like the giant scheme of Silk Road are being executed in the region. Its strategic importance has grown significantly.
War, especially ‘limited wars’, have often proved to be products of political necessity. Or, at least, political expediency for survival has often played a significant role in the execution of wars. Of course, these political expediencies can be traced to structural factors rooted in ethnic identities and cultures.
In India’s case, the political expediency for the ruling dispensation is not at all vague. It is the failure of catchy slogans like “Make in India” and the increasing disapproval of communal fascism of the Hindu right wing speeding up the process of alienation of the people from the rulers. The ruling party is constitutionally handicapped, and for changing the Constitution to suit its ideology and interests elections have to be won, which operates as a compulsion for manipulating polarizations. It is also a giant of a country with wonderful variations in cultures, languages, and faiths. A strongly integrated national culture acts as a strong imagination/wish rather more than as a concrete political viability. So its Constitution is built-in with many possibilities of social management.
Pakistan is of explicit theocratic origin with a long history of military rule. It is beset with many serious contradictions directly showing up the absence of a “national” consensus except a broad religion divided by tribal identities. Pakistan has been involved in the ongoing global power games in the region very actively. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan the vast swathes of border became open arms bazaars which inundated a much broader region with modern assault weapons. There are several armed groups in Baluchistan and the presence of Islamic militants is a constant all over Pakistan. Murderous actions are regular in Pakistan; rather, it has become a way of life for the people. Its structural political balance is weak, fragile, and subject to changes as it was made evident when Bangladesh was formed after much carnage. At the same time, it is globally recognized as a regional military power with nuclear capability. Time has moved, it is not 1947 or 1971.
The greater region of West and Central Asia is unstable to the extreme as is shown by the wars and indeterminacy of boundaries rampant there. Under the global situation existing it is quite possible that any war between India and Pakistan can open another war front for the dominant powers, especially the United States of America, and both the countries can easily be caught in a vicious trap which both the peoples can ill afford. Both the countries are poor whatever the hyperbolic rhetoric of India concerning ‘growth rate’. India has contracted a logistics agreement with the US which is of far-ranging significance. Pakistan is not only supplied well with modern weaponry by the Western bloc but also by China.
All the active agents of imperialist globalization have a common characteristic - their economies are very intricately and highly militarized. What this means is not that they are all powerful military powers in the political sense but that their economic activities are decisively dominated by direct or indirect military production and allied research and development which must have a global market. In this scheme the US is especially notable because its economy, the largest in the world, is the most heavily militarized which means that its economic system which is currently subject to weak dynamics can avoid collapse only with sufficient and increasing doses of violent tensions in the world. The corporate bourgeoisie is not at all surprised at the state of permanent war now becoming evident in the global system. The corporate capitalists not only welcome wars but also natural disasters because that also gives them more opportunities for capital accumulation. There are no inhibitions for the capitalist globalizers when it comes to production and reproduction of capital. Selling of nuclear technology, GM technology, weapons of all kinds on an ever increasing scale is the necessary requirement for them. Otherwise, for them, it is survival itself that is at stake.
The conditions existing are such that a war will certainly promote the interests of global capital and may also, in the short run, protect the interests of the ruling political class in India. But let us remember that the burden of such an exercise will be on the people whose priorities cry out for urgent solutions. A war is calculated as an effective diversion from those priorities while promoting the greed of the corporate capital, globally and regionally. There is no legitimate reason why the people want a war. Hence, it is to be opposed and exposed.