Waltzing across the skies

On the morning of May 10, the skies wore a different colour – a colour resplendent in the day’s glory like never before. It was a colour sketched by a bunch of daredevil warriors waltzing across the vast expanse of the skies, pushing their bravery, brilliance, skills, fearlessness, professionalism and dominance of the machines they were flying to mythical proportions.

One had never witnessed a spectacle with so few taking on so many and emerging victorious by virtually annihilating their venom-laced opposition. From tending to their wounds to appealing for a ceasefire, the Indians were forced to do everything that, just a few days ago, would not have even crossed their minds. While PAF pilots painted the skies in colours of victory, the Indians, led by the butcher of Gujarat, were left ruing their arrogance and their bloated hubris.

This decisive victory in the skies could also become the harbinger of much rethinking in the world. It is not just a victory for Pakistani planning and skills but also for its pivotal strategic collaboration with China. It is a victory for the bravery of the Pakistani pilots and the lethality of the Chinese weapons. Together, on that glorious morning, they were virtually unchallenged, whether in the skies or in striking targets in the heart of the Indian mainland.

This is a loss that the Indians and the West cannot digest easily. The Chinese, with their Pakistani counterparts, have thrown up a challenge that will not go unnoticed by countries that have traditionally patronised India. The China-Pakistan duo has emerged to subdue the ill-perceived traditional Western technological superiority with finesse, precision and aplomb. The face of South Asia wears a different look and will never revert to the pre-May times.

This does not fit in with the Western plans, particularly in the context of India being adopted as a partner in the China project. Now that this dream is effectively grounded, the West could do one of the two things: despatch stockpiles of lethal armaments to India to further bolster its defence capabilities or think in terms of altering alignments. Both options are laced with risks and uncertainties.

While weapons may be a factor in the recent mauling of India, there is also the element of human spirit, which does not come packed in crates. It is inborn and far more important than the availability and use of lethal equipment. Unless one is driven by the righteousness of the cause at hand and possesses the skills to use the available resources to advantage by putting their lives online, even the most lethal of weapons would not deliver the anticipated results.

This has been amply demonstrated in the recent encounter between the two adversaries. In the end, neither the size of the country nor the quality of weapons matters. The spirit and daring emerged as the most potent ingredients under the challenging circumstances when Pakistan took the war into the Indian domain.

While the West would deliberate its options under the changed circumstances, Pakistan should also move towards recalibrating its strategic alignments. The US may have intervened to arrange a ceasefire between the two neighbours. Still, we should not forget that it did so not for accruing any benefit to Pakistan, but to stop experiencing further embarrassment seeing its partner, using weapons supplied by the West, getting a horrid mauling at the hands of a smaller country fighting with Chinese equipment. This must have pressured the US administration to exert more than it normally would in bringing the conflict to a temporary stop. That is where we stand at this juncture.

This is not going to be the end. Tension will mount again, sooner rather than later. The ceasefire provides only a temporary interregnum for Pakistan to consider its options. Neither India nor its strategic partners in the West would be comfortable with the status quo. Retaliation is written in the script that will unfold soon. It is in preparing effectively and wisely to face that eventuality that Pakistan’s future can be secured.

Over time, China has emerged as Pakistan’s most trustworthy and enduring strategic partner, while our relations with the US have remained transactional, moving from one engagement to the next. This has mostly been dictated by the need it has felt for securing Pakistan’s support and making it a partner in advancing its objectives in this part of the world, be it the war against the former Soviet Union or, more recently, the war on terror.

Despite extending support to its own detriment, both in terms of suffering massive human and material losses, Pakistan could never earn a permanent foothold in the strategic calculus of the West in general and the US in particular. We have become a country used in times of need and then dropped. With challenges likely to increase for Pakistan in the near to distant future, it will have to revert to the drawing board to review its options with a focus on ensuring its long-term security and welfare.

While divorcing the West may not be a consideration, espousing them exclusively to serve their objectives may also have outlived its utility. So far as the quality of weapons is concerned, which has been a component of our discourse in the past and a passive compulsion for our continued vulnerability, the traditional perceptions stand exposed.

China is as good as any can be, maybe better than the rest, and becoming ever more lethal with time. It also provides the dependability factor while our relations with the West have remained consistently inconsistent, holding a spark one moment only to extinguish the next. This is not the kind of partnership that should exist among sovereign states. Without mutuality of concerns and objectives, such partnerships cannot last.

In the shifting sands after the recent conflict between the two neighbours, I see a resurgence of tensions in the South-Asian region with grave implications for Pakistan’s security. A wounded US and its Western alliance will be looking to heal their wounds, thus presenting Pakistan with challenging options. Instead of immersing headlong into such an imbroglio, it would be prudent to weigh the options now and make a decision based on established realities.

Let the boys savour their moment of victory with the world acknowledging the superiority of our waltzing wizards with their flying machines. Let’s also ensure that we don’t dig any more pitfalls to plunge into and weigh our options clinically in choosing partners for a future that should be embedded in mutuality of trust and reliability.

The writer is a political and security strategist and the founder of the Regional Peace Institute. He is a former special assistant to former PM Imran Khan and heads the PTI’s policy think-tank. He tweets @RaoofHasan