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Friday March 29, 2024

Delusional Modi threatens Pakistan

By Waqar Ahmed
February 07, 2020

At the founding day of the National Cadet Corps, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently boasted that “all India’s armed forces need to defeat Pakistan is seven to ten days.” The statement was considered foolhardy, reckless and delusional by sane observers and experts in military warfare. Pakistan, as expected, rubbished it.

According to Shekar Gupta, a big name in Indian journalism, “Was he (Modi) talking through his hat? Can the world’s fourth-largest military power defeat the fifth-largest in just about a week or so? Particularly when they are both nuclear-armed?"

He further wrote: "Whether or not you can win a war in 7-10 days would also depend on how you define that ‘victory’. The genuinely strategic issues do tend to be complex, and somewhat less fun than what prime-time debates on some commando-comic channels might want to make you believe. They can defeat Pakistan, maybe with China thrown in, in half-an-hour, leaving time for commercial breaks. In real life, we might need to explore history — strategic and political — and some non-classical definitions of victory and defeat.”

Gupta added: “The central truth is that a country or even a set of countries defeating another in the manner of World War II is now an impossibility. We don’t even have a significant instance of that happening since that war. The Americans, the mightiest of all, failed in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. A mere regime change isn’t a victory. The Soviets’ failure in Afghanistan ended their ideology and military bloc. Saudi Arabia, enormously richer and more powerful, has failed to defeat poor Yemen in almost five years. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, hoping to take advantage of chaos in the wake of the revolution there. Eight years later, all the two countries had was corpses, cripples and prisoners of war, but no tangible gains. This is by no means an exhaustive list.”

He says to win a war India had to have a decisive, deterrent conventional edge over Pakistan. But years are needed to build it. “You could even win with deterrence, without fighting. Not, of course, if you are still flying MiG-21s.”

With regard to Indian Air Force strength, Alex Phillips, an Indian journalist, admitted: “The Air Force is down to 28 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned strength of 42. Of this, about 10 squadrons are made up of the MiG-21 Bisons and Jaguars, which ideally should have been retired long ago.” He said the 2020 Indian “budget revision has come just a year after the IAF was outgunned and outmatched by Pakistan, which carried out a raid on 27 February 2019 targeting Indian military installations a day after the IAF’s Balakot airstrikes."

He categorically stated: "The IAF was mechanically outgunned by Pakistan with its superior fighters, missiles and the airborne early warning and control systems.”

Indian Army chief Gen M.M. Naravane said this week: “We will continue to modernise and be operationally prepared, notwithstanding the allocation”. The word ‘notwithstanding’ really sums up the dire situation of India’s defence forces.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has stated Prime Minister Narendra Modi destroyed “India’s image as a country of peace.” The former Congress president blamed the BJP-led government at the Centre of creating an image for the country that deterred investors. “One crore people lost their jobs in the past year while the Modi government had promised the creation of two crore new ones.” Gandhi further stated: “Narendra Modi has destroyed India’s image and reputation in the world. Today, India is known as the rape capital but Narendra Modi does not talk about this. When the youth raise questions over unemployment and ask Modi why he destroyed India’s image, you are answered with bullets and are suppressed.”

One may conclude that given the state today the country is in, India does not need many enemies when the man who leads India is doing their bidding.