To attack Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi chose national security — the one subject that is traditionally regarded as the forte of the Right, in doing so he violated one of the cardinal rules of military engagement, which is you always attack an enemy at their weakest point, never their strongest

by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra

Sometime around 546 BC, Croesus, the famously rich king of Lydia, sent an emissary to the Oracle of Delphi. His question was should he or should he not invade the Persian Empire on his eastern border. The notoriously nebulous oracle replied, “If you invade you will destroy a great empire”. Heartened, Croesus invaded, and destroyed a great empire — his own. The Persians under Shahanshah Cyrus made quick work of the Lydians, and as his capital went up in flames, Croesus immolated himself on a pyre.

In many ways the Delphi-Croesus story almost exactly describes Balakot and Rahul Gandhi, a delusional leader, egged on by a handpicked group, paying a steep price for his miscalculation. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that Gandhi violated every single dictum of warfare accumulated over 5,000 years of written history.

The question is what exactly went wrong and why?

Disquiet in Congress ranks as Rahul Gandhi insists on resigning, fate of Rajasthan and Karnataka govt's uncertain

First Mistake: Gandhi chose the one subject to attack Modi on — national security — that is traditionally regarded as the forte of the Right, violating one of the cardinal rules of military engagement that you always attack an enemy at their weakest point, never their strongest. This tactical blunder cost Gandhi dearly. When an attack fails the mistakes keep on compounding, and that’s exactly what happened.

Second Mistake: never reinforce failure. Possibly realising the questioning of Balakot was going nowhere, instead of switching tack to a more fruitful target, Gandhi’s lieutenants chose to go on persisting in an attack that clearly wasn’t going their way, expending resources on a hopeless situation.

Third Mistake: fog of war. India had circumstantial evidence to show that the damage inflicted on the ground was significant but no definitive proof was available. In technical jargon this is called the ‘fog of war’, a situation where the results of one’s actions are unclear and bad assumptions are made, leading to bad decisions. This is exactly what happened as voters who were going to be swayed by national security arguments were any way never going to listen to the Congress.

Basically, the Congress was trying to convert the unconvertible and wasted valuable time and effort doing so. Its national security managers gambled on the assumption that the air strikes had gone badly and this would be an opportune moment to attack Modi over it. A bad mistake.

Fourth Mistake: ignoring intelligence. There were clear warnings from day one that the Congress’ assumption was wrong. The issue was that instead of listening to primary source intelligence from the ground that warned them about their folly, they chose to brand dissent as BJP misinformation and propaganda. This was a particularly crucial juncture, because it was the final point where the Congress could have at least hedged, exercised caution, and thought up alternatives. It failed to and the gambit ended up like the charge of the light brigade.

Fifth Mistake: Fratricide. one of the most dangerous aspects of the ‘fog of war’ is fratricide or the killing one’s own troops, and this is exactly what the Congress ended up doing, not just restricting its attacks to the Prime Minister but also calling the Air Force a political tool and putting it in the firing line. It’s quite one thing attacking a political opponent and quite another attacking one’s own troops — in this case intentionally, is something that isn’t going to go down well in a nationalistic country, fiercely proud of its military.

Sixth Mistake: The merge. When two opposing forces get into hand-to-hand combat — called the merge, the greatest danger ensues. This is because your own troops become indistinguishable from the enemy and consequently any advantages you have end up being useless. The shrillness with which the Congress decided to attack, was almost verbatim the Pakistani official line coming out of Islamabad. In such circumstances, the Indian voter was basically facing a situation she thought ‘who is the Indian National Congress and who is the Pakistani’? In such a situation you take a call if you have to shoot the entire formation losing your own troops, and that’s what the Indian voter did.

Seventh Mistake: demoralisation. Indians do accept criticism, it’s just that you don’t criticise and demoralise troops when they are about to charge into battle. This is exactly what Gandhi did. Psychology is important here, the whole genre of military music for example — something common to all cultures no matter how isolated — from the Aztec human bone pipe bands, to European brass bands, to the Turkic Mehter bands, to the Indian Shankh, these are all psychological devices used to boost battle morale. Clearly then Gandhi’s notes were discordant and produced a negative reaction from the same people he wanted to woo.

In short, Rahul Gandhi’s ‘generals’ — several of them ex-military — violated almost every dictum of warfare that their training should have made them pay attention to. To quote 19th century French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, “it was worse than a crime it was a blunder” and certainly leads to some serious questions about the calibre of advice that Rahul Gandhi receives. Their incompetence meant that whatever Balakot achieved with respect to Pakistan, the Congress paid a far heavier price for it politically than the Jaish-e-Mohammad did physically.

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra is a defence economist and senior fellow at Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. He tweets at @iyervval. Views are personal

Source>>