RETHINKING PAKISTAN’S HIGHER DEFENCE |
“From Plato to Nato, the history of command in war consists of an endless quest for certainty…historical commanders have always faced the choice between two basic ways of coping with uncertainty…to construct an army of automatons following the orders of a single man, allowed to do only that which could be controlled; the other, to design organisations and operations in such a way as to enable the former to carry out the latter without the need for continuous control. …the second of these methods has, by and large, proved more successful than the first…”
— Martin van Creveld quoted by William Lind in Manoeuvre Warfare Handbook
“He plunged past with his bayonet towards the green hedge,
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror’s touchy dynamite.”
— The Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes
SITUATING THE ISSUE
Among other changes brought in by the 27th Constitutional Amendment, one relates to the creation of the office of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). The position, which is to represent command of all three services, will not exist as an independent office but will be held concurrently by whoever is Chief of the Army Staff, beginning with the current incumbent. The amendment also extends the tenure of the current army chief/CDF as also those who would succeed him.
The issue of the probity of the amendment and the manner in which it was pushed through continues to be debated. The delay in the notification gave rise to much speculation about the grey areas in the draft, which seemed tailored for specific circumstances and person but will impact the Higher Defence Organisation (HDO) and civil-military relations beyond this moment and its politics. Expectedly and rightly, the debate on the political aspects of the amendment should continue.
My purpose here, however, is different and is related to analysing the argument, given by some former generals, that there’s nothing novel about the changes that have been made in the HDO because the issue was long being debated within the organisation and the system. They have argued that, in light of evolving warfare, the imperative for ‘jointness’ — seamless operational coordination among the services — has now been formalised through these changes.
On the face of it, these arguments cannot be faulted. For instance, the need for coordination at all three levels — tactical (where battles are fought), operational (where planning is done to achieve the desired outcomes), and politico-strategic (the highest level that informs the purpose of war as also the direction and intent of the other two levels) — should be obvious. War is not a clash of mobs. It requires disciplined forces that must operate to create synergies. That requires coordination.
The 27th Constitutional Amendment promises streamlined command across the military services by creating the post of Chief of Defence Forces. But neither is this a novel concept, nor is the current interpretation without its issues. History shows that organisational redesign alone cannot overcome the realities of conflict. Ejaz Haider urges revisiting the details of an important and necessary doctrine…
However, agreeing with the obvious or stating it without reference — in this case, to factors that do not fall within the operational domain — is not the same thing as agreeing with the details of how it is to be achieved and why in a particular way and not in another.
Further, while jointness is much talked about, like strategy, a term that has almost become meaningless, it must be problematised. It is neither a magic wand nor even desirable in many battle scenarios. We shall return to that.
At this point, a caveat is in order. What follows is my view. There can be many views. Debates over doctrines and the best courses of action have to continue. Wars usually settle them!
One example is the post-WWI debate in France over static and mobile defences. Critics of the idea of the Maginot Line — a vast French system of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations built along its eastern borders (Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland) in the 1930s — argued that it symbolised passivity, would be costly and a drain on resources and would not be effective against German manoeuvre warfare. The proponents argued that it would provide a strong defence, a base for counterattack and force the Germans into Belgium, drawing their main thrust into a pre-planned battleground.
As it happened, the real test came with the German offensive. The Germans didn’t attack the main line. They rapidly advanced through the supposedly impassable Ardennes Forest, getting around the line’s northern end. The French, who had committed their best mobile forces to Belgium, had left the Ardennes and the road to Paris vulnerable. The point is that debates over this and that can only be settled when the real test of battle comes.
The second issue is that wars are not linear. Nor do they follow a particular template, at least not for the winning side, which wins precisely because it does something different, unexpected. As the celebrated German Panzer commander Gen Hermann Balck once said, “There can be no fixed schemes. Every scheme, every pattern is wrong. No two situations are identical. That is why the study of military history can be extremely dangerous.”
In other words, the official view remains untested.
Let me begin this discussion with some history related to HDO in this country, take a look at jointness and its attendant problems and square it off with how battles frustrate top-down planning and why it is important to keep things simple.
HAVE WE THOUGHT OF JOINTNESS ONLY NOW?
The short answer is no. We thought of it way back in the 1970s, after realising the organisational failures, both vertically and horizontally, in the 1965 and 1971 Wars. Gen Ehsanul Haq, former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff and arguably a most experienced officer, wrote an........