Many have seen the famous interview where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat down together for a lengthy discussion about their parallel journeys in the convoluted universe of Silicon Valley. At one point during that interview, Steve Jobs, while praising Bill Gates, says that it was Microsoft that had realised before anyone else that it was really the software that was the key to computers.

Nation states are no different than computers if you think about it. There is the hardware and there is the software. The strong army and their skills and military hardware make a state’s hardware and the internal culture, the society, the people, their rights, their education and skills, and so forth make the software of a state.

The mistake many nations made in the past and perhaps still do is that the strength of the hardware is equated with the entire strength that is needed for the nation to survive any threats. Nothing can be further from the truth. History is replete with examples........

© The Express Tribune