When war is a campaign strategy
“I swear by my soil I won’t let my country be destroyed. I will not let the country stop. I will not let the country bow down.”
A line delivered by Indian Prime Minister and Hindu Nationalist Narendra Modi, who just so happens to be facing a serious challenge to his party’s parliamentary majority in a general election to be held later this spring.
The quote itself is from a speech given in the aftermath of border and cross-border airstrikes and clashes between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir territory. Retaliatory strikes, India claims, that were targeting an armed group responsible for the deadly suicide bombing of an Indian police convoy two weeks ago.
High tensions and the occasional airstrike, artillery barrage, or exchange of gunfire aren’t particularly out of the ordinary in the region, but the cross border air raid by India represents a significant escalation from what has been a relatively low intensity conflict since the 1971 India Pakistan war. With Pakistan now claiming to have downed two Indian planes, and captured one or more of their pilots, all the ingredients are there for a full blown crisis that could easily be the trigger for war should neither party back down.
There being a connection between the two events — forthcoming elections and military conflict — isn’t considered particularly conspiratorial in India. In fact, articles from Times of India, Forbes, The Hindustan Times, and a number of other outlets have made no bones about it. Modi, his BJP, and their coalition allies will almost certainly benefit at the polls for bringing their country right up to, and perhaps even over, the edge and into war. After all, Modi is a nationalist, and what better way to rally a populace to your nationalist policy than an outside enemy and a war.
The strategy of using war to rally support for leaders in times they might be facing the prospect of losing power is nothing new. It’s something academics have theorized and studied for years. Diversionary Theory of War, Diversionary Foreign Policy, and a handful of other terms have been coined for the phenomenon. While it’s naysayers may claim a lack of a definitive causal link, they fail to consider that domestic political concerns are never the sole reason, but when taken with the broader context can be the determining factor in the form, time and place. While some may be skeptical it’s hard to argue with the results.
Time and again when leaders engage in foreign military adventures, at least in the modern world, their polling numbers and general public support receive a corresponding bump. However brief that increased popularity may be — and it appears to vary based on the variety of the conflict and its duration — if well timed they could be the difference between being holding on to power and being removed whether by election or revolution. This is to say nothing of similar efforts in other forms of government, as Lenin himself observed of the first world war, it was
“…to divert the attention of the laboring masses away from the domestic political crisis”
An apt analysis even today, especially in light of the All-India General Strike on January 8th-9th of this year — purportedly the largest in world history — with an estimated 150-200 million participants. While India may not be ripe for revolution like wartime Imperial Russia, there’s still likely little that could turn back the rising tide of labor militancy and the corresponding rejection of the BJPs neoliberal economic and fascistic social policies by huge swathes of working people. But, rallying the country around the flag has worked before and could work again. With Modi’s brand of Hindutva and the manner in which he is framing the conflict, this would be right in-line with his history of stoking militant nationalism, religious bigotry and sectarianism.
Aside from the obvious fears of escalation and war between two nuclear powers, the takeaway for those of us residing outside of India or Pakistan should be plain; the way to break the power of a cynical Diversionary Foreign Policy is to forge an unbreakable commitment to international solidarity that categorically rejects the wars waged and violence committed solely for the benefit of the ruling class.
To deny a fascistic domestic government — whether the imperialist US and its attempt at regime change in Venezuela or Modi’s opportunistic aggression in Kashmir — the ability to wage war without mass domestic resistance is to deny them one means of reproducing their class and the hierarchies they uphold.
No war but class war.
Jean Krill is is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His writing navigates the many disparate visions of a radically better future.