Indo-Pak schism: Will hawks turn into doves?

Wars between States are increasingly becoming rare. It takes something ‘unprecedented’ for a responsible State to wage war. This is because the costs of war are ‘too huge’. 

Take the case of India and Pakistan, both nuclear power States. Both sides have more ‘hawkish’ people than ‘dovish’ ones.  Hawks are those who believe in going to war, like the hawks do literally. On the other hand, the ‘dovish population believes in avoiding war, they are by nature ‘peaceful’. In the case of India and Pakistan, the ‘hawks’ have always been popular, to the extent of being ‘glamorous’. This is because they believe that by waging a full-scale war, they will teach a lesson to the ‘enemy State’ and that the outcome would be decisive.

Because of this nature of thinking, war sounds like a good idea to many civilians, politicians and the media. These groups shout out the most because they don’t have to live in ‘war zones’ where their lives would be at stake. 

One must have observed that in the last few weeks there has been a great public demand that India should take offensive measures against Pakistan. People’s expectation with the current government is that they will defend the interests of the country ‘aggressively’. Why has there been such an expectation from this government?

Every government is responsible for maintaining the ‘integrity’ and ‘sovereignty’ of the State. But even then a ‘war’ is seen as a last option. That scenario changes when citizens vote for the ‘set’ of people who had aggressive postures regarding foreign policy issues when in the Opposition.

This is where the citizens commit mistakes. Political representatives in government can’t be expected to behave in the same way as they used to do while in opposition. All responsible governments, who value their citizens as well as soldiers’ lives exercise restraint in going up the ‘escalation ladder’. 

To sum up, it’s better to have a ‘hawkish’ government in power than a ‘dovish one’ because hawks don’t get pressured easily by the opposition doves and they don’t have to prove like doves that they care about ‘national interests’.

The author is a junior research fellow at JNU