The 50th anniversary of the 1965 War deserves to be marked on both sides of the border, but in Pakistan, greater focus is being paid because the armed forces loom larger, much much larger, on the national political horizon. While 50 years ago there was some fear in Indian minds that the military might take over, those fears have now been put to rest. On the other hand, in Pakistan, the military has taken the reins of government four times. Indeed, at the time of the 1965 War, Pakistan was under a military man as President, a field marshal no less.

It is interesting that both countries officially have marked the 1965 War as a victory, which indicates that actually it was a draw, an inconclusive war. There is a belief that the War did not decide the relative strengths of the two countries. There had been a previous, less serious, war in 1948, in Kashmir, which had also not decided the issue between the two countries. That the 1965 War was succeeded quickly by the 1971 War, and that the 1971 War was then succeeded by a peace that has lasted 44 years, supports the theory that wars only occur when there is a disagreement about the relative strengths of countries. It is worth noting that the first two military regimes resulted in war with India. The next two did not. In fact, the next two both coincide with US intervention in Afghanistan.

However, the 50th anniversary was marked at a time when Indian aggression on the Working Boundary shows that the core issue, the underlying disagreement, has yet to be solved. The entire world is involved, because the two countries are now nuclear powers, and there is now a danger that did not exist in 1965, or even 1971: that the conflict could become nuclear.

It must be noted that the 1965 War is so far off that none of its veterans are still in service on either side. As a matter of fact, neither are any veterans of the 1971 War in service in any of the three forces that fought that War. The 1965 War was thus institutionally closer to World War II, for the senior commanders on both sides had fought in that War, and that too on the same side, in the British Indian Army.
One of the most important carry-overs from World War II that was brought to the 1965 War was the utility of a great tank battle. That gave the famous fight at Chowinda, which was fully comparable to any of the famous tank battles of the 1965 War, and was succeeded not just by the tank offensives of the 1971 War, but also those of the contemporaneous Arab-Israeli Wars, of 1967 and 1973.

One effect has been the Army’s continued desire to have another, decisive, tank battle. This has turned attention to the Sindh-Rajasthan desert, where the terrain is accounted better suited to armoured warfare. Is it purely a coincidence that this is where there could be a repeat of El Alamein, where many of the commanders of the 1965 War, cut their teeth as young officers. Of course, Chowinda remains in their minds, and both sides have developed resources for such tank battles.

However, one dimension of desert warfare is that it makes the nuclear battlefield possible. If either side concentrates armour on its side of the border prior to war, the other side need not engage it with its own armour; it will just nuke the concentration.

Thus the lessons of the 1965 War, and the preoccupations of commanders on both sides, are very relevant in the context of the present day, when Indian aggression has once again raised the threat of war. One of the lessons of the 1965 War was the need for a closer coordination between the three services. In Pakistan, that was not achieved even in the 1971 War, and though Zulfikar Ai Bhutto pushed through the creation of a Higher Defence Organisation, based on a Defence Council and a Defence Committee of the Cabinet, and the creation of a new service HQ, the Joint Services HQ, headed by an American-style Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, this was seen as an attempt to bring the military under the control of the government.

One of the marked developments in recent years has been the conversion of the Defence Day (that is, commemorating all three services) into a sort of Army Day. The PAF has got Air Force Day on September 7, and September 8 is Navy Day, as the two smaller services try to get a different identity. It is worth noting that the two smaller services have grievances, rooted in the military’s political involvement, though they are quick to reap any benefits they can. There is also the creeping takeover reflected in the fact that various inter-service posts have been taken over by the Army, starting with the Chairmanship, which has only once rotated amongst the services as originally conceived and is now an Army preserve, and including such posts as the DGISI or the DGISPR, which have been held only by Army officers.

The 1965 War was for Pakistanis almost the War of Liberation that had been avoided in winning freedom from the British. It was also the War that had not been fought in creating a new country, though that might be seen in the Partition riots. It certainly helped that the 1965 War was against India. More important, it provided for Pakistan the moment that European countries had known in the Napoleonic wars a century and a half before: the achievement of ‘the nation in arms’. Even today, the ‘Spirit of ‘65’ is invoked as what could happen if a small country is subjected to aggression by a bigger.

However, the purpose of the 1965 War, that of internationalizing the Kashmir dispute, remains unfulfilled. It might well be an overly harsh judgment, but it remains true that the international community refuses to take up the dispute. The War only lasted a fortnight, and neither India nor Pakistan knew how they would fare in a longer war. Even the 1971 War gave no answer. With the nuclear dimension, it is not likely that a war would last very long. A long conflict would require conscription, and the resulting ‘deprofessionalisation’ of the military is something to be avoided by both militaries, which look to a short conflict, determined by a tank battle in the Chawinda area or the Rajasthan desert. It would also require two grindingly poor countries to find the means for spiraling expenditure. Already, aid donors make loud noises about peacetime military expenditure. As Kargil and the events leading up to it showed, asymmetrical warfare will not work either.

A question that has been left unanswered all of these years, and which will be faced in 2021, with the Golden Jubilee of the 1971 War, will be why the ‘nation in arms’ of 1965 did not show itself then, why a country which had faced off a much bigger neighbor in 1965, was riven apart in 1971. The military brushes away that defeat by blaming it on politicians, without examining whether the wrong lessons had been learnt from 1965. Is it too much to hope that the 1971 Jubilee will have neither tension on the borders, nor the Army trying to take so much of a political role?