Abstract
The national requirement for strategic restraint for any country is derived from its political judgment given its location and the prevailing strategic environment. The cutting edge lies in the military domain and the contours of the quantum of strategic restraint depend on the military capabilities of the country concerned and the threats it faces both current and foreseen. While the military potential has its own impact on objectives and developments, it is largely in the diplomatic field in which efforts are launched and sustained in bilateral and multilateral engagement to reach the political objectives which define strategic restraint, and to deal with situations in which calls for such restraint go unheeded.
Seven facts should be clear to any objective observer in the context of South Asia:
- First of all, Pakistan as the smaller country with a correspondingly smaller economy, defence budget and armed forces, has vested interests in better relations with India which include strategic restraint. This would allow Pakistan to devote a larger amount of its limited resources to nation building and the welfare of its people.
- Secondly, any such policy and objectives require a positive response from India.
- Thirdly, Pakistan has already experienced to its cost its division into two countries at the hands of a military intervention by India in 1971: the first example of a state being dismembered after the end of the Second World War.
- Fourthly, the international community has the ability to act in a manner which facilitates strategic restraint in South Asia or in a manner which leads to its destabilization