Russia has a GDP of $2 trillion, their military spending is $100 billion/year. They produce as much oil as Saudi Arabia. They’re also self-sufficient in producing advanced weapons. Still, they’ve been fighting for 3 years with up to 250,000 dead and over a million injured.
Pakistan has neither the money, nor weapons production, nor the stomach for hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Why does economy have to figure in every time when discussing conflicts. We have learned this Banya talk from our neighbors next door,
If money is the only criteria to win wars then:
1. A bankrupt isolated famine and pandemic stricken Russia, with an armed forces depleted by massive casualties in Workd War 1 and torn apart by a simultaneous revolution and civil war while fighting Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Japan supported by UK and France should have LOST the war it fought between 1918-1923. Russia WON the war despite losing 13 million troops and civilians to war, bombing, chemical WMD attacks, cold, starvation and a simultaneous pandemic that wiped out 6 million working age adults l
2 . A bankrupt famine stricken starving and isolated North Korea fought a multinational a UN backed force for three years forcing a stalemate lasting 75 years and survived to become a nuclear and missile power.
3. Vietnam, a rice water eating nation, bankrupt and on the verge of starvation and split in two rival regions , defeated in sequence French-Australian and US occupation forces in a war lasting 10 years.
4. In 1962, China was not a member of the United Nations and was hemmed in by the Soviet Union on land in the west and by the US Pacific fleet in the east. China was bankrupt and on the verge of mass starvation, and under strict arms embargo . Yet China beat the Sandhurst Officer led UK equipped professional Indian Army to pulp and captured 38,000 sq. km that it still holds,
Pakistan is fighting a defensive war. This is not a war of choice. It has been imposed on us. The war is not about territory or even terrorism. It is about an ideology that is to be imposed upon our people--an ideology that will reduce us into a sub-national protectorate of a so-called emirate where our children will be educated with no skills of value in this era and our women will be kept illiterate and denied medical care since there won't be any female doctors.
The other alternative is occupation and colonization by the new friends of the Taliban, their Hindutva masters who want "living space " for their 1.4 billion population.
So for this grim future should we look at ourselves as Banyas counting coins or should we stand up and fight aggression like the Russians , Vietnamese and Chinese?
