The Strategy of Madness.
Saeed A. Malik.
Although Machiavelli did advocate that a Prince may sometimes profit by playing mad, I can only think of a couple of times this strategy was actually employed.
The first time it was used was by Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War. He told Melvin Liard to let the word out so that it gets to the Russian and Vietnamese leadership that the U.S President harboured such extreme hatred of communism, he could be expected to do just anything to end the Vietnam War. He wanted it bruited about that it was not beyond him, in a fit of madness, to order a nuclear strike on both the countries! He believed that if played properly this could induce both the Russians and the Vietnamese to come to the table and to end the war on U.S terms.
Melvin Laird, who was Nixon’s secretary of defense at the time, was then ordered by Nixon, to lay out plans which would give credibility to this “Madness”. But he chose to put off giving shape to any such plans by one excuse or another. He thought this strategy was too “crazy” and dangerous and could lead to a nuclear war.
But Nixon insisted, and in Oct 1969, US bombers, loaded with nuclear warheads were ordered to fly along the borders of USSR. And for three successive days, they did this.
No one is certain about the degree of fright these manoeuvres created among the Soviets, but nothing much came of them.
But the next time this strategy was employed, it did create an immense amount of fright. This was when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then under arrest and knowing his quarters were bugged, began issuing fusillades of invective against Zia ul Haq and his generals, enumerating all the nice things he would do to them when he returned to power.
By this stratagem, Bhutto did succeed in generating some serious fright. Serious enough to get himself hanged!
And now we are seeing Mian Nawaz Sharif, egged on by his brilliant daughter, taking a leaf out of Bhutto’s book and running with it.. Whether the result he achieves is going to be as brilliant as the one achieved by Bhutto, one cannot predict at the moment. But one can clearly see where he is headed.
He has decided that being the lion that he is, it best behoves him to roar and to keep on roaring until the roar flattens out into a bray. And he seems to have arrived at the felicitous conclusion, that without him, Pakistan stands to lose all meaning. Thus, if he cannot have Pakistan all to himself and his brood, Pakistan would be better off as a heap of rubble.
So far his crowning achievement is the tattering of a political party built of three decades of loot and plunder.
The only thing more pathetic than
Nawaz Sharif is his sorry remnants of slobbering court jesters, making excuses for him and trying to put Humpty
Dumpty
together again.
And then there is Chaudhry Nisar–sulky little Jack Horner…the sole carrier of the flag of integrity in the late lamented PML-N…the symbol of loyal service to the party. So loyal in fact, that he has proudly confessed to advising Nawaz Sharif at every turn, of how to make away with the wealth he stole from the country he pulverized and pauperized, and therefore to escape the just deserts coming to the plunder king of a ravaged land.
But luckily for Pakistan, whatever be its plight, Nawaz Sharif’s last attack on the state and its army seems to have put public support decisively behind the army.
Most writers and nearly all the anchors have given to cutting him slack, have either genuinely turned, or seem too embarrassed to help him along with their usual platitudes of mercenary support. Perhaps Pakistan will see better days yet.
Perhaps the process of accountability now underway will be an across the board process, and proceed from top to bottom, because the poor bottom, having been buffeted so long and so mercilessly, is now in a truly sorry state and needs some relief.
—
Saeed A. Malik.
