SMDA & strategic prevention of war

Hassan Aslam Shad Wars rarely begin when the first salvo is fired. Miscalculations have already accumulated and military leaders have convinced themselves that the risks are manageable. They’re mostly wrong. War is merely the final act of resistance. And it’s often too late by then to stop the consequences. History offers plenty of examples of leaders making costly blunders. Major conflicts seldom erupt all at once. More often, they emerge from decisions and reactions that steadily reduce the opportunities for detente and reproachment. Each seemingly manageable step narrows the space for diplomacy until the choices become far more difficult than anyone anticipated. That is precisely what makes such situations so dangerous. That is why the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (SMDA) signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia last September deserves closer scrutiny. Most commentary on defence agreements focuses on the military balance of power. That is understandable, but it is also incomplete. What is often forgotten is that most consequential security arrangements are equally important for the conflicts they prevent and the stability they preserve. The difficulty with deterrence is that its success remains invisible. A crisis quietly contained rarely attracts public attention. Failures or wars, by contrast, are immediately obvious, which is why they tend to dominate public debate. Success in deterrence leads to no dramatic headlines. In the light of the above, the SMDA appears to be an attempt to prevent a conflict. Historically, deterrence has been one of the most misunderstood ideas in international law. The word conjures images of military force, but deterrence is fundamentally – and importantly – about influencing calculations. Why? It seeks to convince adversaries that the costs of a particular course of action outweigh any conceivable gains. At its heart, deterrence is about influencing decisions before events spiral beyond anyone’s control. The relationship betwe