Guest Column: Nukes, Mercedes, and a Dump Truck

There are Generals and there are Generals. And there is Field Marshal Asim Munir, who appears to be getting ahead of himself by wading into an area that even a seasoned soldier would shudder to talk about: nuclear weapons. More than eighty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reduced to rubble and thousands died as a result of two atomic bombs, the top brass hat of Pakistan has allegedly warned that if his country “goes down, it would take half the world” with it.

In one go, the Chief of the Military Staff reminded the international community that Pakistan is a nuclear nation which would not hesitate to take a route that many are scared to even think about.

Obviously, India was at the top of Gen. Munir’s thoughts, especially in the context of what had just happened in the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam, with much of the international reporting saying that Islamabad was at the receiving end. But apparently, Gen. Munir did not stop with his nuclear sabre-rattling—he had also threatened to destroy India’s infrastructure, like water projects on the Indus River.

“We will wait for India to build a dam, and when it does so, we will destroy it with ten missiles,” the General is reported to have told an audience in the United States during a recent visit. Not to be left out, and in an attempt to please the brass hats, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto threatened India over the Indus Waters Treaty, stressing that Pakistan would “reclaim all six rivers” and that “India will lose this war.”

The unfortunate part of Gen. Munir’s nuclear rant in America is that it did not merit any serious attention in the White House, State Department, or the Pentagon. Even lawmakers appear to have given a miss to what normally would have come across as outrageous remarks, and that too on foreign soil. The White House and State Department spoke of Washington and its relations with New Delhi and Islamabad, virtually ignoring the steamy comments of the top-ranking military visitor. But a former Defense Department official, Michael Rubin, hammered away at Gen. Munir’s nuclear rhetoric.

“Americans look at terrorism through the lens of grievance… They don’t understand the ideological underpinnings of many terrorists. Asim Munir is Osama bin Laden in a suit,” Rubin said, making the point that the General’s remarks were raising larger questions. “The Field Marshal’s rhetoric is reminiscent of what we’ve heard from the Islamic State,” Rubin remarked. And memories are still fresh of bin Laden and family being neighbors of a Pakistani military garrison in Abbottabad for an extended period of time, until taken down by American Navy SEALs in 2011.

More than anything, there is a context to the Pakistani General’s outburst. Gen. Munir perhaps was quite aware that his free run of outrageous remarks on the use of nuclear weapons on India and “half” of the world would not be seriously objected to, as India was currently on the receiving end in Washington.

Knowledgeable folks are taking the view that President Donald Trump’s fifty percent tariffs on India, 25 plus 25 as secondary sanctions—had perhaps little to do with Russian oil or the purchase of military hardware from Moscow. It had everything to do with New Delhi repeatedly stressing that President Trump had nothing to do with the ceasefire in Operation Sindoor; there were no calls exchanged between President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the timelines put out by Washington.

Further, speculation is that President Trump may have been infuriated that Prime Minister Modi had politely turned down an invitation to visit the White House at the time of the G-7 Summit in Canada. There was this uneasy feeling on the Indian side that a surprise guest by way of Gen. Munir might show up in a Trump–Modi meeting, resulting in an awkward situation of a forced handshake that could be turned around later as a three-way mediation – something that would be welcomed by Washington and Islamabad but politically suicidal for Prime Minister Modi. Hence the pressure on India by way of additional tariffs, back-to-back invitations to Gen. Munir, and, more recently, placing the Baloch National Army on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, seen as a snub to India.

There was perhaps a moment when Gen. Munir got carried away with his bombast when he talked in Tampa, Florida, of an India that was a “shining Mercedes” and of a Pakistan that was a “dump truck full of gravel.” The intent was perhaps to say that a Mercedes gets more damaged when hit by a dump truck, but it did give the opportunity to point out the glaring difference between the two countries, by way of the solid economic gains of India, taken note of even by politicians in Pakistan. Further, in threatening to take “half” the world with him, Gen. Munir forgot that decision-makers on the other side were not going to be sitting idle.

In all the rabble-rousing in the United States, Gen. Munir appears to have forgotten that rational and stable actors never discuss the use of nuclear weapons, which is generally left to the civilian arm of the government. Even at the peak of the Cold War era, the United States and the then Soviet Union very nearly came to nuclear exchanges a few times, but wisdom prevailed.

Being a professional soldier, Gen. Munir would not want to be remembered in the same fashion as how Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander of Allied Forces in the First Gulf War, characterized President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as being a “great” military strategist: “… he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he is a great military man.”

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.