“एकं विषरसं हन्ति शस्त्रेणैकश्च वध्यते | सराष्ट्रं सप्रजं हन्ति राजानं मन्त्रविप्लवः” (Udyog Parv, Mahabharat, 33-45)
The above Shloka from the Udyog Parv of Mahabharata clearly depicts that by altering the psyche of the society one can easily disrupt the functioning of the civil society . Our ancient thought givers has clearly conceptualised that if one has to preserve its own society then there is a need to preserve the real idea of the society . Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Panch Pran has framed this idea in two of his Prans i.e. Removing every trace of the colonial mindset and Taking Pride in our legacy .
In 1648 as a result of the end of the Thirty Years War, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed and its provisions gave rise to the idea of Nation State and introduced the concepts of Sovereignty, Collective Security, Balance of Power etc to the modern Statecraft theories . Since the treaty of Westphalia traces its origins from the Europe’s Thirty Years War, due to this it established a world order where Anarchism with Force and using violence as a ultimate arbiter for security has become the hallmark . This makes the Realist Foundation of security based on a hierarchical understanding of the anarchic international system based on State power .
In order to achieve political and territorial superiority over the world the Nation States started to have Wars with each other . However, this doesn’t implies that earlier these was a complete peace in the world . Although tribes fighting in the name of pride and other abstract objectives has been there . But in the post-Westphalian World, fighting for a political sovereignty with a complete legitimacy from the Nation states become the attribute .
However, the contemporary Western Notion of War was devised by the famous Nineteenth Century Prussian Military Thinker Carl Von Clausewitz, he defined war as “a duel on extensive scale” and “and act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”
However the field of Security Strategies got revolutionised when in 1989, Military theorist William Lind along with several other Military Scholars like Colonel Keith Nightangle, Captain John F. Schmitt, Colonel Joseph Sutton and Colonel Gary I.Wilson wrote a seminal article in the Marine Corps Gazette titled “The Changing Face of War : Into the Fourth Generation” and conceptualised the idea of Generations of Warfare and provided a framework to study, analyse and define the nature of warfare prevalent in the post World War II era and called it the Fourth Generation of Warfare where the Non State Actors took the central Stage in the warfare and they are nurturing a new phase of warfare . And it is evident in international studies that the Non-Military threats came to centre stage with the end of superpower rivalry ! The rise of terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda has been a testimony of this . And the 9/11 incident has merely ratified the fact .
Defining Fifth Generation Warfare :
In his 1991 book titled “The Transformation of War”, Martin Van Creveld argued “ that the Clausewitzian Universe in rapidly becoming out of date and can no longer provide us with a proper framework for understanding war. ”
In 1999, two Chinese Military Officers Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in their seminal work “Unrestricted Warfare” claimed that “war will no longer be what it was originally.” Liang and Xiangsui further argued that “warfare will transcend all boundaries and limits, in short : unrestricted warfare.”
The above two works came at a time when the phenomenal developments in the field of technology, politics, economy and social organisations started to impact the postmodern war period .The post-1990 globe witnessed the phase when the Information Technology had integrated in a synergistic method with other emerging technologies and thus paving the way to boost the development trajectory of these emerging technologies . Due to this war came out from a pure military realm and this also transformed the basic elements of war, thus necessitating the review of understanding the war from a new prism . Many scholars started to stress the need to expand the concept of security beyond the territorial and State Centric approach !
Further and contemporary researches in global security identified a new generation of warfare called the Fifth Generation of Warfare (5GW) or the Hybrid Warfare ! This generation of Warfare is a type of warfare which is more elastic in nature, where tools of Warfare are not guns and in can be carried out within the premises of a civil society without any explosion rather it implodes within the society . Hence, this warfare method is also called the Elastic War .
And Fifth Generation Warfare needs a different perspective to deal with .
Definitions of Fifth Generation Warfare :
० Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of US Defense, Homeland and Americans , Dr.Steven Bucci in his article of September 29, 2010 stated that : “ We no longer have the luxury of a linear, series type engagement. We now require an integrated simultaneous approach that has soldiers who can do development and intelligence gathering, who know the psycho-social dynamics of the people among whom they live and move. It requires information operations that range from paper leaflets to the most sophisticated cyber campaigns, and it must be completely immersed in the overall policy thrusts of the nation’s leaders. This new integrated concept is called Fifth Generation Warfare .”[1]
Fifth Generation Warfare and it’s Dimensions :
The Fifth Generation Warfare is a decentralised type of warfare where the lines between the war and peace, combatants and civilians had been blurred . It’s a long term and a complex warfare . The most important feature of this warfare in that it’s a Non-Contact Warfare which destroys a specific target without the humans seeing it . In order to defeat the enemy this warfare form takes the advantages of the social faultlines of a nation by extensifying and exploiting these faultlines for sake of the purpose of the belligerent . Social Engineering, Propaganda etc are the main tools of this warfare . Daniel H.Abott in the introduction of his book titled “The Handbook of 5GW” has argued that in the Fifth Generation Warfare “Violence in so dispersed that the losing side may never realize that in has been conquered . The secrecy of 5GW makes to the hardest generation of was to students .” Through propaganda the psyche of the targeted population is altered in such a way that their way of perceiving the things and also the context through which they used to perceive the events also gets manipulated . The hallmark of this propaganda warfare is – “Propagandising the Fact and Weaponising the Propaganda” .
Fifth Generation Warfare broadens the scope of conflict to such a extent that the targeted society does not even able to perceive that he is being attacked thus making it incapable to counter this type of covert attack .
Fifth Generation Warfare extended the war theatre from the political and geographical fields to cultural and cognitive domains . NATO in 2021 has coined the term Cognitive Warfare and defined it as a warfare focused on “attacking and degrading rationality, which can lead to exploitation of vulnerabilities and systematic weakening .” According to NATO this mode of Warfare makes Human Mind, the battlefield .
Through propaganda the motive of the belligerent is to decrease the trust of the public from the State by producing Fake alternate Narratives and through Disinformation and Misinformation .
Narratives is a vehicle which infuses certain ideas and thought into the public consciousness .
According to a famous psychological theory Illusory Truth Effect, false information is bombarded in such a way that the target started to perceive that the illusion in form of false narratives being served him is the truth ! This is also the basic premise of the psychological warfare . One of the recent examples of this is the Fake reporting done by the Global Media outlets over the COVID situation in Bharat !
The motto of this kind of warfare in not to conquer the state rather to undermine it , defining this objective of Fifth Generation Warfare Daniel McIntosh argued : “The conflict in not to conquer the state, of to divide the state, but to undermine the State .” He further argued that this form of warfare focuses on the goal to strip off the state legitimacy in such a was that “it cannot be certain of anyone’s primary loyalty.”
Thus Fifth Generation Warfare is a mode to seek control of the human terrain including public perceptions, ideologies and narratives . It takes a society into a suspended state of perpetual war .
Fifth Generation Warfare and Implications for Bharat’s Security Spectrum :
It is a pertinent need to understand this mode of warfare for a country like Bharat having a wide range of social diversity ranging from variety of languages, traditions, customs, regions, religions etc. having a potential to become a future societal Faultline .
Today the war theatre in side our nation has shifted from jungles to our urban centres . This had been evident from the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s speech he delivered at Pune on October 2021 . He clearly stated that “The new areas of warfare have shifted from territorial frontiers to civil societies. Wars are now fought with other means.” When a person like Ajit Doval passes a statement like this it has some deep connotations . It is important to understand the landscape of time when such a statement has arrived in the public arena . Earlier in 2019, when the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was passed from both the Houses of Parliament it was falsely propagated that this law will snatch citizenship from the Muslim population of this country and there were manufacturing of movements like Shaheen Bagh in Delhi which led to the blocking of roads and raising slogans attacking the sovereignty of Bharat and attempts to destabilise the society !
However the strategy used by naxals to move towards urban spaces is not a recent phenomenon rather it’s a long term approach and strategy adopted by them in the early decades of 21st century . In 2004, Communist Party of India (Maoist) was formed with the merger of CPIML People’s War Group and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) . With its formation in 2004, CPI- Maoist brought a document called “Strategies and Tactics of Indian Revolution” . And its 13th chapter titled “Work in Urban Areas” was of worth importance as it devised the broad strategical framework for the naxal movement to work in future in the urban areas . In laid down tasks in front of its cadre to Mobilise and Organise the basic Masses in the urban centres and described this work as the “main activity of the Party.” The Shaheen Bagh movement can be considered as the classic example of this activity . And further in it stressed to make United Fronts with different organisations implying that naxals should tactically align with the other organisations to disrupt the functioning of the State as well as destabilise the society . Later on this 13th chapter was converted into a full fledged document in the 9th Congress of CPI – Maoist called “Urban Perspective: Our Work in Urban Areas” (UPUA) . And if one analyses the Koregaon Bhima Case Chargesheet then it was evident that the naxals have done a good amount of work in terms of implementing and monitoring the 2007 document . The so called civil liberties groups and the Maoists shares a organic relationship which in evident from the point no. 3.4.5 of the 2007 document : “ The organisations that most consistently oppose state repression and black laws are the various civil liberties organisations active in different parts of the country. We can work to some extent through them. They, however, have a poor mass base and limited political programmes. Thus, while we should work to broaden and strengthen such organisations, they cannot be the only forums for building the front against repression…..”
Similarly anti-Bharat organisations like the Popular Front of India (PFI) have switched towards utilising the tactics of Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) . In July 2022, Bihar Police revealed a document of PFI titled “India Vision 2047” which called for making Bharat a Islamic Nation by 2047 through altering the demography of this country . This document was a clear example of anti Bharat nefarious designs of PFI having a reliance over Fifth Generation Warfare tactics . It mentioned that the cadres of PFI must work towards the propaganda that Muslims are being living in a degraded situation in Bharat and thus, using the fault line of religion for its own agenda .
Conclusion
Thus it is not a hyperbola to state that the Bharat in not facing a war and it is satisfying that our political and Strategic leadership understands that we are facing a serious challenge from the perpetrators of this mode of warfare.
A New Bharat with a vision of Viksit Bharat in moving a head in full momentum and leaving its imprint globally . But the nefarious designs of some hands has been there which wants to create blockage in front of Bharat’s journey towards our aim . A sense of defeat has been created within the anti-Bharat elements. Bharat is the biggest market and is having the largest youth population which is the sign of our potential to become the global Economic engine and lead the world from the front . Thus there has been regular attempts to sow the seeds of discords within our society and weaken our social structures so to derail our growth journey for their own interests and continuously they are hatching conspiracies against us . Thus, there is a need to expose these elements and their villainous designs and counter these designs by creating a grand Narrative of Bharat !
The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not reflect the views of BlueKraft Digital Foundation.
