Burhan Wani’s killing and the Butterfly Effect

It may not be off mark to assert that India and Pakistan came close to war in the aftermath of the Fidayeen attack in Uri (Kashmir). While it’s still not clear how the Indo-Pak dynamic will pan out in the short and the long term, the Uri attack had connotations that could have  led to nuclear brinkmanship in South Asia. The predicate for the impasse that defines Kashmir contemporarily – a gridlock wherein the state is pitted against the people and separatists – and the almost “near war” condition between India and Pakistan was the killing of the militant commander, Burhan Wani. This event (a small or even a negligible one by the standards and yardsticks of global politics and international relations) threw not only “local” consequences but also regional and hence global ones. If, after the Uri attack, India and Pakistan would have waged war against each other, the conflict, in all likelihood, would have escalated to the nuclear level, which, in turn, would have led to the involvement of Great Powers in South Asia – along with the United Nations. The catalyst, to repeat, was Wani’s killing and the political volcano that emerged after the killing.

If, after the Uri attack, India and Pakistan would have waged war against each other, the conflict, in all likelihood, would have escalated to the nuclear level, which, in turn, would have led to the involvement of Great Powers in South Asia – along with the United Nations. The catalyst, to repeat, was Wani’s killing and the political volcano that emerged after the killing.

That a “small” event could have local, regional and international consequences and implications suggest that world politics is essentially “glocalized”. “Glocalization” is a neologism that accrues from the synthesis of the global and the local. Glocalization of the conflict in and over Kashmir through the medium of Burhan Wani’s killing also brings to mind what is called the “butterfly effect”.  The genesis of the butterfly effect lies in science and “chaos theory”.  According to Peter Russell,“ In chaos theory, “the Butterfly Effect refers to the discovery that in a chaotic system such as the global weather, tiny perturbations in the system may sometimes lead to major changes in the overall system. It is theoretically possible that a butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico could create tiny changes in the air flow that would eventually lead to different weather in Europe. In most cases, the flapping wings would make no difference whatsoever, but occasionally, very very occasionally, when the system is at a cusp where it could go either way (like a ball balanced on the top of a cone), the flapping may be just the difference that caused the future to unfold differently”.

Wani’s killing, in terms of the international system, local politics, international relations and global security was “that tiny perturbation in the system that sometimes leads to major changes”. The question is, what does this tell about international relations and the international system and their relation to “local” politics? First, the nation state is no longer the “self contained” entity that it was made out to be; the nation state operates or exists in a world that has been effectively globalized (there maybe some disagreement over the extent and depth of globalization) and hence the domestic and the foreign blur into each other. This means that theoretical paradigms that forswore the domestic and focussed only on the external do not entirely hold. Practical and foreign policy implications and consequences flow from this. Moreover, profound and thick linkages tie nation states together in domains as varied as  nuclear deterrence, economics, finance and hence politics. All this is overlain by the fluidity that defines international politics contemporarily: the international system is on the cusp of evolving into a more multi polar system creating space and room for manoeuvre for various states and players to assert themselves. This, in turn, leads to, what is called “bandwagoning” behaviour in some cases and balancing in others. Hence the involvement of players like China, and to some extent potentially Russia and others in the Kashmir imbroglio.

What are the implications of these developments?

The  major ones pertain to war and peace. War, has over time, become a more costly or even an improbable proposition for states. This has consequences for diplomacy. Diplomacy in the age or times of the “Butterfly Effect” has to be delicate, nuanced and sophisticated. It can no longer entirely be contingent or predicated merely upon forces. While force is not irrelevant in buttressing diplomacy, but increasingly it appears that it is the politics of linkage(s) that determines diplomacy and diplomatic behaviour. These linkages are “glocal”- that is, the synthesis between the global and the local. In terms of the dynamic between India and Pakistan, this means that while war may still be an option but its likelihood is slim. Broadly speaking, the implications of these developments percolate to the international system in a far-reaching way: the system is on the cusp of change so much so that a small event caused fault-lines to open and these could very well turn out to have wide and deep effects. What brought these to the fore was an event in the nature of a  “Butterfly effect” (minute in terms and by the yardstick of more profound developments, events and trends in the world. At this point in time, while the theoretical implications and consequences are clear, the larger practical consequences remain to be seen. Will the region and the world be safer and peaceful on account of this? All we can say is that this remains in the domain of the “ unknown unknown”.

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