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Its 26 days since the 7/11 serial commuter train blasts in Mumbai killed over 200 Indian Citizens. We are now convinced that the Indian response to 7/11 is status quo ante. The first few weeks saw the pendulum of public debate swing from shock at the incident, numbing indifference evidence in the Mumbai resilience, anger that dominated op-ed columns and blogs, self doubt reflected in the needle of suspicion pointing towards home grown groups, accusations reflected in the freezing of the Indo-Pak peace process, irony reflected in the ludicrous Pakistani demand that India dismantle terrorist camps and finally cynicism and resignation reflected in the mood in Rashtrapathi Bhavan as Parliament sends back the self serving Office of Profit Bill to President APJ Abdul Kalam. But the last 2 weeks in parliemtn have been disgraceful with two Windbags dominating political debate. First we had the absurd spectacle of the Jaswant Singh mole episode. A classic display of Manmohan Singh ko gussa kyon aata hai. Not when 200 Indians are massacred but Manmohan Singh really gets riled when an irrelevant issue becomes a personal affront him. If the Prime Minister had even applied a fraction of this emotion in his reaction to 7/11 the country at large would have taken his government with far more credibility. That unfortunately is not to be. If the political wind passing by one foreign minister was not enough now we have the Natwar Singh Manmohan Singh tu-tu main-main dominating public debate. All of this in the Indian Parliament which has all but forgotten the 200 deaths in Mumbai and the changing security environment across the globe.

Contrast this with the seriousness with which the rest of the world views the changing global security environment and the role India should play in it. Indian Restraint came for some exceptional praise from Tom Friedman of the New York Times of the Flat World fame, when he appeared on Tim Russert's Meet the Press sunday news talk show on NBC in the United States. Extolling the extraordinary restraint showed by India in the face of the 7/11 Mumbai Terrorist Train Blasts, Friedman highlighted that India was the world's second largest Muslim Nation, India's richest man was a Muslim I.T. Enterpreneur in Azim Premji and India's President was an erudite Muslim Scientist and Academic in APJ Abdul Kalam. Friedman's remarks came in the wake of the ongoing debate in the United States on the Israel Lebanon Hezbollah Middle East Conflict.

The peculiar nature of the current Middle East Conflict has an eerie echo in conflicts closer home to India. Groups with no strong State affiliation are waging low intensity conflicts against modern Nation States with a mixture of military and terrorist operations. These groups have the advantage of guerilla warfare and a sympathetic mass base providing a very effective civilian cover. With no obligation to play by the rules these groups are neither bound by Geneva Conventions nor susceptible to International Diplomatic Pressure. Not requiring either a uniform or a badge these groups morph from non-governmental social service organizations to semi-military terror units at free will exploiting the abundance of funds the social services attract and the flow of arms from obliging neighbours.

This is the nature of the 3rd World War that India and by virtue of history and geography Pakistan find themselves in. It has already begun. We just have not officially taken note of it. The first world war was not very different form this one. Not the official first world war which was more of a localized european confict of interests, but the larger worldwide war spread over many centuries when Europe invaded and imperialized most of the world. So when did the 3rd World War begin. This may be a subject of debate for decades to come. Offstumped recognizes the invasion of the Burhanuddin Rabbani Afghanistan Regime by the Pakistan sponsored Taliban movement, the arab/chechen/south-asian participation in the Bosnia Kosovo Conflict as the beginning of the 3rd World War. It was in these two conflicts and subsequently many more in Chechenya, Kargil and more recently in Iraq that non-state groups began to mobilize across nation state boundaries to take on established Nation States with covert and overt sponsorship from obliging Nation State Neighbours.

Offstumped believes that the Hezbollah situation in Lebanon with a legacy preceding the start of the World War III is particularly important to the shape and form the third World War is likely to assume in the years to come. The first moves in the Third World War failed prematurely to the chagrin of their architects. The Pakistani Military establishment lead by Musharraff which spawned the Taliban as the first of its non-state agents in extending its sphere of influence by taking over Afghanistan had to bite dust post September 11th. The second misadventure by the Pakistani Military establishment to cut off Kargil from Indian Kashmir by deploying Pakistani army regulars as un-uniformed non-state guerilla insurgents had to be withdrawn under immense pressure from the Clinton Administration and heavy casualities. Other misadventures in Chechenya and Kosovo have been put down by either heavy handed military tactics of the Russian Army or International Peace Keeping Forces deployed as buffer zones between warring civilians. The Hezbollah situation however is close to becoming a shining example of a non-state agent in the form of the Hezbollah movement having become state within the state of Lebanon. With sponsorship and support from Iran and Syria, the Hezbollah has not just armed itself militarily very well but has created a strong social mass support base that allows it to run a parallel government while not actually being accountable to anyone internally or externally. Thus anything short of total disarming and dismantling of the Hezbollah would result in the first of many triumphs to come for the Non-State Groups in their World War against Nation States in the years to come.

To an extent most of the world, specifically a majority of the centrist opinion makers in the developed world are in denial of the third world war. The reasons for this state of denial are two fold. The first would mean an acknowledgement of the unravelling of Imperialist map making of last century at the end of the second world war, World War II. Given that most of the developed world was responsible for this map making it is not a reality one wants to easily acknowledge. The second reason for this state of denial is the economic inter-dependence of the world. The world of the 21st century is much more economically integrated with its Flat World Enterprises, Global Supply Chains, Information Superhighways and multi-lateral Trade Agreements. The economic costs of acknowledging a global conflict of the scale of a World War III are too high and hence the business as usual atmosphere where conflict and commerce co-exist though not always in harmony.

So where does this leave India ? How is India preparing strategically for this extended third World War of low intensity conflicts pursued by Non-State Agents ?

Watching Tom Cruise's Top Gun the other day a thought crossed the mind that the world was probably never going to see Russian MIGs and American F-xx fighter jets battle each other except perhaps in trans-national training exercises. The assymetry of the conflicts in the Third World War is best exemplified by the nearly home made Katyusha Rockets with no control being fired by the Hezbollah finding random targets and the precision gudied air dropped Israeli bombs finding Civilian targets. The nearly eye-ball to eye-ball combats on the Kargil Hills by Indian soldiers with the limitations of Air Fire Power, the bloody Russian campaigns in Chechnya and the everday suicide bombs in Iraq throws into question if conventional Military strategies and weapons systems have any relevance at all. The Washington Times last week carried an interesting article praising growing Indian Military prowess referring to the BrahMos Missile, the anti-terrorism training camps and the sale of military supplies to Latin America. The article however seemed targetted more at the American Defense Industry in its attempt to sell weapons systems to India than an accurate assessment of the Defense needs of India.

Defense systems apart, the Third World War has many more strategic implications to India. The first of which is stability in its immideate geography. British map making has cursed the Indian Sub-Continent with a litany of geographical imponderables. One of them India was able to solve with the 1970s War of Liberation of East Pakistan resulting in the creation of Bangladesh. The two other imponderables in Kashmir and Tamils in Sri Lanka continue to fester on. Kashmir saw the sidelining of home grown separatists like Yasin Malik and Shabbir Shah to give way to Pan-Islamic Terrorist Groups operating across State Boundaries in multiple conflict zones and deriving support and succour from social groups like the Jammaat-ud-Dawa the parent organization of the Lashkar -e- Taiba and the nearly autnomous Pakistan Intelligence Service ISI. If a non-state agent like the Hezbollah were to acquire the legitimacy of being a party to Internationally negotiated ceasefire and diplomatic negotiations by virtue of its tactics that attract regular military responses and subsequent International Diplomatic pressure it would be a shot in the arm to the groups operating in the Indian Sub-Continent. It would become an example to emulate and could lead to further destabilization of the Indian Sub-Continent.

How has India been responding to this developing scenario to date ? The overwhelming state of denial of the west finds its echo in India as well. The current responses of looking at the United Nations as some kind of arbiter for conflicts of this nature and the mindset that seeks to apply conventional rules of warfare, international treaties on prisoners of war are International Laws that were drawn with conflicts between Nation States in mind are both anachronistic and irrelavant. India is in urgent need of an overhaul of strategic thinking. A school of thought must develop that factors the nature of the Third World War, the evolving world order, as it prescribes a doctrine for how India must respond to 7-11 like Terrorist Acts, how India negotiates the Nuclear Deal with the U.S., how India engages with Pakistan and how India influences International Consensus on dealing with the Middle East Conflict.

So who will create the vehicle for developing such a strategic school of thought .

The Manmohan Singh Sonia Gandhi lead UPA Government with friends in the form of Fidel Castro hugging Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury and Cabinet Ministers in the form of the incompetent and selfish Shivraj Patil and Arjun Singh has neither the capacity nor the foresight for strategic thinking. The principal Opposition BJP lead by L.K. Advani has practically lost its strategic bearings with the Jaswant Singh Mole episode hikacking its public agenda. This leaves the strategic intelligenstia and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS, the spiritual mentor of the BJP which has been making the right patriotic pronouncements to come together to create a vehicle for developing such a strategic school of thought.

Offstumped Bottomline: India's strategic response to 7/11 and the changing global security environment is status quo ante. Nothing exemplifies better than the tit for tat expulsion of diplomats with Pakistan. Can the Indian Right overcome its shortsightedness and Minority phobia to take a long term view for the nation and can the strategic intelligenstia overcome its practice of secular untouchability to engage a popular movement to see its strategic thinking translate into policy of the State ?