The military, especially the air force, made the nation proud. But what is done, is in the past, however stellar it was. Today and tomorrow is another day with its own set of challenges. Now is the time to know and be ready for what is possible, what beckons and what must take our wholesome attention.

To celebrate, to learn, to dissect and analyse will be in the weeks ahead. I promise my readers I will return to those in due course. But what stares in our face is immediate and must consume our absolute attention even as the armed forces of Pakistan continue to keep a keen watch over an enemy smartening from his losses and a bloody nose that it got from the valiant armed forces of Pakistan and its absolutely amazing people who went out in throngs on streets to defeat what the enemy had intended to suppress and subdue.

It helps to remind what militaries do: "war is a continuation of politics by other means" — Clausewitz. What it translates into is that when the military instrument is applied it must create 'space' for politics to pursue its aims using the space opened through application of military force.

We must differentiate between wars too: there are wars of annihilation as was mostly the case in the medieval era, as well as till WWII when nations were either demolished or recreated out of ashes but to destroy them to ruin was what signaled the end. Not so in the modern era when the space for war with the kind which is prevalent is greatly restricted — Russia despite being a nuclear power cannot seem to end what it began in Ukraine, a country of little military means. It is also because of the world we live in.

When one nation goes down it disrupts and demolishes the entire construct of markets and supply........

© The Express Tribune