For most of its 79-year history, Pakistan has survived in a state of ‘no war, no peace’, barring a few real war episodes, mostly under a hybrid system of governance, which continues to date. The scar of 1971 has remained a bleeding wound in our national psyche, without much-desired honest retrospection at the national level. One still wonders why such a great disaster could not be avoided, which became a “National Misfortune” rather than a mere ‘military failure’. Recently, I revisited a book after 30 years, which I had read in 1996, titled Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, co-authored by Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch. Taking some pearls of wisdom from this book, this piece is intended to highlight the imperative of re-examining our Perpetual Security Challenges with a view to offering some ‘food for thought’ to the incumbent and future national decision-makers. However, it must be underscored here that “It is difference of opinion that makes horse races”; a difference of opinion highlights how diverse thoughts drive wisdom, spark debate, or test our patience. Different cultures and classic texts view clashing viewpoints as paths to growth or traps for fools.

Explaining why such big mishaps occur, the subject book suggests that the size of the setback is a function of the aggregation of adverse factors: The more that goes wrong, the greater the degree of failure. The bigger the stumble, the harder the fall. Rough-and-ready........

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