Strategic Depth

Strategic Depth is a sound concept. All countries strive to gain and retain it. It is not merely a geographical or spatial notion, but has many dimensions: military, economic, demographic, social and political; and indeed internal and external.

Russia is a quintessential case of a country endowed with wide spaces that were used strategically in its war against Napoleon and in the Second World War. During the bipolar era, its East European satellites and Central Asian republics provided it with additional depth, externally. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remained interested in its “near abroad”. That illustrates the significance of this factor.

Israel, because of its very different environment, has taken another path to achieve the same effects. Critically lacking physical depth internally, it has primarily relied upon military power and American support to overcome this handicap, and gain territory externally. But its strategic depth essentially lies thousands of kilometers away, in the US.

Objectives of this concept are indeed best served by a country’s inherent internal strength. All the same, alliances with other countries are helpful and at times unavoidable.

Afghanistan was once assigned the role of a “buffer” between the Soviet and the British Empires; to create strategic depth for both of them. When the latter left the Region and India was partitioned, Afghanistan continued to provide (forward) strategic depth to Pakistan, the successor state in the West, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Pakistan lost it when Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviets. Its help to the Afghan resistance was aimed at restoring the status quo anti.

Indeed, it also had an Indian context. With the Soviets now on its Western borders and India in the East, Pakistan was- what at that time was called- in a “nutcracker situation”. Considering that the pre-invasion Afghanistan had never exploited its periods of wars with India, Pakistan was all the more desperate to get the Soviet occupation vacated.

There has been plenty of criticism of Pakistan’s policy of helping the Afghan resistance. Some may do so because, according to them, it spread drugs, weapons and militancy in the region. Others opposed to Zia-ul-Haq were loath to support a policy that carried his name (and must have been very depressed when with the Soviet withdrawal it achieved its primary objective). They have every right to run down the policy, but to malign in the process a valid doctrine is a bit devious.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).