From 26/11 in Mumbai to 9/11 in New York: Why large nations lose small wars

Nine years ago today, India got its own 9/11. The 26/11 attack was neither the first nor the most damaging. The 1993 bombings killed nearly 100 more people. Nor the most provocative. The 2001 parliament attack mobilised two nuclear armies. But the 26/11 attacks were etched into our collective psyche because it met all the requirements of a textbook terror attack. Nearly a decade later, we have achieved some tactical capacity but ironically may have become more vulnerable strategically.

At its essence, terror is an instrument of war, designed to exert compellence far disproportionate to the size or conventional ability of the attacker. Terrorism has never been about absolute body counts. It has always been about creating shock and awe to accentuate the helplessness of the state. That is how a nation one-sixth of our economy can engage with us in conflict over decades. And while the principles of this instrument have remained unchanged over centuries, its execution has evolved too rapidly for the state machinery, creating a paradox wherein large nations end up losing small wars.

The classical model of state security demarcates threats and responses into structured compartments. So the armed forces deal with external threats and police with internal. There is one agency to deal with external intelligence and another to deal with internal. Such structured approaches work well when dealing with insurgents or militant organisations whose tactics are derived from a similar military lineage, but collapse when confronted with asymmetric thinking and formless structures. Let’s understand this with 26/11.
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