The next war may be won before the first drone leaves the ground. Ask any war strategist what future conflict will look like and the answer comes quickly: drones, artificial intelligence, satellites, cyber attacks, missiles that travel at many times the speed of sound. None of it can be ignored. Yet a quieter contest is settled first. Each side is judged, by the world and by its adversary, on what it says, how it says it and whether anyone believes it. Today that judgement is made on social media, which has become the first place where nations actually meet.
What armies knew before us
Armies of the past understood this better than we sometimes credit. In the Arab tradition a warrior did not simply walk out and strike. He spoke first. He recited rajaz verses, named his father and grandfather, listed the victories of his tribe and told his opponent whose house he was about to challenge. Homer’s heroes do much the same, pausing mid battle to recount their ancestry, and the habit will be familiar to anyone who knows the martial cultures of South Asia. An enemy who hears such a recitation learns that the man in front of him carries generations on his back and will not give way cheaply. Some, one suspects, lost heart before the first blow. There was a quieter effect too. Verse, memory and command of language told the listener something about the civilisation standing behind the soldier.
Khaybar shows the idea in its purest form. When the Muslim army reached the fortress, Marhab, the best known warrior of the garrison, came out and challenged anyone who dared to face him. He did not simply draw his sword. He announced himself in verse, declaring that all of Khaybar knew him as a fully armed and battle tested hero. Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, who had been handed the standard that day, went out and answered in verse of his own. He gave his name as Haydar, the lion his mother had called him, and promised to repay Marhab in full measure. Then he struck him down. Look at what the exchange was for. Marhab hoped to frighten his opponent with a reputation. Ali replied by telling him exactly who he was facing, and the sword only confirmed what the words had already said. Poetry, name and honour were part of the weapon, and the duel was half decided before the first blow landed.
Sun Tzu, writing long before Khaybar in a very different world, ranked the ways of winning. The best, he said, is to defeat the enemy’s strategy before it takes shape. Next comes breaking his alliances. Attacking his army is only third and besieging his cities the worst. Notice where the army sits on that list. The first two rungs are contests over perception: what the enemy believes about your resolve, and what his friends believe about his cause. The poet on the ancient field was already working on those two rungs.
The duel has moved to the screen
Today the duel takes place on a phone. When tension rises between two states, journalists, diplomats, analysts and ordinary citizens across the world reach for their screens within minutes. Official handles, military spokespersons, retired generals, scholars and plain citizens together form a picture of a country, and that picture sets quickly. Few people will read a nation’s history before forming a view of it. They read its timeline.
What they find their matters. A country that speaks calmly, with facts, with historical grounding and in the languages its audience reads, suggests confidence and depth, whatever its arsenal holds. A country whose voice is abusive or careless suggests something else, and the adversary notices. The modern rajaz is the carefully argued thread, the precise statement, the documentary made with care, the line of verse placed at the right moment. If Sun Tzu’s ranking still holds, the timeline is where those first two rungs are now contested.
May 2025 and what followed
The crisis between Pakistan and India in May 2025 supplied a live demonstration. Within days, fact-checkers had debunked dozens of viral clips. BOOM, an Indian fact-checking outlet, found news channels and social media users sharing footage of Israeli air raids on Gaza from October 2023 as pictures of Indian strikes on Pakistan. Then came the night of 8 May. According to BOOM, Indian news outlets aired claims that India had destroyed Karachi Port and captured Islamabad, that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had surrendered, and that a military coup was under way in Pakistan. BOOM could verify none of it, and the official statements from both governments mentioned none of it. The claims did not survive scrutiny, but by then they had already travelled.
The war in Ukraine has taught the same lesson on a larger canvas, with both sides working as hard to win audiences who will never see a trench as to hold the trench itself. A missile destroys a target. A narrative decides whether the world calls the strike justified or reckless. The old line between the front and the information space has largely gone, and states that leave communication to whoever happens to be free will find their story written by others.
The obvious objection
A fair sceptic will object here. Social media rewards outrage, not substance. Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat has pointed out that platform algorithms favour engagement over accuracy, and the false clips above spread because they were dramatic, not because they were true. All of that is correct, and it explains who wins the first hour. It does not explain who wins the week. The people who actually shape a crisis, editors, diplomats, analysts and the fact-checkers who answered those clips, check what they see, and they remember who was right. Noise buys attention. Only a record of accuracy buys belief, and belief is what lasts. It is the lesson of Khaybar in another form. Marhab announced a fearsome reputation, and it did not survive contact with the man he challenged. A name, like a narrative, lasts only as long as the record standing behind it.
Depth cannot be bought
Hardware can be purchased, borrowed or copied. Depth of thought cannot. A nation that speaks with authority about its history, its poets, its scholars and its strategic reasoning projects a quieter form of deterrence, and Pakistan has the material for it. The philosophy of Iqbal, the verse of Faiz, the Sufi tradition and a long record of scholarship speak of a civilisation with roots and nerve. What is needed is deliberate investment: trained communicators who understand strategy, scholars able to write for global readers, translators who can carry Pakistan’s case into Arabic, Persian and the languages of Europe and Asia, and institutions that pull in the same direction. In May, some of the most dramatic claims about Pakistan did not survive scrutiny, which showed how much a reputation for accuracy is worth. It compounds, and it has to be built in quiet years rather than in the first week of a crisis. Speed helps, but accuracy matters more, since one exposed falsehood damages every true statement that follows it.
Winning before the fight
The poet warrior and the Chinese general would both recognise our age at once. Machines will matter, as they always have. Yet the nation that carries itself on the world’s screens with substance and credibility may find that its adversary has made up his mind before the first order is given. The first meeting between countries now happens on a screen, and we should make sure the picture is worthy of the name we carry.
