A few days ago, veteran journalist Jehangir Khattak, who hosts the Khabar-o-Nazar channel, reached out to me. We had a lively conversation. He began by asking: “If you were to rewrite your book on national security today, would it be any different?” He was referring to Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan, which was published in England on the 1st of January 2003.
I said ‘no.’ The thesis of the book would remain the same, since no real changes have taken place in the nation’s military-centric paradigm. In fact, the 27th amendment has constitutionalised the army’s dominance in the nation.
I added that I submitted the manuscript of the book to the publisher in the summer of 2001. I was driven to write it based on the army’s foolhardiness in attacking Indian army positions in Kargil. The attack failed militarily: Kargil was not seized and roughly a thousand combatants lost their lives. But it also failed diplomatically: it invited worldwide condemnation. Even China, Pakistan’s all-weather friend, refused to support the attack. The backlash was so severe that an infuriated army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, who was the mastermind of the mission to seize Kargil, decided to seize the reins of power through a coup d’etat on the 12th of October 1999.
I critiqued the Kargil mission in an article, “The Price of Strategic Myopia.” It was carried on the front page of The News on Sunday, on Pervez Hoodbhoy’s recommendation. I followed up with an article in the journal Defense Analysis, which critiqued Pakistan’s combat effectiveness. And then I further expanded on the thesis by writing a book on it.
While the manuscript was being reviewed for publication, terrorists attacked the US on 9/11. The US said the mastermind of 9/11 was Osama bin Laden. After the Taliban failed to turn him over, it attacked Afghanistan with all its fury in October, deposing the Taliban and hoping to find Osama. The publisher, Ashgate, asked me to update my manuscript.
I added a prologue, briefly reviewing the US response, and said it confirmed my narrative and conclusions. The book was reviewed extensively, and generated a fair bit of debate, in scholarly and military circles, not just in Pakistan, but also in the UK and in the US.
It was amazing to hear a highly educated man in a civilian government dismiss the notion that there was an opportunity cost to defense spending
I began writing regularly on national security issues in Pakistani papers and occasionally in Pakistani and non-Pakistani academic journals. I also began speaking at conferences at the University of California, Stanford University and Harvard University and at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, the World Affairs Council in Houston and in a few other places.
In 2011, a decade after 9/11, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attack, was found and killed in Abbottabad, just a mile away from the army’s academy. The government established a commission to investigate what went wrong. In its report, the commission quoted from my book: “National security does not reside solely in the military’s combat effectiveness but in a complementary set of five dimensions that include four non-military dimensions and one military dimension. The non-military dimensions are political leadership, social cohesion, economic vitality, and strong foreign policy. One cannot rely on hard military assets to prevail in a strategic conflict; the ‘soft assets,’ the four non-military dimensions, may, in fact, be the decisive ones.” In 2020, I discovered that my book had been reissued by Routledge Revivals.
So, to return to the question posed at the beginning of the podcast, the national security paradigm continues to emphasise the military dimension of national security at the expense of the softer dimensions: economic, political, social and diplomatic. And within the military, the army is by far the dominant institution.
Even during Imran Khan’s tenure, his national security advisor made a preposterous claim that the guns v butter trade off, long a hallmark of economic policy making, had become archaic. It was amazing to hear a highly educated man in a civilian government dismiss the notion that there was an opportunity cost to defence spending, overlooking the fact that economics is the science of allocating scarce resources to unlimited human needs. Maybe he said what he said to please the high command of the army, which essentially runs the country. It is useful to recall that this was the time when Imran Khan would never tire of saying that the army and the civilian leadership were on the same page. He would often have his picture taken with General Bajwa, the army chief, smiling and waving to the crowds.
When he crossed a redline, and interfered in selecting the head of the ISI, the army found a way to get a vote of no-confidence passed against his government. Not only was he removed from office, but he also ended up being incarcerated on several fabricated charges.
A classic example of the military dimension of strategy being exploited to the hilt is that even though Pakistan exploded six atomic bombs in May 1998, in response to India’s five explosions, Pakistan still carried out the attack on Kargil just a year later. There was no peace dividend. And there has been no economic dividend either, since spending on conventional forces continues unabated.
Very few diplomatic efforts have been made to find a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir conflict with India. Of the few that have been made, all have failed. Musharraf, the author of the Kargil excursion, tried to find a way out of the imbroglio at the Agra Summit with Prime Minister Vajpayee but for reasons unknown, the initiative died on the anvil.
Kashmir, which accounts for less than one % of the population of South Asia, continues to be the strongest driving force behind their military spending. This is not just Pakistan’s fault. It is also India’s fault. But it has hurt Pakistan economically much more than India.
Since 1991, India has been experiencing rapid economic growth, due to innovative economic policies created by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Bangladesh, which used to be the poster child of economic backwardness when it was East Pakistan, has sped by Pakistan in many economic dimensions, most notably in exporting apparels.
Even though General Musharraf’s tenure ended abruptly in 2008, the army’s dominance continues under a civilian façade. Through the 27th Amendment, martial law has essentially been enshrined in the Constitution.
In the meantime, the nation continues to suffer. Poverty and illiteracy are widespread, the physical infrastructure is in a state of decay, urban areas are plagued with crimes and terrorism is active in Balochistan and KPK. International and domestic debt continues to rise, unabated. The nation subsists on loans from the Arab countries and the international lending agencies.
And yet, Pakistan has demonstrated that it can use its soft power effectively when it comes to addressing international crises, such as the US-Iran war. It has also shown its diplomatic prowess in negotiating the Makkah Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and itself. Internationally, it is having its moment in the sun.
The time has come for Pakistan to use its soft power domestically and resolve the cultural, economic and political problems that are prevalent at home. And it should use its diplomatic skills to negotiate a settlement of the Kashmir issue with India. It has been a thorn in the hide of both countries since they gained independence 79 years ago.
To put things in perspective, the Kashmir region, including areas administered by Pakistan and India, has a population of under 20 million. Why should the conflict over Kashmir cast a dark cloud on the future of Pakistan and India, whose population is around 1,750 million? The costs of the conflict are huge. The Kashmir conflict is holding back both nations from realising their full economic potential.