The best way to learn and to teach is by example and experience. Arguments and explanations never have the impact that real experience can have. When raising children, the best way to teach them to stay away from fire is not by telling them so, or telling them that burning hurts. Children learn quicker if they are either burnt or get close enough to feel unbearable heat. This teaches them to stay away from fire without a word. A leading lawyer and human rights activist and friend from Swat used to say way back in the 1980s that there were two types of people, those that learn from others’ experiences and those that learn only from their own experiences. Those in the first category are better off than those in the second.
In the years leading up to, and during, the Second World War, millions marched with the armies of fascism and expansionism. There were always a few Germans and Japanese who could see, and did try to warn people about the destructive path the demagogues were leading. Such voices were scorned, looked down upon as foreign agents, insulted and suppressed. A vast majority of the same German and Japanese later became the bearers of liberalism, democracy, freedom and peace once their hands were burnt, and their cities, lives and societies destroyed.
History only repeats itself for those who do not learn from it. The repetition is not the exact replay of events though. The Germans and the Japanese learnt the fallacy and self-destructiveness of fascism and expansionism when others got united and destroyed them. The destructiveness of a certain action or policy may come through external or internal reactions. Are Pakistan and its people in the category that learn through going through self-destruction? Will they self-destruct before reading the writing on the wall?
People read arguments and imagine non-existent facts. Consider the strong belief that China will defend Pakistan against the US; that Pakistan can replace the US with China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and even Europe and Japan. This conviction is prevalent despite clear statements, private and public, including from China, to the contrary. A certain militarist, self-delusionist, grandiose, and intolerant mindset is evident but most cannot see it. This mindset is the result of experiences of birth, later development of the state and regional and international environment of the Cold War and post-Cold War period.
The calculation that external powers will not directly attack Pakistan for a variety of reasons sounds plausible. However, the argument for saving Pakistan from collapse, as that will have serious negative implications for regional and global security, and the fear of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling in the hands of terrorists, is wearing out. One can observe a gradual shift towards emergence of a new policy consensus towards Pakistan in powerful capitals: do not go for military or even economic action against Pakistan, but do not save it from internal political destabilisation, erosion of state authority, lack of governance and economic meltdown either. The people of Pakistan will learn only once they have experienced the destruction of extremist control of power, or after chaos that scatters power all over.
Two considerations go against letting Pakistan go: its nuclear weapons and the spillover beyond its territory. These two are serious issues. However, if pushed, many innovative policies can be found to deal with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s security establishment is again focusing on traditional security methods. I trust claims of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons being secure. But the question is, secure from what? And from whom? The threat (from Pakistan’s perspective) may not come from where it expects, and may not even be of the type it might plan for. The other consideration is increasingly becoming irrelevant as well. Most believe (rightly or wrongly) a stable Pakistan to be a source of instability rather than stability in the region. The spillover effects of a destabilised Pakistan will most probably not be worse, and confining it would not require more resources than keeping it afloat.
Pakistan’s security experts are only evaluating the cost-benefit of traditional methods that may be applied against Pakistan. It is not a question of traditional knowledge or intelligence of the people in power. They are quite capable of analysing the situation through traditional lessons learned from the writings of great international relations theorists like Morgenthau, but only through the prism of their particular mindset. There is a need to challenge this mindset intellectually. However, can this be done through reason and argument only? Or will this state and its people learn only through experience? There is serious need to think out of the box, innovatively and imaginatively.
The writer is the Chairman of the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar