Daily Times

The present controversy surrounding Army Chief Bajwa’s visit to Senate and the leakage of the contents of the discussion begs a serious question. Was the in camera briefing to Senate a simple case of formal civil-military interaction like in functioning democracies or a one off desultorily planned tete a tete? The answer may perhaps lie in a peep in the past where the military ruled the roost and as a result, all the formal channels of civil-military interaction for national security decision making got stunted.

In a functioning democracy, the COAS’s visit to legislature for a formal briefing to national representatives should be a normal event, hardly raising any hackles amongst a segment considering the briefing infra-dig and another gloating over the landmark event stamping civilian supremacy over a supercilious military. After all, have we all not seen the US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJSC) being called to Senate and House of Representatives for a no holds barred grilling on security policies? Why was much song and dance made of the army chief’s visit to the Senate, trumpeting it as a historic event in 70 years history of civil military relations in Pakistan?

A few other questions also warrant an answer. Why was the visit not properly planned and structured to extract the answers germane to major policy issues like Pak-Afghan relations, internal security challenges, Pak-India relations and counter terrorism strategy? Why was the in camera session not kept confidential? Was there any objective of the briefing other than familiarising the Senators with some security related issues?

Was the briefing beneficial for the Senate to give policy direction to the armed forces? And did Senate as a consequence of the briefing firm up any policy directives for the armed forces? What was the role of Minister of Defence, Secretary Defence, and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee in the run up to the briefing and after the event?

The post briefing expression of regrets by the Senate chairman for leaked contents of the in camera briefing betokens a dysfunctional and desultory civil-military interaction that transcends the event, being rooted in the history of military dominance in the country and the concomitant abdication of the national security and defence policy formulation.

Anatol Lieven points to the power asymmetry between the civil and military institutions in his book Pakistan, A Hard Country by remarking that there is only one institution that really works in Pakistan i.e the military.

It is evident therefore that our civil-military interaction is a victim of the lopsided power and capacity balance between the civil and military institutions. The civilian supremacy in United States was not imposed through constitutional fiat but trend setting traditions such as voluntary spurning of the post of a constitutional King by George Washington after winning the war of independence from the British.

In a functioning democracy, the COAS’s visit to legislature for a formal briefing should be a normal event, hardly raising any hackles amongst a segment considering the briefing infra-dig and another gloating over the landmark event stamping civilian supremacy over a supercilious military

The civil-military interaction does not only happen through random invitations but proper institutions like legislative committees, Cabinet Committee on National Security, Ministry of Defence, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. The academic debate on the civilian control of the military by scholars such as Samuel Huntington yielded notions of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ control.

As per subjective control, the civilians co-opt the military in civilian governance so as to share power with them as an insurance against the military’s disruption of the political institutions. In objective control, the civilian government allows professional autonomy to armed forces in return for the military’s acquiescence to the civilian political control without any attempts to encroach in civilian domain. What sort of a model do we follow in Pakistan?

We are in fact following a mish mash of the two systems. During military tenures, the subjective control allows the military ingress in all governance and policy formulation structures while during democratic tenures the objective control is exercised upon the military.

The trouble arises when the institutional memory of the military takes it towards the default settings of a mish mash of objective and subjective control. In simple words, the military due to long established habits and associated privileges retains its institutional autonomy while at the same time insisting on being co-opted into the civilian power structures, appropriating thereby the control of foreign and security policies. In order to exercise complete objective control like the functioning democracies, the civilian component of the state and polity needs to be very competent and assertive.

An uninformed and incompetent civilian leadership would neither be able to command respect nor provide necessary direction to the armed forces even if the armed forces acquiesce to subordinate themselves fully to civilian control. Conversely, it can be argued that if the military refuses to cede space to the elected representatives in matters of national defence, foreign policy, and national security the civilians can hardly provide any direction.

Other than the will, there are structural impediments to an effective civilian control of the military. These include lack of proper institutions to debate the national security issues. We do not have a fully resourced National Security Directorate that works under National Security Adviser. Logically, our National Security Directorate should be our main policy evaluation think tank feeding options to Cabinet Committee on National Security and the office of the prime minister.

While the military has professionally run policy evaluation organisations that formulate policy options on military strategy and national security the civilian institutions lack such expertise. Until National Assembly and Senate are not served through a competent team of security professionals in National Security Directorate and Ministry of Defence, the military would always find it difficult to interact with them. The security expertise gap, therefore, between the civilians and the military, needs to be bridged in order to gain full respect of a military weaned on the notions of martial superiority in a national security state beset with existential threats internally and externally.

Our national security decision making process is heavily militarised due to the reasons mentioned above. An example is the National Command Authority where the civilian presence and expertise is far less visible than the military component. The policy options in employment as well as development of nuclear assets are prepared and presented to the PM and cabinet ministers who do not have the staff to scrutinise those options on professional merit.

Resultantly, the military’s viewpoint is the only view point that prevails on such fora. Same is the case with the threat perception and the determination of the response in conventional sphere. The threats determine the response and the economic capacity determines the value of the response. A professional scrutiny of the army, navy, and PAF’s threat perception by the civilian security experts with adequate military experience is de rigueur to ensure a balancing of the overly militarised policy planning process.

What we need is a potent Ministry of Defence, an effective National Security Directorate, and a strong linkage with think tanks and academia to feed policy options to the civilian security oversight institutions in cabinet as well as legislatures. Until the civilians don’t enhance their expertise to provide effective oversight and direction, the notion of civilian control of the military will remain a pipe dream.

The writer is a PhD scholar in NUST. He can be reached at rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, December 25^th 2017.