Daily Times

Prime Minister-elect Imran Khan has stated his desire to turn Pakistan into an Islamic welfare state, geared to the collective betterment of society. However, his utopian vision arguably can’t transpire without a reduction in the astronomical costs of maintaining the existing national security state. Otherwise, the new government will be hard-pressed to find sufficient resources to allocate towards the reduction of poverty, raising living standards and human development.

Can Khan — beholden to the military in his successful elevation to power — challenge the India-centric security policies underpinning the national security state? Debatably, the foreign and security strategies pursued by the security state have virtually bought Pakistan to its knees.

Firstly, Khan must use his negotiating skills to persuade the generals to abandon their futile strategic dreams to compete with the regional behemoth and rival, India. On the surface, Khan has a strong argument given the enormous ideological, economic and social costs for Pakistan to maintain military parity with India.

But, Khan would have to broach the subject carefully — the generals would consider civilian input into India policy an infringement on their sacred turf — any change amounting to an about-face and admission of fallibility.

Historically, a confident and larger India has instilled fear in an insecure and smaller Pakistan, drawing it into a ruinous confrontation, it can’t win — a slight variation of the famous Thucydides Trap. Periodic Indian threats about teaching Pakistan a lesson and the perceived Indian hand in the creation of Bangladesh didn’t help.

Khan has to persuade the military brass to discard the use of jihadists as cannon-fodder in the region. Again, Khan would be on strong ground. After 9/11, with the attention on terrorism, state support to local jihadists has turned into a huge liability, straining Pakistan’s key diplomatic relationships

In a bid to counter India, Pakistan dispensed with democracy and self-reliance. Instead, the country took refuge behind a nebulous Islamic identity and a militarised state. Furthermore, Pakistan bolstered its military and nuclear-weapons capabilities, through sovereignty sapping external alliances. These negative factors retarded political, economic, and social development.

The military ensured its centrality in the state, adept at both starting fires and acting as the fire fighter. It continues to view itself as the only fully functional institution in Pakistan.

Secondly, particularly with the United States.

Moreover, the country paid a high price domestically, as state-sponsored jihadists morphed into a Frankenstein’s monster that unleashed weapons, bombs, and terrorism into the mainstream of society. As a result, trade and investment has shied away from the country, seen to live continually under siege.

Pakistan’s jihad industry derives its strength from the military’s decision to use non-state actors, as an integral part of its strategy to bleed India. Society canonizes Jihadist leaders like Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and Masood Azhar of Jaish-e-Mohammed (The Army of Muhammad) as Mujahideen (freedom fighters). The jihadi network flourishes under state patronage, attracting money and recruits drawn to the Islamist narrative and the Kashmir cause.

Thirdly, Khan must explain to the generals that Pakistan doesn’t have the financial means to sustain an arms race with India. India, with the numbers heavily stacked in its favour, has the economic brawn to prevail.

Khan inherits an economic crisis, potentially forcing Pakistan to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Over the years, Pakistan the world’s twenty-fifth largest economy at $ 300 billion has grown intermittently undermined by terrorism and political chaos. In contrast, India, the world’s sixth largest economy at $2.6 trillion has attracted large foreign investments and managed consistently high growth rates.

In addition, India’s massive defence spending, focused on the Chinese and Pakistan threats, constitutes around 12 percent of the national budget (2.5 percent of GDP). India still has the flexibility to invest in social programs and economic uplift.

In comparison, Pakistan’s defence spending, primarily focused on the Indian threat, officially consumes 30 percent of the annual national budget (3.5 percent of GDP). This leaves Pakistan with precious little resources to pursue Khan’s dream of a welfare state.

Demands for a re-sized military, within the country’s means solely concentrated on defending its frontiers (and not on outlandish fantasies of liberating Indian Kashmir), make eminent sense.

As an aside, the defence outlays (albeit during war) of Germany and Japan were 70 percent and 76 percent of national income at the height of World War II. After recovering from military defeat and occupation, the reduction in defence spending contributed significantly to Germany and Japan’s meteoric economic rise.

Lastly, Khan must make a case for the necessity for autonomous civilian institutions, operating outside the military’s overbearing shadow. His envisioned welfare state will need strong democratic, executive and legal institutions. It is essential for the military to cede space to civilian institutions to solve the country’s problems politically through give and take, unlike the sledgehammer approach applied in the past.

An ideal outcome is a welfare state, emerging out of the ashes of the national security state.

The writer can be reached at shgcci@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, August 3^rd 2018.