Daily Times

The weakness of politicians to display a high caliber of leadership and to develop strong national institutions has been ascribed as one reason for military’s preponderance in the national decision-making

The Battle For Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighborhood is a new book written by Shuja Nawaz, an author and a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center in Washington. The book is a lucid and a detached reading that throws fresh vignettes on US-Pakistan relations and the internal political dynamics of Pakistan in the backdrop of a troubled relation with India. It is a useful primer for someone interested in understanding the South Asian security environment from an independent perspective. Considering the author’s expertise and interest in the security environment of South Asia, the relatively slim volume of 350 pages encapsulates useful nuggets of information and conclusions on civil-military relations as well.

The book opens up a treasure trove of pithy insights right from the start in the preface, and thus sets the tone for the rest of the discourse. It sounds some warning shots for a bumpy ride in the bilateral relations of the two conjoined twins that have not yet overcome their violent separation’s hangover, and thus keep currying favour with the dominant world powers for a game of one-upmanship in the subcontinent. This continual standoff results in an arms race that leaches off the vital resources for human security and national development. India being the bigger protagonist in the conflict equation has done little to allay the fears of Pakistan. Due to a perpetual threat environment, Pakistan has been constrained to maintain large armed forces for a matching response, putting strain on her fragile economy.

Avoiding alarming prognostications, the writer in his clinical tone, sounds a warning note while pointing out the widening gap between the economies of the two countries. The subliminal message emerging out of the discourse is the need for Pakistan to accord more importance to the economy as its weakness impacts directly on the national security. As per the Global Trends 2030 report, Indian economy would rise from the present seven-nine percent of Pakistan’s economy to sixteen percent by the year 2030, leaving Pakistan little leeway to match India in a costly arms race.

Another issue bedevilling the Pakistan-India relations is the growing Sino-Pak relationship that is perceived in confrontational terms as a zero sum game by India due to her fears of Chinese domination of South Asia.

The leitmotif of the main discourse in the book is woven around a classic notion of ‘internal balancing’ by Pakistan instead of the erstwhile ‘external balancing’ and ‘bandwagoning’, all interesting euphemisms for Pakistan’s reliance on the USA in the past to develop a military capability vis-à-vis perceived threats. Focus on national economy and human security along with reliance on non-kinetic aspects while tackling the internal security challenges by religious militancy and ethnic particularism are recommended as viable options for Pakistan.

The style of narrative and marshalling of facts to support the arguments reminds one of John Keats’ lines: O what can ail thee, Knight at Arms. Pakistan that has morphed into a national security state resembles a knight at arms that is ever ready to take up arms on behalf of its threatened population, but the writer apparently wants the knight to doff his armour and don the yeoman’s robes to lend a working shoulder to the national development effort.

The development mentioned above includes national politics, flawed democracy, skewed civil-military balance, and the right spending priorities. As per the writer’s analysis, the weak national polity always left a vacuum that was filled by the bureaucracy and the military. The whimsical national decision making system that encourages personalised gains at the expense of institutionalised decision-making has thrived in an environment of pork barrel politics for personal aggrandisement. The strength of the book lies in the prescriptive remedies that offer practical solutions to the problems faced by the country. In the economic sphere, for instance, the writer recommends “doubling up of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves, domestic investments and foreign direct investment in the next five years to transform its economic system.”

The writer offers a very interesting prescription for the success of Pakistan’s CPEC initiative. He believes that Pakistan needs to negotiate the minefields of transparency and preparedness with dexterity internally while making the enterprise a ‘win-win’ formulation externally. To bury the confrontational hatchet, he recommends a greater engagement of the US in the CPEC as a stakeholder. The development of Pakistan’s neglected Western corridor under the rubric of CPEC should be the US contribution in order to build a foundation of a cooperative relationship.

The above could also undercut the viscerally adversarial attitude of the Indo-US strategic coalition vis-à-vis the Sino-Pak alliance for CPEC and Gwadar. The growing economies and affluent urban populations of Pakistan and India would ultimately act as a bulwark to the conflictual relationship due to their economic complementarities.

The subliminal message emerging out of the discourse is the need for Pakistan to accord more importance to the economy as its weakness impacts directly on the national security

Where one would like to sound a note of caution to the author, however, is the scepticism about the actual Indo-US intentions and the ability to transcend the proclivity for competitive politics in the region.

The book is also a useful primer for a student trying to understand the nature of civilian polity in Pakistan. The writer points out the civilian leadership and political institutions’ dysfunctional nature and clumsy attempts at capturing the turf belonging to other national institutions like the judiciary and the armed forces. President Asif Zardari’s attempts at bringing the ISI under the ministry of interior and Nawaz Sharif’s attempts to intrude on military’s turf are cited as examples. The weakness of politicians to display a high caliber of leadership and to develop strong national institutions has been ascribed as one reason for military’s preponderance in the national decision-making. General Ashfaq Kayani’s mediatory role during the lawyers’ movement for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has been cited as one instance of civilian submission to military’s mediation. The sacrifice of the pawns like Pervez Rashid by Nawaz Sharif during the ‘Dawn Leaks’ episode and National Security Advisor Mehmud Durrani by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani were indicative of the decision incompetency and weak judgment of civilian leadership.

The writer has also pointed out the civil-military imbalance and the expediency of the US strategies whereby they relied “too much on the military partners while mollycoddling the corrupt civilian leadership”. The duplicity of civilian leaders like Zardari has been highlighted who played games while privately applauding US actions against militants and publicly criticising US acts for cheap brownie points with the public.

For dealing with internal militancy, the writer recommends a book by Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up: Twenty First Century Combat as Politics, which basically highlights that all military action in fact is political at heart, and therefore, non-kinetic aspects must take precedence over the kinetic aspects. While commenting on Pakistan’s counter-insurgency campaigns, he lauds the altruism and leadership qualities of young officers evidenced by an officer to men casualty ratio of 10:1.

The writer has also raised some important issues about Pakistan’s defence planning and organisation that need to be studied by all serious students of military strategy and doctrine. The most interesting parts pertain to armed forces’ organisation that needs to be tailored as per the dictates of joint planning and contemporary threat environment.

Some tips about nuclear deterrence like the use of MIRVs to counter Indian Anti-Ballistic Missile Shield would also be found useful by our nuclear strategists. Any future threats to Pakistan like climate change, black swan events, post-18th Amendment centre-provinces clashes, floods, earthquakes, labour retrenchment from the Gulf, and the Kashmir conflict have been analysed well along with practical remedies.

Overall, a very useful exposition of Pakistan’s political, economic, and security challenges have been captured in a very readable prose without burdening minds with unnecessary statistics and details. One wishes the author had also elaborated the how part of applying the Thucydides’ model of ‘Fear, Respect and Honour’ by the USA to Pakistan.

The most important advice that needs to be heeded by all who read the book is that Pakistan’s battle for Pakistan would ultimately be won from economic development and political progress.

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