Why has Pakistan become a garrison state or a heavily militarised warrior state with an intense focus on narrowly-defined national security concerns, while several erstwhile military-ruled countries in Asia and Africa have become democratic and reaped the benefits of increased global trade and investments.
T.V. Paul Professor of International Relations at McGill University, Montreal author of 15 books sets out to unravel this labyrinth. This book is an attempt to examine the role of war and war-making in the development of nation-states in the developing world.
The story of Pakistans chequered existence extends beyond its frontiers. More than six decades of intense pursuits has made Pakistan less secure and less unified as a coherent nation-state. In European history war-making was an instrument of national development and consolidation. In Pakistan the opposite has happened. The excessive war-making effort can have perverse effects on a developing country, a limited resources of the country are siphoned off for military purposes with little or, if any, long term value for the larger society. The public may not successfully demand economic and social reforms, unlike in many war-making societies of historical Europe and contemporary East Asia.
After World War 11, rapid development has come to states that engaged in deep economic engagement with the world markets and transformed the competitiveness of their societies. States that pursued extreme ideological and/or realpolitik goals have not fared well. Countries that received economic assistance from abroad for their strategic positions as allies of the great powers benefited only if their leaders pursued a developmental state approach and undertook transformative polities internally. The contrasting experience of several US allies Japan, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan versus Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines attest to this.
Pakistani elite has both the motive and the opportunity to such policies. The political elites strategic ideas and ideological beliefs about statehood, development and power are major factors in determining what kind of state strategy they will follow. If these ideas are based on hyper realpolitik assumptions and deeply held ideological beliefs devoid of prudence and pragmatism they tend to produce unintended consequences that are often negative. Hyper realpolitik assumptions prioritise narrow military security as an end in itself and above all other national goals, including economic welfare, irrespective of the consequences.
The warrior state makes its own trap from which it cannot easily escape. The military has assumed a role of a protector quite intensely. This role comes from twin fears for its future from its immediate neighbours. One is the fear of India with which Pakistan seeks strategic parity, the other is the fear of losing control over Afghanistan. But in that role the protector often generates policies or behaviour that makes insecurity a reality. The army is called upon to assume the role of a protector from the threats that that it has partially created in the first place.
The strategic position has laid a geo-strategic curse on Pakistan. This is similar to the idea of a resource curse. When a country is endowed with too much easily extracted natural resources and mineral assets like oil, it leaves political elite with little incentive to improve the states economic resources base, reform in society or develop a workforce with a variety of skills.
Pakistans transformation will only take place if both its strategic circumstances and the ideas and assumptions that the elite hold change fundamentally. Although some of the strategic circumstances are beyond Pakistans control, its neighbouring states and the great powers can at best minimal help guide in a positive direction.
Internally the Pakistani elite has to adopt a semi secular or at least tolerant quasi Islamic state sate model and begin considering development as its core mission. International pressure helped to reduce the power of the military in Turkey, Indonesia and Egypt but it was his rise of the liberal civil society that reined in the military and that established democratic regimes in these countries.
If the military and the intelligence agencies persist in double games and keep supporting terrorism, Pakistan will eventually fall apart, causing unimaginable damage to itself and to the world. A fundamental democratic structure, a developmental state founded on trade and economic progress rather than an intense warrior state should become the motto of the Pakistan middle classes and civil society.
In a highly globalised world, a traditional warrior state built round the intolerant political ideology is fast becoming an anachronism. It not only promotes ideas and values that are archaic, but is plainly dangerous to its society and to the rest of the world. A pragmatic elite, and a tolerant and a liberal civil society are essential for transformational change.
The Warrior State
Author: T.V. Paul
Publisher: Oxford University Press Pakistan, 2014
Pages: 213
Price: Rs995
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