I think you better concentrate on food and water supply than the form of government. You will be later sorry by doing not so... :)
^ and that's how you fall into slavery or feudalism or whatever you want to call it. A system of government with checks and balances and a public mandate is precursor to progress. Leaders without integrity will always be bought by corrupt businessmen w.o checks & balances. Military will becomes a corrupt trade org without leadership that acts within law.
Ofcourse the author Ayesha Siddiqa is a pakistani strategist and so gleefully uses grandiose terms such as “bleeding the enemy” etc but she has a fair statement of what (all) ails pakistan here.
India has signed two major agreements recently. The one with the US allows it to acquire dual-use and space technology from the world’s technologically most advanced country. The second, with Israel, transfers to it Phalcon airborne early warning technology fitted aboard a Russian aircraft. The agreement extends to greater commercial and trade relations between the two states. The net result of both agreements is major investment in building and bolstering India’s technological capabilities not just in the military sphere, but also in those sectors that could ultimately feed into strengthening the country’s military capabilities.
The growth of space technology and the strengthening of the entire technological infrastructure are of prime importance. Even if New Delhi does not procure the weapon systems immediately, it would be building the potential it could later utilise for strengthening its indigenous defence industry. This would essentially push India towards a new era of technological modernity previously unknown in the region.
Clearly, India is shifting from the regional to the global league. It has done this smartly by building networks with multiple regional groupings and individual states. The inroads into ASEAN, the link with the US through Israel etc are all contacts of strategic value. But the most significance link is with the US. Since the end of Indira Gandhi’s era, New Delhi has been working towards getting close to Washington. Now it is using Israel to reach the US. But this is not the only thing. New Delhi knew the systematic portrayal of Chinese threat would get the US attention. Also, it would push India out of the regional box. Since it did not want to run the risk of being abandoned by the US, as happened with Pakistan – once the threat was over or had minimised – New Delhi began working on cultivating the Tel Aviv connection.
Importantly, this was not just done at the official level. The cultivation of contacts between the Jews living in Israel but originating from India, and the involvement of individuals and the Indian expatriate community in the US, especially those in the think tanks, were the tools employed effectively. Unfortunately, Pakistan was not in a comparative situation at all. It never had a Jewish population and it couldn’t use its expatriate community meaningfully, or its academia to push Islamabad’s case. What is even more tragic is that decision-makers in Islamabad don’t realise that the average Pakistani academic and expatriate, unlike the Indians, has always faced the dichotomy of loving Pakistan and yet not being able to support the policies of the state mainly because of the lack of democracy in the country. How can one feel associated with policies when one realises that there was a strong imprint on these of the military that has ruled the country for almost half of the country’s history? While there may be no problem per se with the military, the fact is that such policies have a strong organisational rather than a national bias.
The question is: What can Pakistan do to counter this? Should it continue with its traditional approach and treat it as a matter to be dealt with by the military in a military fashion? This would mean engaging in an asymmetrical arms race and beefing up conventional and non-conventional capabilities with the intention of increasing the ‘cost of conflict’ for the adversary. Interestingly, given the fact that Washington is high on ‘war against terrorism’ the space for ‘bleeding’ the enemy has also become limited. One can almost sympathise with the non-conventional low-cost option adopted in the past of co-opting non-state actors to raise the stakes for New Delhi. But the days of Mirza Aslam Beg’s non-offensive defence are over. With the two aforementioned agreements and geo-strategic developments, that option is almost out.
Listening to statements of the naval and air chiefs, who seem to have zeroed-in on new weapons procurements, one gets a feeling that the armed forces have not really evaluated the seriousness of what has just happened. The recipe is still the old one. But would the old mindset help? What is being suggested here is not some form of unilateral disarmament, but rather a strategic assessment of the threat and an evaluation of the options. The idea is to adopt a holistic approach to national strategy by shifting the focus from the narrow concept of national security policy, which has been the overriding concept for so long, to the development of the state’s net capacity to thwart the challenges.
India’s technological acquisitions, not limited to weapon systems, are bound to make any fresh procurement by Islamabad meaningless. Pakistan would only strain itself beyond imagination if it were to indulge in an arms race. Such indulgence could only result in a replay of the demise of the USSR. What proved to be far more consequential for the US was its ability to bleed the USSR dry economically.
The strategic assessment would require the government to produce a ‘white paper’ on national strategy with military security as one aspect of it. This means restructuring the armed forces, thinking the military strategy through and prioritising; in essence, to see how can the country’s defence be made cost-effective. This also means filling the gaps between security policy, diplomacy and socio-politics. It is also important to understand at this juncture that Pakistan faces a multifaceted threat. The ethnic and sectarian divide is growing. In fact, issues such as the Kalabagh dam and Thal Canal would sharpen the ethnic divide and so would the continued repression of the liberal-secular forces in the country.
There is also the issue of rising population and the diminishing capability to generate resources to feed them and keep them happy, healthy and educated. President Pervez Musharraf wants to make Pakistan modern. But the road to modernity leads through the empowerment of liberal forces. So far, they have been marginalised for tactical dividends. A grand national strategy would involve reviewing the way the state and its resources – financial, human, natural and other resources – could be improved and developed
Politically, Pakistan would need to stabilise and strengthen its democratic system. This can only be achieved through strengthening the secular political forces instead of showing them the door.
I am sure we would prosper much more without some people in our country, who live in Pakistan but love some other countries.
^ Why are you so sure of that?