The fall in US-Pakistan relations

Columnist SULTAN AHMED talks about the deteriorating relations between once staunch allies.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US is famous for its vigorous espionage in foreign countries, secretly executing the policies of the US government, reportedly including toppling foreign governments, when Washington deems it essential, and coming up with long range projections of the shape of things to come in significant regions and important states.

While the world, particularly Third World countries, may dread the CIA because of its fearsome tentacles, it is regarded by the US as an essential tool of its foreign policy. So its Chief could become president of the US as well as George Bush did in 1989, and his son has now been elected to the same office.

The CIA has now come up with an interesting and partly alarming report on ‘Global Trends-2015’ and for the first time released for publication its contents. Not the US administration, old or new, has accepted its projections of what may come to pass in the world in the next 15 years, but it likes the world to debate its contents and achieve positive improvements in areas where it fears adverse developments or fearful happenings, like wars or an increase in dire poverty. The report does not preclude a nuclear war between India and Pakistan within the next 15 years because of the ‘miscalculations to which they are prone as their military history or the record of three wars between them testify.

In fact, the report says the threat of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be the most serious issue in the next 15 years.’ It is also concerned over the deteriorating economic conditions in Pakistan and the rising population in the region, resulting in at least 0.7 billion of the very poor.

The CIA says: ‘India will most likely expand the size of the nuclear-capable force. And Pakistan’s nuclear and missile forces will also continue to increase.

Islamabad has announced that it does not believe in a nuclear race with India or in a game of nuclear weapon numbers but in nuclear deterrence to prevent India launching an offensive against it. But if India goes on increasing its nuclear weapons and missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads Pakistan will be forced to increase the number of its nuclear weapons.

The new US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says: ‘Credible deterrence no longer can be based solely on the prospect of punishment through massive retaliation. Instead it must be based on a combination of offensive nuclear and non-nuclear defensive capabilities working together to deny potential adversaries the opportunity and benefits from the threat or use of weapons of mass destruction against our forces and homeland as well as those of our allies.’

Hence the report says: ‘A noticeable increase in the size of India’s arsenal, however, would prompt Pakistan to further increase the size of its own arsenal.’ And taking a broader view of the situation in the area it says ‘the widening strategic and economic gaps between the two principal powers, India and Pakistan, and dynamic inter-play between their mutual hostility and the instability in Central Asia will define the South Asian region in 2015.

As has been said by the new US Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, the CIA believes ‘India will be the un-rivalled regional power with a large military, including naval and nuclear capabilities, and a dynamic and growing economy.’

The report also anticipates the widening India-Pakistan gap to destabilise the relations between them and increase the deep political, economic and social disparities within both states.’

And Colin Powell said in his testimony before the Senate that India was a country which should grow more and more focused in the lens of our foreign policy. Soon the most populous country in the world, India, has the potential to keep the peace in the vast Indian Ocean area and its periphery. ‘He said we need to work harder and more consistently to assist India in this endeavour, while not neglecting our friends in Pakistan.’ That means that while cooperating and assisting India in the military or defence sphere, the US does not want to ignore Pakistan. It is one of pity or sympathy for Pakistan than a dynamic relationship between us or a vigorous partnership.

Gen. Powell says China and the US are competitors and potential regional rivals and also trading partners. And the CIA report says ‘wary of China, India will look increasingly to the West, but its need for oil and desire to balance Arab ties to Pakistan will lead to strengthening ties to Persian Gulf states as well.’ India is already doing that by seeking large economic relations with Iran and strengthening its relations with Saudi Arabia, as exemplified by the recent visit of the Indian External Affairs Minister to Saudi Arabia for a long time.

The report has come up with a dim projection of the economic future of Pakistan. It says ‘Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite, and radical Islamic parties. In addition the domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the make-up and cohesion of the military, once Pakistan’s most capable institution.’

The report fears for the future of the federation itself, in the manner some of our politicians are doing. It says ‘In the climate of continuing domestic turmoil the Central government’s control will probably be reduced to the Punjab heartland and the economic hub of Karachi. This is a fear voiced by some of the ethnic and regional parties too loudly.

The report also voices the fear, the turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan may spill over in Kashmir and other areas of the sub-continent prompting Indian leaders to take more aggressive presumptive and retaliatory actions. It expects India’s conventional military advantage over Pakistan to widen as a result of New Delhi’s superior economic position.

India, says the report, will also continue to build up its ocean-going navy to dominate the Indian Ocean transit routes, US-led for delivery of Persian Gulf oil to Asia.

Along with that, India and Pakistan will see weapons of mass destruction as a strategic imperative and continue to amass nuclear war-heads and build a variety of missile delivery systems. The changing dynamic of state power will combine with other factors that affect the risk of conflict in various regions.

The report argues the risk of nuclear conflict will be high in South Asia over the next 15 years as India and Pakistan are ‘prone to miscalculations.’ And both will continue to build up their nuclear and missile forces.

The fact is both in 1965 and 1971 we blundered into war and did not go for it after careful calculation and due preparations. We managed to extricate ourselves after considerable difficulties in 1965 and the 1971 war resulted in the loss of a half of Pakistan and surrender of 93,000 Pakistanis as prisoners of war.

The report expects serious difficulties in the economic sector with the population of South Asia rising by 30 per cent even after the fall in population growth. India’s population is expected to grow by 20 per cent to 1. 2 billion, while Pakistan’s population is expected to rise from 140 million to 195 million by 2015, a truly scary prospect. The rise in population, says the report, will put a major strain on the economy already unable to meet the basic needs of the current population.

The urban crisis is expected to get far worse as by then instead of 25 to 30 per cent of the people of Pakistan living in the urban areas 40 to 50 per cent of them will occupy urban areas. Imagine Karachi as a city of 20 to 25 million people with similar prospects for Lahore, Peshawar, Hyderabad etc. when the whole country right now faces the problem of shrinking water supply and acute scarcity in major cities.

India’s economy, long suppressed by the heavy hand of government, is likely to achieve sustained economic growth, and high technology companies will be the most dynamic agents of that growth, and the service sector will bloom. Despite that half a billion Indians will remain in dire poverty.

The report underscores the vast disparity in economic growth between the two countries. And India, wanting to be a midi-super power will put more and money on its armaments while Pakistan will have less money to spend on matching the arms. And as it spends more on the arms talking of the need for minimum deterrence, it will become poorer and more unstable and face a host of problems, with political and economic uncertainties the more vexing among them.

The report said: ‘Pakistan will be more fractious, isolated and dependent on international financial assistance.’ And that is already too visible now with the total national debt exceeding the whole year’s GDP. The more we borrow the higher will be the cost of that borrowing, and the more difficult it will be to service or repay the loans. In such a context investment will become scarce, and foreign investment which is already barely 0.5 per cent of the total of the world’s foreign investment will become far less.

The leaders of Pakistan have hence decisions to take to reduce the conflicts within the country and in the region. The political squabbles will have to be reduced and eventually eliminated for period of ten years if not 15. Formation of newer and newer parties aggravating the political conflict must cease and we need a broad and sustained consensus on the political system and economic order.

It is folly to dismiss the CIA report as another handiwork of CIA. It is not meant to demoralise the people of Pakistan or destabilise the country. It is largely meant to open our eyes. And if the US is not now committed to support and strengthen us there is real sympathy for us following the manner we have grievously hurt ourselves and the worse we may do.

Our political leaders are more interested in power and manipulating the levels of power to strengthen themselves. Democracy has been made a facade. The alternative is not military rule which the country has suffered half the time, and under which we lost half the country.

The country needs a meaningful and sustainable consensus on the economic policy. Foreign aid, foreign loans and foreign investment will not flow in while the leaders and the generals are engaged in a tug of war. The interest of the country has to rise above the narrow interest of the politicians and the clamour of the Mullahs with their very narrow interpretation of Islam.

P.S. Meanwhile, the militant defence minister of India George Fernandes has confirmed what the CIA report says in respect of India’s vastly augmented defence outlay. He talks of steep hike in the defence budget as part of the national budget to be presented to the Indian Parliament on February 28. He proposes to raise the defence outlay eventually to 3 to 4 per cent of the GDP as proposed by the Parliament’s standing committee on Defence and the Eleventh Finance Commission respectively.

Last year the Indian defence budget was raised by Rs. 130 billion, which was equal to the total Pakistan defence outlay which meant an increase of 28.2 per cent over the preceding year’s defence outlay. And the total Indian defence outlay of Rs. 585.87 billion now far exceeds the total national budget of Pakistan. And yet it was stated the Indian outlay was below 3 per cent of the India’s GDP which may be exceeded by the February 28 budget.

Fernandes was critical of the former Indian leaders who had brought down the defence spending from 3.6 per cent of the Indian GDP in the mid-1980s to 21 per cent by 1996-97. That, some of the Indian defence experts argued, was the main reason why Pakistan opted for the Kargil venture in 1999.

But Western experts and some of our own hint that India is spending more and more on its military and acquiring far more powerful weapons, conventional and nuclear, to force Pakistan to do likewise despite its paucity of resources and go broke in the process. As they said it New Delhi wants to do a Soviet Union in Pakistan. The CIA report has plenty of hints of such designs on the part of India or clear moves in that direction.

All that should make the political leaders and religious militants think clearly what Pakistan should be doing now and what kind of rational decisions they should be taking instead of merely raising more raucous noises or coming up with empty threats.