It has indeed been a misfortune for Pakistan that its top leaders have not been well versed in regional political and security issues. Take, former President Asif Ali Zardari, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and incumbent Prime Minister Imran Khan. They have made outlandish assertions that have led to embarrassing situations in the past.
I have picked three events from the country’s political history to demonstrate my point.
1- Former President Asif Ali Zardari, while addressing a leadership conference of The Hindustan Time in 2008 said that Pakistan would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict with India, thus contradicting Pakistan’s policy of first use of nuclear weapons to neutralise India’s conventional superiority. At the moral level nothing could be a more suitable advertisement for the peaceful nature of Pakistani strategic culture than what President Zardari said to the Indian audience. President Zardari being an ethnic Sindhi, born and brought up in Sindhi culture famous for Sufi poetry of love and peace couldn’t have put it more aptly, than to shun the nature of first use policy.
The only option is to develop expertise in foreign and security policy matters among the political class and make them part of the policy making process. Else, it will only reinforce the belief that the political leaders are not in control.
Ironically, however, his statement had no basis as a state policy. First use of nuclear weapons in a conflict is part of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine. Over the years, we have produced weapon systems which sustain the policy of first use of nuclear weapons. All this didn’t change with the statement of President Zardari. Resultantly, the whole world saw the disconnect between reality that existed in Pakistan’s nuclear force structure and the president’s own assertion. President Zardari should have first built a consensus within the military establishment to change the policy and the corresponding force structure that was built over the years. In the absence of such an effort President Zardari's, the statement attracted nothing more than laughter across the border.
2- Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif received his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lahore at his residence in December 2015. In the meeting between the two leaders, no representative of the Pakistani foreign office was present. Sharif was a proponent of normalisation of relations with India. By meeting Modi, Sharif didn’t realise that any attempt to go for normalisation without a corresponding change in domestic configuration of the state machinery would be a recipe for disaster at the domestic level.
3- Prime Minister Imran Khan met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow just hours before the latter ordered Russian troops into Ukraine. This potentially could put Pakistan on a collision course with the West. Life on the wrong side of the western World is not difficult for states that are politically independent and economically self-sufficient. But this axiom doesn’t hold true for a country like Pakistan where health of the economy is dependent on trade facilities offered by the western capitals and loans facilities presented by the western financial institutions, like the World Bank and IMF.
Of course, rulers are judged within the power structures based on financial goodies they are able to attract from the western capitals and the political clout they muster as a result of relations with the western leaders. For a country like Pakistan, life on the wrong side of the western world may get it into trouble.
The three cases above reflect a disconnect between the civilian leaders’ policy and the on-ground reality of the state machinery.
The only option is to develop expertise in foreign and security policy matters among the political class and make them part of the policy making process. Else, it will only reinforce the belief that the political leaders are not in control.