The welfare state, as described in the policy, aims to guarantee its citizens minimum income, to minimise security threats by enabling citizens to deal with social contingencies, and to provide all citizens best available standards of social services without discrimination. The policy also aspires to ensure citizens’ security, national cohesion and a prosperous nation. The establishment of a welfare system in Pakistan is asserted to be supported by ‘equitable economic development’ and enhanced social services provision. However, the development of welfare system is intrinsically linked with military preparations and warfare because any welfare endeavour to ensure the ‘safety, security, dignity, and prosperity’ of citizens would establish domestic stability and social cohesion as an insurance against any social revolution, and would benefit military infrastructure and manpower as well as civilians’ livelihood — thus facilitating Pakistan to survive through tough periods.
To build on the welfare system, the policy vows to integrate defence capabilities into the country's economic and societal capacities to maximise national power, akin to British Integrated Operating Concept. This integration could be advantageous in terms of optimisation of national resources and promoting social cohesion but the policy aims at expanding the national resource pie in order to provide a bigger slice for defence.
One can argue that social welfare creates a weak and dependent society that reduces national power. Therefore, support diversion of public funds from unworthy welfare recipients to worthy military men. The frail state of social welfare and expanded defence budgets in Pakistan over the past decades seems a clear manifestation of this argument. On the contrary, the concept of 'welfare state' emanated from the times of war in the modern world when the British parliament commissioned Sir William Beverage to chart out a plan for social services reform when Westminster was being bombarded. The welfare state was contemplated as 'an imperative war strategy' based on the idea that “the war could not be won unless millions of ordinary people, in Britain and overseas, were convinced that we had something better to offer than had our enemies – not only during but after the war.” Inferring from the examples of British practice and the New Deal of 1930s that was to preserve liberal capitalist system from collapse, the social services provision envisioned in the policy could bolster deteriorating economy, guarantee vulnerable Pakistani citizens a better future in a rapidly changing regional and global environment and ensure a bigger slice for defence from the national resources pie.
The welfare state, as enshrined in the policy, places at its heart the human security that is to be achieved through, besides social services provision, a ‘sustainable and inclusive economic growth’. In order to ensure human security, the policy builds an ambiguous symbiotic relationship between economic growth, traditional and non-traditional security and claims to move away from the conventional ‘guns vs butter’ debate. On one hand, this demonstrates a transformation of the Pakistani state where economic growth and competition are envisaged as solutions to traditional and non-traditional security challenges. This economic growth could directly encourage and ensure citizens’ livelihood. But on the other hand, the overwhelming idea one can grasp from reading the document is that a 'sustainable and inclusive economic growth' is eyed at expanding the national resources pie in order to devote bigger chunks to different aspects of security.
In this way, the policy envisages a positive relationship between defence spending and economic growth. However, it doesn’t talk about how this national resources pie will be sliced and how these slices will be distributed among different elements of national power. What will be the ratio of defence and welfare spending? The welfare to defence spending ratio will determine whether or not Pakistan’s national security policy has successfully avoided the ‘guns vs butter’ tradeoff.