The Pressures on Pakistan

Anatol Lieven

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2002

Summary:  Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has supported Washington's war on terror so far. But he rules an impoverished and increasingly radical population and faces a powerful enemy next door. If the economic crisis continues, his government could fall, bringing Islamists to power and giving them control over nuclear weapons.

Anatol Lieven is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

After all, as long as the contest over Kashmir continues, it will remain a draw for radical mujahideen from throughout the Muslim world and will encourage groups within Pakistan to give them support and shelter. Islamist terrorists also know that the best way to encourage revolution in Pakistan is to provoke New Delhi or Indian Hindus into savage repression of India's Muslim minority. The war between India and Pakistan that might ensue would radicalize Pakistani Muslim feeling -- especially if India were seen as being backed by the United States. Such a war also would entail the horrendous risk of a nuclear exchange between the two countries.

The United States cannot now hope to limit this risk by ridding the subcontinent of nuclear weapons. One reason neither India nor Pakistan will give up such assets is the fundamental lack of symmetry between the two countries. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is that country's key deterrent against India. It plays the same role as did Western nuclear forces during the Cold War: it deters a potential adversary with a heavy superiority in conventional forces. India's development of nuclear weapons, by contrast, was not focused solely on Pakistan. Rather, India was as or more concerned about its rivalry with China, its own desire to be seen as China's equal in Asia, and its aspirations to become a great power on the world stage.

The nuclear rivalry between India and Pakistan, then, will not be easy to eliminate. It could, however, be contained and made less dangerous -- especially if the United States would make the right moves on Kashmir. Doing so would also help reduce the devastating economic impact the continued conflict has had on both countries, especially the much weaker Pakistan. Maintaining a military rivalry with a country that has a population seven times larger than its own is steadily bankrupting Pakistan. In the 1990s, India spent around two percent of its GDP annually on its military. Pakistan spent five percent of its GDP, which is one-eighth the size of India's, on a military less than half the size of its rival's.

With no money left over for investment in infrastructure, Pakistan is unable to do much to promote its economic growth. Nor can it afford to improve the deep inadequacies in its state education system. Such inadequacies encourage the country's poor to turn toward radical madrassas, since these do not demand fees and provide free food and clothing. The military rivalry with India, in short, has become a key factor pushing Pakistan toward long-term disintegration. And radical Islamists are waiting to pick up the pieces.

In the long term, only serious economic growth and the development of accountable political parties will stabilize Pakistan and end this threat. In the short-to-medium term, however, the army remains the best bulwark against chaos and revolution. It is on the army, therefore, that Washington must base its immediate efforts. Inevitably, this will require providing Pakistan with some of the new weaponry it seeks. But it will also require a resumption of training programs and different forms of contact with Pakistani officers at all levels. If Pakistan's military is going to remain supportive of the United States and take the difficult steps necessary to defend the U.S. war against terrorism, these officers must be convinced that their actions are in Pakistan's national interest. And Washington still has a lot of convincing to do.